The Blessing Inside the Lunch Bag

For the father who writes a line, folds it small, and doubts it every time.

How long have you been calling that note a substitute for something else?

You write it at about ten to seven, standing up, on whatever paper's nearest. Sometimes it's a line from the Psalms. Sometimes it's four words that aren't from anywhere in particular, like God is with you today, which you have written often enough that your hand does it without you.

You fold it small and push it down the side of the lunch bag, under the apple, where she'll find it at about half twelve and probably not mention it.

She's never mentioned it. Not once in two years. You have no idea whether she reads them, keeps them, or bins them with the crusts.

You have looked, once, in a way you weren't proud of. The bag came back empty and you couldn't tell what that meant, and you decided not to look again.

Then you are in the car and the guilt arrives on schedule. Other children have a Sunday. Other children have people teaching them properly. Yours has a father who writes on the back of a receipt before work.

Moses put the teaching in a parent's own mouth at ordinary hours, and ten to seven is one of them. Scripture into the household rather than into an institution, and the Spirit carries four words down the side of a lunch bag.

The Place You Keep Comparing It To

The comparison runs by itself, and you have never once stopped to examine what's actually inside it.

A room with other children. Somebody trained. A story told properly, with pictures. A structure that repeats every week until it's in her bones.

That's a good thing and I've no interest in running it down. Children have been given a great deal in rooms like that, and some of what you know yourself came from one of them.

What's worth examining is how much of your picture you have ever actually inspected. You imagine a teacher who is competent and unhurried, a story told beautifully, a room where every child is attending. Real rooms contain a volunteer who agreed in August and regretted it by October, and a boy at the back kicking a chair leg for forty minutes.

But notice what your comparison quietly assumes, which is that teaching happens in appointed places by appointed people, and that everything else is a stopgap. Go and read where Moses puts it, because he puts it somewhere else entirely.

You aren't running a stopgap, because Scripture never located the teaching in an appointed room. Scripture's instruction hands it to parents in the ordinary hours of a house, and the Spirit makes that the real thing rather than the substitute.

Where Moses Actually Put It

Here's the passage, and every setting in it is domestic.

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (KJV)

Sitting in the house, walking by the way, lying down, rising up. Four settings, and not one of them is an assembly, a festival or a place of worship, all of which existed and all of which Israel had access to at the time.

The teaching is placed in the parent, in the house, across the whole ordinary day. That isn't the domestic version of the real arrangement. It is the arrangement, written down before there was a temple to compare it with.

Those words went first to a people about to enter a land, and they arrive at a kitchen counter without narrowing. A note folded into a lunch bag at ten to seven is rising up, and it's exactly where the passage puts you.

You are doing the thing the passage names, in the hours the passage names. The written Word's instruction locates the teaching in the house and on the road, and the Spirit makes it land at half twelve.

Diligently Is About Repetition

Handle that word diligently, because it's been used against you by your own mind.

You hear diligently and think thoroughly, expertly, properly. So a receipt with four words on it feels like the opposite of diligent, and the guilt in the car acquires a verse behind it.

The word in that sentence is about sharpening and repeating. Doing it again. Doing it at every one of the four hours listed, day after day, until the words are worn into the shape of the house.

Two years of notes at ten to seven, most school days, in a hand that no longer has to think about it. That isn't the failure of diligence. It's about the purest example of it anybody could describe.

Diligence of that kind is nearly impossible to counterfeit. Anybody can manage an impressive fortnight. Two years of a small unacknowledged action is a different order of thing.

Diligent means repeated, never polished. Scripture's instruction asks for the words repeated at ordinary hours, and the Spirit has kept your hand doing it for two years.

I Am Not Telling You She Is Fine

Be honest, because a message that promised you an outcome would be worthless and I won't write one.

I can't tell you how your daughter will turn out. Nobody can. She has a will of her own and it's hers, and any message that guaranteed you a result would be selling you something God never sold anybody.

Nor am I telling you that a room with other children would be worthless to her. It might be very good indeed. If a door opens and it's right, take it gladly.

What I'm taking off you is the word failing. Not the wanting more for her. Not the prayer you pray in the car.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Amir This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.