“These commandments that I give you today are to stand in your heart. Impress them on your children. Talk about it when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”-Deuteronomy 6: 6-7 (NIV)
The Lord, by Moses, establishes the parameters for daily liturgy – an everyday catechism of worship that does not require church construction or rites more sacred than the daily practices of a family at work and playing together. Verse 7 underlines the importance of this concept when the specific activities we do while we instruct our children: sitting, walking, lying down, getting up.
When you’re sitting
Our family reads the most mornings together at 7.30 am, although, to be honest, not everyone is sitting. The little ones are just as likely on their heads or trot under my feet when I make eggs in the kitchen that opens to our living room where we read. We also often have to remind the older children to “sitting upright” from the Somnolente malaise on the couch that characterizes the attitude of many teenagers the first thirty minutes after they rolled out of bed. Regardless of the lack of perfect sitting etiquette, this consistent habit is just an example of the ‘impression’ of God’s ways on our children while we are sitting.
When you walk
I have good childhood memories of evening walks with my brother, mother and dad to the small municipal airport just half a mile from our house. While Twilight spread like a moist blanket over Nights, nights in Eastern Texas, the stars would start to blink to life in the dusk sky, and we would fold down on abandoned, with pebbles, with pebbles and look up better to understand: “Heaven explains the Glory of God;
If you lie down
As a home schooling family who spends hours together with talking, reading, working and playing every day, we shy away from pull stories before going to sleep or evening pool rituals in favor of jar, water, teeth, hugs and pillows. But we leave room for the inevitably talkative child whose greatest questions of life always drink at the surface just before his eyes are closed in exhaustion. Our eighth born, Shiloh, is notorious for the loss of questions such as “Does God have legs?” Exactly before bed.
And I would fail to skip those baby -nights, so that, although they are unable to explain deep truths to our little one while we fill their belly, we can pray for them or others and preach without words, the care of their heavenly father in our dedication to them.
If you get up
If, like me, you have been awakened to moan from one of your small children’s rooms two hours before your alarm is set to go off, then you know that the “Getting up” process can be one of the most saints in parenthood. Mants are often littered with the landmines of too early risers, grumpy toddlers, teenagers who ignore their alarms and are too late at work, and a crazy haste to go out for jobs or school. We have the chance when we get up to explain God’s grace sufficiently for forgotten lunches and missed carpools, lack of sleep and burned breakfast.
It is clear that the parental mandate that is found in these verses, if not constant vigilance, at least an willingness to see every aspect of our days as an opportunity for Divine Instruction (for our children), growth (for us and them), and worship, at least, and worship, and worship, and worship.
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