In situation after situation, I saw our daughters learn the lesson of love, and eventually they found it hard to be content with less. Of course, at the same time they were testing God’s word again, for as they loved, they were so whole and happy.

Leanne was very good in high school to take time for the somewhat mentally retarded who had been mainstreamed into the school. She really cared about them, and they knew it. At the end of her junior year, several of these boys asked if they could write a note in her yearbook.

Children can be very self absorbed, and even mean to others. I haven’t known a child that hasn’t had such an impulse, and we need to be there to show them the supremacy and necessity of love.

Loving is the bottom line of the Christian life. Jesus said to “love as I love.“ So along with teaching our children by testifying and by encouraging them to trust him and test his Word, we also tried to teach them to love.

Jesus said loving one another is an old and new commandment. I guess it is as old as God himself and as new as trying to love each new day. We never wanted the girls to think they would be children of the light just because they had Perfect Sunday School Attendance pins. There is one main question to be answered in life. Do you love?

Last week I told you about a time I confessed to Stacey that God was helping me forgive, as he has commanded us to do in his word, which is the road map for life-abundant and eternal.

The girls had several opportunities to put this into action themselves. For instance, they came in from school one day, furious with a little girl who had called them names and tried to trip them on the bus.

By the time I’d heard all the particulars, I wanted to smack the kid myself. For years we had been able to summon it, but there in my kitchen on that autumn afternoon, tolerance had vanished.