Well, the convention is over, and it’s time to settle into the routine again. First, let me give a shout-out to the volunteers that made our convention happen. They put in uncounted hours of work. So if you see someone who is on the Convention Committee, or volunteered to work at the convention, let them know you appreciate their efforts. It was a great convention.

Now that the mountain top experience is over, it’s time to dive back into normal life. Sometimes we may be tempted to think that the mountain tops, since they are the big noticeable pinnacles, are where all the action is. Those are exciting experiences, and who doesn’t like exciting experiences! We’d love for them to happen all the time! The view from the mountain-top is breathtaking, and awe-inspiring. But if you notice while you’re up there, there aren’t many crops growing on mountain tops. As home-schoolers who are concerned about discipling our children, we must have a rm conviction that growing crops that produce fruit almost always happens in the vales, not on the mountains. And in case I didn’t clearly communicate the metaphor, the crop we want to grow in the lives of our kids is Biblical Faith. Godly faith is built little by little in the ordinary humdrum of life.

God’s instruction in Deuteronomy 6:6-8 is this: “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them while you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Did you notice the description of normal, everyday, ho-hum life happening there? When do we teach God’s commands and precepts to our kids? While we’re sitting in the house relaxing. Or when you’re traveling somewhere. Or when you’re lying down getting ready for bed. Or in the morning, when you’re all getting up and ready for the day. The normal everyday experience is where faith-building happens.

Simple, every-day events like giving thanks together to God for your meals help instill a sense of gratitude to God for His provision and dependence upon Him for His supply to our need. Mundane tasks like taking out the garbage, making the bed or helping wash the dishes provide opportunity to teach and model diligence and good stewardship of the resources God has committed into our hands, not to mention the numerous needs of helping both ourselves and our children deal with the sinful attitudes and thoughts which arise in our hearts while doing them. Any parent knows that having siblings interact with one another will almost always lead to a training session on how to love and forgive.

This is not saying that those mountain top experiences are useless, or unnecessary. Far from it! We can absorb a lot of truth in those mountains. Our kids always joked with my wife and I at the end of a home-school convention by saying, “Oh great! Now what is going to change in our house?” And there were ideas for change at the end of a trip through the mountain tops. But those ideas had to be cultivated in the elds of the valley. We had to come home, get back to normal life, and plow new furrows in our daily routine in order to implement them. Its never easy, but it does bear fruit.

Don’t forget the sacred and holy nature of what happens every day in our homes. Husbands love their wives and model Christ’s love for the church. Wives follow their husband’s leadership and model the church's loving submission to her Lord. Children learn submission to their Heavenly Father by learning to obey mom and dad. This is holy activity. And it happens in the ordinary, mundane things of life.

The conventions and retreats are there to give you an awe-inspiring view from the heights, to renew your vision of the big picture, of the purpose of it all. But the bulk of the spiritual work and growth that we want to see in our families, our marriages, and our children will be cultivated and will grow in the broad at prairies of daily life. Teach the things of God diligently while you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise... in the normal, ho-hum activities of life.

Brian Kelly
PAACH Board Member