Psalms and Children

At my other blog I have commented recently on “The Psalms Project” that I am a part of at Union this semester. It started very well last week with an address from John Witvliet the Director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, whose Worship Renewal Grant is funding this project.

I mention Dr. Witvliet’s address at this blog because it is rich in application in training children. Dr. Witvliet uses training his children as an example of how the Psalms teach us to relate to God properly. Then, his argument that the Psalms are “formative speech”- speech that teaches us how to speak, think, relate and feel- is a strong encouragement for us to be leading our children in memorizing Scripture and to expose them to Scripture so consistently that it shapes our speaking and thinking.

I encourage you to listen to the full address. Dr. Witvliet is good speaker so it is also an enjoyable listen.

Hymns & Children

I have some catching up to do with commenting on books, but various things are conspiring against this at the moment!
So, I thought I would post this video to make the point of the value of teaching substantive hymns to our children. At our church teaching hymns to our children is a part of the curriculum, and then of course many parents do this as well.
This video is of a young boy in the church who stopped by our house one evening with his grandmother. On the way out he decided to use our little piano to play and sing some of his favorite hymns. We only captured this one verse.

R. E. Lee as a Parent

I am currently reading to my boys a not so exciting book about Robert E. Lee. Lee is a great subject, but the style of this book is ponderous. One benefit though is the frequent extracts from Lee’s letters, particularly letters to his children.

This excerpt from a letter to his son in the army (before the war) is a great example of a parent’s proper longings for and expressions to a child. After giving some advice he writes:

“When I think of your youth, impulsiveness, and many temptations, your distance from me, and the ease (and even innocence) with which you might commence an erroneous course, my heart quails within me, and my whole frame and being trembles at the possible result. May Almighty God have you in His holy keeping. To His Merciful Providence I commit you, and will rely upon Him, and the Efficacy of the prayers that will be daily and hourly offered up by those who love you.”