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"Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be but a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art." Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Education is incredibly important to me. I've always loved school {at least in theory}, but especially in the last two years of college, my appetite for learning increased exponentially as I realized all of the worlds it opened up to me. Education is an opportunity to fill our minds with truth and beauty.
At this point we are planning to classically educate our kids at home, and I am super exited about it- mostly because I can't wait to get my own second chance at a more thorough education. The history, the art, the language... pretty much all of it except for mathematics thrills me.
But how easy is it to focus on teaching our kids their colors, and letters, and numbers... and neglect to fill their little souls with the Word of God? While I want my kids to excel in academics, isn't it so much more important that I be saturating them in truths of eternal weight?
I'm not saying that academia has no import in a child's upbringing- clearly it does. Especially if "all truth is God's truth." The point I'm trying to make is that I think it is very easy to focus on the one, while neglecting the far greater.
This is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about wanting to read the Bible to my kids this year. It's why we are including the catechism and hymns in our preschool at home. It's why I'm trying to spend more time in books like Give Them Grace, and in The Book. If the Gospel isn't central in my heart first, it will not be central in my home.
Clearly, the salvation of my children's souls is not up to me. Godly kids have been raised by ungodly parents, and ungodly kids have been raised by godly parents. Church History and Scripture itself delineates this over and over again.
But like the Apostle Paul, I want to be able to say "Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God" {Acts 20:26,27}. Yes, he was speaking to a group of church leaders here- but shouldn't we, by the grace of God, be able to say the same to our children when they are grown?
It's so easy to go on auto-pilot. To let our kids minds be filled with the culture around them- television, books {even good ones}, and friends they spend time with. I don't want to be an auto-pilot mom. With God's help, I want to be a mom who is intentionally devoting herself to the evangelization of her kids.
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