Children and Scriptures

In the Saturday evening session of stake conference a month ago, a sister an experience about reading the scriptures with her children. During an interview with her bishop, he asked, "Do you read the scriptures as a family?"

"Yes we do. We read the Illustrated Book of Mormon with them. They are only 5 and 2," she replied.

"I think you would be amazed at how much your children would understand if you were to read the regular scriptures with your children, not the illustrated version. Why don't you try that and let me know how it works for you" the bishop counseled.

She related how with faith in what the bishop had counseled that they purchased a triple for each child, and began reading the Doctrine and Covenants together as a family. She said it wasn't long before the children would start saying, "Revelation given to Joseph Smith..." even before they had their books open.

Nancy and I exchanged glances in the meeting. Our children are also 5 and 2, and we were in the habbit of reading from the Illustrated scriptures. In fact, we were just finishing our third time through with Isabel. We made a big deal about finishing the book. The next day we went to the bookstore and bought 4 new hard cover Book of Mormons (or "Books of Mormon" depending on how many times you have seen "Best Two Years"). Mom wrote our names in our books. And off we went reading the real scriptures as a family.

And how has it been?

Slow... but that is a good thing. We read 6 verses every night. Everyone gets to read 2 verses, and that's about all the attention span that the kids have - well, I guess Jay doesn't have even that much of an attention span or we would be reading 8 verses instead of 6. But shortly he will want to join in. The most amazing thing about it is how Isabel has responded. She is quite excited to read every night, and tries her best to sound out the words and remember the difference between "Laman" and "Laban." She astounds us with how well she reads the scriptures. The hardest thing she had read previously were "Bob" books. Other books were "too hard." But she seems anxious to jump in to long words like "Nevertheless" and "Jerusalem." So we can add our testimonies that reading the scriptures with little children is a good thing.

One other benefit from going slow is that it gives us more time to ponder about what we have read. Like last night we read 1 Ne 3:18, which says that if Lehi had stayed in Jerusalem after the Lord had told him to leave he would have been destroyed. I started thinking about conference - and how conference is one of the ways we hear the voice of the Lord - and then if we choose not to follow the prophets counsel we are then left unto ourselves. Safety lies in standing in holy places, and following the prophet. See - I've read right by that scripture so many times and never stopped to think about it, just because it is couched between "not murmurring" "Lord giveth no commandment..." and "tender mercies." If we hadn't been reading in such small intervals, I probably would have ended up missing that great scripture again.

Well my bus ride is almost done. Nice chatting with you.