As I listen to a rhyme that my kids are singing in unison, it makes me cringe because it reflects the desire to push the envelope just past what’s appropriate.
At that moment, I must choose how to respond:
- Don’t sing that because you are better than that?
- Although that sounds fun, it’s not?
- For some people, that may be funny, but for others, it leads to a bigger problem?
- Life’s more fun when we live between God’s lines?
None of this is resonating with me and certainly won’t with them. As I start to work through the list above, I start my ramblings of reasoning. “I want to say because of this or that”…and then I process through why that reasoning wouldn’t be quite right (my poor kids)…and what I see looking back at me are blank stares.
So I ask my son Graham, “How many opportunities at 8 and 9 do you have to say, ‘I am not going to do this God, because I love You.’” Graham responded, “Not very many, Mom.”
“So at this moment, we have the opportunity to train ourselves to choose to worship our God by the way we act. When you choose to keep your mouth shut as the chants go around, think of it like throwing glitter up to Heaven.”
My kids held their lips shut, trying not to say the rhyme that was surely bouncing around in their minds, and one changed the words of the rhyme to something that would be a good thing to pour into their hearts. They sang it together, not because they won’t know their God if they sing the bad rhyme, or that they are bad kids if they say the words, but because in this little piece of training, they are teaching their own hearts to choose better.
More of our God, less of ourselves; more of His glory, less of our nature…and in the silly rhyme, God gives us the opportunity to train our hearts to choose Him.
HLLF,
