First Offerings of the Day

I picked up a book called Desperate Households by Kathy Peel. One of her recommendations is to offer our first hours in the day to God by studying our scriptures, praying, or writing in our journal.  She heard a sermon about tithing, how we give the first 10 percent of our increase to God, and wondered what might happen if she did the same thing with her time.  As she did this, she found that she used her time more wisely in the day and that she found herself relying on God more through the day, which led her to accomplish more.

I’ve tried this experiment in this last week and have found that this has been true for myself as well.  I start the day with a good spirit and it carries over for the rest of the day.  I find that as I’m able to make better decisions, that I’m able to think more clearly, and I’m able to focus on the things that really matter.

Right now I’m on the third to last chapter of the Preach My Gospel, a manual written for missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I read the sections and look up the scriptures associated with the sections, then I write my own comments about the scriptures.  It takes about 10 to 15 minutes a day, sometimes less, and it’s simple enough for me to do with my 18-month-old daughter Emma.  I’ve been sitting Emma at a desk and giving her a something to color while I read.

Ben and I moved our family scripture reading to the morning as well.  We were doing it at night when we put Emma to bed, but we found it just extended Emma’s bedtime.  A friend just a gave us a scripture reader for children so we’ll start using that at Emma’s bedtime to look at pictures and talk about some of the stories.

For our family scripture study, we read one page from the scriptures a day.  We’ve been doing this for the past five years and have read through the entire New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants.  We’re almost finished with the Pearl of Great Price and then we’ll read the Old Testament.  We’re hoping to be done with the Old Testament by the time Emma is four.