Tiny Tidbits for Tots

By Deb Valainis

Author Deb Valainis has always felt the need to write even from an early age. When asked to write the children's messages for her church to present during their Sunday morning worship services, Deb was honored. As she sat to write each week's message, she felt each one to be God-inspired with each one being tied to Bible scriptures. She was pleasantly surprised to see that the messages seemed to have such a positive impact on children and adults alike.

An animated storyteller, Deb made each story come alive, often using props and hands-on interaction with the children. Oftentimes, individuals would ask her where she acquired her stories and how people might get copies of them. She was encouraged to put them into a book format for others to share and enjoy. So having accumulated quite a large number of these messages or short stories, Deb was finally convinced to combine a few of them into this first book in the hopes that they might serve to inspire others. Whether used as a story time aid or as part of a family devotional, her hope and prayer is that they will encourage others to read their Bibles each day, as they seek a closer relationship with God and strive to follow His teachings.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098059699

Book preview

Feeling the Pressure

Summer vacations can be so much fun! There is always so much to see and do. You get to spend time playing with friends, and sometimes you can go to local vacation spots or even travel to faraway distant places.

Just remember that school will be starting all too soon, and sometimes things can get a wee bit stressful and confusing for all of us. Parents may feel stress and pressure worrying about their jobs, paying bills, taking care of the home, and of course, being concerned about the welfare of their families.

But it’s easy to forget that kids can feel stress and pressure too. You might feel worried that your friends won’t like you or that the school work will be too difficult. You might even be concerned that some of your friends are doing something wrong, and that they may try to persuade you to join them in order to fit in and be accepted.

You really want them to like you, but you don’t want to do some of the things you may see them doing because you know it’s just not right. It can be so hard saying no sometimes.

You may be concerned that you will be bullied, or uncertain how to react when you see that someone else is being bullied; what should you do?

In addition, you may also feel the pressure to get your chores and homework done.

All of the pressures of this world, and those that we place upon ourselves, can make us sometimes feel like we’re being crushed under the weight of it all. Sometimes it makes us feel very small and powerless.

I used to work for a company years ago that built and operated underwater robotic vehicles called drones or ROVs (remotely operated vehicles). Sometimes we would write the name of the mission, or the underwater drone, on a large Styrofoam cup and send it down with the vehicle into the depths of the ocean. The pressure under the sea is so great that when the vehicle returned to the surface, the Styrofoam cup would be reduced in shape to only about the size of maybe an inch and a half to two inches tall. It would be perfectly intact with perfect proportions, but it would be so compacted in size due to the pressure it experienced in the depths of the sea. The cup could never again return to its original size once the pressure compressed it.

Unlike those cups, we have been assured by God that, since worry won’t change the outcome of things, it is pointless to let ourselves succumb to it. Instead Jesus says in the Bible, in Matthew 6:25, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is life not more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? He goes on to say in Matthew 6:27, Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

You see, worrying doesn’t change a thing. So why waste your time and energy on getting yourself all worked up about things you cannot change?

It is so much wiser to take care of the things you can, and to lay the rest of it at God’s feet and let him deal with it as He sees fit. Don’t let the pressure get to you the way the pressure got to that Styrofoam cup when it went down into the depths of the ocean. Don’t be crushed by worrying about those things that you do not have the power to change, or about those things that haven’t even happened and may never happen.

Be the person God intended you to be; be kind, be gentle, be loving, be faithful, and be obedient to God and to your parents. He is a mighty God, and He will take care of the things that we cannot control. He will give us strength and courage to stand strong, even when things aren’t going just right. So trust in Him. He will walk right alongside you. We call that having faith!

The Road Map

When living on Maryland’s eastern shore, we learn very quickly about how summer travelers affect traffic patterns. The routes to and from the Atlantic Ocean become jammed with many tourists and vacationers as they make their way to and from their vacation destinations.

Other people opt to go to the mountains for vacation instead of heading to the ocean. When I was a kid, we used to love to travel to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania every summer.

