Bible Study – Page 75 – Parenting Like Hannah

Bible Reading Plans for Children

So how are you and your family doing with the twelve month challenge to start living more like Jesus? Have you started having family devotionals? Has everyone found a Bible reading plan that meets their needs? Have you found some great songs to help you memorize scripture?

Finding a Bible reading plan for older children and teens can be a challenge. Many young people struggle with the standard “reading through the Bible in a year” or even the “chronological Bible” plans which adults usually prefer. Children start out the year fine, as those first days are the stories in Genesis they have heard most of their lives. As soon as the genealogies and law lists start though, their eyes glaze over and they give up on Bible reading.

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There’s an App For That

Recently, I joined the world of iPad addicts. My busy schedule and the need to accomplish something while I am waiting, meant I needed an easily portable computer. There is a relatively new app I believe can help you introduce your child to the world in the Bible in a very real way.

Bible360 is a free app (The full app does require payment.). You can download it in the iTunes store or from their website. It has the normal Bible and reading plans. The exciting part for me was the virtual tour of sites in the Bible. Click on one of the more than three dozen virtual tours. (Over 500 if you have the premium paid version) Suddenly you are in Jerusalem or at the Temple. Tap on the various areas for close-ups and more detailed information. The site also contains photos (mini photos over 2300 free, large photos 52 free) , artwork (mini over 700 free, large more than 60 free), maps (mini 143 free, large 16 free) and videos (3 free).

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Teaching Children How We Got the Bible

I am old. Really old. When I was a teenager and wanted to learn about something, I had three options. Trust my parents to have the answer, use our set of encyclopedias or drive five miles to the library and hope they had a book or magazine with the answer. Now, in a few seconds, I can have millions of answers to a question on my computer screen right in my house.

In those olden days, you either had to trust the few sources you had available or you just sort of forgot the question. Today’s child has millions of possible answers to their questions in a few seconds after they ask it. The problem is that some of them are accurate, some are partially accurate, some are wrong and some are just too weird to even consider. With so many answers to choose from, how do we know whose answer we can trust?

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Mother-Daughter Bible Book Clubs

One of my favorite things I did when my daughter was young, was to start a mother-daughter book club. We met once a week during the summer, discussing the chosen book for the week. Every meeting featured crafts, games, refreshments or a field trip. The club included many of the girls in her school class and their moms.

Now I wish I had made it at least partially, if not entirely, a Bible book club. We tend to forget that the Bible is actually sixty-six separate books put together in one volume. Some books like Ruth and Esther are basically one long true story, while other books have multiple true stories within them. There is even poetry and wisdom literature.

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What is Wormwood Anyway?

No, there are no worms in wormwood. Fig Newtons do not grow on trees and gall is actually made from a hibiscus type plant. Have you ever stopped and thought about how many stories in the Bible refer to some sort of plant? Do you really understand the significance of how and why grape vines are pruned? It could mean the difference in how you interpret all of those verses about us being pruned like grape vines.

This summer our church planted a garden. This was not your typical garden, although there were some familiar things in it. It was a Bible garden filled with a lot of the vegetation mentioned in the Bible.

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