Tell Your Children and Grandchildren
“You must love the LORD your God and obey all his requirements, decrees, regulations, and commands. 2 Keep in mind that I am not talking now to your children, who have never experienced the discipline of the LORD your God or seen his greatness and his strong hand and powerful arm. 3 They didn’t see the miraculous signs and wonders he performed in Egypt against Pharaoh and all his land. 4 They didn’t see what the LORD did to the armies of Egypt and to their horses and chariots—how he drowned them in the Red Sea as they were chasing you. He destroyed them, and they have not recovered to this very day! 5 “Your children didn’t see how the LORD cared for you in the wilderness until you arrived here. 6 They didn’t see what he did to Dathan and Abiram (the sons of Eliab, a descendant of Reuben) when the earth opened its mouth in the Israelite camp and swallowed them, along with their households and tents and every living thing that belonged to them. 7 But you have seen the LORD perform all these mighty deeds with your own eyes!"
Deuteronomy 11:1-7(NLT)
Pastor’s Blog
One of my regrets in life is not hearing all the stories of my father’s experiences in World War Two, or more of the many stories of how his family survived the great depression. I would love to have heard more about how my dad’s dad had come to America from Austria, how he found work, how he lived, married a German woman and made their life in the “new country”. I imagine there many lessons learned, many sacrifices made, many experiences of God’s providence.
But for some reason Dad was reluctant to talk about all of that. He did an incredible job of working hard all of his life, always at two or more jobs, so that we children would be able to have a better life than he had. Doing that was his pride and joy.
However I not only missed the lessons that experiences of hardship teach because he ensured that my life would not be as hard as his, I also missed learning about those experiences, especially how he thought about them, handled them and what he learned. It’s a big regret in my life.
Moses now tells his people, don’t make that mistake. But, he says, don’t just tell your children about your life, tell them about God, about how it is because of God that we stand here now, that it is God who has sustained, provided, led, and blessed all these years. Tell them the story of God.
So that’s now a goal of mine. . . . to tell my “God story” more effectively and more frequently.
(to post your thoughts, anonymously if you wish, simply click on “comments” below
Jeff, I recently read something I think relates well here. The quote, taken from a book on conversations that Dad's need to have with daughters went something like this. The author was saying that he found himself often times being "distracted from distraction by disctractions". Simple, but insightful. I, and I think the larger "we" are a lot like the Israelites, with our main distraction in life being complaining about what's not rather than cherishing what is. And in that disctraction, we forget about what got us "here" -- wherever here is; all the while forgetting that "here" is most certainly blessed even though we often miss it in the midst of our rushed culture. I wonder then, what is the vehicle to remind me in every situation of every day of what God has already done for me? What are the Red Seas of my life that seem an age ago? Perhaps a scarlet RS (for Red Sea) on my lapel would do -- perhaps not. Consciousness of how I should be walking, I suppose, is the doorway to consistency in the future. Thanks for the nudge ~ MS.
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