Flipping through the XM stations in my car yesterday, my three year old let out an enthusiastic "This one! Choose this one!" when we hit the "Classical Pops" station. I pulled my hand back from the dash and looked in the rearview mirror. Asher had closed his eyes and a smile played on his face.

I love Classical music; the strings, winds, and piano all intricately weaving evocative notes together in joyful or in mournful harmonies. But how do you teach your children to love some of these things you love? Exposure!  Especially when they are exposed to these things when there is great peace and happiness in their midst. Play your favorite tunes all you want, but if a spirit of bitterness and strife permeates the home, I highly doubt the children will grow to cherish your musical taste.

And this same concept I think is true with our values. We want our children to value what we value, but if there is not peace and love in the home, I imagine they will not be interested in what we have to teach them.

You may have heard it said, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."  I think of those words often as I long to teach them things that are important to me... without love.  Now don't get me wrong, I love my boys.  But haven't you had afternoons, days, or even seasons in your mothering where you were not functioning from love, but instead from frustration, grief, or self-centeredness?  I have.  And when I am there, trying to parent and nurture without love, I am not an affective teacher.  

A good example is "Brotherly Love".  We might greatly esteem this lofty concept of our sons loving and preferring one another well, we can talk about it till we're blue in the face, and we can play it's lyrics over and over again like the strains of a favorite song, but without love the lesson will fall to the ground and the child's heart will likely not grow to express love either.

Telling children to love Classical music, to honor their parents, or to respect their teachers are all mute pleas, unless the children are exposed to Classical music, and parents who honor and respect one another, others and even their children.  In the end, if the lessons are just talk in a home our young ones will likely grow to despise the lesson and the teacher.

This is a convicting lesson for me.  

1 Corinthians 13:1-9, 13

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal... If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing...  If I give all I possess to the poor...  but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.