For This, My Son, Have I Taught You... Hunter Reading from the KJV

 

"So great is my veneration for the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society..." 

-John Quincy Adams

With great fanfare, on Hunter's half birthday, I announced that now that he was five and a half, he was finally big enough to read from the Bible.

And without hesitation, Hunter read Genesis chapter one from the King James Bible.

I cried.

This very Bible, that he read from, was a gift I bought him almost three years ago.

I was a young mom. Early and hopeful in my adventures with Doman, wielding away for hours upon hours and carefully painting big, red-lettered words on long strips of card stock for my two and a half year old son. I wanted to teach him how to read.

There had always been a bigger picture involved in our educational pursuits. I told him, again and again, as I repeated for years, that the reason he must learn how to read, the reason I was teaching him, was so that one day, he would be able to read the Bible for himself.

In preparation for that day, I searched for a Bible with bigger print for his little eyes. I eventually settled for a $12 Giant Print Bible from Amazon. That Bible has stayed with us for years, all in anticipation of this moment.

It has been our companion reading together for hundreds upon hundreds of hours, but alway with the intention that, one day, my son, you will read from this all by yourself, every day of your life, to know the wisdom of God in your life.

Hunter, age one, with his first Bible, fun,
but with too small of print for little eyes

And so it finally happened. My baby has become a true reader.

Maybe I didn't realize it was coming, and maybe him turning the half-year mark had nothing to do with it (it convinced him, right?), but he has crossed the threshold. He made a milestone.

And it is moments like these, where everything in parenting, was worth it.

"And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them"

Deuteronomy 17:19

Hunter is 5 years, 6 months old