Get Smart

How much better to get wisdom than gold, and good judgment than silver!

PROVERBS 16:16

IF YOU HAD THE CHOICE to go to school or stop, what would you choose? Why? How important do you think it is to learn things like math and reading? Those are pretty basic things that impact our day-to-day life.

God gave us good, thinking brains, and he wants us to use them. Part of that is exercising your brain the same way you exercise your muscles—you use it and that helps it grow, make connections, and get smarter. Think of it this way: if you only ever learned two words to describe color—say, black and white—then everything you see would have to be described by those two words. What color is that lake? Black or white? What color is the sky? Black or white? But when you know every color, then your world suddenly gets bigger. What color is that lake? Seafoam green? Wow! And the sky? Turquoise blue!

Our education and learning are important to God. He wants us to learn as much as we can about things like science and art and math. But he also wants us to learn about him, too. That’s why he gave us the Bible. So every day that you feel like groaning because you have to go to school, instead remember to be grateful that you get to go invest in yourself by exercising your brain!

DO

Go outside or look out a window. Find one thing that’s interesting to you in nature. Study it or bring it inside, and at the bottom of this page, list every word you can think of to describe that object—as many as you can! Maybe it’s a leaf and you can list words like “stem, green, crunchy, flat, wide, pretty”—and so on.

PRAY

Dear God,

Thank you for giving me a smart brain and the ability to learn. Help me do my best in school—not to earn a certain grade but because I want to learn. Remind me that my education is a blessing. Amen.

READ

Proverbs 4:13; Matthew 13:12