The Garden of Eden Playground

“A playground!” The happy voices of my children rang out from the back seat as I swung the car into a parking space and cut the engine.  It was a new playground for them, huge, and full of brightly colored slides and ramps.  A veritable Garden of Eden.

But, like all such gardens, there was one “forbidden fruit.”  Off to the side (yes, way over there on the right) was a tiny sandbox with a digger.  Because they were about to set off on a six-hour car ride, I told them not to play in the sand. 

What, then, was the one and only thing my daughter wanted to do? Quite obviously, the sand digger!  It made me so sad to see her joy evaporate as she fixated on that one prohibited option.

You see, of course, the analogy to Adam and Eve.  But my daughter’s actions that day revealed to me my own disposition to pine for the one thing I don’t have while forgetting, or ignoring, or dismissing all the wonderful things I do have in my life. 

God has given us richly all things to enjoy.  That sentiment is from I Timothy 6:17.  But it’s not the things themselves for which we are to be thankful.  The whole verse goes like this, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”  We are to enjoy God.  We are to hope in Him.  We are to trust Him.  When I lose sight of this, I am truly lost. 

God has indeed given us so much to enjoy.  A mantra at my house is, “Be thankful for the things that you have.”  A mom friend was lamenting today all the “unplayed-with” toys at her house.  Our children have so much.  I see this clearly in their lives.  But it’s true in mine, too.  We don’t wonder where our next meal will come from.  We don’t worry that we will face the winter elements without coats or shelter.  We have food, raiment.  But are we content?

And when we are not content, when we chase elusive idols of happiness and self pleasure, we find ourselves miserable and, often, eating the forbidden fruit.

But that’s not where God wants us.  He wants us to play on the slides, to rejoice in the beauty of a sunny, late-September Friday, to race and romp as carefree children.   We do this as we hope in Him, as we trust in Him. As we put our confidence in Him.  He alone can carry that trust and never fail.

Taste and See

One morning this summer as I stepped across the threshold of a bed and breakfast, I was greeted by the delightful yeasty aroma of warm gooey made-from-scratch cinnamon rolls.  Seeing the thick creamy white frosting on top of the spicy brown bread made them even more inviting.  I knew I was going to enjoy them, and I couldn’t wait to share them with my equally excited children.

There was just one problem: my son is two.

He eyed this delectable dish, didn’t recognize it, and promptly decided he was NOT going to try it.  Imagine having to persuade, cajole, and finally command this small child to eat ONE bite of the sweet cinnamon roll.  I just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

And then it hit me.  How often does God offer us an equally exquisite gift, but we fail to recognize its goodness.  He wants the best for us, offers the best to us, and we flatly refuse to enter into his plans.  We, in our “infinitely wise” bout of being a spiritual toddler fail to see or to understand that God’s plans are for our good.

How often life presents us with situations in which we cannot understand the whole picture.  My four‑year‑old is struggling with the idea that even though God is good and powerful, sometimes things happen to us that we do not perceive as good.  Often and again we come back to this, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”  And why? Because his ways are higher than our ways.  We are not commanded to understand (see Proverbs 3:5), but we are indeed instructed to trust.

In the end, my son had to trust that I had his best interest in mind by commanding him to try the cinnamon roll.  And he had to obey, even though his own inclination was to turn away. 

Far better than cinnamon rolls, infinitely beyond the best food ever prepared, is our God.  He will never disappoint, and he can be utterly trusted.

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

When You Just Have To Cry

She’s sitting here in my arms right now.  This four-month-old bundle of blessing and smiles and pudgy lovableness.  But she’s having a hard afternoon.  Tears that only now have stopped.  A cry that breaks your heart open with pity.  A cry that says, “Mama, I hurt, but I can’t explain what’s wrong.  Just hold me.  Be with me.”

And so that’s what I’m doing.  No more cooking, cleaning, working on the “to do” list.  No addressing birth announcements. (Did I mention she’s already 4 months old?) No more sorting out the kid clothes in the basement that are threatening to overwhelm my laundry room.  Just sitting and snuggling. Giving comfort.  Just this morning I was sharing with a friend my discovery of the application of James 4:13-15.  We say, “Today I’m going to get these five things done.”  What we ought to say is, “If the Lord wills, I will get these done.”  Apparently today God wants me to hold my daughter.  “Yes, Lord, and with pleasure.”

