"according to your wisdom"
1 Kings 2:6
My Amazing Boy loves U.S. history. He probably gets that from me... who got it from my father. He's got several sets of army men so that he can re-enact battles from any variety of wars and battles. He's got books about American history, and all his life he has enjoyed watching movies or tv shows on the theme. Not to mention, we've taken a few field trips and vacations designed to increase our kids' ~ and our ~ knowledge of our nation's history. Our homeschool curriculum has always called for it to be taught a couple days a week, but he has always wanted it every day. And this year he was supposed be learning just World History. But he'd never want to go a whole year without American History, so we're doing both.
All that to say this: Amazing Boy knows his history. It's been so interesting to watch him make connections in his head about different things he knew, but never realized they were connected. Take World War II, for instance. As a child, you can pick up facts about the Jews and the Germans, and gain some knowledge about what was going on there. But you can also hear about the Japanese and Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific. But that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to connect that all this was part of the same war. It's like when you're doing a jigsaw puzzle, and you have a whole row of pieces that are connected, but you don't know yet, where they belong in the puzzle.
Our general format is that he'll read an assignment in his history book, and then I'll ask him questions about what he has read. But I often ask more questions than what is in the book. I want to challenge him, and the textbook doesn't always do that. I might ask a question I know he should know the answer to, maybe having to do with one of our vacations. Or I might ask a question that I know will challenge him to think about some new aspect of history.
But what often happens, if he doesn't know the answer, is that he'll think for a few minutes, and then say something that was in the text he just read, to see if that's close. Or maybe he'll say, "I'm not sure," and then look in the book to find the fact he didn't catch. But then I'll have to say, "it's not in there." What I want, is for him to check his own knowledge. There's a good chance the answer is in his head, even if it's not in the textbook. I don't want him to just rely on the info at his fingertips.
This is what God wants from us, too. The Bible can't touch on every aspect of life we can expect to run up against. But even if you're not sure of something, if you have made a point of reading Scripture on a regular basis, you have what you need for any situation. Even if it's something as simple as "love thy neighbor" or "be angry; and do not sin in your anger," you'll have the knowledge already in your head.
Begin every day with reading the Bible, and prayer. Give Him your day, and you'll find you are equipped for everything your day will bring you.
~ "Jesus answered and said to them,
'You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures
nor the power of God'" ~
Matthew 22:29
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