JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

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 upon 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.

Deuteronomy 6: 5 – 7

What I love most about these verses is the family lifestyle they describe. Talking about God with your children is to happen when you are sitting at home, walking on the road, lying down and getting up. Spiritual instruction isn’t supposed to come in chunks on Sundays or Saturdays. It’s not something that can be scheduled for certain times and not others. Our children learn about love and about God through what we do with them every day.

This week while Ted was gone, the girls saw a sign for an evening library pajama story time and wanted to go. So we ate dinner early and I changed the girls into their pjs. We headed to the library.

However, afterwards, we had to make a trip to Home Depot. A quick re-caulking of the shower had turned into a larger project when I discovered I needed grout also. After searching all Monday on the island, I realized that night that we needed to drive all the way to Home Depot in Silverdale.

I expected that the girls would fall asleep on the drive. I figured I’d play the stereo to keep myself company, as I often do on long trips. Instead, perhaps because it was an unusual occasion or they were energized by the story time, the kids stayed awake. It was one of the moments in a busy month where we weren’t rushing somewhere. It was relaxed, perhaps even a bit silly, considering the pj attire.

And I found that the girls had many questions for me. They wanted to know how phones ring. But they also had deeper issues. They asked spiritual questions. They wanted to understand life.

In the van that night, I remembered these verses from Deuteronomy. I wonder what a “modern” translation might say. We don’t walk along the road as often as we drive it any more. And car trips can become opportunities for great conversations if I am willing to listen.