December 5, 2014 Advent Devotional - Teach

Today's devotional reading from the LEC Family Advent Devotional is Deuteronomy 6:4-9 --  Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.  This verse is called the Shema which means "to hear" and is one of the most sacred and special verses to the Jewish people.

I found this very interesting flow chart for this verse that shows the importance that this instructional verse is to Jewish parents:

In today's LEC Advent Devotional, the devotional writer asks us who are the people in our past who taught us about faith in Jesus Christ, what things did we do with this person, and how can we pass on these traditions of faith to the next generation.  One of my fondest memories of growing up in the church is of a lady we called "Aunt Becky."  She didn't have any children of her own, so we were ALL her children.  She was our children's choir director, and I remember her teaching us songs that we sang in church.  For the past 25 plus years, I have been a part-time church music director, and every church that I have served in, I have had a children's choir.  Perhaps the reason that I have always made it a priority to have a children's choir is because of that early memory that I have and the foundation of faith that I learned from those songs.

Today's Advent Photo of the Day

#teach #pictureadvent

This is a picture of a wooden recipe box that was my grandmother's.  Many of my fondest childhood memories are baking with my grandmother.  She owned a roadside bake stand and when I visited in the summer, she would let me bake with her and sell whatever I baked.  I received the money from the sale of my baked goods.  I still love to bake and, in fact, have just rekindled that love of baking.  I have a new stand mixer and have tried to recreate many of the favorites that my grandmother baked.  Now that I have many of her recipes, I hope to be able to leave this legacy for my children and grandchildren.