BJU Press Blog

A Choice to Live Christmas All Year Long

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Homeschool Christmas Tree

It wasn’t too difficult of an assignment, really—to speak for fifteen minutes at a homeschool mothers’ Christmas luncheon about what it means to be a homeschool mom. Pretty straightforward, right? Yet despite my best efforts I was once again down to the wire and facing a blank page.

“Who am I to offer ‘words of wisdom’ to all these moms?” I thought. “Most of them have been homeschooling for years and have already experienced the things I’m going through right now!”

With my frustration building, I went to make sure my little ones were all tucked in for the night. I had to chuckle at their poses in bed—obviously sleep had caught up with them while they were still mid-wiggle. But as I bent down to kiss my six-year-old, she wrapped one arm around my neck and gave me a sleepy kiss. “Will you be here tomorrow morning, Mommy?” she asked.

I sometimes had morning errands to run and would be up and out before the youngest ones awoke. “Yes, Darlin,’” I said. “Lord willing, we’ll make Christmas cards tomorrow, and when Daddy gets home, we’ll put up the tree!”

Eyes still closed, she smiled. “Happy, happy, happy,” she said as I unlooped her arm and tucked it under the covers.

Reluctantly, I closed the bedroom door and went back downstairs to resume my battle with writer’s block. But as I stared at my screen, I couldn’t help but think of my little girl’s question. As much as we love our children, none of us can promise them we’ll “be there” in the morning.

Beyond God’s grace we have no guarantees that we will have another day to watch over the little lives that mean so much to us.

And so I thought, if I knew this were my last Christmas, my last few days to spend with my children and husband, what would I do differently?

  • I wouldn’t just say “I love you” but would use every way I could think of to show them.
  • The dishes could wait while I sat on the floor and read stories.
  • We would act out the Christmas story with blanket tents, and I wouldn’t care how big a mess we made.
  • Instead of just setting the trimmings out, I would make gingerbread houses with the kids and eat just as much candy as they did.
  • I would stash mistletoe around the house and catch my husband and children under it as often as I could.
  • We would go out together and make it our mission to do something nice for someone in every store we visited.
  • We would all write special thank-you cards to Daddy for everything he does for us and surprise him at work with cookies and hot chocolate.
  • We would make funny Christmas caroling videos and email them to the grandparents.
  • My snow angel would be right in the middle of all the smaller ones in the yard.
  • And when it got dark, we would turn off all the lights except the tree’s, and in one giggly, wiggly, blanketed pile, we would all make wishes on the stars that had taken up residence in our tree.

What is all this, really? What age-old wisdom would I be imparting to my children through antics like these? Will this help them get into better colleges, find satisfying careers, or achieve world peace? Not likely. But they will learn how to live. They will understand that the little things and the not so little things—like spending time with the people you love—are what really matter.

It’s so easy to let the pressures of seasonal expectations get to us. We quickly forget that our time with our beloved spouse and children is so very brief. None of us is guaranteed another Christmas, another new year, or even tomorrow.

Today is God’s gift to us, and we give a new gift to our children every day that we teach them not just how to get through life, but how to live it to God’s fullest.

So no, I couldn’t offer any great words of wisdom to the moms I would speak to, but I could offer a reminder—a reminder that living love isn’t something we do only at Christmas. As homeschool parents, our choice to homeschool our children is a choice to live Christmas all year long: loving them with our lives by teaching them how to live and love life and each other.

Following the Wise Men to Raise Wise Children

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wise men manger scene
As a homeschool dad, I love seeing my girls put aside their rivalries to put on a Christmas pageant. Last Christmas, our first grader organized a Christmas Eve pageant that she and her sisters put on for us and their grandparents. Of course, one of the cutest parts was when three little “wise” girls presented gifts to their baby doll.

We often meditate on the symbolic nature the wise men’s gifts but may not realize that their presentation of gifts to the King plays a significant role in the unfolding story of creation, fall, and redemption. Their acts of worship before the Christ child are a pattern for what Christian parents are trying to accomplish in homeschooling. Let’s meditate together on the wise men, their role in “the old redemption story,” and how we can use it to inspire our homeschooling all year round.

The Past Worship of the Wise Men

Their Story

The wise men are mentioned in the Bible only in Matthew 2:1–12. Since they’re called wise men or magi (from the Greek magos), it is clear that they had wisdom in their work that was respected by their community. It was probably because of this wisdom that they had prospered enough to be able to afford gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

In some way, they also had a heart toward God. As scholars, they were familiar with the Scriptures and apparently knew the messianic prophecy of Numbers 24:17. Since they were watching the heavens for a sign of God’s Messiah, they saw the star when it appeared and immediately set out to find the child. When they arrived in Bethlehem, their hearts rejoiced—not that they had found a new source of earthly treasure but that they had found the child.