Coming from the central part of the state of Delaware, we didn’t see many hills around our home, and we had no mountains around us. The land around our home was flat. Mountains were a real novelty. It was exciting when we would travel into the mountains on our vacations. The roads would twist and turn, going up and down the steep slopes, as we drove into the higher elevations. You could not see what lay ahead of you around the next bend, or even what lay behind you, because of all the sharp twists and turns in the road.

But my dad, he knew where the road would lead, and we had faith that he would get us to our destination safe and sound. Back then, he used a road map. Today we would probably use a GPS (Global Positioning System), but we didn’t have them back in those days.

But unlike when you travel by car on mountain roads, if you travel on a plane, you can look down from way up in the sky, and you can see just where the roads lead. It’s all laid out, almost like you are looking at a road map from way up there, and it’s easy to see just where you are going.

God watches over us sort of like when we fly in a plane. He can see all the paths that we are on in life. He sees all the twists and turns that we can take. He can see when we take a detour or make a wrong turn in life, and He can see what lies on our path ahead.

He lets us drive along, and sometimes He gives us little signs to help us along the way. It’s sort of like the way we see street signs as we’re driving. These little signs help to steer us in the right direction so that, hopefully, we won’t get lost along the way. One of the signs we may get might be a friend who comes along to help point us back in the right direction, or it may be a piece of scripture we heard or read.

God even provides little rest stops along the way to give us a chance to regroup and refresh ourselves. These may be things such as Sunday school, spiritual retreats, vacation Bible school (VBS), or relaxing time with other Christian friends and family.

When we leave this life, God wants us to arrive at our final destination which is our home with Him in heaven, safe and sound. He wants us to be filled with peace and joy, grateful to be home with Him at last!

Let God be your road map. Let Him guide your paths and direct your feet in the way you should go. The Bible, in Psalm 48:14, says, For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.

Use the tools He provided for instructions like our Bible scriptures. Keep the faith and travel well, my friends. Travel well, and we’ll all meet together at our final destination to dwell in the house of God forevermore!

Saying Thank You

Iam so thankful for you! I am also grateful to have woken up for this brand-new beautiful day!

I am thankful for many wonderful things. My family, my friends, my church home, food, my home, my health—all of these are just a few of the things I’m thankful for today. You can probably name a lot of things that you are thankful for too!

There are lots of ways to say thank you in many different languages. In Spanish, they say, "Gracias. In German, they say, Danke. In Latvian, they say, Paldies. In French, it’s Je vous remerci. And in Italian, they say, Grazie." Even people that can’t speak learn how to say thank you, speaking with their hands using sign language.

But sometimes, saying thank you isn’t very easy, even when we know how. Like when our mom or our dad have punished us, and we’ve done something wrong. It isn’t very easy to say, thank you then, is it? When we, or someone close to us, is hurt or sick, it isn’t easy to say thank you then either.

Sometimes it’s just not easy to be thankful. Especially when someone mistreats you, or when someone makes fun of you. When things aren’t going so well, it gets pretty hard to remember all the things for which we should be thankful.

I recall when I was a little girl, and I went away to camp for a week. I thought it was going to be so much fun. But many of the people at camp were really mean to me. They made fun of me, they played mean tricks on me, and some of them even tried to hurt me. It sure wasn’t easy to be thankful when all those bad things were happening to me!

But learning to be grateful and learning to say, thank you teaches us to acknowledge all the good around us, even when it is hard to see those things. It teaches us to focus more on the things that are good and right, than on those things that are negative or bad.

It teaches us to show appreciation and to give recognition to those who are responsible for providing the good things in our lives. It also reminds us of all those things with which we have been blessed. Being thankful lifts up other people as we remember to say, thank you. It not only makes them feel good, but it makes us feel good too!

God wants us to always remember to be thankful for everything. He wants us to speak with Him all the time through prayer, and He wants us to have joyful lives.

In the Bible, in 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18, it says, Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

But we aren’t the only ones who didn’t understand why we should be grateful when bad things are happening. A long time ago, there was a woman named Corrie ten Boom who found it hard to be thankful. She was from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.

Corrie and her sister were taken prisoners during World War II and placed in a concentration camp. When her sister reminded her that they needed to be thankful in all circumstances, just like the Bible taught, Corrie didn’t see anything to be thankful for about having to stay in a flea-infested bunkhouse in an enemy concentration camp! But she did as her sister said, and she prayed anyway, praising and thanking God.

