Bible Bee Update

Our Bible Bee materials have arrived. Two excited children opened the box as soon as it was delivered. Papers, cards, pins and manuals rose in a stack on the floor. They each spent several days setting up their notebooks and punching holes in the corners of the verse cards, in a futile attempt to keep them in one place. Still the floating verse cards are as ubiquitous as Legos. Then they began memorizing.

One child does only the minimum requirement. We let all three children choose whether or not they wanted to participate in the Bible this year with the clear understanding that they would commit to spend at least 15 minutes each day memorizing. That's not enough time to win anything, but hopefully enough time to keep from embarrassing yourself on competition day. Once they've made their choice, we remind them of the expectation (I would say "enforce" it, but we're not standing over anybody's shoulder and punishing infractions). It becomes a matter of keeping one's word, with the added benefit of keeping God's Word ever before you.

Two children are passionately memorizing verses. They walk around with their ring of verses, muttering words of life. These two work together and they compete with each other always pushing the other to work a little harder. We stand back, watch, listen to verses, and encourage. They're having fun. One read "but a brother is born for adversity" as "but a brother is born as an adversary," and laughed aloud. The other came in today talking about flies in a perfumer's oil, but with that pseudo-Boston accent, we thought she was talking about Oreos. It took more than a minute to figure out the Oreo's role in the perfumer's process, let alone that this was the Bible we were talking about.

This is the Bible we are talking about. Last year before the Bee another mother asked how we made our children learn their verses.We don't make them, we couldn't make these words travel from the head to the heart. This isn't of our making, it is of God and we love to see Him working.