breakfast is a multidisciplinary contact sporting event

They never told me in "child raising 101" that breakfast was a multidisciplinary contact sporting event:
 Sit-still-in-your-seat-please-wresting,  
how-much-food-can-you-place-in-your-mouth-and-still-breath-alon,  
facial-contorting-for-least-favorite foods
...just a few that my kids medal at regularly

Some how we still manage to get more food in than on so we call that a win.  We teach them to "eat a rainbow" like they learn in school so they can have a balanced diet. Some things go over well, some not so much but we do our best. We supplement with a chewable multivitamin  and to make it all more fun we have a battery powered blue light that each person gets to place on their heads after they eat what they need too.

We then all sing "urgent, urgent, urgent, food emergency"

( True story, I have no pride)..sorry to my wife for telling family secrets.

But there is one more thing that we make sure gets into our kids before they walk out the door. It is far more important than vitamins, a food rainbow, and singing a Foreigner re-mix sample. 

What? 

God's Word. 

We place the Word of God into them and us.  Our time looking at God's word does not take a super long time but its super good.  We have a great book written my Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago called "Thoughts to Make your Heart Sing".  

We all sit together. Mom. Dad, and the kids. We model our priorities.

Today's story was about a homing pigeon named Winkie who became a hero during WWII. After the plane she was in went down in the sea she flew 129 miles back home, thus alerting the base that the crew was lost. She got help for those who could not save themselves. She knew the way home. 

The book tells us this is our story:

How ever far away they are, 

birds can find their way home again 

and again and again. 

But not God's children-

God's children aren't homesick for him.

 God is our true home. 

Away from him, we are are lost

Oh, return to me, for I have paid the price to set you free

Isaiah 44:22

 

Yes mornings are nuts. 

We worry about matched clothes, brushed teeth, combed hair, homework, lunches, and a million other things. ahhhhhh! 

Shouldn't  we put as much worry, 

energy, and focus into teaching our kids by example the most import things? 

Let's model our priorities.

If we don't teach them what is most important the rest of the world is more that willing and ready to do so. 

One last word of caution:

Don't feel guilty if you don't do this now. You can even be hones and tell your kids you have let things get out of alignment and today is the day to shift that.  Just start. Today.  

Take small bites. But start. 

Please. 

One verse at a time. 

Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. 

Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children.

 Talk about them wherever you are, 

sitting at home or walking in the street; 

talk about them from the time you get up in the morning 

to when you fall into bed at night. 

Deuteronomy 6:7 (Message translation) 

discipling our kids in the suburban jungle

As we were getting ready to walk out the door to the school bus Olivia was looking out the back door.

"Dad, what are those big birds that look like pigeons?"

"Those are Doves honey, like the birds the poor used in the bible give to God. Do you remember where else there are Doves in the Bible?"

(it was a loaded question, I was waiting for her to respond with the olive branch after the flood)

"Yeah dad, at the baptism of Jesus in the river by John"

Do you see God-lived-life around you? Do you talk to your family about it?

Now some folks get their theological nickers in a bunch talking about "natural revelation" but this is how Jesus had discipled those closest to him whom he sent and to share what they had seen and heard. 

He talked about birds, rocks, mountains, fish,  and snow and so it just makes sense that so should we too.

If we are honest, however, we must admit there is a disconnect here for many insomuch as a good number of folks have lost touch with "outside" and weather.

We curse snow because we have to shovel it instead of being reminded that are sins are washed as white as it is.

We curse rain because it ruins our outdoor plans instead of being reminded that it is a gift from God so that our food grows for the righteous and unrighteous alike. 

We want only warm sunny days, forgetting that seasons allow the earth to experience a Sabbath rest.

That's ok, it's an easy fix! Here are a few hints to help your kids understand God and allow you to disciple them in a manner that Jesus did:

1. Buy a pet. Kids learn love, dependence, unaccountability and disobedience. We can't have an ox to talk about like Jesus did but a dog, cat, fish, bird, whatever works fine.

2. Keep live plants in your house. You can do it! Then you can talk about vines and branches and lilies of the field. Try a Myer Lemon tree and let the kids see real fruit!

3. Put a bird feed in your back yard all year round. Marvel that God keeps birds alive in the snow!

4. Put up a bird house and talk so kids can see birth happen.

5. Use a bird bath and talk about living water, cleansing of sin when they take a bath, water of life.

6. Plant a garden and teach were food comes from. Anyone can grow cherry tomatoes in a pot!

These are the things kids see and remember. We are called to disciple them. One day we will not be with them. I pray that my kids will remember our early summer foraging in our front yard strawberry patch looking for what awesome gifts God gave us for breakfast.

Look at the birds, free and unfettered, 
not tied down to a job description,
 careless in the care of God. 
And you count far more to him than birds.

                                                                               Matthew 6:27 (Message translation)

a dirty God and a little bird

"Hey dad, something fell and I don't know what it is"
I had thought I heard a few noises in the chimney yesterday while I was studying.

Here is a maxium:
If you ignore "it", "it" just moves into your house.

I had to get Olivia off to school and I knew this was going to get messy so I pushed a chair up against the screen to keep my new b.f. (bird friend) from flying the coop and made it to the bus in time to flash my truck lights and stop the driver in the middle of the street. 
This was not in my schedule.

No problem.
Thankfully during a period of my life when I had been "dismissed" from college I worked at a pet store in the mall. I was the guy who would be called in to catch the parakeets that found their way into the clothing store and I would strut through the food court wearing a lab coat, carrying a 15 foot long net. Wonder I didn't get arrested. (see mom, those years weren't wasted)

I went to the basement and got my shop vac anticipating a dust storm. I couldn't find my kids' crab net so I grabbed a sheet to toss over the guy and started a conversation with him.
I didn't want to be abrupt.

As I  slid the screen over to one side it became immediately clear the bird did not read my script.
 He made bolted out opposite side of screen. Dang it. I instinctively pushed the grate back, but instead of containing him in the fireplace, I pinned him to the wall.

Now I'm worried I'm going to squish the little bugger.My original plan was to save the thing, not kill it.  I ever-so-carefully smother him in the sheet and he ducks out a corner and tries to go out the window behind my wife's antique bottle collection.
Bird is not squished, but a few of her treasures are shattered.
 
(cue chase music)
He flies up stairs.
I trap him in the curtain behind my wife's makeup table.
I carry him downstairs and he gets free...back at window
(crash)  another one bites the dust.
Trap him in the girls room.
Get a bit firmer (there are only so many bottles you know)

...and then

So the cool thing is that God was all in the mix of this.

I woke up with a burden for folks like this bird.

We were made to live free and unfettered but we got lost and followed a path that looked good but in the end was not where we were supposed to be.

Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. 

He put the Man he had just made in it.  

God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground,

 trees beautiful to look at and good to eat.

We were naked in the woods, didn't have to work, and lived face-to-face with God.

But we ran.

God chased after us time and time again. We made a bigger mess than fire place soot.  We broke his most precious treasure and still he chased us.
  

But it was our sins that did that to him,
    that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
    Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
    We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
    on him, on him.
                    Isaiah 53:5

We even broke his very heart.

"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! 

Killer of the ones who brought you God's news!

 How often I've ached to embrace your children, 

the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me."

Matthew 23:37

But nothing stopped him from getting us back. 
You see,  God got very dirty chasing us. 

Will you get very dirty chasing others so that they too, can be free?