love to paint

Yesterday in the car, I turned on NPR and listened to a local talk show radio host interview an author about parents and their expectations of their children.  The host was talking about how parents have unrealistic expectations of their children so they can't live up to them.  My 8 year old daughter suddenly says from the back seat that no child can be good enough.  It took me a second to comprehend what she was saying and then I remembered what the sermon at church on Sunday had been about and the Bible study discussion from Sunday night.  I probed her and asked what she meant.  I learned that she understood that none of us are good enough to earn God's love.  We are loved by God and are good enough because Christ died for our sins.  We are saved by grace through faith--not by our own good works.  She didn't understand why the adults on the radio were having the discussion at all.  I reminded her of a time when she told me she was a horribl...

At lunch one day this week, Autumn brought a book with her to the table.  She actually wanted to read it instead of eating her lunch.  So, what was this book?  It happened to be a new book that's coming out on Athanasius.  Yes, Athanasius.  This book is newest release in a series written by Simonetta Carr on figures from church history. Earlier this year, I reviewed one of the other books from the series on John Owen .  Reviewing that book challenged me to think critically about biographies and what we, and our children, learn from reading them. There is a saying that if we do not learn from history then we are doomed to repeat it.  There are also other sayings about history and why we study it.  I always told my middle school students that we studied history so that we could learn from the past and not have to reinvent the wheel over and over.  Both of these sayings apply to this series of Christian biographies for children. I asked Simo...

What did you learn about the Puritans in school growing up?  What I remember learning is that the Puritans were the people who came over on the Mayflower searching for religious freedom because there was religious persecution in England.  And that's about all I remember learning. I learned a lot more about the Puritans this week because of a children's book I read. The book I read is Simonetta Carr's book on John Owen, a Puritan theologian, from her set of Christian biographies for young readers.  The cover of this book is inviting and might make you think that this is a picture book about John Owen, which it is not.  This book is a solid biography for young readers in grades 3-6.  It is formatted wonderfully, especially for this age group.  The font size and type as well as the background on each page is beautifully done.  The book is very easy to read because of the formatting.  The younger readers may have some difficulty reading ...