Deuteronomy 6:6-7 "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
750 hours. 1250 hours. 2000 hours. As I wandered through the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, last week, I quickly became intrigued with the docents that were in each room, ready and willing to share any and all knowledge of the museum with me. They each carried a small notebook with handwritten letters and actual historical pictures, bringing history to life. Each docent also bore a name tag with their landmark number of volunteer hours printed on it. There was one other point of comparison with each docent, and this one was quite apparent - they were each, shall I say, getting up in their years.
Let me be honest here. I didn't grow up loving history. In fact, it wasn't until recent years that I found a museum actually something of interest rather than a torturous intrusion on my sleep. However, being married to a lover of history tends to rub off on you, and after almost twenty years now, I can actually say I not only tolerate museums, but I actually like them. You see, I got through history in school with B's and C's, but I never really embraced its importance. My parents didn't instill a love for history in me, and frankly, that was just fine with me. But now that I'm learning to love history, perhaps for the first time in my life, I wonder how many other people are out there just like me. Worse yet, I wonder how many people are raising their children with the same lack of interest for history. As I walked through the museum last week, looking at the docents and their volunteer hours, I couldn't help but wonder if museum docents would soon be a thing of the past, taking with them the mass amounts of knowledge that they bare.
In Deuteronomy 6, God charged the Israelites to be, in a sense, spiritual docents. Look at the verse to memorize for this week. (Yes, I know, there's two verses to memorize, but I needed to include both for cohesiveness sake, ok?) We are to love God, think constantly about His commandments, teach His commandments to others, and live our lives daily by the guidelines He sets out for us.
Can you imagine how many volunteer hours we would have on our name plate if we actually lived our lives the way God expects us to? Some of the docents at the museum logged 2000 hours and more. Yet, how many hours have I spent telling others about Christ? How much time have I spent teaching others about His mighty works? Have I committed my life to teaching others His-Story? Am I logging hours, talking about God when I am at home, walking down the road, laying down, and sitting up? Or, like the gray haired guides in the museum, are spiritual docents quickly becoming a dying profession?
Have I been obedient and served my God enough to even earn the title "Docent for Jesus" on my name tag? How many hours of service will my name badge list when I get to heaven?
---Beth Banfill
www.GodandMe2theMax.com
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