Kitten's First Full Moon

I was reading a bedtime story to my daughter tonight titled, Kitten's First Full Moon. The story is about a hungry Kitten who runs into Luck, Bad Luck, and back to Luck, again...

What a Night! A hungry baby kitten is on her front step and looks up into the night sky and sees her first full moon. When she sees it, it looks like a little bowl of milk in the sky and she wants it. She closes her eyes, sticks our her neck, licks and all she gets is a bug on the end of her tongue. Still she sees the bowl of milk, just waiting. She pulls herself together and takes a flying leap, only to fall down the steps...still the milk is waiting. She runs down the sidewalk, through the garden, across a field and to the pond and is no closer than when she started to the little bowl of milk. She climbs the tallest tree only to find she is now scared of her surroundings. She looks down into the pond and sees...and even BIGGER bowl of milk (the reflection of the moon in the water). So...she takes a flying leap into the pond and all she get is WET! She is still hungry, sad, and now tired. After all this luck, or should I say bad luck, she returns home back the way she came. As she climbs back onto her safe porch there is a great big bowl of milk waiting just for her. Lucky Kitten!

This past week at church we talked about plucking out our eye if it causes us to sin. That's a funny thing for God to say to us. It is an even harder message sometimes to teach children because they will either laugh themselves silly because they can't get past the image of someone plucking their eye out, or they think, "OH! What kind of a God are you teaching me about that would want us to pluck our eye out."

This book was a great way for me to teach my children that sometimes there are going to be things on this earth that look really good, and we may think we have to have it. We may do everything in our power to try to reach it only to discover we are afraid of our surroundings. At times we will find that we can't get it because we don't need it, or if we reach it, it may be a disappointment that distracted us from what God really has for us.

The great thing about being a child of God is that even if we get distracted, we get off track, we fall into the temptation of sin...God is waiting with arms open wide to give us that special thing that is waiting JUST FOR US!

Straight from the Source

I was in Science class with some third graders today. Each one was given a bracelet with 5 beads. Each bead looked white, plain and boring...nothing special about them. They wore them in class for about an hour, wondering all the while, what they were wearing the bracelets for.

THEN...we took a walk outside. "Keep your eyes on your bracelets," they were told. As they went from the building to the outdoors, the beads began to change colors. When they got to the playground, in the sun, the colors became brighter...more vibrant. "Wow! That's cool!" they all said. Of course, scientifically speaking each bead reacted to the heat from being outside. When the beads came in contact with direct sunlight, they really reacted and changed.

While they were all in amazement of these magnificent beads I was thanking God for being our power source. Each one of us may look like plain, ordinary beads (I mean beings)...nothing special by ourselves. We come in contact with other Christians and a change begins to take place within us. We change colors, so to speak, and begin showing signs of being special. Thank God we have other Christians to encourage us along the journey of life that can begin bringing out the special qualities placed in us all. However, I really want to thank God today for being the direct power source that can completely change us and show our full potential...our brightest colors. When we come into direct contact with God we will change into His likeness.

Thanks God for being there...even in a 3rd grade Science lesson.