4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 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. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
I’ve been thinking about this passage some lately, especially the part about ‘impressing them on your children’. How do we do with it, what do we do, how can we do better? We’re missionaries, so it should be even more obvious to our children that we follow the one true God. But is it? I mean, they are 20 months and 3 months old, so it’s kind of hard to tell right now. But Evangeline is already our little parrot. It won’t be long before everyone in her little world knows what mommy and daddy say, because she’s saying it too.
Lord, help us to impress upon our children’s hearts your commandments. Let us impress on them the love we have for you, and the obedience that comes out of that love. Help us to find ways each day to talk about it, to teach them, and to show them how to love You more. Thank you for our sweet babies, and for the responsibility of bringing them up as a woman and man after Your own heart.