Then one day, after one of the women had given birth to a baby, the guards came to the bunkhouse where they were staying. The women in the bunkhouse knew that the guards would take the baby away if they discovered it there. The women were so scared!

But because of all the fleas in the bunk room, guess what? The guards refused to enter the bunkhouse to do a search. None of the guards would go inside because it was infested with all those fleas! That night, the baby was safe, and it was all on account of those nasty little fleas! Thank God!

Corrie realized then that we do need to do as God asks, and we need to remember to be thankful in all situations!

She understood that although we may not be able to see the whole picture or the entire situation at the time, and although we may not understand why we should be grateful for what’s happening when it all seems so bad, she understood that God sees it all! He sees a much bigger picture. He can see the entire situation, even into the future, and God knows how things will turn out in the end. When we are faithful in doing as He asks, He can make so much good come from even a bad thing!

We may not see why we should be thankful at the moment. But we can trust that God’s got this!

So as we are saying our prayers each day, we should remember to thank God for everything. We should thank Him for all the prayers He’s already answered, and let Him know how much we really appreciate all that He has done for us every day!

Becoming Who You Are Meant to Be

Alarge portion of my childhood was spent growing up on my grandparents’ large dairy farm. On the farm, we raised cattle to produce milk and other things like butter and cheese.

On the farm, everyone had their chores to do. Everyone was expected to work hard. Most farmers, and farmworkers, are a pretty hardy lot. They are strong and fit. They have to be in order to be able to lift heavy bales of hay and straw or to muck out the cattle stalls, carry feed buckets for the calves, and to do all the other daily farm tasks.

But you see, unfortunately I was, what you might call, the runt of the litter. I was always a bit on the weak side. As a result of being so weak, I wasn’t quite as able to do a lot of the hard work around the farm like my brother and sisters could. I just wasn’t strong like they were. The fact that I couldn’t do as much as everyone else certainly didn’t go over very well with my strict grandparents, my aunts, or my uncles, and they always seemed to be disappointed in me.

Eventually I began to wonder if maybe God hadn’t made a really big mistake when He made me. Everyone else seemed to think I was pretty useless, and I was beginning to think they might be right.

But you see, God doesn’t make everyone the same. He makes us all with different qualities, abilities, talents, and strengths. We are each created for a different purpose.

We are sort of like different clay jars and how each jar is made to be used for a different purpose. Some of them are used to store things and some can be used as a vessel from which to drink. Some can display a beautiful bouquet of flowers or perhaps hold fragrant oils or incense. Some can be used as lanterns, and some can even be used as paperweights or as an interesting or fun decoration.

God has a purpose for each and every one of us too, just like those clay jars. Sometimes we don’t see right away just what our purpose may be. It’s just like when I was a kid, I didn’t understand what good I could possibly be to anyone if I couldn’t do what the others could. I just couldn’t see what God might have had in mind when He made me.

Years later, however, I discovered that I did have other gifts, talents, and abilities after all. I found out that I could sing. I could also sketch and write stories. I could play instruments like the Native American flutes.

A lot of those things I didn’t find out until later, but eventually, God revealed them to me just as He revealed that I do have purpose in this life after all! We all do!

So even if you don’t feel as though you fit in where you are right now, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t on the right path to discovering who you were intended to become later.

Galatians 1:12 says, I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Be faithful to God. He will guide your paths and direct your feet to help you to find your true purpose and your reason for being. One day, you will find yourself right where, and who, you were meant to be!

Can You Hear Me Now?

Ihave this small rectangular handheld device that allows me to do lots of awesome things. It allows me to speak to people far away. It lets me look up things on the Internet. It lets me take photos that I can share with others. It even lets me play games. I’m sure you’ve seen them before, and you know just what it is! It’s a mobile phone.

Cell phones enable us to keep in touch with everyone all the time, no matter where we are. When we need help, or if we just want someone to talk to, they really come in handy.

They make sharing news with others easy. All we have to do is pick it up, dial the number, and boom, just like that, we’re connected.

We all know what it means