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The Picture Bible

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And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6:6-7

I remember my mother taking this to heart. When I was little, she read from the big family Bible and the Upper Room devotional before we went to bed. The words in the devotional were not written for a child to understand. At the end of the reading, Mom would lead us in the Lord’s prayer. I liked the words, but didn’t understand a lot of them. My little sister Lola didn’t either. This became really obvious one night when she got upset at the end of the prayer.”

“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

“You said something about Halloween.”

“What do you mean?” Mom asked. I didn’t say anything about Halloween.”

I think my sister thought she had missed out on candy or something. Who knows? Mom finally figured it out. The Lord’s prayer starts like this: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Lola heard the word hallowed and thought Mom said Halloween. Mom explained the meaning of the word and how hallo-wed sounded a bit like Halloween.

That story stayed with me as I grew up and became a mom. I knew spending a couple of hours in church every week was not enough to teach my children about the Lord, so my husband and I planned regular family devotions. We knew it was important to use age-appropriate language, so over the years we collected kids’ devotional books and Bibles to use.

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