abridged post for my own archives…
From Cindy of Dominion Family, of course:
I have been thinking in my spare moments about how to fit together, for my younger readers, the ideas of self-learning and yet rigor. I have also confused myself. I don’t think these are contradictory things but it has been hard to wrap my mind around them. I am comforted by the fact that many spiritual principles are illustrated by dichotomies.
[...]
The last few years we have listened every morning to excerpts from Messiah (eventually listening to the whole thing). Our morning devotions centered around the Bible passage/s in the music that morning. It is a MT activity that keeps my mind engaged and happy. On the other hand, the children sometimes have the glassy-eyed look of IV drug users.
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So I was praying and yesterday I began to think about ‘little things‘ and how I believed if I was just consistent with something for a short period of time everyday my children would assimilate many things over the years.
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But then the phone rang and someday was now. Somebody was asking me to burn a disc of Messiah because their computer had crashed. [...] And I said incredulously, “The Messiah?” And the little darling on the other end said, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I am so glad that I am familiar with those sorts of things now even though I was bored out of my mind sometimes then. I really appreciate what you gave us.”
Yes, his exact words were bored out of my mind but they were the words that encouraged me. [...] If we give our children living ideas and real things to learn the self-learning will take place even if is somewhat like planting a tree and waiting a long time for fruit. There are still things that can steal away the fruit from the growing plant. Planting good seed doesn’t always guarantee good fruit. There is thief who would steal and kill and destroy.
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I am not one to give a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. But it is the difference between giving our children an apple from Narnia and snake oil. The hard part for those of us woefully uneducated to start with is knowing the difference.
emphases mine
