Unforgettable Childhood

Tonight we started a new devotion time in our house. We have different kids devotional books that we have done in the past with the girls, but we decided to try create our own family devotion time.

Our youngest is learning the alphabet so we decided to create our own “ABC’s of Scripture”. We started with the verse from 1 Peter 4:8.

“Above all, Love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.”

We started our discussion with some questions for the girls.

Do you have a list of rules in your classroom? What are some of the rules?

They listed a few of the rules they are supposed to follow. A few examples were to Raise your hand, Be nice to others, and Listen to the teacher.

Next we asked the girls this question.

Do you think that there is one rule that is the most important?

They didn’t really think that one was more important than the rest so we continued our discussion with these questions.

In the scripture Daddy read it starts with what “A” words? (Above All) What does Above All mean?

We talked about how “Above All” is like the most important rule in a list. We talked about the rest of the verse. As a family it is easy to think about loving each other deeply, but what about people that are not as easy to love. We had a great discussion about how we can show others the love that this scripture is talking about.

My husband turned to Matthew 22:37-39 and read to the girls.

“Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. and the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We talked about how God loves everyone and He wants us to love everyone, too. It is always interesting to listen to the responses our girls have during devotion times. Our middle daughter made a statement about a classmate she has that helped us to know she is starting to really understand the love that God has for all people. She said, “God loved Jack even though he doesn’t celebrate Christmas.” This led us into an interesting conversation about how even though not everyone believes in Jesus, we can show Jesus love to them in many different ways.

As a family we talked about how we don’t always do the best job of showing each other how much we love each other. And if we can’t show each other love, how much harder will it be to show others love. We talked about how as a family we are going to focus on loving all people, especially each other.

It was amazing how two verses helped us to have a wonderful conversation as a family. It was also amazing to see how much our girls at 9, 7 and 3 really understand.

When we finished up my husband prayed for us. As a family we are going to work on memorizing this scripture together before we move on to the letter “B”.

Well the girls put on Go Go Boots, Cowgirl Boots and tennis shoes and were ready to trick or treat at 4:45 last night. We held them off a little bit and then we turned them loose. Actually it was pretty cold so we got in the pickup and drove around town to let them get a bucket full of candy.

We started their fun with one last pumpkin carving session. We had one pumpkin left that was waiting to be carved.

Then we had to have a photo shoot of everyone in their costumes.

And finally we let them go and get some candy.

One of their favorite parts of Halloween is getting home to start giving away candy to other trick-or-treaters. So we came home by 8:00 so they could hand out candy.

Friday night even my hubby and I dressed up for some Halloween fun. . .

I am wearing his college jersey that he wore when he played football. He is wearing a Poison T-shirt that he still had hidden away from a Poison concert he went to in 1987. It was a fun night.

Now what am I going to do with all of this candy???