February 5

“From the earliest times the faithful in Israel had given much care to the education of the youth. The Lord had directed that even from babyhood the children should be taught of His goodness and His greatness, especially as revealed in His law, and shown in the history of Israel. Song and prayer and lessons from the Scriptures were to be adapted to the opening mind. Fathers and mothers were to instruct their children that the law of God is an expression of His character, and that as they received the principles of the law into the heart, the image of God was traced on mind and soul. Much of the teaching was oral; but the youth also learned to read the Hebrew writings; and the parchment rolls of the Old Testament Scriptures were open to their study.”

                   Desire of Ages, page 69 from the chapter, 'As a child'

      Can I have a moan? My first pastoral visits were undertaken over 30 years ago. I was but a callow youth fresh from Newbold college. I had hardly a clue about life let alone anything serious like Ministry. What I do remember is that people in those days had bookshelves with books on. The books were not covered in dust but were well used. Ah, those early days in the Leicester district.

     Nowadays the bookshelves are absent, and so are the books. True, we have Kindles, Smartphones and iPads – but you can’t fit a family around a tiny screen and read together. Please disagree with me.

     Yesterday’s blog closed with a peremptory, “Start today”. What I meant was, “start planning for the future life of the children around you today." You can start with books. You can go a bit further by finding time, and then you can chisel that time into a definite meeting together with the family.

     Tomorrow you will be getting a little added bonus from my friend Pastor Patricia Douglas. Her project called, “The Big Read” will be heading to your inbox as soon as it arrives.

     For now take a look at an earlier initiative from Rose Gomez up in the Manchester area. You can read about the way Rose encourages families to read together here. Maybe you could decide that reading together as a family is a really good way ahead for you and your family. After all, Mary and Joseph thought the method good enough for their son – and you can see how He turned out.

 

     Housekeeping details for you

     The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.

     A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here