"These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and gates." Deuteronomy 6: 6-8

I read this this morning and thought--Wow! I spend a lot of time setting up rules with my children that don't have anything to do with God's commandments. They know well my idea of a clean room, where to take their dirty clothes, who sets the table on what night, how to help clean the kitchen, the need to call when they are late...the list goes on. I make sure my children know these rules so that my household will run smoothly. But The Lord's Commandments? I know they've learned them at church; we might talk about them from time to time when the need arises. BUT using them as symbols, posting them in my home, making them a a part our daily conversation...I must admit, I haven't been so good at that.

And either has our society. There are even people who want them removed from courthouses! It's always been funny to me that we want to remove a set of commandments which include, You shall not murder, from a place which serves to convict people of murder. And if we really take a look at those 10 commandments, can you imagine what a more peaceful, loving world we would live in if we bound them to our hands and foreheads---our hearts?!

Well, I have little control over society as a whole, but I certainly can make them a bigger part of my own mini-society--my home. And...I always say, It begins in the home.

Just a few thoughts before I wake my children...

Thank you God for giving us a set of rules to live by!