You may recall that we don’t have a good track record with family devotions. I’ve tried a number of them, and so far we’ve failed to make it a regular habit. At one point last year, fed up with my kids’ persistent mutiny against devotions, I actually gave away my own copy of Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling for Kids in a random blog drawing.
When Advent rolled around this year I decided to simplify the whole process by going straight to the source. I decided we would read some of the Gospel of Luke as our nightly dinnertime devotion.
“Mommy! Read more!” Rowan begged one night at the table, after I’d finished the story of Zachariah. “Are you serious?” I asked, closing my Bible and setting it next to my plate. “Yeah, yeah, I’m serious, read more,” he said. “It’s catchy, don’t you think?”
“Catchy” is certainly one way to think of the Bible.
Two weeks into Advent Noah asked if we could continue the dinnertime Bible reading even after Christmas. Again, I asked if he was joking. Turns out, he wasn’t, and so that’s the plan. I’ve wanted to try The Message translation for a while now, so I picked up a copy at Barnes & Noble last weekend, and this week we started from the beginning, with the light and darkness, the heavens and earth.
For the past three years, whenever I read about many of my fellow bloggers and their families, I saw a Norman Rockwell picture of perfection – the family gathered around the dinner table, heads bowed, Scripture in hands. Then I’d look at my kids, falling off their chairs, silverware clattering to the floor, giggling through grace, mutinying against every attempt to bring God to the table, and I’d inevitably assume I was doing something wrong. “Why? Why is this so hard? Why can’t my kids be polite and Godly?” I wondered. “What am I doing wrong that they are such spiritual barbarians?”
The answer, of course, is nothing. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I simply needed to persevere until it clicked; to keep trying different options until one fit. And to wait. Patiently.
Maybe it’s simply that they are older now, a little better able to concentrate and understand. Or maybe I should have cut right to the chase, bypassing the devotional books and going straight to the Bible. Or perhaps this, too, will turn out to be a fad. Maybe three weeks from now they’ll mutiny again.
I’m not telling you this story so I can pat myself on the back, or so you’ll look at our family the way I looked at others. Instead, I want you to see what’s real, so that you’ll know that it’s all okay, in every less-than-pretty variation. I want you know that boys tumble from chairs, and silverware clatters to the floor, and someone burps during the prayer, and thanks is given more often for Super Mario Bros. than for the soup.
Grace isn’t always pretty, at least at our house. But through it all, God is present. Even, or perhaps especially, when we fall off our chairs.
What about you? Do you read the Bible or evening devotions at dinnertime with your family? Do you ever feel like you’re raising spiritual barbarians?
With Ann Voskamp’s Walk with Him Wednesday series {because we are trying, again, to make a habit out of this…}
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