Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Hiding These Things In My Heart

Every Wednesday evening I secretly look forward to driving my cubs 20 minutes so that they can attend AWANAs at a "local" church. Now if your kids are anything like mine, then you are probably wondering why I wouldn't avoid being caged in with them for 20 minutes in the car at night. Typically, as soon as the van door opens, the battle and bickering begins . . . but not on Wednesday nights!

I don't know what it is about the AWANA's program, but these people got a good thing going! Not only does it provide the kids with sound, Biblically based doctrine, but it makes them excited to learn and study Scripture. Throughout the week we will catch them working on their AWANA booklet without any prompting, encouragement or . . . threats! Just today, Darlin' declared that she wanted to be able to sleep in on Saturday morning, because she's been getting to bed late. What's she been up to? Reading her Bible! If you've got elementary aged children, get them to the nearest AWANA program ASAP and you'll be amazed too!

For some truly miraculous reason, Darlin' and Bud become the best of friends as they gather their AWANA's material and situate themselves for the ride each Wednesday night. The entire way to the church this evening they were quizzing themselves and each other on various Bible memory verses. Being the quite creative children that they are (objectively speaking, of course) they use various memorization tools to aid them in their quest. Namely, singing.

They will put their verses to known tunes or even make up their own and then proceed to entertain each other by performing said verses in differing styles of music: rap, country, opera, etc. You get the picture!

This does make for a rather noisy ride! And yet, I just can't bring myself to tell them to settle down as they continue to sing aloud from God's Word. As they are hiding His Word in their hearts, I continue to drive through the dark with a smile on my face as I hide these memories in my heart!

2 comments:

heidi @ ggip said...

I never knew what Awanas was before.

Musings of a Housewife said...

Yeah, I've always wanted to find an Awana program, but not we're starting something at our church. I hope it's half as good as Awana.