For some reason lately, I crave ice cream. I could eat it
for every meal. OK! NO! Don’t jump to conclusions here! It is creamy and cold and lately I’ve had to
lie down a lot to allow my hip to recover from surgery. I suffer from severe
acid reflux, so lying down is a problem
and anything that keeps from making me breath fire is wonderful relief
for me…so, see, ice cream is what I am craving. The problem is that there is
very little nutritious about ice cream, or frozen yogurt (my real choice
actually), and try as I may, and no matter how often or how many labels I read,
I just can’t make it so. My husband keeps reminding me repeatedly: “ice cream
isn’t FOOD!” He is right, sigh, it isn’t
and I cannot live on ice cream, but wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be great
to just enjoy the wonderful pleasures of the sweets that we enjoy and the
prettiness that surrounds us that God gave us to enjoy without dealing with the
ugliness that is the reality of this world as a product of sin that we brought
here? Recently, I read a small scripture
that gave me pause to consider this very issue.
You are,
no doubt, familiar with the famous passages found in Deuteronomy 4:9-10; Deut. 6:7-8, 11:19. Many
of us can say these verses by heart and understand the command to teach our
children. But the question becomes…teach what? God tells the children of Israel
to tell their children of the greatness of God who brought them out of bondage.
It tells them to tell their children about the journey they made to the land
their God had promised, and despite their disobedience, He kept that promise. He
tells them to teach them the law and that God is a God of patience. He is one
who always keeps His promise.
But, it
wasn’t until recently when I was preparing to teach the temptation of Christ to
my three and four year old class that I realize that I didn’t know how to teach
the concept of Satan to them. I even thought about skipping over that account
because it sounded so negative and they are so innocent. I was prepared to
teach the love of God. It was that week that I read Joel 1:3:” Tell your children about it, Let your children tell
their children, And their children another generation.” What were they to tell
their children? Read onto verse 4: What the chewing locust
left, the swarming locust has eaten; What the swarming locust
left, the crawling locust has eaten; And what the crawling locust left, the
consuming locust has eaten.” And the verses concerning destruction continued..ewwwww.
They aren’t pleasant images. But, they are images of what really happened, the
power of God and the punishment the people had to endure. Really? God wants
them to tell their children of the punishment that God can deal out? Yep! You
got it. Just as those children need to know the love of God and the
lovingkindness and patience, they also need to understand that God’s patience
will not endure forever and that someone that is trying to drag them into the
depths of a pit of eternal punishment, someone who is very real and will try to
consume their souls, someone that they must guard against from the very start,
if they choose to disobey God. They must understand that God will do whatever
He must to keep us from that place.
It
would be great if I could survive on ice cream, cookies and cotton candy. It
would be wonderful if all I had to deal with was pleasantness in the world, but
Adam and Eve’s sinned and I must live with the reality of that sin, and so must
those precious children. They watch the
bad guys fight the good guys in cartoons and movies; the very basis of good vs.
evil. So, I realized how important it is to teach my preschool class that
disobedience will mean God will mean punishment and Satan is real. We practiced
making Satan go away by saying (in our strongest and loudest voice!) “Go away
Satan! We hate you!!! It is written: We obey GOD! ” Yes, Satan is real, and although it would be
much easier to avoid it, we must be willing and ready to teach our children,
grandchildren, nieces and nephews the reality that God will punish, that hell
is real and so is Satan. We must not be afraid to tell them the truth. After all, the scary part is, we know Satan will tell them whatever lies he chooses. He can and will disguise
himself as something they love- usually something beautiful and unexpected, a
temptation…ice cream…cotton candy....cookies…butterflies? (II Corinthians 11:14).
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