The wise men went in and humbly bowed down in worship. They opened their treasures and presented their gifts to the King.

Their Part in God’s Story

In the unfolding of God’s redemptive story, the wise men’s worship of Jesus was a sign that He was the King of the Jews. Jesus was the Christ, the Chosen One, who was coming to break the power of the fall and redeem people and the creation.

Part of that redemption involves how men and women use God’s blessing of dominion over creation (Genesis 1:26–28). Fallen people pursue wealth through dominion to be independent of God. Redeemed people use the prosperity produced by their wise dominion to accomplish God’s purposes and give Him glory.

This is exactly what the wise men did. They had grown in wisdom by observing God’s creation in the fear of the Lord. Their exercise of that wisdom in dominion over creation led to prosperity. And they took that prosperity and offered it to their God in worship.

The Future Worship of the Wise Men

The wise men of that first Christmas were prototypes of future wise men. At the end of story of Scripture, the Father and Son rule from the new Jerusalem. There “the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into [the new Jerusalem]” (Revelation 22:24). These kings of the saved nations are exercising dominion in the restored earth and bringing their treasures to the King in worship. Notice how the unique treasures of the kings are called “their glory.”

In the eternal state, redeemed men and women will still use math, science, social studies, and language arts. And the end of their labor will be God’s glory.

Homeschooling Wise Men (and Women!) Today

So what does this have to do with homeschooling? Everything! It demonstrates the redeemed purpose for learning history, math, science, and language arts. Here are three steps our children can take to follow the example of the wise men in the past and in the future.

Grow in Wisdom

The wise men didn’t become wise by being lazy in their study of God’s creation. Remember, when we study how God’s world works, we’re learning His wisdom.

Prosper in God’s Calling

Exercising God’s wisdom in His calling led to prosperity for the wise men. It can for your children as well. If they’re faithful in their mastery of science and math and God calls them to engineering, they should prosper as engineers.

Offer the Glory of the Calling

Prosperity is piece of glory that we receive for acting wisely in the fear of the Lord. We should take that glory and offer it to God. When we use our skills in service to our neighbor or in the household of God, we are worshiping. When we take a portion of our treasure and give it to God, we are worshiping Him in the exact same manner as the wise men of old. We are literally giving glory to God.

This Christmas, as my homeschooled girls perform their Christmas pageant, I want them to know that they can follow in the footsteps of the wise men. They can daily study to become wise women so they can offer their treasures to King Jesus.

A Hope-Filled Christmas

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Christmas ornament
Despite the festive, signature red and green of the Christmas season, I was blue—navy blue from head to toe.

It was my first Christmas as a newlywed and my first Christmas away from home.

It wasn’t that we were spending the holiday completely apart from loved ones. My husband’s family was driving eleven hours so that we could all be together. But it simply wasn’t my family. Life was just too expensive for us to travel coast-to-coast to spend the holiday at my folks’ house. So there would be no late-night wrapping marathon with my mom, no curling up with my siblings while Dad read Christmas stories, and no helping the little ones open their gifts and play with new toys.

How could I celebrate without them?

I never expected to ask myself that question. My family always focused on Jesus as “the reason for the season,” manger scenes figured prominently in our Christmas décor, and we read the account of Christ’s birth every year. But here I was feeling like it just wouldn’t be Christmas without my family.

Why was I celebrating Christmas?

In our fast-paced, materialistic society, the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season is the one time generally set apart for family gatherings. But if Christmas means spending time with family, how can our hearts be merry when the ones that make the season special are so far away?

The first Christmas was also spent with families scattered far and wide—for a census. How vulnerable Mary and Joseph must have felt, so very near the baby’s time of birth but packed nonetheless into a strange city overflowing with people. Squeezed into a stable with the animals of wealthier citizens, the young couple faced Mary’s labor and delivery alone, without the help of mothers or nearby neighbor women.

The Son of God faced a different kind of separation in leaving heaven and His Father’s side to come into the world as one of His frail creatures. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) was the cry that rent the heavens some thirty-three years after the night of the angels’ rejoicing outside Bethlehem. Pressed down by the weight of the world’s sins, Jesus Christ experienced the full agony of the separation from God that we deserved.

So why do we celebrate Christmas?

But the story doesn’t end with the separation of the crucifixion. We celebrate Christmas because the Son of God rose from that grave as our conquering Savior. The unbelief and derision from many of those Jesus came to save couldn’t diminish the hope inherent in His coming. The angel had told Joseph, “Thou shalt call His name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus doesn’t just offer hope to every hurting heart; He Himself is the hope people desperately seek. And Christmas is the season of hope because it commemorates the beginning of Christ’s work to reconcile us with God.

