It always seems that my children need me most just as I’m trying to take a moment to collect myself for the day. Whether it’s the little fingers attached to the pleading voice on the otherside of the bathroom door, or the fall off the bookcase while I’m half into my clothes, it always seems like they need me when I’m doing something else totally apart from them.
Today they decided that fighting over the suitcase HAD to occur while I was trying to keep up with the “Reading Through the Bible in a Year” program our church is doing.
What a way to get out of a devotional mindset in a jiffy.
But wait, aren’t those moments when we least feel like having that devotional mind, the times we MOST need to cultivate it? I confess that today, I “got out” of that mindset when dealing with my children. I felt affronted; here I was trying to do something that will benefit them (having a mommy who has God’s Word running through her head goes a long ways in keeping mommy sane), and they had the ingratitude to show their sinful little natures and take me away from it!
What is a devotional mindset? “Devotional” is defined as being “characterized by devotion.” “Devotion,” according to Dictionary.com means “profound dedication; consecration; an earnest attachment to a cause, person, etc.
We ought to go through our lives (especially while training our children) with a devotional mindset. We are, after all, raising them to be autonomous from us and dependent on God. If we live every moment with the thought that we are consecrated, dedicated through Christ’s blood, we will reflect that to our children and they will see what it is to walk a life in full submission to God’s will.
Sometimes living that way means we put away the “devotional” we were doing to sit with our children on the porch in the morning sun and talk about how God made the birds to glorify Him, how even the weeds in the flowerbeds grow in God’s design. Immersing our children in that wonder the Almighty can be the best thing.
We can always read a quick devotional in the bathroom, while the kids are happily occupied smearing peanut butter off their sandwiches onto their plates.
