Reading to Children (Part 1) - Sally Lloyd-Jones

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Reading to Children (Part 1) - Sally Lloyd-Jones
Reading to Children (Part 2) - Sally Lloyd-Jones

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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God Breaking into History

Guest: Sally Lloyd-Jones

From the series: Telling Stories to Children (Day 1 of 2)

Bob: One of the challenges that families often face during the Christmas season is how to or even whether to blend in the holiday traditions with the biblical story of Christmas. Here’s some thoughts from author, Sally Lloyd-Jones.

Sally: You know, I became a Christian when I was four. I am sure, the first four years of my life, we were—it was more Santa Claus. Father Christmas was the big person looming in your life when you’re little. I suppose the excitement of: “He’s coming!” and everything like that—that’s not so dissimilar to what you—actually, is the truth of Christmas. It’s exciting; because your rescuer is coming, which is much more exciting than “Santa’s coming with presents.”

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, December 7th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Sally Lloyd-Jones joins us today to talk about how we keep Jesus at the center of the Christmas season. Stay with us.

1:00

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us.

Dennis: How’s your English accent, Bob? [Laughter]

Bob: Terrible. [Laughter]

Dennis: You have a great impersonation of Jerry Falwell.

Bob: Yes; but—

Dennis: Can I hear your Sally Lloyd-Jones? [Laughter]

Bob: I’m not that clever! [Laughter] No; mine would be [speaking with English accent]:

Look at her, a person of the gutters,

Condemned by every syllable she utters.

By right, she ought to be taken out and hung

For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue!

Sally: That’s brilliant.

Bob: Thank you.

Barbara: I know that one.

Bob: Do you?

Barbara: I watched that over, and over, and over.

Bob: That’s Henry Higgins. Don’t you know Henry Higgins?

Sally: Of course! I was just testing. [Laughter]

Bob: If you could have anybody come to your house and tell the Christmas story to your kids at Christmas time, who would—wouldn’t you want Sally Lloyd-Jones coming and telling the Christmas story to your kids?

Dennis: I think a wonderful story I’d love to hear—just to hear George tell the Christmas story.

Barbara: Oh, A Wonderful Life! [Laughter]

Bob: George Bailey?

Dennis: Yes!

Bob: [Imitating George Bailey] “Help me, Clarence. Help me! [Laughter] Get me out of here!”

Sally: He’s very good; isn’t he?

2:00

Bob: [Imitating George Bailey] “Get me back to my wife and kids!”

Sally: You love films, I guess.

Bob: I do; I do.

Dennis: When it’s Christmas time—this happens to Bob every 11 months—so just put up with it if you would. [Laughter]

I just introduced, very casually there, Sally Lloyd-Jones, who joins us again on FamilyLife Today. She was born and raised in Africa, schooled in England, lives in New York City. She is the New York Times author of a bestselling book—one of them she has written is called The Jesus Storybook Bible.

Bob: I think everybody listening to FamilyLife Today has The Jesus Storybook Bible—feels like. How many copies?

Sally: Two point five million.

Barbara: Then I think you’re right—it is everybody.

Bob: Everybody I run into—

Barbara: I have one, and I don’t have children at home. I have mine marked—I love it! [Laughter]

Sally: Oh. The most exciting thing to me is its now in 34 languages.

Bob: Oh, that’s wonderful.

Dennis: That’s cool!

Barbara: Wow!

Dennis: What’s your favorite language out of those 34?

3:00

Sally: Well, I’m really excited about Arabic—it’s just been translated into Arabic. What I love to say is, “I wrote a book I can’t read,”—[Laughter]—actually, three of them!

Dennis: And is it in Mandarin?

Sally: I think it is.

Bob: That’s great!

Dennis: That reaches a few people too.

Also joining us is my wife Barbara. Tell them about Sally’s book that we’re also talking about this Christmas.

Barbara: We’re talking about this book that she wrote for children for Christmas: Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story. I just think it’s a great idea to have books to read to your kids during the different seasons, because we have all these traditions that we do. I remember when we were raising our kids—there were certain books that we read, every season, that were favorites. I think this one will become a favorite of many families to read, year after year, with your children.

Bob: We had, in our library at home, it was called The Holiday Story Book. There were stories for every holiday of the year. So you’d open it and read one for Valentine’s Day or whatever. I never read any of them except the Christmas one. I remember it was a story of a car in an old car lot that was sitting there.

4:00

Nobody wanted to buy this old car—it was a clunker and barely ran. Apparently, as I remember it, Santa’s sleigh malfunctioned right over the ca...