There is a lot I miss from the days when our children were young. High on the list is family devotions. Nick once described our family as having a “Spartan-like commitment” to them, though I remember as much failure as success and as many misses as hits. Still, there’s no doubt that over the 26 years we had children in the home, they were a staple practice for our family. I have fond memories of gathering around the living room or around the table to read a small portion of the Bible, discuss it, and then pray together. There was no better way to begin or end the day, depending on whether at that time we did them in the morning or evening.
One struggle we often encountered, though, was keeping our devotions fresh. It is never wrong to simply read Scripture, but sometimes we found it helpful to supplement with other material. And while it has come far too late to be helpful to us, Ian Duguid’s The Lord Saves Me is exactly the kind of resource we would have gladly used.
The Lord Saves Me offers 40 devotions on the Psalms. Each devotion is just a couple of pages long and written at just the right level for children aged somewhere between toddlers and teens. There is also a prayer included with each devotion and, uniquely, the author’s own translation of the Psalm written for a young readership, which perhaps makes it a bit more like a paraphrase. The devotions themselves are casual in tone but serious in content—an appropriate pairing for the subject matter. Most of the key Psalms are included: 1, 8, 19, 23, 32, 73, 139, and so on.
Here’s a small sample based on Psalm 84:
Have you ever gone on a vacation to visit a very special place? Trips like that can be fun—so much fun that we want to stay on vacation forever! Can you think of somewhere you would like to stay forever?
Every year, Israelites went on a trip to Jerusalem to worship God. It was a long, hard, dangerous journey. The Israelites even traveled through a place they called the Valley of Tears. But the writers of this psalm knew God could protect his people and make them strong as they walked to his temple. God could even take their tears and turn them into pools of water, helping many plants to grow.
To give you a gauge for the size, that excerpt is about 20% of the total length of the devotional. As for the Psalm, the author’s translation begins like this:
I really love your house,
Lord of Armies:
I wish I could always be
in the palace of the Lord! My whole self cries out
to the living God.
Even birds find homes in his house,
and swallows make nests by your altars,
where they can hatch their chicks,
Lord of Armies,
my King and my God.
Overall, it’s a great little book that will make an ideal family devotional. As I said, I would have used it in my family and therefore commend it to yours.
