The Bible Bee

     Today I want to make a little plug for the Bible Bee.  Our kids have participated in it for the last two years and are already eagerly awaiting the arrival of the memory verse cards for this summer.  The core of the competition is simply in reciting verses, word perfect, before judges at a local Bee in August.  They allow contestants to memorize verses from different Bible translations.  My chief concern when we first heard about it was that our family verses would be NASB and the Bible Bee would be NIV and I feared this would only confuse our kids.  But they're able to memorize in the version we use every day at home.  There is also a Study Manual.  My thought on this is that even if you disagree with it theologically, your kids can still memorize verses, you can't disagree with the Bible!  Our family daily works on memory verse passages throughout the year but there is something about a competition that encourages kids to work just a little harder.  In our home we asked our kids commit to study for a minimum of 15 minutes per day, but two went far beyond that, working on their verses for an hour or two a day.  We've never won a local Bee, which shows some families or children take it very seriously, but our kids voluntarily signed up again this year and are counting down the days until the Bible Bee box arrives in the mail.  This is what Bryan and I desire for our kids, a standard so high it's not easily met, even with hard work.  We want to train our kids to strive for excellence.  The time to register is short.  I'm really posting about this too late, but if you have kids between ages 7 and 18, I highly recommend it.  Last year I literally had tears streaming down my cheeks as we watched the National Finals live on the internet.  Watching those children recite verse after verse with word perfect accuracy and knowing the power of God's Word to captivate their hearts made me cry over and over again.