Ebenezer, not Scrooge

We all ate together for breakfast this morning, a planned rare occassion. We mainly aim instead, to get our dinners together as a family, wherever possible. When life was normal (if we can remember back then) some needed breakfast at 6:45am and others at 8am, so as a result, breakfasts are rarely eaten together in our house. (Maybe we could change this for lockdowns going forward, as we might not get the opportunity again). 

So we let the late sleepers sleep in a bit, said there would be orange juice (a rare treat) and planned to do/watch church a little later. As they all came into the kitchen, I explained that the meals of today could be related to a slightly obscure tower in the Bible, and asked if they could guess which one. They are totally used to this, and probably occassionaly bored by it. Less so, when food is involved of course, the fickle beings that they are. God's word, the Bible literally says the following...

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up". Deuteronomy 6v5-7

So, I have taken the words 'impress them on your children' as 'feed them to your children'. Some of my meals in this area have gone well, and it's very obvious what the story or Bible teaching is, and some have been far reaching, with one or two that were quite scary looking. You can check them out on one of my insta pages here. One day I'll stick them in a recipe book; the good, the bad and the ugly because I want to keep encouraging mums to find new ways to teach their kids about God's love for them, and because some are just hilarious. 

Anyway, their answers started coming. 'Tower of Babel', 'the tower of fire and cloud of smoke or something',

 'that tower where God changed languages', 'the leaning tower of Piza', 'the tower of Bethlehem', 'the tower to Heaven', 'the tower they marched around seven times'. Some of their answers were vaguely Biblical, some were simply not. But instead my answer was more obscure. It was a stone which Samuel had laid down to remember that God had helped His people even after they had sinned against Him, an Ebenezer. It was to remember His goodness, to be grateful for His rescue, His help again. 

A quick visual of the tower in Moana to help it sink in, and then we went round the table and said one thing that was good even during this lockdown, an Ebenezer of our own. One child said, 'online learning' met with an eye roll from a sibling. One said, 'time with my siblings', met with an unidentifiable murmer from someone else. There seemed to be a Scrooge amonst the Ebenezers. One child really couldn't think of anything, so had to be reminded of a good moment or two. One said, 'yesterday's family walk', which took all my self control not to say, 'Ha, told you it would be good'. One said, 'having school provision at this time'. One said, 'coming 2nd in the Kahoot quiz'. I said I liked it when we were altogether eating, no pressure to do anything. One said, 'this breakfast' because that's literally as far back as they can think. 

There was a moment when one of the teens asked for more, and I suggested that the mountain of Eggy bread that I had made was enough. His quick response of, "Aint no mountain high enough",  got him an extra batch made. 

It was nice, an important thing to keep doing. We ate a tower of Eggy Bread, a tower of waffles and a tower of meatballs. The eldest even said he was full, and that I had beaten him through the power of eggy bread. This is a huge compliment. This shall be my Ebenezer today.