If you are trying to establish the weekly tradition of celebrating the Sabbath, it is going to take quite a bit of work. The biggest thing I do on Saturday is get ready for Sabbath dinner. And sometimes I have set aside the whole day because putting on a nice meal for a large group is a serious undertaking, especially if you are doing it by yourself. I don’t have little kids running around my house, but I understand that for you young moms who are trying to put on a Sabbath dinner yourself each week, it is a big challenge. And even you grandmas out there who are doing what I am (fixing dinner for your kids and grandkids each week), I know you need help too.
So I have a few suggestions for you, and these are real-life suggestions that I use, not theoretical suggestions that I would use if I didn’t have a house staff to put the meal on for me.
Hot tip #1: Keep the menu simple. This is a weekly celebration for your family, so you want to make kid-friendly food that will go together easily, not a labor-intensive menu Continue reading ‘Shortcuts for Sabbath Dinner’
One of the central duties of parents is to teach their children to be grateful to God for all their many blessings. I remember my father teaching me that I could not even lift my little finger if it were not for God’s power and goodness. That little lesson had an impact, obviously, because I still remember him demonstrating this finger-lifting.
So when you are teaching the little ones to say thank you and please, it is a lesson about their Christian duties that reaches beyond simple cultural expressions of good manners. It it teaching them to have thankful impulses. It is teaching them to speak the language God wants to hear from all His people all the time.
Our fallen, sinful impulses direct us to take notice of what is missing, what is lacking, how things fall short of our desires. This is why kids whine and moan and are given to complaining. But God has given parents to children to bring them up to better things. So we have to accompany our commands to our children (say please when you ask for things) with biblical teaching (God wants us to be thankful for everything all the time).
Children need to be taught to count their blessings: fingers, toes, parents, siblings, food, sunshine, rain, Christmas, and all the rest. And, as always, it comes back to the parents modeling such gratitude themselves. It is rather counterproductive to snap at your children with, “Say thankyou!” as though you want to add, “you little beast!”
As creatures, we are designed to be thankful. It should be our native tongue because thanksgiving is the natural response of a grateful heart to God for His manifold blessings to us. It is not something we should do occasionally, but it should be a characteristic of our lives, an attribute we are known for as a people.
Romans chapter one describes the downhill slide of the unrighteous. They have willfully suppressed what God has plainly displayed to them (even His eternal power and Godhead) and so they are without excuse. “They did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened”(vs. 21). In the remaining verses of chapter one we see that “God gave them up” and “God gave them over to a debased mind.” In other words, God does not withhold His righteous judgment until after they have died. The unrighteous begin to experience the wrath of God while they live, for what else is God’s wrath if it isn’t being given up and given over? We Christians ought to recognize God’s judgment when we see it, and this chapter of Continue reading ‘Our Native Tongue’
Since we have written (and continue to write) so much about Christmas, we have created a new category; so if you are looking for last year’s Advent calendar demo, you can go look in that category and everything we have written about Christmas will come up.
Isn’t this ridiculous! This is the start of one of Daphne’s Christmas presents, and so far I have to admit to being pretty pleased. But, owl needs a house! Wait, hasn’t that happened before? But this owl is not going to take over piglet’s house – I’m going to make him his own.
We already have an enormous Advent calendar, which I love. I am also finishing up a knit one pretty soon here, which you will see the moment the last end is woven in and the last pom pom is installed. So you will be relieved to know that the two of these which I made are being sent to family! You could of course make this out of prettier paper (although it should be cardstock). Mine were really the “crank it out” version. I had wanted to get pretty glittery number stickers, Continue reading ‘Advent Calendar, speedy version’
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