But what really made me think was the tenderness evoked by my pitiful child.  How often do we come to God the same way?  “It hurts, and I don’t know how to tell you exactly what’s wrong, but I need your comfort.”

And so He replies:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7-8).

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (II Corinthians 1:3-4).

Thank you, Father, that you love us perfectly.  Thank you for your infinite tenderness and endless supply of comfort.  Thank you that we can cry to you with any trouble, and find in You sufficient grace to meet our every trial.  We come boldly, knowing we can trust your perfect Father love.  If we delight to meet the needs of our children, how much more will you give good gifts to us when we ask.  We cry out to you, God, sometimes with pains that cannot be expressed in words.  And your Spirit helps us in our weakness.  Thank you, Father-God, for this comfort, and for the picture that our needy children present us with when they come to us in tears.  May we mirror your love.  Amen.

And now, blissfully, my daughter is asleep.

Book Time: Sacred Parenting

I just finished reading Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas.  (There are guides, DVDs, devotionals, etc. This is the original book—just make sure you get the right thing when you order.)  I was led to this book by Lisa-Jo Baker’s summer reading list, and it took me a while to get through it, though that says far more about me than the book.  I enjoyed this book and profited from it on many levels and in many applications.  I highly recommend it to any friend who is actively parenting a child.  

Before you get past chapter one, you realize this is not a parenting book.  It’s not written to teach you how to parent your children.  Instead, it focuses on what God is doing in your life, how he is using the lives entrusted to you to teach you things about Himself.  “The message of this book  . . . insists that the process of parenting is one of the most spiritually formative journeys a man and a woman can ever undertake. . . . Spiritually speaking, we need to raise children every bit as much as they need us to raise them” (p15). 

While focusing on what we need to learn, the author clearly points to God as the ultimate reason for parenting.  He asks a staggeringly simple question: “Why have children?”  There are so many wrong answers to this question!  

The book further goes on to explore the areas where our children chisel at our personhood.  For example, guilt.  Guilt equals bad, right?  And then we feel guilty about feeling guilty!  Chapter 3 explains three reasons why guilt can, in fact, be a good thing.  And how about learning to let our children suffer? “Our natural (but not necessarily holy) inclination to make life as easy as possible for our children, coupled with our focus on what we really want them to achieve, ultimately tells us parents what we value most about life” (p. 29).

Chapter 6 challenged my perspective about the Israelite nation who complained and were sentenced to 40 years of wandering and death.  I’ve always seen that story through the eyes of the suffering, thirsty adults.  I’ve never looked at it through the eyes of thirsty adults who are watching their children suffer, in danger of their life.  How much easier it is to go through something painful yourself than to watch your child go through it! Yet this chapter lays open our fears and vulnerability and points us to God’s Word.  In fact, because they acted on their fears they actually suffered more.  “While Scripture honestly admits the real threats we face in life, it remains equally forceful about not being driven by fear of them” (p. 95).

Other chapters include joy, sacrifice, listening to God, anger; and they have such interesting titles and subtitles as “How raising children teaches us to look beyond glamour and into glory” and “A very boring chapter in the Bible (that can change your life forever)” and “Walking on the wild side of parenting.”

This book is not a “fun” read as some more narrative books are.  It’s not a “feel-good” book to boost your spirit.  It makes you think.  This book asks hard questions, uses insightful quotations and source material, deals with serious and real issues, and addresses them all in light of God’s Word.  That being said, it’s also very accessible.  It rings true and it isn’t overly technical.  Also, the chapters stand on their own quite well, so if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, you can read just part of the book and still benefit.  I will definitely be re-reading this book!

Followers

I really thought he was pretty full of himself.  Not that I could criticize him publically.  The apostle Paul, that is.  I mean, what kind of false modesty says, “I could boast about [having this impressive pedigree/suffering this much for Christ/having been so bad before salvation].  But I won’t.”  Sure, Paul, my young teenage mind was thinking. 

And then I got to know Paul.

It happened in high school.  After my friend Erica convinced me to join the Bible quiz team and I fell head-over-heels-in-love with the adrenaline of the quiz process.  But on another level, I fell in love with the depth acquired by the intensity of that length and breadth of study.  To know the passage, not just a verse here or there, but whole chapters.  In fact, whole sets of chapters.  To memorize.  To meditate. To ponder.  To understand on a whole new plane.  And I still have that knowledge; I can give you chapter content for most of the books of John or Corinthians or Acts. (In honest retrospection, it was the single most valuable thing I learned in high school.  To my chagrin I no longer memorize Scripture like I once did.)  Anyway, it was during these Bible quiz years that I met Paul. 

