Bible Bites: 365 Devotions for Aussie Families
Ladeane Lindsay
Youthworks, Sydney, 2010. 376 pp.
Ladeane Lindsay’s Bible Bites offers 365 family devotions to assist any parent or grandparent in the spiritual teaching and guidance of children. Bible Bites doesn’t assume that families will be able to consistently conduct devotions on a daily basis, and so does not lock you into dates and days of the week for studies. This helps reduce guilt or rushing unhelpfully through studies at unsuitable times. Also, as the spiritual leader of your children I think you should have the flexibility to study the Bible as often or as spontaneously as you feel led, so the format assists with this as well.
Each devotion is divided into a number of sections. First the Bible is read, then there’s the ‘talk it over’ section, an activity, a ‘learn the memory verse’ spot, and a time to ‘talk with God’. The repetition of these sections results in a logical format that offers consistency and predictability, which is important for children as they appreciate knowing what’s expected of them and what might come next.
In the ‘talk it over’ section, you discuss the Bible reading with the help of an accompanying blurb that assists in prompting your children to respond and ask questions. We have four children ranging from ages one through to eight, and my wife and I found that on occasion it was necessary to alter the language in this section, in order to enable our youngest children to understand. Obviously our one year old would not have a clue what we are talking about, but having him participate in the studies was an important exercise for our family. However, for our four and six year old children, we still found that it was necessary to use some simpler language to explain certain concepts that the book provided. Our eight year old had no problem understanding any words or concepts from the book, so this seems to be the age that the book is targeted towards. If you are able to browse through each study beforehand and come up with a few ways to ask questions that are age-appropriate for your children, then this discussion time produces some excellent conversations. On the other hand, if you have toddlers and prefer not to stray from the prescribed questions, then this study series may not be for your family until they’re older.
The activities were a great way to promote hands-on time learning as a family. Again, we replaced some activities that were not age-appropriate with a more suitable activity from another study which was a closer fit to our children’s learning styles, to better engage them in the devotion. Some activities required forward planning, so for our family—who are not the most organized!—this required a quick change of plans when we came across them, and again we used activities from other studies and applied them to the current devotion. This was not a problem, and the children enjoyed the study despite our lack of preparation. Sometimes, as time was an issue, we would skip the activity section as this could extend the length of the devotion by a fair degree.
The ‘learn the memory verse’ section provides great ways to reinforce the Bible in your children’s minds through games and drawing, and includes further activities on top of the main activity. This section is a lot of fun, and our children enjoyed the experiences. Again, extra resources are required for this section, so forward planning is required or, as happened once more with our family, a late change of plan with limited resources. This still seemed to be just as effective.
The ‘talk with God’ section enables you to spend time praying with your children and allowing them time to pray. It opens up more discussion on the topic of the devotion, and additional opportunities for your children to ask further questions. For our family, discussing relevant people we can pray for really helped to make our prayers more meaningful and made them real for our children.
Some studies offered an extra ‘spiritual challenge’ section that was a chance to inspire our children to love the Lord in a deeper way through practical applications.
Bible Bites could be used by anyone, from the highly organized parent to the impromptu and spontaneous, from the consistent Bible studiers to the hopelessly inconsistent. All that may be required is a little flexibility to suit individual children if you have a wide range of ages and learning stages in your family. As the spiritual leader of my household, I would recommend this book being part of your family’s devotional collection. Bible Bites has and will continue to be a great devotion tool for our family.
