Did you practice your piano?
Do you remember being reminded to practice? Maybe you played the clarinet in the band, or the brassy trumpet, or lilting flute. Perhaps you were in the choir and had to practice your voice lessons. You may have played football or basketball and spent hours practicing throwing, catching and running until you had no more breath left.
Gracie, our 13-year-old granddaughter, practices! She works on her tae kwon do and practices the form for her black belt requirements, works on her punches and kicks and aims for the target and kicks again. Her class practices sparring as they pit themselves and their skill against each other for points to be the winner.
She practices her trumpet for the band and shoots videos on her phone of her playing and sends it to her teacher as part of her class. She loves playing her ukulele and enjoys practicing it and singing. Algebra! My goodness, that skill takes practice.
Little Addie, at 3, watches her sister as she practices; then she tries to do the same things! Gracie asked me if I wanted to work with her as she made pictures from beads: “Let’s create something!”
Addie chimed in, “I want to create, too!” Although the beads were too tiny for her to work with on her own, we let her pick out beads and help us.
When Gracie practices her dances for the dance team, Addie is all eyes and ears! “My dance; my dance!” she says as she jumps around.
When Gracie is finished, Addie goes into action imitating Gracie and singing her dramatic rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Imitating, practicing is part of our development. We watch, we listen, we try to do.
The Bible says we practice our faith, imitate faith and behavior of Christ and mature Christians, as we mature from spiritual babies to experienced, faithful Christians.
Ephesians 5:1 tells us, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.”
Paul told the Corinthian Christians, in I Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.”
In Philippians 4:9 we read, “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Did you ever practice something wrong? Maybe you didn’t read the music correctly and practiced a piece of music over and over and over — incorrectly! Isn’t it hard to unlearn something?
Maybe someone taught you how to a solve a math equation wrong — and after doing many problems, you had ingrained in your mind the wrong steps and you had to then unlearn it if you wanted to get the right answer.
Be careful who you imitate and what you practice.
Be careful, that as a Christian, you are living a life of faith worthy of imitation.
What will happen if others do as you do?
