Children's Messages
The Bible -- Our Spiritual Food
by Mary Gruell
Bible Text: 2 Timothy 3:14-17
Message: Mary Gruell, a missionary with Lutheran Bible Translators, owned a long-nosed mongoose named Nicky during the years she taught the children of LBT missionaries in Liberia, West Africa. A long-nosed mongoose is about the size of a fat squirrel with a short, straight tail and a long nose. Nicky, about six months old when she bought him and brought him home, loved to eat. At first he growled and made funny noises while he gobbled down his rice and meat sauce meal. After a while he calmed down because he knew he'd always have plenty of food.
Nicky loved the rice, but his favorite food was eggs. One day he found some eggs on the kitchen counter, knocked them on the floor, ate some, and then began playing in what was left. When Mary walked into the kitchen, Nicky was sliding from one end of the room to the other in the broken eggs. He had perfected the art of playing with (or in) his food.
Nicky became a healthy, fairly chunky mongoose on his diet of rice, meat sauce, and egg. We may not eat what he did, but a good balanced diet can help us have strong, healthy bodies. God's Word is what we "eat" to grow in our faith and in our love for Him. In the apostle Paul's letter to Timothy, in verse 15 of today's Bible reading, he says, "from infancy you have known the Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." God's Word contains all that we need to know about Jesus -- his teachings, suffering, death, and resurrection -- in order to believe in Him and be saved. The Holy Spirit works faith in our hearts and helps us "digest" God's Word and apply it to our daily lives.
When Nicky played with the eggs he'd broken, he didn't get the full nutritional value from them; if we play with our food it can't help us grow either. We can play with our spiritual food, God's Word, also. We do this when we let our minds wander during Sunday school or church, read the Bible without taking time to think about what God is saying to us in that passage, or memorize Bible passages without learning what they mean
There are still more than 440 million people in the world in over 3,000 language groups who don't have any part of the Bible in their language. They can't understand God's Word and they cannot read or hear God's message of love to them.
The Bible contains passages which teach, comfort, encourage, correct, and strengthen us. Before you read it, you can ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand what you read and to help you grow in your faith. You can also pray for all the people who need to have the Bible written in their languages and for the missionaries who are going to those other countries to work with them.
Pray: Dear loving, heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of Your Word which helps us to grow in our faith and in our love for You. Send Your Holy Spirit to help us as we hear or read Your words and use them to strengthen us in our walk with You. Be with those people who still do not know you and with those who need to have the Bible written in the language that speaks to their hearts. Send missionaries to help them. In Jesus' name. Amen.
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