Published 11/18/19
By Greg Johnson
What If...
Waking up and getting ready for school has always been tough. It’s not that you stay up late, it’s just that you’re not a morning person. When the alarm goes off at 7:15 you sleep right through it. Then when Mom comes in at 7:20, you wish you could continue sleeping—but you know you can’t.
“Breakfast is in ten minutes,” she always says. “If you want it hot, you better get dressed and come on out.”
So you lumber out of bed, sleepwalk through putting your clothes on and do a dazed shuffle into the kitchen for some food.
For some reason, however, this morning you wake up at 6:55—and can’t go back to sleep. You dress and walk out to the kitchen, surprising Mom.
“What’s for breakfast?” you say, almost in a chipper tone.
“What are you doing up so early?” she asks.
“Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d just face the world a little earlier. You don’t have to make anything today, I’ll just have cereal.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
Now it’s 7:30 and you’re already dressed and fed. With no homework to catch up on, all you have to do is make your bed and brush your teeth. School doesn’t start for an hour... what are you going to do now?
You could read that new book you bought at the book fair. You could go watch a tape or some cartoons. Or... there’s your Bible next to your bed that you never seem to have time for.
Questions to Think On
• Be honest: what would you do?
• How motivated are you to read your Bible at all?
• What would it take to help motivate and discipline you to open it up a few times a week?
• Mom and Dad: Talk about your own Bible reading and prayer habits, good and bad.
What Does God Have to Say?
But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
(c)