So how can we celebrate Christmas when our hearts are weighed down, either by grief over absent loved ones or simply by the stresses of life? We do it by finding joy in one, unchangeable truth—that God gave us Himself that first Christmas. He experienced our separation for us: “He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5).

The ache of my first Christmas holiday away from my family still lingers these many years later, but because of Christ, I can always have hope. Because of Christ, those who love Him will spend eternity together. And because of Christ, Home is waiting—the Home and family we’ll never be separated from again.

What Is the Bigger Purpose of English?

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practice English

At times, it’s easy to start thinking that English is all about getting your kids to recite endless lists of grammatical rules or marking up their essays with red ink. But we should remember that, just as there’s a bigger purpose in science, there’s also a bigger purpose in studying writing and grammar.

At its heart, English is the study of written communication. And as followers of Christ, we believe that clear and effective communication best demonstrates Christlike character.

When your children are studying English, they should always know that they’re getting ready to share their testimony. Anything they write can either help or harm their testimony for Christ.

Veterans of the letter-writing generation may believe that the growth of technology means the death of the written word. On the contrary, written communication has exploded as more and more social media channels have appeared. Facebook users rely heavily on writing as they post status updates and comments on their friends’ updates. Even highly visual channels like Instagram and YouTube add written messages to pictures and videos.

Whenever your children enter the world of social media, whether they’re still at home or if they create accounts as adults on their own, they will be communicating their testimony in every status update and comment. It will not only come across in what they’re saying but also in how and how well they say it. Clear and effective communication can improve a believer’s testimony in two ways.

• Showing an appreciation and respect for truth

Clear communicators don’t want a small grammatical mistake to accidentally mislead the person they are communicating with. But in writing, grammatical correctness isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s also about being factual. Clear communicators double-check their facts and choose the best words for what they’re trying to say so that they’re understood. So long as your children are being careful in how they say things, people will value their honesty.

• Recognizing the value of people

The difference in today’s written word is that it’s highly condensed. If you want to share something online, you have to consider how much space you have to do it in and how much anyone will read. Those who learn to communicate effectively also communicate concisely because they believe that their messages have value and that people need to hear them. Today, many people may ignore a good message because it’s too long or too difficult to understand. Your children can show value for their friends’ time and energy by keeping messages clear and short.

This is what your children are working towards as they study grammar concepts or write essays in their English courses. They’re working to be able to communicate messages that matter, like sharing the gospel or encouraging a friend, so that no one will misunderstand or ignore them.

6 Gift Ideas Kids Can Make

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Christmas gift ideas
My husband and I have tried to teach our children since they were very young that Christmas is not all about them. First and foremost, it is about Christ. But this season does give us and our children a prime opportunity to practice loving our neighbors. We can show our love to family members, music teachers, Sunday school workers, and people in our neighborhood by giving them gifts for Christmas. My children have no difficulty coming up with a list of gift ideas for everyone, but they do have one problem—they lack money.

So, in order to participate in gift-giving, they have to be creative and make the gifts themselves. Here are some of our favorite do-it-yourself gift ideas. Most of these projects don’t involve any expensive materials and need little-to-no supervision.

1. Decorated Mugs

We tried making our own mugs for the first time this year, using the tutorial from 5mintesformom, and they came out great! I could hardly believe how easy and inexpensive they were to make. I bought the mugs for less than a dollar apiece at Walmart. The oil-based Sharpies are a little pricey, but they’re worth the investment because the water-based Sharpie ink washes off quickly.

2. Dish Towels

My three-year-old loved making dish towels for her grandparents this year. We loosely followed the instructions from icanteachmychild.com but skipped the part about using contact paper. My daughter enjoyed using a pencil eraser to make polka dots and a foam stamp to add butterflies.  The flour-sack towels necessary for this project are available at Walmart for under a dollar each, so this also ends up being a very inexpensive gift.

3. Bookmarks

Any child who can sew on a button can make these adorable ribbon bookmarks featured on DYI Joy. They make perfect gifts for booklovers and can be completed very quickly with just a few supplies.

4. Coasters

A couple years ago, my children made coasters similar to the ones found on thefrugalgirls.com. We used tissue paper to make ours, but I love the idea of using photos.

5. Treats

Almost every year, my children and I make some special treats to give to our neighbors. We’ve made truffles like the ones on Snack Works using mint Oreos and dark chocolate for the coating. We’ve also made white chocolate pretzels like the ones on geniuskitchen.com.

6. Mixes

Mason jars filled with homemade chai tea mix (see the recipe on thekitchenismyplayground.com) or hot chocolate mix are also great gift ideas. My kids like to help mix everything together and decorate the jars for the lucky recipients.

Does your family have any do-it-yourself gift ideas that you love to make and share? We would love to hear about your children’s creative adventures! Share a link or a photo in the comments below or tag us on Facebook or Pinterest.

Happy gift-making!