Once I got to know him—really know him—I realized that he wasn’t quite as uppity as I had imagined him.  I grew to really respect him.  To understand why when Agabus foretold his capture in Jerusalem it caused his friends to literally weep.  And also why in the end they were willing to let him go, saying only, “The will of the Lord be done.”  I wish I could have been present at one of the sermons he preached.

Eventually, the pompous presumptiveness I attributed to his command in I Corinthians 11:1 was replaced with awe at the audacious responsibility he was willing to assume when he said, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”

And I realized that though Christ is our ultimate source, sometimes we need a human role model to help us understand how it looks in real life.  Yesterday we sang happy birthday to my husband, and he was sweetly amused to see our two-year-old son singing along a few beats behind everyone else (since he doesn’t know the words himself yet).  Hesitatingly, he reached the “dear so-and-so” part of the song, watched me closely, then plunged away with “Dear Stee-eeve.”  Normally we don’t let him call us by our first names, but it was obvious he was just being a follower of all the adults singing the song.  We couldn’t help ourselves; we burst out laughing!  Our children know perfectly how to follow us.  They want to be just like us.  They wear our shoes, mimic our occupations, use our word phrases and expressions, hold their cups just like we do.

And we need to be like them spiritually and find role models to follow, too.  Maybe you will find someone at your church.  Or a relative.  Maybe an admired saint in a biography you’ve read.  But—and this is key--to the extent that they follow Christ, then aim to be just like them.  I have my list: a short one and a long one.  And work so that you, like Paul, will be able to say to others, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”

Spiritual Allergies

Last night I was reading one of those ubiquitous baby magazines that habitually arrive in my mailbox.  One of the articles covered allergies, and I was interested in the current prevailing wisdom since this seems to be increasingly common on today’s baby scene.  Sure enough, peanut allergies have tripled in the last 10 years and lots of other allergies are now more common than before.  There are no end of opinions on why this is happening and what to do about it, but it was the final paragraph of the article that really caught my attention.  It proposed a lack of exposure to dirt and germs as a possible culprit.  “The theory behind the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ is that kids today grow up in a too-clean environment, leaving their immune systems idle, so they start fighting off harmless substances.”¹ (They obviously have never looked under my car seats!) 

While we were singing in church this morning about the cross and what Christ accomplished for us there, I suddenly realized that my struggles with “petty” things might be because of my own “too clean environment.”  As modern American Christians, we strive to limit our exposure to the spiritual dirt and germs of the world.  In our middle-class comfort we often don’t struggle for the resources to meet our basic needs.  Sure, there is always something else we’d like to spend money on, and certainly there are spiritual battles being fought in my house on a daily basis.  But hearing that there are 40 bars or taverns in my small town of 20,000 people sobered me to a side of life I don’t see or interact with all that often.  Thinking of the cross makes me wonder if intensive parenting days are really all that horrible by comparison.  Really. 

And all these thoughts circling in my brain make me wonder, is my spiritual immune system so relaxed that I am becoming a victim of spiritual “allergies”?  Have I become so introverted that I cannot see the truly important things around me?  Have I lost sight of the cross and am I blind to the spiritual attacks that Satan is hurling every day?  God’s Word is a good light source to examine the world around us.  In its pages we see that our adversary is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 

Surprisingly, as a mother I have found that I cringe when my kids get that layer of mud from playing in the backyard.  I sigh as another load of laundry walks in the door.  I never expected it to bother me that much, and to some extent I’m able to stand back and enjoy watching them have so much fun in the dirt.  But some day’s I’d rather just skip the playground on the lake with all the sand. 

But my kids need to play in the mud.  To get dirty.  To build sand castles.

And then to be clean again.  To bask in long bubble baths and clean jammies and smelly lotion.

And we need that spiritually.  To go out into a lost and dying world.  To make friends with people who don’t know our Christ.  To lend aid to a single mom struggling to buy clothes for her kids.  To offer help to someone struggling with alcohol or drugs or prison recidivism. 

