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A minister was telling, in the pulpit, about his lovely three-year-old daughter.  “I fell to day­dreaming the other day,” he said; “and I could see the day, not far distant, when she would be starting to public school.  I could see her, with happy face, and with her hair done up in pigtails, trotting off to her first day in classes.  It was a beautiful vision.  Then I dreamed a bit further, and saw her graduating.  There she stood, in cap and gown, tall and slender like her mother when first we met.  That, too, was a charming vision.  I dreamed a bit further, and saw her going off to college.  Then I hit a snag.  Her mother also had gone to college; there she met a young man; in the course of time there was a wedding, and a new home, and afterwards this little one in the home.  What so greatly concerns me is the question, Where is that boy who is destined someday to be the life companion of our loved one?  Where are his father and mother?  I would go anywhere to find them, and I would implore them to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and to surround him with every influence to insure his growing up clean and straight.  Then we could look with assurance toward the day when the two would stand before the marriage altar with the smile of God upon them.”  This minister was wisely concerned.  Perhaps that boy was at that very moment in junior Church receiving instruction in the things of the Lord, while his parents were in the sanctuary listening to the preacher.  And perhaps the minister was even then building more wisely than he knew.

Expository Preaching Without Notes, Charles Koller, page 133, 134