God is My Helper

This was another two week Bible verse. Our schedule got messed up after I fell down our steps. It's a long story. I ended up in urgent care for blood in my urine after the fall and in physical therapy for injuries to my neck, shoulder, and back. I'm still sore, but I'm so thankful that no one else was hurt and that my injuries weren't worse than they were.

So the whole helper theme tied in really well as we have taken lots of trips to PT over the last two weeks to visit someone who is going to help mommy get better. And we pray to God to help mommy get better too! And what parent doesn't like teaching opportunities about helping?! :) Plus, if you haven't ever played, Curious George has a great little game about helping (the Super Helper Game) that's fun for the whole family.

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God is Our Protector

We're going to be celebrating Haven's birthday for the rest of the month (or so it seems...). Haven means safe place. Since this verse describes God as our safe place--our haven--we thought it was an appropriate verse to end the month.

Evan had fun building his own hiding place this week...a big tent right in the middle of his toy room. He got to read books there, play with his cars, and even take a nap. What a special treat! :)

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God is Patient

This month is going to be very busy with visits from family, several weekends of birthday parties for Haven, and a trip to Wisconsin. So for this month, we're going to do 2 Bible verses instead of 4. And how fitting that the first is about patience, right?! Don't we all need to be more patient with each other and with ourselves?

This is especially an important lesson for Evan to learn as Haven is getting to be more mobile and is therefore getting into all of his toys and things. He doesn't have much patience with her, and we're praying that this verse will help him remember to be patient.

So this week we planted a calla lily bulb. The song that goes along with this week's verse says, "Be patient, the flower will grow." It's the part of the song Evan remembers the best. It's fun to listen to him sing the songs and remember the verses. We'll have to post some updates when our flower has grown!

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God is Awesome

For this verse, we tried to help Evan understand that awesome is better than good and better than great. But I think that God's awesomeness shone through the strongest this week when Evan heard these words sung at church (it's a Chris Tomlin song). It made Evan's day to know how to sing the song, and it made MY day awesome to see how excited Evan was...like God picked out that song just for him. :) Thanks, God, for making Evan's day AWESOME! :)

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God is All-Powerful

This week Evan colored a card for his Papa T, who is deeply depressed. Right after Christmas, he tried Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) to get better. His doctors made him believe that with a little electricity to send his body into a seizure they could flip a switch in his head to make him back to normal. Sixteen treatments later, his depression has only worsened, and now he has memory loss reaching back to a year. But we know that with God all things are possible, so we're praying that God would heal Papa T, restore his memory, and help him find joy again!

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God Our Maker

Three year olds don't really get what an image is. So we had to start somewhere! Between drawing a picture of himself on a BIG sheet of paper (we're reusing the back sides of old posters that our church uses to advertise message series), checking out the many, many pictures around our house, and looking at ourselves in different mirrors, I think he finally got the idea.

So here's the lesson to think about this week: Remember the funny mirrors from the circus or the Magic House (for you St Louis dwellers)? Some of them make us look really tall and skinny. Some can make us look short and fat. With every mirror, our image changes! We can do that with pictures too!...If all we saw were those mirror images (or pictures other people drew or changed of us), it might be really easy to forget what we REALLY look like. Sometimes we forget what we're supposed to look like on the inside because of the sinful things we do. That's why it's important that we read our Bibles to learn more about God. He is joyful and loving, honest and trustworthy, faithful and just...and since we're made in his image we should be like that too!

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God is Our Creator

It's the beginning of January, and one of our family resolutions is to bring God's word more into our every day life. Jon and I both grew up to pretty much hate learning scripture because of forced elementary school "memory work." I don't want my kids to grow up hating God's word and struggling to be in it every day or see how it applies to their lives. So we're starting weekly family Bible verses. I get to create a fun poster on my PSE8 and the whole family works to memorize the verse within the week and see how it applies to our lives throughout our week.

To help us while the kids are still really little, I'm using the book "Knowing God: A Sing & Remember Book" created by Stephen Elkins, Illustrated by David Semple, and narrated by Kirk Cameron. Each verse teaches us something about God (like this week: God is the Creator), gives us something to think about, provides a Bible story (not necessarily where the verse is from), a short message "for me today," and then a song that helps with the memorization.



So for this week, God is the creator. It's fun for us to make things with our hands. Evan and I made banana bread, pictures, play dough sculptures, and a lego audience for his Cars race. But God made the world and everything in it using just his words. He used no paper or glue or play dough or blocks. He is SO powerful and creative that he made everything with just His words!



We had lots of fun making the lego audience. Evan liked to make them cheer, but most of all, he enjoyed announcing the race for them. :)...that is until our little Godzilla came and destroyed our beautiful work. I guess there's a Bible lesson in that too! :)

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