At this stage in my life, there’s only so much I can do to “get out there.”  But the first step is awareness.  And then it’s finding the little things, like praying for the foster parents in my church.  Or donating a case of water for our church’s booth at the county fair.  Maybe volunteering to help at VBS.  It may be choosing to immerse myself in my community by taking my kids to toddler story hour at the library or the nature center.  And it also involves looking with eyes that see.

Dear God, give us eyes that see you at work in the world around us.  Help us to love others and help us to fight your battles and not our own.  Give us spiritually strong immune systems that protect us from the fiery darts of the wicked one.  Let us draw near to You and please shelter us safe in that haven of rest. Amen.

¹ Stewart, Rebecca Felsenthal. “Could My Baby Have an Allergy?” American Baby July 2012: 20-22.

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This Most Blissful Emotion

It happened!  The baby is here!  And this baby-wecloming, for the first time, found me in the hospital with Wi-Fi and the devices necessary for instant access.  There are up sides and down sides to this seemingly ubiquitous technology, and that debate should be saved for another day (she says, head down, staring at the computer screen).  The point is that with the entrance of our beautiful daughter into the world, we were able to immediately communicate that news to the waiting world (maybe I exaggerate), and in response we got dozens and dozens of well-wishes and congratulations.  And it was FUN.  There was so much joy in and of itself with the arrival of our baby, but it was heaped up—overflowing—when we were able to share it with so many people.  It made me think of Luke 15:10, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  We are told to “rejoice with them that do rejoice.”  And so I thought: If I can be this happy over the physical birth of a child, what must God feel over the spiritual birth of a child?  And if I am encouraged by the joy of my friends and family, what must the party in heaven with the angels of God be like? 

Charles Spurgeon summed it up in this sermon:

Oh! there is enough in the salvation of Christ to make heaven full of bliss; there is enough to make us full of praise. Let us take up the theme; let us talk by the way to one another about it; let us talk to sinners about it; let us recommend religion by our cheerfulness. Levity be far from us, but happiness let it be the happiest sphere in which we live if we have little else to rejoice in, we have enough here. Whatever may be our condition or prospects, we may still rejoice in God's salvation, and let us not fail to be filled with this most blissful emotion.

Moving On From Noodles

I had an epiphany last week.  I was feeding my kids what they ecstatically call “cheesy noodles”—a.k.a. good old macaroni and cheese from a box.  I ate a forkful from the pan and stopped.  I realized, with shock and horror and some satisfaction, that I no longer liked this food.  In fact, it doesn’t appeal to me much at all!

Then my mind went back to all those summers growing up when my mom required us to cook one meal per week as part of our regular chore list.  One of our favorite meals to prepare was box mac-n-cheese.  We liked to make it because it was both easy to prepare and because we loved—and I mean adored—eating it.  My mom would often be busy working with her gardening or sewing while we partook of these meals.  “Would you like me to save you some?” I would ask.  Gently her no would come back.  She once said she didn’t really like this food.  How can this be? I wondered.  In a Peter-Pan sense of losing one’s childhood, I vowed that I would never give up my love for macaroni and cheese.  I could not fathom life without it.  

So discovering last week that I have outgrown my childhood food love was in some ways a letdown.  It was a betrayal of my innocence and simplicity.  The feeling you get when you watch your toddler master some brand new skill or suddenly fit into a whole new shoe size.  There is pride in the accomplishment along with a twinge of sadness that growing up is inevitable.

But perhaps my greater astonishment in leaving behind mac-n-cheese was the sense of rightness that accompanied the departure.  I realized that what I have now discovered—grown-up food—is infinitely better than what satisfied me as a child.  Now I love to eat warm crusted goat cheese and roasted asparagus and made-from-scratch pierogies.  The culinary world beckons, and I am delighted to discover new and delectable edibles from around the world.   

The parallel here is to our spiritual “taste” in food.  A couple times in the New Testament (see I Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 5) there is a contrast between “milk” and “meat.”  The trouble seems to be that those requiring milk didn’t even know what they were missing!  They had stunted their spiritual palate.  C. S. Lewis uses the famous analogy of “an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”  The encouragement here is that even the things we love about God and His word can still be deepened as we grow in Christ.  Unlike my noodle analogy, we will not “dislike” what we loved as young Christians; rather, they will cease to satisfy us and we will crave more complex and deeper relationships with the God of the universe.  We will understand Him more fully (though never completely), and we will  . . . grow!   

