Learn It. Live It. Share It.

Learn It. Live It. Share It.

Commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.

Deuteronomy 11:18-19

Growing up Amish reminds me of what it would have been like to live in the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder. When I was a fifth grader, the Little House series of books was my favorite. I loved the passages about Ma making simple oil lamps of buttons, scraps of calico, and axle grease. Or about Pa hanging a wild boar in the smokehouse. I liked the idea of waking at dawn, riding in a horse-drawn wagon or buggy, and sitting as a family by lantern light.

History—the kind Laura lived—is still being lived out in some ways. Today, Amish families not only sit around the living room at night, sewing and reading by lantern light, they also live by many values modern progress has forgotten. What lessons from the past are worth embracing? Sometimes the best person to ask—it seems—is an Amish man or woman. In some ways, our past is their present.

Here are some values to consider: common courtesy, family togetherness, neighborliness, service, and putting others before yourself. These values are based on the Scriptures, and the reason they don’t get passed down is that parents neglect to teach and train their children by them.

Teaching scriptural values should be even more important than teaching our children to brush their teeth, turn off lights when they leave the room, or recycle. Do we forget to teach these values because we’ve forgotten their worth?

Spend time reading God’s Word. Ask Him what values He desires you to live out in your own life. Ask His Holy Spirit to work through you. And then pass those values on to the children and young people in your life.

Dear heavenly Father, living by Your Word displays often-forgotten values. May I be a diligent student of the way You desire for me to live. May I depend on Your Holy Spirit to “work out” the truths Your Word “works in.”