Sowing seeds of creativity, excellence and refinement

The treasure chest of the soul…..

What sculpture is to a block of marble,
education is to the soul….Joseph Addison.

By wisdom a house is built,
And by understanding it is established;

And by knowledge the rooms are filled
With all precious and pleasant riches.

Proverbs 24: 3-4

As Joel, Joy and I drove home last night from visiting a hurting friend, we began to speak of the need of soul filling of our culture. I shared with them, “I hope that at each juncture of life, with each person you meet, you will have in the grid of your mindset that you need to leave some bit of love, words of life, knowledge, wisdom, a corpus of thoughtful and illuminating ideas–that you will seek to fill the lives of those with whom you spend time, with something of the eternal good.”

“You have to have a soul filled with light, beauty and intellect in order to have something to give,” Joel pondered.

Somehow, the subject turned to music. “Remember all of the music we listened to as kids, Mom?”

Do I remember? I carefully sought it out and created places for us to listen, enjoy, discuss, dance to, etc.

“I loved Classical Kids–you know I still play them when I clean my room, Mom. My favorite was Beethoven Lives Upstairs”, offered Joy.

“Oh, I loved the Magic Flute by Mozart , and the aria that the woman sang. Joy, did you know it is one of the most challenging arias to perform in all of music?”

As which point, all of us started to belt it out together, seeing who could hit all of the high notes and all of the ones in between, amidst laughing chattering–no it was like this……..Then the conversation turned to the Messiah, the Nutcracker, Les Miserable, Narnia, and we pulled into our driveway.

Joel immediately came in the house and put on the Messiah and while we were popping corn, making finger sandwiches and piling up a plate of fruit, we sang to the choruses while we were making a Sunday night snack. All of this bubbling out from what they had stored up and cherished.

And so my soul was filled to observe what was coming out of the souls of my children. The satisfaction of seeing that investment of what is eternal will indeed reap rewards.

As I have said many times before, I pictured my children’s souls as a treasure chest and sought to fill their souls with substance of excellence, beauty, life-changing thoughts and ideas, the best books, the most beautiful stores and literature, fine music and concerts, science and creation, loving, sacrifice, serving,  great people and ministry opportunities.

One of the great accomplishments and most fulfilling purposes and work of a godly woman is to become a condutor of all the is good, true and beautiful in the minds, souls and lives of her children. And so, it is satisfying to see that it has all been stored up there, in the deep recesses of my children’s souls–that what we sow, they will reap.

It is not about curriculum, it is about life and investment and mentoring and joy. We dance to His truth and leading in front of our children and they become familiar with the ways and values of he Master Artist as we celebrate Him in our homes, and they in turn dance the steps in their own lives.