And this progress in spiritual culinary understanding is good and right.  Let us not cling to our childish loves but embrace and seek to grow in Christ as we live each day.  It happens slowly and gradually until, one day, we look back and see that the progress has been being made and we are no longer the spiritual children we once were.  As Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (I Corinthians 13:11).

O taste and see that the Lord is good:

blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

O fear the Lord, ye his saints:

for there is no want to them that fear him.

The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger:

but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.
Psalm 34: 8-10

No Guarantees

I endure pregnancy.  In actual fact, I have some of the most routine, easiest pregnancies (and deliveries, so far!) that anyone could ask.  For me, though I surely dread the fatigue and other common symptoms of being pregnant, it’s not the pregnancy I hate.  It’s the waiting.  I want that baby in my arms—NOW!  The one consolation for all my pregnancy complaints is that, “Well, at least at the end you have a baby.”

Lately it seems God has been showing me just how presumptuous this idea is.  While it is true that the vast majority of pregnancies in modern USA do go to smooth completion, this week has brought story after story of just the opposite.  A friend of a friend whose baby died the day he was delivered.  Another friend who yesterday gave birth at 28 weeks and now waits anxiously while her baby’s life hangs in the balance.  There was a couple in our childbirth class who gave birth at 35 weeks only to lose their precious boy a few hours later. 

And history is replete with tragic stories of the death of babies and toddlers.  Infant mortality rates in the previous centuries are breathtakingly high.  Consider Charles and Sally Wesley: “Only three of the couple's children survived infancy: Charles Wesley junior (1757–1834), Sarah Wesley (1759–1828), who like her mother was also known as Sally, and Samuel Wesley (1766–1837). Their other children, John, Martha Maria, Susannah, Selina and John James are all buried in Bristol having died between 1753 and 1768.” 

When I spent a summer in Kenya we had a well-baby clinic on Friday afternoons.  The clinician would ask the mother how many children she had had and how many were currently living.  Almost without fail the mother would give two different answers.  Nearly every mother there had experienced the death of a child.

Another loss I’ve learned to grieve more deeply is for the mothers of the soldiers killed at war.  I used to think of soldiers as adults, whom their entire family would miss but mostly their wives.  Now I realize how young an 18- or 19-year-old boy is; and no matter how old her child, a mother loses so much—so much investment, so much promise, so much love—with the death of her babe.

All these sad thoughts to say that we are given no promises in this life.  As “sure” as a thing seems, it is still in the hands of an almighty, providential God.  A God who loves us, but who also rules our lives in His omniscience.  A God whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways.  Our ways are for ourselves.  For peace.  For black-and-white pictures of beautiful, perfect, sleeping infants.  God’s ways are perfect.  Sometimes that perfection looks perfect to us, too.  But not always.  I truly pray and hope for a healthy, beautiful, living infant in my arms.  Soon.   

When, and if, this happens I pray that I remember what a gracious gift He has given.  Not taken for granted.  But blessing upon blessing, received with a grateful heart.  And open hands.

"There's a Person in There!"

From this . . . :

 . . . to this:

When I collected my son from the nursery at the church we were visiting on Sunday, the nursery worker praised his obedience.  Knowing as I do, that a boy who has just turned two is no proven workmanship of parenting, it was still gratifying to hear that he had done well that morning.  Her explanation, that even with very young children you can tell what standards are being set in the home, made me think about the reputation a child has.  “Even a child is known by his doing.”  This is certainly true for elementary-aged children, but it seems to be true even at a much younger age range.  And I know this from the times I spent as a babysitter in high school.  Some families were fun to sit for; others required grit, determination, and a lot of cash.

A good friend and mentor from our church in Pennsylvania likes to tell the following story.  Her oldest child Timothy was having his first birthday party when someone remarked that in six months or so they would have to start spanking him.  A kind friend of hers told her sincerely that if they waited six months to start teaching him to obey, it would be six months too late.

My husband and I joke about the transformation that occurs to make a baby into a “real person.”  We mean, of course, the child becomes someone with cognition and the ability to act in his or her own will.  As the mother of very young children, I am amazed at how early that self-will begins to exert itself.  These expressions of “personhood” are both a joy and concern.  We would never want our children to stay infants (as precious as they are), but the visibility of the sin nature causes us to mourn.  On the other hand, the discoveries of toddlerhood delight us.

