I guess we all look ahead to the New Year spread before us with great hopes and plans. It’s a clean slate, another 12 months of opportunity.
There are things I hope to accomplish this year. I want to be more organized in 2013, especially where family laundry, (my most dreaded household chore,) is concerned. I want to eat better and feed my family in healthier ways. I want to read some of the books I’ve been trying to get to. I want to redo all the landscaping at our house. I want to try my hand at growing blueberries.
Of course I want to work for the Lord. I want to be more faithful, more committed to personal time in prayer and God’s word than ever before. I want to try to reach out more, to be kinder and more compassionate and more selfless than in 2012.
And of course that starts at home.
Like usual, Peanut was the first child awake on this first morning of the year and he climbed up beside me on the couch and cuddled up next to me and started talking nonstop, like he always does. He had plenty of questions to ask and lots of suggestions for things I should be doing with him or for him.
“In a minute, baby. Let me finish reading my Bible.”
“Mama,” he said then, laying a hand over the open page, “will you teach me what it says?”
On this first day of 2013, nothing could have gripped my heart more tightly and filled me with greater intent and purpose for the new year than that simple question from an eager little boy.
“Yes,” I answered and I read to him from Romans 8: 38-39.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Deuteronomy 6: 6-7
It’s a big job, passing down our faith to our children. And we have limited time to accomplish it. But for those of us who are believers in Christ, no task could be more important in the year to come!
