Yesterday our family celebrated Rosh Hashanah for the first time and we loved it. Rosh Hoshanah, the Feast of Trumpets is considered the Jewish New Year. For our family it also signified a time of remembrance of God’s blessings in our lives. I truly wish I had the opportunity that my children are having to celebrate and understand the significance the Jewish holidays.

As we prepare for Yom Kippur, I am truly amazed at how the Biblical Holidays are so interwoven and interconnected with our spiritual heritage. This season is a time of reflection, contemplation, and putting things in order and getting right our relationship with God. We see celebrating the Biblical Holidays as a great way to pass our faith to our children and teach them about the nature of God and our responsibility as His children.

A couple of months ago we featured A Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays. This 585 page book is a great resources for understanding the Biblical Holidays from a Christian perspective. It even included a special Homeschool curriculum unit study. If you are interested in learning more about Biblical Holidays, click here!

You Teach What You Tolerate

I love this simple statement because it is so true, especially when it comes to our children and Homeschooling. 

For example, if my wife and I tolerate having our school room in a perpetual state of trashiness, then I have taught my children that it is okay have a trashed school room. I can pretty much count on the fact that my kids will leave it trashed. Whereas if I do not tolerate it and I require of them what I can tolerate (a clean school room), then I am teaching them to keep the school room clean.

This philosophy applies to so many areas of our lives.  Chances are, if someone around us is doing something that we don’t like, we have taught them that it is okay to do it because we continue to tolerate it.

Everything I experience today is the result of something I thought, said, or did yesterday. If I don’t like what I am experiencing today, then I need to change today, the things I thought, said, or did yesterday so tomorrow will be better.

While I suppose there are exceptions to this rule, I use it a lot, especially when it comes to Homeschooling my children. If they are falling behind academically, missing the mark spiritually, lacking manners or etiquette, then I am responsible to determine what I have done to contribute and what I can do to ensure the results I experience tomorrow are better than what I got today.

Likewise, when I see them maturing into the awesome individuals that God created them to be, then I can be assured that as their father, what I did yesterday is what I should be doing today, so I will get similar results tomorrow.

As we begin a new school year, I am reminded to hold myself accountable to the goals that I have for my family. If I don’t like the results I am getting, then I must accept responsibility, determine what it is that I am saying, doing, or thinking that is producing the undesirable outcome, and make the necessary changes.

May God grant us the wisdom to see the right, the will to choose it and the strength to make it endure.