Once the babies are choosing to obey or not, the real work of parenting begins.  Though reputation is not the goal in and of itself, it is one of the fruits by which we know the plants are being tended.  And even tender seedlings need gardening!

However, if we start when they are young, we will be amply rewarded for the effort.  This week I revisited one of my favorites, Pride and Prejudice.  Says Mr. Darcy’s housekeeper, who has known him since he was four years old: “But I have always observed that they who are good-natured when children are good-natured when they grow up; and he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted, boy in the world.''

Of his own upbringing, Mr Darcy shares further insight: “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.”

For good or bad, what we do with our children in their very early years really does make a difference.  Not that mistakes cannot be overcome or corrected, but it is so much easier to do it right the first time. 

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Could you just be perfect, please?

“Our children will fail to obey.

Our goal is not to produce perfect obedience,

but to provide regular demonstration that sin has consequences.”

I read this quotation here (in an excellent article on the relationship between obedience and love) and it made me realize that sometimes my goal is perfect obedience.  I want my children to be perfect.  It would definitely make my life easier.  It would lead to less stress when I’m trying to fix dinner if they could just be perfect and not fight over the inflatable football.  It would make me look so good at church when they’ve gotten their coats on and I’m in the process of putting on mine or when I’m talking to someone.  Instead they zoom off across the narthex, sometimes loud but always fast.  It would help me not feel like a broken record when I say, “Don’t step on your books. Take your hand out of your mouth.  Give that back to your sister.”  So, yes, my imperfect self desires perfection from my children.  

What a reminder, then, that perfection is not even truly possible in this sin-cursed world.  I will fall, fail, break down.  So will they.  The goal is not perfection.  When they fail, I am to bring them God’s long-suffering, loving-kindness, best-interest punishment, and restoring forgiveness and mercy.  The goal is a relationship with God, letting love motivate our obedience.

I beat myself up over my own failings.  My lack of consistency.  My anger.  My selfishness.  But God does not expect perfection from me, either.  He remembers that I am made of dust, that I need Him every day.  He chastens me because He loves me.  Just as I do (or try to do) for my children.

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

Book Time: "Treasuring God in Our Traditions"

A great book in my collection is Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noel Piper, wife of John Piper.  It discusses the practical way to build spiritual heritage into your parenting.  I’m highlighting this book because I just discovered a link to a free on-line copy of the book.  Not only is this book a worth-while read, it is also enjoyable as the author brings in personal illustrations from her own childhood and her experiences as a mother. 

The book is a well-organized collection of ideas that include every-day traditions, special-day occasions, and annual holiday events.  They have inspired me to be intentional in building traditions with my children—from the songs I sing to them at night to the way we anticipate Thanksgiving to the comfort level I feel in making family uniquely “mine.”

One of the best and most-recommended parts of this book is the appendix entitled “The Family: Together in God’s Presence.”  It is on page 107, and I’m including the entire text here in case the link gets taken down later.  It is a very thought-provoking passage on having your children sit with you in the worship service at church.  I appreciate the emphasis not only on what is going on, but on why we do it and how to emphasize this to your children.  As my children are very young, we are still considering our personal adoption of these ideas, but there is ample food for thought here!

Happy reading!

 
The Family: Together in God’s Presence

By John and Noel Piper

Some Thoughts on Worship

from John

God-centered worship is supremely important in the life of our church. We approach the Sunday morning worship hour with great seriousness and earnestness and expectancy. We try to banish all that is flippant or trivial or chatty.  

Not all services are this way. Sunday morning is the Mount of Transfiguration—the awesome place of glory and speechlessness. Sunday or Wednesday evening is the Mount of Olives—the familiar spot for conversation with the Lord and each other.

In this article, we hope to do two things: 1) demonstrate that parents (or some responsible adult) should bring little children to the Sunday morning worship service rather than send them to a “children’s church”; 2) give some practical advice about how to do it.

We don’t claim that our way of worshiping is the only valid way. Not all our ideas may fit with the way another church does it. For example, we don’t have a children’s sermon as part of our Sunday morning service. It would be fun for the children, but in the long run would weaken the spiritual intensity of our worship. To everything there is a season. And we believe that, for at least one hour a week, we should sustain a maximum intensity of moving reverence.

