“Buttons! Buttons! Read the buttons!” and so for the fortieth time that week I sit down with my two year old grandson Judah and read Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. And every time we reach the page where Pete loses his last button but doesn’t let it get him down because “buttons come and buttons go,” and where Pete looks down at his buttonless shirt hanging open and the author asks, “what does he see?” Judah springs up, holds his little arms high over his head with a big grin on his face and says, “His bel-ly but-ton!” with exactly the same amount of glee and excitement as the first time he ever heard the book read.
He loves that book and the other two Pete the Cat books he has, as well as the one called Click, Clack, Boo, plus the one based on Ezekiel 37 called Dem Bones. That week we babysat we learned by the third day to be careful what we said or it would remind him of one of those books and he would toddle off to find it and ask for it to be read not once again, but three, four, five times again.
Yet here we sit with a shelf full of Bibles, every version you can imagine, amplified and not, written in and bare, paragraphed and versed, and now even some in large print, and do we ever have the same amount of desire to read it as a two year old who can’t even read it to himself yet? He knows those “Pete” books so well you can leave off a word and he will fill it in. You can say the wrong word and he will shout, “No! No! It’s ______!” You can mention one word completely out of context and he will immediately think of that book and go looking for it.
Yet we seem loathe to pick up what is supposed to be our spiritual food and drink, the lamp that lights our way in the dark, and the weapon to fight our spiritual battles. We moan over daily reading programs, especially when we get to Leviticus or the genealogies. We complain when the scripture reading at church is longer than 5 verses, especially if we are one of those congregations that, like the people in Nehemiah, stand at the reading of God’s Word. We gripe when the Bible class teacher asks us to read more than one chapter before next week’s class. What in the world is wrong with us?
This little two-year-old puts us to shame. Just from hearing it read, he can quote practically a whole book, several of them, in fact. His whole face lights up when you read it to him yet again. I have to admit, Keith and I would occasionally try to hide those books by the end of a day. We may not do that with God’s Word, at least not literally, but leaving it to sit on the shelf and gather dust isn’t much different.
I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules. Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble, Psalms 119:162-165.
Dene Ward
He loves that book and the other two Pete the Cat books he has, as well as the one called Click, Clack, Boo, plus the one based on Ezekiel 37 called Dem Bones. That week we babysat we learned by the third day to be careful what we said or it would remind him of one of those books and he would toddle off to find it and ask for it to be read not once again, but three, four, five times again.
Yet here we sit with a shelf full of Bibles, every version you can imagine, amplified and not, written in and bare, paragraphed and versed, and now even some in large print, and do we ever have the same amount of desire to read it as a two year old who can’t even read it to himself yet? He knows those “Pete” books so well you can leave off a word and he will fill it in. You can say the wrong word and he will shout, “No! No! It’s ______!” You can mention one word completely out of context and he will immediately think of that book and go looking for it.
Yet we seem loathe to pick up what is supposed to be our spiritual food and drink, the lamp that lights our way in the dark, and the weapon to fight our spiritual battles. We moan over daily reading programs, especially when we get to Leviticus or the genealogies. We complain when the scripture reading at church is longer than 5 verses, especially if we are one of those congregations that, like the people in Nehemiah, stand at the reading of God’s Word. We gripe when the Bible class teacher asks us to read more than one chapter before next week’s class. What in the world is wrong with us?
This little two-year-old puts us to shame. Just from hearing it read, he can quote practically a whole book, several of them, in fact. His whole face lights up when you read it to him yet again. I have to admit, Keith and I would occasionally try to hide those books by the end of a day. We may not do that with God’s Word, at least not literally, but leaving it to sit on the shelf and gather dust isn’t much different.
I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules. Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble, Psalms 119:162-165.
Dene Ward
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