What does "TURKEY" mean?

Dr. Barrett Mosbacker
Publisher The Christian School Journal
Superintendent, Briarwood Christian School (Birmingham, AL)

The following is an email that I recently sent to our staff and parents.  I am sharing this devotional on The Christian School Journal because you may want to submit your own acrostic, but I will not give you pizza!     You may also want to consider something similar for your school.

Click here to read the full post.

Dear Staff and Parents,

Last week I had the privilege of attending our fourth grade Thanksgiving program, The Purpose of Thanksgiving.  It was a beautiful program and the children were wonderful.  We have some great talent heading to the South Campus!

As I watched and listened, I was again reminded that we are to walk through this life with its peaks and its valleys with a grateful heart.  One of the songs the children sang was Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart.

Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks unto the Holy One
Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son
Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks unto the Holy One
Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ, His Son

And now let the weak say, "I am strong"
Let the poor say, "I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us"
And now let the weak say, "I am strong"
Let the poor say, "I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us"

The Challenge—You Must Hurry!

This beautiful song got me to thinking about Thanksgiving and how our culture demeans the holiday when referring to it as “Turkey Day.”  I do not like the phrase “Turkey Day” because it distorts the purpose and meaning of Thanksgiving.  “Turkey Day” turns our attention away from God and toward our appetites.

Seeking to refocus our hearts and minds on thankfulness, I have created a simple acrostic from the word Turkey:

Thankful

Under all circumstances

Remembering God’s goodness and

Keeping his praise on our lips as we

Enjoy Him and his blessings every

Year

I bet our students can do much better than the Superintendent!  Here is a challenge!

Take a few minutes in your classes to have your students (individually or as a class effort—see below) create an acrostic for the word Turkey that communicates something about thankfulness from a biblical perspective.  Here is a website that you can use on your SMART Boards: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/poetry/acrostic/turkey/index.shtml. 

This challenge has both spiritual and academic merit!

The Rules:

Click here to read the rules ~ and consider challenging your students this Thanksgiving!

Long Story Short ~ Ten Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God

Written for use in family worship, this book could also serve as a valuable resource to teachers in Christian school classrooms.  Check it out . . . and let us know what you think!

Long Story Short ~ Ten Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God

Click here to order from Westminster Bookstore

(Publisher's Description) ~ Christian parents know the importance of passing the gospel story on to their children, yet we live in a busy world filled with distractions. Schedules collide, there is homework and yard work and dishes and laundry, the car’s oil should be changed, there are phone calls to make...and before you know it, everyone is getting to bed late again.

The Bible can seem like a long story for an active family to read, but when you break it down into short sections, as Marty Machowski does, family devotions are easy to do. Long Story Short will help busy parents share with their children how every story in the Old Testament points forward to God’s story of salvation through Jesus Christ. You won’t find a more important focus for a family devotional than a daily highlighting of the gospel of grace. Clever stories and good moral lessons may entertain and even help children, but the gospel will transform children. The gospel is deep enough to keep the oldest and wisest parents learning and growing all their lives, yet simple enough to transform the heart of the first grader who has just begun to read.

Ten minutes a day, five days a week is enough time to pass on the most valuable treasure the world has ever known. Long Story Short is a family devotional program designed to explain God’s plan of salvation through the Old Testament and is suitable for children from preschool through high school.

Does Mist Matter?

As originally posted on "Nurturing Faith" - Christian Schools International

“Lord willing” was a commonly heard phrase in my childhood years. Perhaps having parents who had seen war and depression made them more aware of who was really sovereign.  Or perhaps it was a phrase reserved for older people, who live more with the realization of shortening years or have experienced the unpredictability of life. James reminds us:

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15.

What power or influence does mist have? Can mist control very much or is it subject to other forces such as heat and light? If we are mist, it certainly puts the phrase “Lord willing” in a different light. This year ahead brings uncertainty at an earthly level – we have no guarantees for ourselves or the schools/churches/organizations we serve. We are here at God’s desire and for his purposes – what a delight to rest in that fact. We operate at his will and for his pleasure– let’s acknowledge our temporality and his sovereignty – even in our daily speech. We must trust he has “prepared in advance” the work that he wants us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

Blessings on the new year ahead!


http://nurturingfaith.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/does-mist-matter-a-devotional-for-the-endbeginning-of-a-year/