The Biggest Stumbling Block

There are several reasons why we urge parents to bring their children to worship. But these arguments will not carry much weight with parents who do not love to worship God.

The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can’t impart what you don’t possess. 

Togetherness

Worshiping together counters the contemporary fragmentation of families. Hectic American life leaves little time for significant togetherness. It is hard to overestimate the good influence of families doing valuable things together week in and week out, year in and year out. 

Worship is the most valuable thing a human can do. The cumulative effect of 650 worship services spent with Mom and Dad between the ages of four and seventeen is incalculable.

Catch the Spirit

Parents have the responsibility to teach their children by their own example the meaning and value of worship. Therefore, parents should want their children with them in worship so that the children can catch the spirit and form of their parents’ worship.

Children should see how Mom and Dad bow their heads in earnest prayer during the prelude and other nondirected times. They should see how Mom and Dad sing praise to God with joy in their faces and how they listen hungrily to his Word. They should catch the spirit of their parents meeting the living God.

Something seems wrong when parents want to take their children in the formative years and put them with other children and other adults to form their attitude and behavior in worship. Parents should be jealous to model for their children the tremendous value they put on reverence in the presence of Almighty God.

Not an Excessive Expectation

To sit still and be quiet for an hour or two on Sunday is not an excessive expectation for a healthy, normal six-year-old who has been taught to obey his parents. It requires a measure of discipline, but that is precisely what we want to encourage parents to impart to their children in the first five years.

Thus the desire to have children in the worship service is part of a broader concern that children be reared so that they are “submissive and respectful in every way” (1 Timothy 3:4 RSV).

Children can be taught in the first five years of life to obey their father and mother when they say, “Sit still and be quiet.” In general, parents’ helplessness to control their children should not be solved by alternative services but by a renewal of discipline in the home.

Not Everything Goes Over Their Heads

Children absorb a tremendous amount that is of value. And this is true even if they say they are bored.

Music and words become familiar. The message of the music starts to sink in. The form of the service comes to feel natural. The choir makes a special impression with a kind of music the children may hear at no other time. Even if most of the sermon goes over their heads, experience shows that children hear and remember remarkable things.

The content of the prayers and songs and sermon gives parents unparalleled opportunities to teach their children the great truths of our faith. If parents would only learn to query their children after the service and then explain things, the children’s capacity to participate would soar.

Not everything children experience has to be put on their level in order to do them good. Some things must be. But not everything.

For example, to learn a new language you can go step by step from alphabet to vocabulary to grammar to syntax. Or you can take a course where you dive in over your head, and all you hear is the language you don’t know. Most language teachers would agree that the latter is by far the most effective.

Sunday worship service is not useless to children just because much of it goes over their heads. They can and will grow into this new language faster than we think—if positive and happy attitudes are fostered by the parents.

A Sense of Awe

There is a sense of solemnity and awe that children should experience in the presence of God. This is not likely to happen in children’s church. Is there such a thing as children’s thunder or children’s lightning or the crashing of the sea “for children”?

A deep sense of the unknown and the mysterious can rise in the soul of a sensitive child in solemn worship—if his parents are going hard after God themselves. A deep moving of the magnificence of God can come to the young, tender heart through certain moments of great hymns or “loud silence” or authoritative preaching.

These are of immeasurable value in the cultivation of a heart that fears and loves God.

We do not believe that children who have been in children’s church for several years between the ages of six and twelve will be more inclined or better trained to enjoy worship than if they had spent those years at the side of their parents. In fact, the opposite is probably the case.

It will probably be harder to acclimate a ten- or twelve-year-old to a new worship service than a five- or six-year-old. The cement is much less wet, and vast possibilities of shaping the impulses of the heart are gone.

Some Practical Suggestions

from Noël
When our four sons grew to be young men, we assumed that the worship-training chapter of our life had ended. But God has wonderful surprises. Our youngest son was twelve when we adopted our daughter, who was just a couple of months old. So our experience with young children in the pew started about thirty years ago and will continue awhile longer.

Getting Started Step by Step

We discovered that the very earliest “school” for worship is in the home—when we help a baby be quiet for just a moment while we ask God’s blessing on our meal; when a toddler is sitting still to listen to a Bible storybook; when a child is learning to pay attention to God’s Word and to pray during family devotional times.

