The point of family devotions, of course, is to convey God's Law and Gospel, the faith in Christ to our children so that they will grow in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And, as our rite of Baptism in the E.L.S. [Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary, p. 136] states that our children are given "instruction in the Christian faith, to the end that [they] may come to the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood, and thus, abiding in baptismal grace and in communion with the church, [they] may lead a godly life to the praise and honor of Jesus Christ." The goal is that they remain in the faith by being grounded in God's Word and be raised to eternal life.
Sometimes a Bible translation fails to get the point across in the appropriate way. We started on Isaiah again a couple of days ago. Thursday morning, before the school bus arrived, we read Isaiah 3 as part of morning devotion. The tone of the chapter is very serious. God is calling the unfaithful organized church to task for abandoning the faith.
Normally we use the NKJV. It's the translation used in our Hymnary and forms the basis for our liturgical practice. It is also a fairly literal translation. But that morning I was using an E.S.V. It reads very well. And the translation seems to do fairly well on most things, but there's always something that doesn't quite work with new translations.
The ESV rendering of Is. 3:16 "tinkling with their feet," set the children giggling and laughing trying to contain themselves and be reverent.
I suppose it's my fault for not having used this verb for the very commonplace sound of ankle jewelry--except in NW Minnesota where in the middle of Winter our woollen socks would absorb any tinkling from our feet.
At least I can say that they were listening to the reading.
At least our kids did understand the point of the chapter, even if the mood of the text was disturbed by a simple choice of words.
