Considering Virtues

As our CBS ended with the final lesson on Philippians, I have implemented plans for the summer Bible study.  I received a tremendous resource years ago that employed The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.  The book in of itself is not the Bible, but as we mull E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G over in this Dialectic stage, I want the challenge to take the stories and tall tales collected in the Bennett book and relate (debate, compare, contrast) them to the verses in the Bible concordance (I'm teaching them to use the reference tools too).  I, of course, will attempt to bring my children along for the challenge as well. The Mom at Shiver Academy already did so much of the work, I just have to get the kid copies of the books and my adult collection of the stories AND the Bible out each day of this summer to bridge the gap in what could be a lull in their maturing growth.  We've read the Bible in 90 days and we've read The Story version of the Bible by Max Lucado, so why not delve further into virtues... these three people with be paying taxes soon, so they need to know what is virtuous or not and why it is or isn't.

AND IT IS ALL TIED TO GRATITUDE.  How you ask? Well, this is where I bring in the Ann Voskamp resources that I've acquired since reading her book, One Thousand Gifts several years ago. I've followed her blog ever since.  There are monthly challenges with prompts each day to record three things we are thankful for in our lives.  This exercise combined with the reading and consideration of virtues in each story sited in the Bennett source along with Bible verses from the concordance or biblegateway.com search engine help us to practice the presence of God even when there isn't an active Bible study group over the summer.