Devotion 9.15.22

"And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the say, and when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between our eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of our house and on your gates." Deuteronomy 6:6 - 9

"...teach them diligently..." at the start of v 7 has some interesting notes in my bible. The phrase comes from "Hebrew 'shanan;' verb for sharpening by repeatedly running the blade over a whetstone. Parents are to teach God's Word faithfully and repeatedly to their offspring so that God will continually dwell with His people." (Lutheran Study Bible notes, pg 288) So, what do we take from this?

Parents are noted as the primary source of instruction in this passage. In many places in scripture, it notes a father's role in discipline.  This goes beyond "punishment" as we so often define it, but rather in teaching, guiding and leading a child. What's interesting in this is the motion given by the Hebrew word "shanan" in terms of sharpening. My dad was a meat-cutter who could sharpen a knife blade to a razor's point. The motion mentioned in the definition of the Hebrew word, "repeatedly running the blade over a whetstone," indicates a rhythmic approach, made clear in v 7, "...shall talk of them when you sit...walk...lie...and rise." That doesn't "imply," it states directly to talk of God in every available moment.

So, why do we forget? Forget what you ask? Forget history? I have a love for history and taught it in school for six years before moving to administration. My observation was that kids would retain history better if you could link it to the here and now. How do you do that? You can start by teaching that there is literally nothing new under the sun in terms of what happens today. It is linked to our story of how we arrived to where we are today. It's found in every day life, not just in the headlines, but in many aspects of what we do, why we do it, and how we do it.

What about your family? My observation as a teacher is that it was good to link issues of the day to the everyday life of people in our community. The family unit being the most significant part of a community, each family has a story about how it got there and what brought them there. Not separate from that is the church (or churches) in that community. So, you have a basis under your own roof to talk about your family in the context of its history, how you got here to this point today, and faith's role in your family. What do we talk about around our dinner tables, in the car, as we pray and as we have time to talk/teach our families about their past and the faith that is a significant part of that?

That makes history and faith active in our lives. Rather than say, "Never forget," we say, "Always remember." Remember who we are, where we've come from and how God has a plan for us in our past and in our present (Jeremiah 29:11). We pray that our parents are taking an active role in the development of our children, and we pray that we, as members of a larger faith community, the church, take our role in helping shape those children when opportunities arise.