Home Archive by category "Parenting" (Page 6)

Category: Parenting

The Gospel According to Darth Vader

Followers of my blog know I’m a Star Wars fan. People often laugh when they hear me say to my son in a deep voice, “Luke, I am your father.” He laughs, even though he doesn’t get the significance of the quote. Since he is only six, he hasn’t even sat through all the movies, though we have watched segments and he loves the original Clone Wars cartoons I have on my iPad before the freaky looking version came out that looks like a video game gone bad. (I’m not a fan of the current Clone Wars show – yuck!) Tonight, Luke had trouble sleeping so he was lying on the couch down in my office while I worked and looking at all the items in my Star Wars ‘museum’ – and noticed I have a lot of Darth Vader figures and collectibles and asked, “Why do you like Darth Vader so much, when he is a bad guy?” Good question. I answered, “Luke, Darth Vader is the reason I love Star Wars so much – because Star Wars is a story of a bad guy who was saved because of the love of a son, a son named Luke.”…

Continue reading

Avoiding the GIMMIE GIMMIE’s

How do you help kids develop an “Attitude of Gratitude?” Every holiday seems to get derailed with the wrong focus. Christmas is about getting presents and Easter is about candy – and Thanksgiving can end up being about FOOD! MANY many years ago I wanted to develop a game for my students at church that would help them focus on being thankful, but in a fun and engaging way. I also had the issue of it being a low attendance Sunday with families traveling and as a result I often was short on volunteers. What to do? I ended up creating a large group game that became so HUGELY POPULAR it became an annual tradition. The game has been available on Kidology.org for over ten years in my “home made” version – but we finally decided to create a “real” version worthy of the FUN that it creates and make it available for wider use! If you have ever played Parker Brother’s classic card game of PIT – you will already know the basic rules – and get a mental image of how fun the game is. But instead of just a few players yelling out, “One! One!” or “Three!…

Continue reading

The Freedom of Childhood

And Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 Children are free from so much. Unlike adults, their default is play not work, imagination not reality, exploration not explanation, curiosity not cautiousness, and best of all they worry about nothing other than their immediate needs and loved ones. No thoughts are weighed down by the future or world affairs. They can swing for an hour with no thought to the things still undone on a task list. They accept complete dependance on those who care for them without question. Perhaps these are a few of the reasons Jesus asked us to come to Him as children. Then we would be free indeed.

Continue reading

To Build a Boy

My son is loving that a house is now being built next door! I already blogged my thoughts on how the framing of the foundation related to fatherhood, but now the foundation is complete – and Luke has left his mark: Luke’s day now consists mostly of watching these men work, and then going and mimicking their work in his own giant sandbox. At lunch today be informed us, “It’s O.K. To go to lunch, my workers are at lunch right now too. I have ten workers, you know.” He’s the foreman of his backyard construction site and gives us daily reports at dinner of his workers progress each day, in creative detail. You can only imagine his sheer excitement when a huge truck arrived today and dropped off two massive piles of rocks next to our house! He loves imagining the house that will be built upon this foundation. “The house will be up here, Dad!” As I watch this boy of mine, I too wonder… What will HE hold up one day? What will be built upon his life? Some of his accomplishments and how God uses him, I will get to see, much may be after I’m…

Continue reading

Blessing Faith Remembered, 31 Years Later

I’ve been going through some childhood papers, sorting, filing, (pitching!) and it’s been very special (and funny) to get these glimpses into the “young Karl.”  Many things I remember, others come as a surprise to me. I was very touched to discover a very simple piece of paper that I had written and colored just a year after my little sister, Blessing Faith, was born…and died. I didn’t want to forget her. She lived only 5 days due to a very rare birth condition where her brain did not finish developing. I got to hold her, and my parents later told me that my strength and trust in the Lord at age 12 helped them through it. It was something amazing for me to grasp at that time, not understanding the simple faith of children and how it can often help us more complicated adults! Anyway, here is a close-up of what I wrote, and a PDF of the entire sheet is linked below. I wanted to make sure I never forgot that day, and here, 30 years after making this simple piece of paper on Blessing’s birthday, I am getting my wish. I am remembering. Some might ask why…

Continue reading

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...