“As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” 1 Peter 2:2
We have driven many, many miles with our children in the car. Of course we played games such as counting Fords and Chevys, “I spy with my little eye,” and making acronym sentences out of signs we saw along the road like “yield”: “Yawning Is Everyone’s Little Diversion.” It didn’t matter if they made good sense as long as they were sentences.
But the game we played the most was one a brother taught us not long after we were married. I would start by saying, “I’m thinking of someone in the Bible whose name begins with ‘M.’”
One of the children would ask a question, “Did he spend 40 years in the backside of the desert?” I would answer, “No, it wasn’t Moses.” The person who initiated the game had to know whom the questioner was thinking about, and the questioner had to know at least one biblical fact about the “M” person and was not allowed to use the name of the person he was thinking about.
Another child might then ask, “Was it the mother of the Lord Jesus?” I would need to respond with, “No, it wasn’t Mary.” If I failed to know the name the questioner was thinking about, then the questioner took my place as initiator, and he could say, “I’m thinking about someone whose name starts with P.” Or if the questioner guessed correctly and asked, “Did he write the last book of the Old Testament?” and that’s who I was thinking of, I would reply, “Yes, it was Malachi.” That person would then become the initiator and everyone else in the car became a questioner.
This game accomplished several purposes. It kept all of our minds busy. It made us think of scriptural people, and it encouraged the children to study their Bibles so they could come up with a name that was difficult to guess. They were not allowed to choose a name that was only in a genealogy. There had to be at least one full verse about the person of their choice. We enjoyed that game many times, and I would encourage all mothers to seek from the Lord activities to entertain their children in a way that will direct their minds to the precious, holy Word of God.