My Responsibility to My Children

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-9) NRSV

Today I went through a sermon by Dr. Bill Bennett called Don't Be a Dud - Be a Dad in my devotional time. One of the scriptures was Deuteronomy 6:4-9. I have read the Shema (verse 4) many many times. It is absolutely central to the Christian (and Jewish) faith. However, something grabbed me today about verse 7 where God commands me to "recite them to [my] children and talk about them when [we] are at home and when [we] are away, when [we] lie down and when [we] rise." What a responsibility! God has just placed the task of making sure that my sons know the scriptures on my plate.

When my first son was still in the womb we prayed nightly that he would love God, love to pray, and love to read the Bible. While this is certainly a very good idea, this is not enough. We are responsible for taking the active and practical steps to communicate the scriptures to our children. It is our responsibility as parents (and not God's) to transfer knowledge of the scriptures into our children.

We are pretty new to this parenting game (we have a 2 year old boy and another in the oven), but we have already started reading the Bible to our son. We read the Bible every night to Nathan (I recommend "The Children's Illustrated Bible" by DK Publishing), and have since he was born. I know that he doesn't understand much of it now, but I want to instill the habit...and he does absorb some. Now when he looks at the pages with the animals he starts saying "God made giraffe" or "God made ei-ei" ("ei-ei" is Nathan for monkey). Even with this encouragement, I have been getting discouraged that we are wasting our time reading the Bible to Nathan at this age because he understand so little. However, in light of Deuteronomy 6:7 I think that we need to crank it up a notch!

This article is also posted to Digitial Devotion.