We went out hiking yesterday. Of course, the children were just as excited to see the cows as the deer. Driving through big mud puddles was as much fun as seeing the mountain waterfall, and watching Daddy change the flat tire was the biggest excitement of all.
On these kinds of trips, Lee and I go into teacher mode. We point out the strawberry blossoms, the rings in a giant tree stump, the difference between aspen and Douglas fir, and so on. We’ll stop the car for a yellow swallowtail butterfly, or some bright pink flowers. And as we do these things, I am challenged when I consider how much I enjoy this kind of teaching, how alert I am in finding interesting jewels I know will fascinate my kids, and how often these “teaching opportunities” come up.
Compare that with how I talk about God’s Word. Big difference. But we did talk about something that got me brainstorming about how I talk about spiritual things. We found the head of a mountain spring, with enough bubbles to convince me to drink from it. I told David he could get water with his hands, or just drink it like a dog. And that reminded us about Gideon. Then I started thinking through all of the object lessons in the Bible– there are quite a lot that we encounter in our modern existence every day– yeast, milk, plants, games, and so on. Perhaps I just need to do a better job at being sensitive to pointing out the connections already in the Bible for me. And beyond object lessons, what about watching out for biblical principles in action as we watch people around us? The nice man helping mommy with the shopping cart, the children fighting over a swing, and the car who stops to help a hurting animal can all illustrate biblical principles. I should be pointing these things out. And what about when I simply find a Bible passage that is beautiful in meaning and expression? Shouldn’t I be sharing these too?
And you can probably guess where this train of thought is going to lead us. If I am going to be sharing God’s Word and ways to our children, I need to be thinking about God’s Word and ways throughout the day. “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”
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