2-1-2021
A kid zooms by my chair in the living room where I’ve been sitting and eating my lunch. The kids had lunch at the dining room table a half hour ago, but I was busy making the meal, divvying out portions, washing hands, and cleaning a few dishes. As the work piles on, I don’t pause for my food until I’ve cleaned up the mess.
“Mine! Mine! Miss Amy, that boy taked my Tigey!” a child complains. Ugh! I was in the middle of eating my chipotle and cheddar salad, reveling in the fact that I just got six kids to eat chicken and ranch salad as their main course.
There goes another kid running in front of me. Don’t they remember the house rule that they can only run in the basement? Of course not, they’re little and tired of playing with the same toys that have been out for a month. The toys were new...at Christmas...which apparently was a long, long time ago.
New things get old rather quickly these days, but being a mom and daycare owner, I’m on top of it. I make the old seem new and the forgotten seem wonderful by a secret method called rotating.
Throughout the day, I rotate the kids activities and rooms. Every half hour or hour, I’m changing where we are in the house, and I’m switching what games, activities, and toys we use. It minimizes boredom and keeps the kids under control...minor control...they are still kids after all. Haha!
I can tell when it’s time to rotate the everyday toys because the kids stop playing with them and begin to use the furniture as a jungle gym. They might even start fighting over a tiny toy that one of them mysteriously found under the couch, hiding since the last time I mixed up their toys.
When I bring down a basket full of old toys that they haven’t played with in a month, everyone cheers. I have never heard so much applause and so many kids saying ‘thank you!’ without being prompted. This was the small heaven moment of a much bigger one. Seeing a child’s smile is always going to make me thankful to God and seeing six grateful grins is a true blessing.
They were so excited! Watching the kids experiencing their older toys again was refreshing. Everyone was playing together kindly with each kid enjoying their own ‘new’ toy. No fighting. No running. No destroying the furniture. Peace.
I’m the same when it comes to the Bible...God’s living word. If it was old and dead, then thousands of years of people reading it wouldn’t mean much. However, it’s living forever, and it’s fresh and new each time I open it.
When I get stuck reading the same parts for months at a time and nothing else, I must remember that God has more to say. I shouldn’t read only the gospels or only the proverbs because I think they’re easy. I need to spend time in the books of the law, the weird patterns of the psalms, and the hard to understand book of revelation. All of these scriptures work together.
God reveals himself in the holy word. He convicts me with something different when I read it. I can continually learn more and more about His character as I study the scriptures.
Oh, I haven’t read the book of Hebrews in the Bible for months, so I open up the pages, and He speaks to me. My prayers follow His will. He’s transforming me day to day to be more like Christ. What was once a book of famous moral stories has become a lifeline that challenges me because of the central focus the entire Bible has on Jesus.
“Tell me the story of Jesus.
Write on my heart every word.
Tell me the story most precious,
Sweetest that ever was heard.”
(hymn by Frances J Crosby, published in 1880)
Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
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