The Change in My Kids

I just wanted to note down some milestones in my life before I forget them or they drift away like wisps of vapour.  Sometimes, I feel like my journalling is like Dumbledore putting a wand to his head and withdrawing a memory, this thin, wispy trail of thread from your mind, and gently dropping it into the pensieve.  So let's see, it started with that day when I bumped into Commander Katherine in the walkway of my church basement where Sunday school classes are conducted.  She smiled at me and accosted me by saying that she has seen the change in my boys.  They are aged 11 and 12 at the moment.  She said she has seen them growing up in church (and I blushed because I remember how they used to hate Sunday School from ages 4 to 10, and how my oldest boy would escape the moment we reached basement and we had to chase after him and he would play "hide and seek" with us throughout the church grounds, until sometimes my husband gave up cos we were so late for church that he would just join me and my boy would come skulking back after a long time) and seen the change in them.  She also commented that she noticed I had 4 kids, all of them in Sunday school, and that we were a faithful family.  She said we must be bringing them up well in the Lord.

I do realise that my 11-year-old boy has suddenly become very religious in a good way.  He has started to initially worry a lot if he was saved, and then if he was doing things according to God's will, and now he just has this insatiable thirst for the Bible.  It started with us doing a Bible study and family prayer every Sunday night, starting with the Gospel of Matthew.  Then it progressed to him coming to me with the Bible on weekday nights saying "Bible study?" in that hopeful voice, and I would often groan because I would already be really tired running after all my kids to shower, make milk for them and chase them to brush teeth (including brushing for my youngest and inspecting the teeth of my second youngest).  He now wants to do Bible study every night if possible and doing Bible study is his reward for studying.  And because of him, all my kids join in the Bible study and are learning lots because after reading a passage, he always asks in an anguished voice "But what is the lesson here?" and I will be forced to translate the passage into some relatable principles which they can implement in their life straight away.  Either some way of thinking, or some new understanding about God or how He works.  Then his face will light up and he will smile like the noonday sun, and go to bed happy.  Oh, and then they all ask me to go and pray with them and snuggle with them a bit.

So now they look forward to Sundays (cos it's the Sabbath and they don't have to do homework) and to Sunday School, always bringing their bibles now and earnestly going in.  I honestly don't know what has come over them.  Even my oldest is more serious about God now, or at least, he has a keen conscience and a keen sense of sin in his life.  His prayers at night are quite sincere and cute, always asking God for forgiveness for all the sins he has done in his life.  And he tells me he is so worried that initially he would not be saved, and then later, that he would fall away in his life and get distracted by other things that take up his attention.  I pray that it would not happen, and told him that's why we go to church, and surround ourselves with like-minded people, and anyway God will draw us back when we stray, like a good shepherd.  

This is one of the good good things in my life!  And I thank God for His grace and mercy!