It is Opposite Day!
One of the spiritual disciplines I have started teaching our kids about is one of “acting in the opposite spirit”. This is how I started our discussion. What is the opposite of black and they responded white. I continued with hot and they said cold, fast and they said slow. Then I said, one of the little secrets about how Jesus calls us to live in the kingdom of God is acting opposite of how you feel. It is a secret tool to keep our hearts soft like clay so God can keep working on us, otherwise we get hard and then we don’t hear God very well. I was relating this all back to the story of “The King of the Golden River”. I wont tell you how because I don’t want to ruin the story for you, but the kids understood exactly what I meant.
So I continued, If you are mad at your siblings how could someone who follows Jesus respond? They thought about it and said, be nice and hug them and help them. We talked about a few other things too. Like what could we do if we REALLY wanted money or things and that was all you thought about. (again relating it back to “The King of the Golden River”) They said, give money and stuff away. Now I have a reference point to refer back to as we move forward together as a family.
We talked about how throughout the story of God’s People, we have been learning how to act opposite and do what Jesus would do and not what the world would do or what maybe feels the best. So this morning the children were playing Lego’s upstairs and Jackson came down and explained an interaction he had with his sister. Then he said “Mommy aren’t you proud of me I acted opposite”.
If you are interested in learning more about spiritual disciplines I HIGHLY recommend the book Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. This book is on my all time top ten list.
