SPIRITUAL SUNDAYS

When I saw this graphic on CrossDaily.com I thought "What an important lesson this picture illustrates. I should share this for Spiritual Sundays," so here it is.

And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Obviously the teaching of each generation is of highest importance. We teach our children many things, but the most important is to teach them about God, his Son, his love and his laws.

I was impressed with this account of his early teaching written by Phillip Johnson.

"My earliest childhood memory is a pre-kindergarten Sunday school class. I suppose I was four years old—maybe even younger. Our church was an old, imposing building that smelled like someone's attic. The windows in our classroom were huge, and I loved the way the sun shone in. I was mesmerized by those little particles of dust that dance in the sunbeams in a dusty room.
I clearly remember one Sunday sitting in that room and learning the song "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." Our teacher eagerly pointed to the huge streams of light coming in the windows, and she tried to make them an object lesson.

The only trouble was, none of us understood anything about metaphors. All I could think of when we sang that song were those shiny little specks floating in the shaft of light, and I couldn't figure out why Jesus would want me to be one of those. I loved the song, but I have to admit it made no sense to me.

That memory is so deeply etched in my mind that even today when I hear "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam," I am immediately transported back to that old room with the big windows, and those little flecks of sunlit dust come to mind.

My own kids are now older than I was then, and one day several years ago it suddenly occurred to me that the earliest memories they would carry to adulthood had already been formed. Nearly everything they are learning now will stay with them for the rest of their lives."

I'll bet a lot of you are believers today because of what you were taught at a very young age. The first remembrance I have of hearing about God and Jesus was when I was about 7 years old. A lady in the neighborhood where my cousin lived held a little class for the neighborhood children. I remember telling my Mom I wanted to be baptized. She said I was too young to know what I was doing. We were not attending church anywhere at that time. When we did start going to church I was about 10 and the reason we started was because I told my Mom I wanted to ride the church bus to a Methodist church in our town because it came to our neighborhood. She told me that if I wanted to go to church we would go to the Church of Christ (the church she had been brought up in) and guess what? That church also had a bus so we started riding it. From that time on my mother and I never missed a service unless we were sick or as they say "providentially hindered." I asked my Mom why we had not gone to church sooner. She said that she took me to Sunday School when I was really small. I don't remember it at all but I have a feeling that the things I learned back then even before I could remember it had an impact on my life. As I look back, God had a purpose for my life and he has led me all the way until this very day. And I am so thankful for that.

I hope you will visit our Spiritual Sundays blog and click on the links to see what others have shared today. Of course you are invited to share as well. For instructions on how to participate, you can click HERE.