Friday Night with Keisha and God

Keisha and I just returned from taking Jake for a walk. It feels like November outside. I might even put my winter coat on today.

She and I are heading to the library in a little while. I learned that 10 of the items I've requested are now available. They are mostly DVDs and CDs.

Last night, while Jennie napped before heading to work, Keisha and I spent some great time together. We did a couple loads of laundry, and we started to work on a "Color by Numbers" kit Jennie bought for her yesterday. I helped her make her bed, and we ate dinner together.

While we ate dinner, we went through a "Sticky Situation" in her "Sticky Situations" book. Yesterday's situation was about seeking advice. The child in the story planned to make special crafts to give as Christmas presents to her family, friends, and teacher, but as she started to consider the cost, she realized that she may have gotten herself into more than she could handle. She didn't want to ask someone in her family for help because that would spoil the surprise.

We were given three scenarios for how to play the situation out:

1. Go through as she orginally planned and cross her fingers, hoping everything works out
2. Ask another adult, like a grandparent or a craft store worker, what they thought of her plans
3. Give up and just buy them something

We looked at Proverbs 15:22. In her Bible, it reads:

Plans fail without good advice.
But they succeed when there are many advisers.

Finally, Keisha asked me to share about a time when it was hard for me to get advice and a time when we didn't get advice, discussing the results for each. I shared about when we were looking to buy a house: how we spent many months looking in Middletown and finally Dayton, how we asked many people from church and elsewhere for their thoughts. When we finally decided to buy it, we believed we'd made a wise decision.

I also shared about when Jennie and I went on vacation the year before Keisha was born: we didn't really ask anyone else about where to go, nor did we have the money to go on vacation like we did. Also, when we returned, we decided to go into debt by getting new furniture and appliances, which we couldn't really afford. We later had to pay more money for this debt because of these unwise decisions.

Before I tucked her into bed, I read couple of Bible stories, as she requested. The first one was about the Magi giving presents to Jesus. I emphasized to Keisha that the Magi gave Jesus their very best because they loved him and worshipped him.

The second story was about Jesus feeding the 5,000 men with only two fish and five loaves of bread. Since she's learning subtraction at school, I explained it to her this way:

Normally, two minus two is zero and five minus five is zero, right? Not so with Jesus. Somehow, Jesus miraculously made sure that everyone had enough to eat. His disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of leftovers!

She was encouraged to know that God can do miracles like this.

Before she climbed into bed, she told me, "Daddy, let's pray to God." So we did. Afterward, she told me, "I think we should do this every night when I go to bed." Okay.

I left her room, feeling convicted and inspired to see how God is helping our daughter love him more.