Chapter Books

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end says the Lord God. I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come, the Almighty One. Rev. 1:8

One of the great joys of life is being able to read books and draw meaning and entertainment from them. In the kindergarten years, it was rewarding for us teachers to see the joy on the faces of the children as they sat while listening to a book and looking at the pictures as we went through a story together. Later, as we began to move on to chapter books, they began to mature enough to enjoy the story with only infrequent pictures. The thing I love about chapter books is that when we read our chapter for the day, the children knew we weren’t finished. They knew we would continue the story the next time we were together.

The best chapter book of all time is the Bible. The story begins with creation, takes us through good and evil, suffering, hardship, disasters, rebellion, wars, shows us how humans tend to reject their God, comforts us, and finally gives us hope for salvation, forgiveness and love.

Chapter books remind me of the Bible and in particular the resurrection. God has said it is not finished here on this earth, but rather the journey and the story continues.

We all feel like our daily lives are a chapter book right now. We awake and never know what the day will bring, but we do know that through it all, we are learning some powerful coping skills.

Right now, we are all learning how to develop patience. Each day we think maybe the solution will come, the apex will be reached, the curve will flatten, a vaccine will be found, school will start again, businesses will reopen, vacation plans will be realized, and things will begin to return to normal, but while we wait, we are writing a chapter in the book of patience.

We are increasing our vocabulary daily with new words and phrases such as “shelter in place”, “social distancing”, “zoom”, ” pandemic”, “home schooling”, “essential”, “sequestering”, and “quarantine”. We are writing a whole new vocabulary in the chapter book of life during and after the COVID-19 era.

We are using visualization methods to get through the days and nights without human contact and touch. We see friends and loved ones through Zoom, FaceTime, Facebook, and drive by visits. We remember what it was like to hug our friends and loved ones, and we add the chapter of not taking things for granted to our book.

We are also writing lessons on giving as we are learning how we can each reach out to others to offer encouragement, joy, faith, hope and love. We are learning thankfulness for all those who give of themselves each day.

Finally, we are getting practice in the skill of predicting the ending of the book. Students usually know how they want the book to end, the character they want to be the hero, the right way to end the story, but only the author knows the ending. As in kindergarten chapter books, we can all predict how we’d like to see this end, but no human really knows. God is the author of this story, and only He can write the ending .

Through this time, we must remember not to despair. God is the author and preserver of it all and the author of this chapter book. He’s writing a great ending to this chapter book that will show His power and His love.

Stay strong and faithful, and add a chapter every day!

I love to tell the story of unseen things above; Of Jesus and His glory, Of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story because I know tis true. It satisfies my longing as nothing else can do. I love to tell the story, wilt be my theme in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love. I Love To Tell The Story by Alan Jackson