One of the most valuable things you can do as a family is to spend time together reading the Word of God or a Bible story. It’s not as hard as you might imagine. You can do it in 5 or six minutes.At our house, this is how it looks. After dinner, I read a Bible story or a short segment of Scripture. For, instance, I might read the 23rd Psalm – -The Lord is my shepherd.
Two or three minutes later, when I get done reading the Psalm, I ask our youngest, Mary Beth, what was the story about. She just turned five, so if she says something even remotely on target, like “it is about Jesus,” then we celebrate with the kind of enthusiasm that an athlete does when she has won a gold medal.
I then come up with a question that will appeal more to my boys. In the case of the 23rd Psalm, it would probably be to ask, “What does it mean that the Lord is with us even in the valley of the shadow of death.”
That’s all it would take to get my son, Benjamin, to begin imagining himself fighting Goliath or defending the Alamo.
After we’re are done talking about the passage for even a couple of minutes, we pray around the table for family members and our church. Prayers are short: one or two lines. And, we often have to give one of the younger ones the death grip during prayer to teach them to be reverent.
After prayer, we sing one song. Anything from, “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” to “There is a Fountain.” I sing like Barney Fife, so Jamie leads.
After talking to you when I was there, we got a simple Bible story book and our Bible time has started to more resemble what you describe here. We are so much more likely to do it because it’s more managable. It was hard to find a good book, though. I wanted one that included the less popular texts of the Bible, and didn’t add a lot to the text.
We’re pretty happy (so far) with the one we got: The Childrens Bible in 365 Stories. I like the pictures (the pictures in Taylor’s for litte Eyes are totally familiar to me from staring at them when I was like 4 or 5… same with Little House series) and the stories take just a few minutes to read.
Remember – -even short periods together stack up over time. And, try and drive home a few powerful truths over and over again —