Tuesday, May 31, 2011

tell your children

Last week my husband taught a message that gave me an idea. The message was on Joshua chapter 4, where God commands the children of Israel to set up a memorial made of stones from the Jordan River to symbolize God's deliverance when he parted the waters for them.



Not only did God want the Israelites to remember the miracle they had witnessed with their own eyes, the dry riverbed they walked through with their own feet; but He wanted them to tell their children. There are many places in the Old Testament where God tells the Israelites to set up these memorials, or have feasts to remember the things that He did for them. I know why. We forget. We forget how good God is and the unwavering faithfulness He has shown in the past. I don't want to forget the things God has done for me and my family; and He commands us to remember!

As my husband taught, I tried to think of a way that we could have a sort of "memorial stone" as a family. Something we could look at constantly and say: "God is good. He has always been good." I have heard of people having actual stones that they write on with metallic pens---but God blesses us way too often for that :) So, I came up with the idea of having a family remembrance stone journal. A place to consistently record every time God blesses us so that we can look back and see how good He is. I want the boys also to write it in when they are old enough and draw pictures until they are. Whenever God blesses them, I will say "let's put it in the journal!" so they begin to see God's faithfulness as well. I really hope we keep it up, because years down the line I want us all to be able to flip through it and be blown away by God's blessings to our family.



4 comments:

The Frugal Momma said...

I love this idea! Your little ones are blessed to have parents who want to raise them up in the Lord!

P31 Women said...

Jessi, I think this is a great idea. I know how creative you are and I wanted to share with you about this workshop we had at our woman's retreat this year. I actually got to edit the video for it. Shannon Woodward was the speaker and she does these Journal's where she collects pictures from magazines, like Martha Stewart or country magazine and she rips the pics out that she likes and paste's them in her blank paged Journal and uses pretty pens to record a scripture or an event in a very artistic way. I have heard of some women using it as a family Journal as well. I want to send you a picture of one of the pages, not sure if I have one on file. Anyway, thought Id share that with you.

P31 Women said...

Here is the link to her blog post about it.
http://twigandfeather.com/2011/04/visual-journal/

Jessi said...

Thanks Nicole! I loved that journal!