The professor becomes the student

At work I quite often have to attend training meetings or seminars.  Most of the time they are quite useless in my opinion, but I go into them with the same thought:  Find one thing I can use.



There's gold in these here hills I tell ya!

All it takes is one nugget to walk away with and I can consider my time spent there as justified.

Reading to the girls at night is not at all like this.  It is a very enjoyable and fulfilling time for me.  We get to read to them from one of their story bibles.  We, in essence, get to teach them and train them from the best book available. 

I really didn't expect to find any useful bit of insight in the books (here and here) we are reading from as I assumed they were just stories from the bible written so children could grasp the basics of deeper text. 

I've nearly completed reading the bible from cover to cover myself this year.  I didn't read it from Genesis to Revelations in one fell swoop.  Instead, I used this method.  It was a little easier for me to follow as making it through Jeremiah or Isaiah can be a bit difficult - you'll know what I mean if you've tried it yourself.

The books do tell the stories exactly as I had imagined.  I was wrong, however, in thinking the girls would be the only ones to benefit from the books.

I found it - my pure gold nugget.

In writing about the death of Jesus, the book made a profound statment I had never thought of before.  Jesus is hanging on the cross and people in the crowd are making fun of him.

"If you were really the Son of God, you could just climb down off that cross!" they said.

And of course they were right.  Jesus could have just climbed down.  Actually, he could have just said a word and made it all stop.  Like when he healed that little girl.  And stilled the storm.  And fed 5,00 people.

But Jesus stayed.

Ready for it?

You see, they didn't understand.  It wasn't the nails that kept Jesus there.  It was love. 

Awesome.  So simple, yet so HUGE! 

We are nearly done with the second book and will be starting from the beginning of the first one again when we finish.  I think I'll be paying a little more attention this time around to see what else I might have missed.