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informative informal education

Deuteronomy 11:2 Understand today that it is not your children who experienced or saw the discipline of Yahveh your God: His greatness, strong hand, and outstretched arm;

Deuteronomy 11:3 his signs and the works he did in Egypt to Pharaoh king of Egypt and all his land;

Deuteronomy 11:4 what he did to Egypt’s army, its horses and chariots, when he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued you, and Yahveh destroyed them completely;

Deuteronomy 11:5 what he did to you in the open country until you reached this place;

Deuteronomy 11:6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when in the middle of the whole Israelite camp the land opened its mouth and swallowed them, their households, their tents, and every living thing with them.

Deuteronomy 11:7 Your own eyes have seen every great work Yahveh has done.

informative informal education

A few moments ago, I was thinking about all the educational experiences I had that did not result in degrees, so did not end up on my resume. While I was in the army, I took a correspondence course at seminary, got trained on computers, and took advanced individual training in logistics. Recently I took several training sessions on sales and safety, and was certified on the forklift.

What struck me as I read this passage this morning is that Moses warns the Israelites that their children will not have the benefit of all their informal education. Only they will have seen God’s power deliver them from slavery in Egypt. Only they will have walked through the middle of the Red Sea. Only they will have experienced the ground swallowing up the rebellious ones.

We have a responsibility to the next generation to pass on the things we have learned, especially those things that we didn’t learn in a classroom.

Lord, thank you for all the ways you teach us.