Lessons from a Baby #5: Learning the Language

Bella, my 16 month old granddaughter, is learning language the way we all do.  We talk to her all the time and many simple daily things are repeated - eat, bath, night-night, bye-bye, hi, etc.  She is beginning to repeat many words and is constantly adding to her vocabulary.

She has Ma-ma and Da-da down pat.  Next came Papaw (or PaulPaul - since my husband's name is Paul). Her maternal grandfather is Pappy. However,  I have no earthly idea who I am.  She has not yet settled on a name for me.  We've used the name "Gran" for me - short for "Granny", which is what I called my grandmother, but evidently that's a much harder sound to produce.  We're trying Mimi and Nana and Mamaw to see what sticks, but for now, I am "she who must not be named"!

She really does know and love me.  She reaches for me, hugs me, gives me an occasional kiss.  I have kept her in my home many times while her parents were busy with other things.  We have a relationship, but she is just not too sure of what to call me.  I dearly love her, in spite of the fact that she hasn't yet mastered this concept.

We learn the language of the kingdom the same way.  Words, thoughts and principles that are part of our daily spiritual lives are repeated often by our Christian friends, our pastor, our daily Bible reading, songs we enjoy and writers we follow.  Still, in spite of that daily repetition, there are some concepts we still don't acquire easily.  A common theme that you'll see in my blog posts is maintaining communication with God in prayer and Bible study.  That theme isn't repeating because I am so accomplished at keeping it a priority; it's repeating because I struggle so much with being consistent with it myself.  Without letting myself off the hook for this discipline, I do realize that God dearly loves me, even when I am not mastering the lessons that He keeps trying to teach.

Bella can only learn what we can teach her.  If she was put in a situation where she had no human contact and no more exposure to language, her language learning would cease.  If we live in an environment where the Word is not spoken, where people are not sharing what God is leading them to say, where all the media we take in is focused on the things of the world, we won't learn any more kingdom language ourselves. We as adult Christians have control of what language we are learning.  Let's make sure that we are learning it from the right source.

"In" and "Amen"

Sometimes, when I’m not in serious Bible study, I just flip through the pages of my Bible, looking at words or verses I have highlighted or underlined in the past.  I was doing that the other night when I thought about the fact that the Old and New Testament are one continuous story of the love of God and His plan to reach us and bring us into relationship with Himself.

As I thought more along those lines, I considered beginnings and endings.  I knew the first word of Genesis 1:1 was “In”, but I wasn’t sure about the last word of Revelation.  I looked up Revelation 22:21 and confirmed that it was “Amen”!

 I am quite aware that there are 66 books in the Bible and that 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”  I am in no way saying that we shouldn’t read and learn from every word, but really, the first word and the last word sum up the whole theme of the Bible.

Throughout the Old Testament, God was trying to establish relationship with His people – to be IN their midst, for them to live IN His ways and according to His laws.  That system of the law showed men how impossible it was to live in holiness in their own strength – how much they needed a Savior.  The New Testament reveals the sacrifice of Jesus which made a way for us to be IN Him and He IN us.  His Holy Spirit lives and works IN us.  From “IN the beginning” to the Holy Spirit IN us – that was the plan of God.

“Amen” means “so be it”. 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” That final Amen in Revelation 22:21 goes like this, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”

The grace that John is referring to there is that same grace that causes us to be IN Him. Acts 17:28 says that, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being…..”  The most important decision we will ever make is choosing to be in Him.  Everything else in our lives flows from our relationship with Jesus.  What about it?  Are you IN? Amen!

78 and 29

I recently attended a wedding shower where one of the party games was to guess the number of candies in a jar. I have been historically terrible with this activity, always underestimating the number by quite a bit.  So, attempting to apply that experience to my guess this time, I estimated as usual, then added about 20 more to my guess and chose a number that was not a multiple of 5, thinking that whoever filled the jar probably wanted to make it trickier. My educated guess was 78. To my amazement, the bride-to-be announced that the winner, who had guessed the number exactly, was me! The prize for this feat was to take home the jar of candy.

At home later, I told the story to my husband, but I did not divulge the number or any hint of the amount.  He walked by the jar, barely taking a glance, and said, very nonchalantly, “78”.  My jaw dropped!  Not only had I done the practically impossible by guessing the exact amount, but he had just matched my answer without even taking time to examine the jar! What in the world????

Then, just yesterday, we visited a large flea market in search of an elusive item we needed for a project. We had walked through all the buildings by the upper parking lot and walked down a set of concrete stairs to the rest of the buildings.  After a fruitless search of those buildings, we headed back to our van by way of those same concrete steps.  We walked side by side up the steps with no conversation, but when we reached the top, we both spontaneously looked at each other and said, “29!”  That was the number of steps on the staircase. We had both been mentally counting, for whatever reason, and decided at the same moment to make that big announcement.

What is my point? When people have been married for a long time, it is said they can finish each other’s sentences.  How does that happen?  It’s not because they once stood at an altar and made promises to each other.  It’s because they have talked together day after day, year after year. They have seen each other react to many situations.  They have listened to each other tell the same stories to other people over and over.  A serious investment of time together makes it possible for two to become one. The knowing is in the life together – not in the vows.

I believe it’s like that in our relationship with God.  We begin to talk the way He talks, know His heart, and think like He thinks only when we spend time with Him.   It doesn’t happen automatically the day we go to an altar and repeat a prayer, vowing to follow Him.  The knowing is in the life together – not in the vows.

Answers at My Fingertips

One of the things I do as a special education teacher is to read tests aloud to my students, so they can be tested on their knowledge of a subject instead of their reading ability.  Just the other day I was reading a math test to a sweet little third-grade girl.  Many of my students are allowed other accommodations, such as using a calculator to solve problems. She was one of the students who was permitted to do this.

Throughout the test, she was trying her best on each problem.  Many only required her to do things like identify the names of various shapes or match vocabulary words to the corresponding pictures.  However, others did require actual calculations.  She dutifully copied one difficult problem on a dry erase board and began working on it, but she was having trouble solving it.  The calculator lay only inches away from her on the table, but due to the rules of the test, I could not remind her it was there. For several minutes, she struggled with the calculation, erased, and wrote it again, and tried to talk herself through the steps. She even reached over the calculator once to pick up a number line to assist her.  Finally, as I held my tongue (and my breath!), she noticed the calculator, looked at me wide-eyed with a big smile and picked it up to complete the problem successfully.

Sometimes I am a lot like this third grader.  I take a problem in my life and try to work it out myself.  I struggle with the complexities of it, backtrack and try to do it another way, and then I get frustrated.  All along, the means to solve my problem is just at my fingertips.  Why do we sometimes look at prayer as a last resort instead of the first impulse?

I’m not suggesting prayer always gives us the instant solutions a calculator does, but I do know God’s answers to life’s problems are always better than ours, even if we don’t always understand them.  I’m learning the first thing I should do is to take a situation to Him and then step out in faith with the wisdom He gives me – to take actions based on what He has promised.  I imagine when I’m struggling with something on my own, God is patiently waiting for me to notice and remember what is available to me right at that moment and to use the tool of prayer to begin to put things right.