What if, this curriculum buying season, God said no?
No new math workbooks.
No experiment kits.
No history text.
What if the Font of all Knowledge, the Originator of Life considered your well-laid plans for the upcoming year and simply said no?
Instead, lean into Me.
Not the instructor’s guides.
Not the prescribed scope and sequence.
Not the catalogs.
Not the rep behind the table at the convention.
What if you bought nothing? What if all you had was what already crowds your shelves? What if you were creative? What if you dug for options within the treasure trove of experiences right there under your own roof, or in your very own life?
What if you paused just long enough before submitting your order to ask yourself how this thing, this piece of something fleeting, lined up with God’s call on the life of your child? What if you held that book before getting in line and asked yourself what investment it would make in the future of your family?
What if God said no?
What if He stripped your homeschooling down to the One Thing, the One Purpose, the One Call?
What would it be?
This is the challenge I’m giving myself this spring, as my family pauses for a deep breath before diving in to the closing moments of last year’s plans. The lure of the vendor hall is almost too much to bear, isn’t it? All those beautiful books. All those (possibly) perfect math programs. All those tidy journals, ready to be written in.
But what if God said no? Could I — would I — be able to provide the education God desires for my children without the newest reading plan? Does that math manipulative bring them closer to fulfilling what I know to be the true reason for the life we have chosen to live? If our primary drive in homeschooling were simply academics, simply performing above and beyond their peers, well … I would buy it all, and more. I would mortgage my retirement to give them an edge. And yet …
And yet, for us, the motivation is fulfilled with no financial investment required and literally everything returned in eternal dividends.
My children do not need thousands of dollars in curriculum to be led, gently, to the beauty of God’s grace, love, and mercy. They do not need me to worry over being able to afford the right foreign language program or full-color reproductions of classic art works. They need my husband and I to prayerfully cast a vision that allows for daily encounters with God through his creation, through relationship, through His Word, through discovery, through the words of wisdom and inspiration He has placed in the hearts of men.
This is our curriculum, is it not? These are the methods by which we train up our children, and pray that they will be irresistibly drawn to the Truth. The things we buy can aid our journey, but they are not deserving of our faith. That we must leave focused fully on God, firm in our belief that He has every intention of seeing this good work to completion … with or without a textbook in hand.