It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve been trying to post this for about 3 days. It’s just been one of those weeks with lots of stuff going on and then yesterday I had a could-barely-move headache. Ugh!
Anyway, at lunch the other day, we sat down to finish up our Fantastic Conduct week. I did something I almost never do: I simply read a story from the Bible. It was the story of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (that would be Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego to all you non-Biblical scholars like me!) and their training in Babylon in Daniel 1. They are slaves taken from their homes to learn Babylonian history, language, customs and religion. They are given the king’s food to eat. And they don’t want to eat it because it would make them unclean. If they ate the food, they would be disobeying God’s laws. They convince the gaurds to let them eat only vegetables and at the end of ten days they are stronger and more fit than the other boys who ate the king’s food.
What’s interesting about this story is that if Daniel and his friends would have eaten the King’s food they would have been OBEYING the King’s commands. And no one would have known that they were disobeying God’s laws. Their parents weren’t there, their teachers weren’t there and apparently, not too many of their friends. Yet, they continued to DO GOD’S WORD even when they were far from home, slaves in a foreign land.
Isn’t that what we want for our kids? To do God’s Word when we aren’t around? To go out of their way to obey God? To make sure that even if it inconveniences them or sets them apart, they will to do God’s Word?
Maybe it was because Lydia and Asa were preoccupied with their food, but they listened and interacted as we read the story. They were very interested in this “prequel” to the Daniel and Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego stories they already knew. After the story, I held up different foods in the kitchen and asked them if the 4 friends would have eaten them. They picked each one and laughed as we talked about eating only vegetables every meal!
Later on I ironed on their new patches. And let me just give you a few tips that I learned:
1. If you are ironing on felt, make sure you put a tshirt or pillowcase on top of it. Otherwise you’ll get burnt felt on your iron. Lovely.
2. If you put your 2nd badge next to your first badge, well, you’ll probably burn off half of it. (See Asa’s SPEECH badge above. *sigh*)
3. Use dark t-shirt tranfers on dark fabric. You know, if you want to see the badge you ironed on. (See Lydia’s crest above!)
Oh well. The kids still like it. And just wait till you see the cape I have to show you next week. You will love it!
We had fun talking about our LIFE this week and how to build it on The Rock. I’m praying Fantastic Conduct for our children, so they will continue to do God’s Word all the days of their life!
I’ve totally learned lesson #1 recently myself. if you have figured out how to get the felt off the iron, let me know! 🙂 Thanks for all your inspiring
posts!
I have really enjoyed all of these lessons. I have been using them with our lesson time for our awana program at church.
Thank you!
hope that is o.k.
When we did the speech experiment I forgot to bring something yucky to put in the first jar. so we just had everyone spit into the jar after we found some dirt and mud on their shoes. My son even found a spider to put into it. 🙂 it was I think just as effective as oil, etc.
Awesome! So glad you guys have used them! 🙂
Aw, this was a really good post. Taking a
few minutes and actual effort to produce a really good
article… but what can I say… I put things off a lot and never seem to get nearly anything done.