Our devotion is by GLYNIS GOYNS who serves St Marks in Moregloed and also works for the South African Faith Communities' Environment Institute (SAFCEI).
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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 upon 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. Deuteronomy6:4-9
I'm not sure why, but Deuteronomy 6:4-9 always raises a picture in my mind of God walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of evening, chatting in the beauty of the garden about the joy of the day past, and anticipating the wonder of a new day to come... God present in the most natural way. I have the same sense of wonder about the normal everyday manner in Deuteronomy of bringing our children into God's presence.
An early childhood memory of mine is of my mother, widowed in her thirties, taking my brother, sister and I walking in the veld. She would find a sunny spot with a view, sit us on a rock or tree stump, and put her finger to her lips: "How many silent sounds can you collect?" she would whisper. Eyes alight with a deep sense of mystery, we'd listen for the sound of the wind stirring the grass; a beetle's wings whirring in the heat; a distant bird call; or our own hearts beating. We would hear God's voice shaping His creation as we listened to the hushed tones and long silences of peace in the afternoon. Without realising it, my mother was giving us a precious gift... to listen to the silences, to the meaning behind the sounds, to the unspoken. Such a gift is at the heart of love, the simple willingness in everyday life and ordinary surroundings to slow down, to be still, and to know the mystery and wonder of the Creator God; to hear the unspoken cry of a brother or sister, the dejection in a sagging head, the loneliness of a single tear tracking through the dirt on a grimy cheek, the confusion of a heart unable to express its deepest feelings.
That memory is imprinted in my very being, part of who I am. As we share the teachings of the Almighty and His precious Son with our children in the most ordinary ways as an intrinsic part of everyday life, so those lessons become an integral part of their identity rather than a distant wisdom to which they turn on the odd occasion when they're out of their depth. Children raised on the Word of God as they sit and as they walk along the road, when they lie down and when they get up come to know that this is the very essence of life itself.
Is this not the heart of mission in the home as one generation after another passes on the wondrous ability to "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One" and the understanding that there is no other way but to love Him "with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength"?
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
