In a way, it is like January 1st, all over again. With the start of the new school year, I am making big plans for new routines. For example, I want to expand my cooking repertoire. It seems like I am stuck in a rut and am constantly fixing the same dishes over and over again. MY plan is to try a new recipe once a week. I have cookbooks I never use. Surely, I can get a little more organized to make THAT happen. (Realistically, I think once a month is more feasible!)
Another thing that I am hoping to implement with the start of the school year, is really just expanding something I began with Riley last year as a Kindergardener.
As a gift after the first day of school, her daddy and I presented her with her first "big girl" Bible, not a story Bible. It is the ESV Children's Bible and we spent about ten minutes everyday after school in "Bible Study". She desperately wanted to be like the teenagers she knows I teach the Bible to. We began with the books of the Bible, adding one a day until we had covered all 66 books. With the help of a couple of songs, she can still recall them and knows in which testament each can be found. Then we progressed through some of the fantastic Bible helps in the back of her Bible. She understood and retained so much more than I would have thought possible. It really became a very special time for both of us.
So this year, her daddy and I want to expand Riley's Bible Study time. We are going to be studying and learning her first (and mine too) catechism. In case you aren't sure what a catechism is, it is a serious of questions and answers backed by scriptures to teach what a faith really believes. These questions range from God's identity and Man's sin, to the Ten Commandments and Prayer.
From before her birth, her daddy and I knew that we were responsible before God for Riley's instruction and growth in Christ. We are the ones who need to be teaching her and not the church. Yes, the church has a role to play, but we are the ones who will stand before God one day for what she has or hasn't learned. We desperately want Riley to know what she believes and why she believes it. We want her to have her own faith. We believe teaching her a catechism is one way to do that.
You may be thinking that a catechism doesn't seem very "Baptist". Well, I hate to say it but, then you really don't know your Baptist history very well. If you google "catechism," you will find a really wide variety. Let me suggest Tom Nettles' book, Teaching Truth, Training Hearts - the study of catechisms in Baptist life. (We are using Chapter 5, A Catechism for Boys and Girls with Riley.)
If you have any tips on how to begin teaching Riley a catechism, I would really value and appreciate it. If you have any ideas on how to help bring the Bible to life for a first grader, I would like that too . . .
Now where is that Rachel Ray cookbook?
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