efflorescence: February 2016

SHOP SECRETS

Saturday, February 20, 2016
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ALL THINGS LOVELY

Friday, February 19, 2016
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It has come to my attention that words beautifully threaded together by people of importance tend to enrapture audiences of all stages in life. Consequently, I have decided to establish a Quoteful Collections series to be posted as many Thursday's as I am able. Hopefully, they will satisfy your hunger for thoughts and comments and inspiration on different subjects. If you do not have such a hunger, then I suppose you should come back another time. But today, dear readers, let us revel in words spoken about words themselves.

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"When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does." // Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail

"Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." // C. S. Lewis

"I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book." // Lucy Maud Montgomery

"I think books are like people in the sense that they will turn up in your life when you most need them." // Emma Thompson

"If you don't see the book you want on the shelf, write it." // Beverly Cleary

"So often, a visit to the bookstore has cheered me and reminded me there are good things in this world." // Vincent Van Gogh

"I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp." // J. K. Rowling

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." // Jorge Louis Borges

"What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world. Worlds that sing to you; comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean. They show us how to live and die." // Anne Lamott

"The book to read is not the one that thinks for you, but the one which makes you think." // Harper Lee

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." // Benjamin Franklin

"Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul." // Joanne Harris

"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you've lost a friend." // Paul Sweeny

Friday, February 12, 2016
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ROCKY HEART

education

My mother teaches kindergarten. When she says jump, they jump, and when she says count, they count. She teaches at the same Christian school which I attended through my middle and elementary years. Additionally, my dad teaches fifth grade and my brothers are currently students at this school. It is practically part of our family.

Some people think we're crazy. Why in the world would you spend that kind of money on education when they're teaching reading and math for free just down the street? My answer is worldview.

Sunday morning four young believers were baptized into the Church of Christ. One by one they stood in front of our congregation and spoke a few words of the testimony of Christ in their lives. One used the beautiful analogy comparing our old hearts, dead in sin, to that of stone, and our new hearts restored by Christ into living flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

Not two weeks ago, my mother was given the challenge to explain this analogy in language appropriate for five-year-old comprehension. Try that sometime. She chose this explanation: people have rocky hearts before Jesus saves them and gives them new, better ones. She told them that they could pray every day that Jesus would take their rocky hearts away. One of the sweethearts took that 100% literally. Her mother has confirmed that she prays this innocent prayer daily and calls out her parents when they neglect to include it in their own.

Following the service, this little five year old came up to my mother for her post-service squeeze, and my mother again pointed out the biblical truth referenced in the testimony and connected it to what they had talked about in kindergarten Bible time. Her little pigtails bobbed as she bounced and giggled at the reminder.

Jesus can take your rocky heart away.

Moments like this are why I believe in Christian education. Children absorb everything they are exposed to especially at early elementary ages. In kindergarten and first grade particularly, whatever their teacher says is true. They see them as some kind of all knowing authority on the world. Trying to explain to a first grader in the secular school system that the world wasn't made because of a big bang is like speaking to a brick wall. Yes it did, mommy. Mrs. Carter said so.

In solid Christian education, children at all ages absorb knowledge through the filter of a Christian worldview. Each day the Scriptures are opened and read. Yes, parents do that at home, but there is something unique about an outside figure expressing their understanding of the Bible. Outside of Bible time, Christ is woven into every subject the children study. From day one, they are memorizing scripture and catechism and hymns -- all gushing with Biblical truths. Teachers are roll model figures who love on and pray for the children every day. I won't even begin on the key factor of advanced and personalized academics.

There is something beautiful about places like this, so rooted in the Word. They are places where children can strengthen their roots in what Christians believe, hopefully influencing their desire to become one themselves.

Which leads me full circle. Each one of those four baptisms last Sunday were of graduates or rising graduates of Christian education. Ever since they were five years old in Kindergarten, they were being read the Scriptures, memorizing catechism, under the influence of godly teachers who loved them and prayed for their salvation. They were being taught that Christ could take their rocky hearts away. And He did.