Today my feet literally touched Holy Ground. I am in Israel! The first words our guide said to us were, "Welcome Home". It did not take me long to really get was he was saying - it is our spiritual home. He said that many of us had been taught our spiritual heritage and history way before even our American History. I never looked at it quite like that. He also said that all of the stories that we had heard since we were toddlers were about to come alive. Little did I realize then how amazingly true that would become. I was overcome by emotion on many occasions as I saw places and heard the lectures. When he made the statement again about our spiritual heritage and those who taught us God’s Word I became very emotional. I was incredibly grateful for the gift I had received as a child. It was not until my family moved to the coast when I was 4 years old that I ever went to church. There was a tiny lady there who went by the name of “Shorty Sullivan”. I don’t know that I ever knew her real name. She was very tiny, very old and wrinkled, and had the appearance of a little gnome. She and her husband, Leroy were very poor. Her husband was illiterate and trapped muskrat and "shrimped" for a living. Yet, this tiny little lady began to teach me the scriptures and made the Word come alive for me. It was her that began a hunger in me to know all of the stories and all of the details, and the questions that I asked surely drove her crazy. So…as I stood here yesterday – on Holy Ground – and saw story after story come alive before my eyes I found myself ever so thankful for Shorty Sullivan’s ministry. She was someone that the world would not remember but I certainly did. Thank you God for placing her in my life. I don’t know how I would have learned about who God was and is without her.
Thinking about this has reminded of the incredible responsibility that we parents are given. We are to teach and train our children in God's Word and ways. We must teach the next generation and "pass the baton" to them. Deut. 5 - 7 says "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments I give to you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk with them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." Each day there are hundreds of teachable moments to share with our children about God. We just have to be intentional and look for them. It is easy to think we don't know enough or they won't understand or sometimes we are just too busy. However, those reasons (or excuses) do not remove the mission we have been given by God. He was pretty plain in those verses in Deuteronomy.
Rich Mullins had a song with a verse that spoke to the importance of reading the Bible to children. The verse said, "Stories like that make a man grow bold, stories like that make a man walk straight." Even when our children were very young I can remember reading Bible stories to them. It is one of my most precious memories. They had to take turns choosing the story and we often read the same stories over and over again. Funny how their personalities come out in their choices. Our oldest son always chose Samson and our youngest son always chose David and Goliath. We were not master theolgians and often could not pronounce correctly the names. However, the good news is that God promises that "His Word will not return void". I know that I am clinging to that verse and pray the same for you.
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