Quick and easy spiritual thoughts in the morning...

With school starting back again I thought I'd share this idea with all of you. Hope it helps your family too!

I know the school mornings are crazy, but ideally it would be great to send our kiddos off to school with a little extra gospel strength in their reserve. Since our family reads scriptures in the evening together, I like to have a spiritual thought each morning, but I never have time to plan one.

Here is an idea:

On the front and back cover of the Ensign is usually a beautiful picture and scripture or brief story or history. The Friend also has a picture or two each month and so does the New Era. It is not exact each month, but you get my point.

I tear these out and save them. When I have time, I laminate them to pretty paper and file them away in my "spiritual message" box. (Can you tell I just sat down and laminated a pile that had been staring at for me a while!) Each morning I can conveniently pull one out and use it as our spiritual message in the morning. We talk about it over breakfast.

It takes a few months to gather enough to get started, but you can always go online and print them. Just start stashing them now and you'll realize you have tons very quickly. Once you've gone through them all, go through them again and again!

I love this because:

The pictures are often not common gospel pictures we see regularly, or ever!
I love introducing them to amazing artist, like Carl Bloch, while having a spiritual message.
The stories and pictures reference scriptures, people, or church history.
Kids love pictures, sometimes these stick more than a scripture in the morning.
It is a nice way to build your own gospel library of pictures.
And they are great for FHE
...I could go on!

To add to this collection, collect your handouts from church and other activities and add them to your "spiritual message" box.

Anyway, this is just an idea that makes me excited so I thought I would share.