At church, even while our children were still nursery-aged, I began to help them take steps toward eventual regular attendance in Sunday morning worship service. I used other gatherings as a training ground—baptisms, choir concerts, missionary videos, or other special events that would grab the attention of a three-year-old. I’d “promote” these to the child as something exciting and grown up. The occasional special attendance gradually developed into regular evening attendance, while at the same time we were beginning to attempt Sunday mornings more and more regularly.

I’ve chosen not to use the church’s child care as an escape route when the service becomes long or the child gets restless. I don’t want to communicate that you go to a service as long as it seems interesting, and then you can go play. And I wanted to avoid a pattern that might reinforce the idea that all of the service is good up until the preaching of God’s Word—then you can leave. 

Of course, there are times when a child gets restless or noisy, despite a parent’s best efforts. I pray for the understanding of the people around me and try to deal with the problem unobtrusively. But if the child won’t be quiet or still, I take him or her out—for the sake of quick discipline and for the sake of the other worshipers.

Then I have to decide whether we’ll slip back into service or stay in the area reserved for parents with young children. It depends on how responsive the child seems and whether there’s an appropriate moment in the flow of the service. If we stay in the “family area” outside the sanctuary, I help my child sit quietly as if we were still in the sanctuary.

By the time they are four years old, our children assume that they’ll be at all the regular weekly services with us.

Preparation All Week Long

Your anticipation and conversation before and after service and during the week will be important in helping your child learn to love worship and to behave well in service.

Help your children become acquainted with your pastor. Let them shake hands with him at the door and be greeted by him. Talk about who the worship leaders are; call them by name. Suggest that your child’s Sunday school teacher invite the pastor to spend a few minutes with the children if your church’s Sunday morning schedule allows for that.

If you know what the Scripture passage will be for the coming Sunday, read it together several times during the week. A little one’s face really lights up when he hears familiar words from the pulpit.

Talk about what is “special” this week: a trumpet solo, a friend singing, a missionary speaker from a country you have been praying for.

Sometimes you can take the regular elements of the service and make them part of the anticipation. “We’ve been reading about Joseph. What do you think the pastor will say about him?” “What might the choir be singing this morning?” “Maybe we can sit next to our handicapped friend and help him with his hymnbook so he can worship better too.”

There are two additional and important pre-service preparations for us: a pen and notepad for “Sunday notes” and a trip to the restroom (leaving the service is highly discouraged).

What Happens During Service?

First, I let a child who wants a worship folder have one. It helps a child feel like a participant in the service. And quietly, before service begins, I may point to the different parts of the service listed in the folder.

During the service, we all sit or stand along with rest of the congregation. I share my Bible or hymnal or worship folder with my little one, because use of these is an important part of the service.

The beginning of the sermon is the signal for “note-taking” to begin. (I want a child’s activities to be related to the service. So we don’t bring library books to read. I do let a very young child look at pictures in his Bible if he can do it quietly.) Note-taking doesn’t mean just scribbling, but “taking notes” on a special pad used just for the service.

“Taking notes” grows up as the child does. At first he draws pictures of what he hears in the sermon. Individual words or names trigger individual pictures. You might pick out a word that will be used frequently in the sermon; have the child listen carefully and make a check mark in his “notes” each time he hears the word.

Later he may want to copy letters or words from the Scripture passage for the morning. When spelling comes easier, he will write words and then phrases he hears in the sermon. Before you might expect it, he may be outlining the sermon and noting whole concepts.

Goals and Requirements

My training for worship has three main goals:
1. That children learn early and as well as they can to worship God heartily.
2. That parents be able to worship.
3. That families cause no distraction to the people around them.

So there are certain expectations that I teach the young ones and expect of the older ones:

• Sit or stand or close their eyes when the service calls for it.
• Sit up straight and still—not lounging or fidgeting or crawling around, but respectful toward God and the other worshipers nearby.
• Keep bulletin papers and Bible and hymnal pages as quiet as possible.
• Stay awake. Taking notes helps. (I did allow the smallest ones to sleep, but they usually didn’t need to!)
• Look toward the worship leaders in the front. No people-gazing or clock-watching.
• If you can read fast enough, sing along with the printed words. At least keep your eyes on the words and try to think them. If you can’t read yet, listen very hard.

Creating an Environment in the Pew

For my part, I try to create an environment in our pew that makes worship easier. In past years, I would sit between whichever two were having the most trouble with each other that day. We choose seats where we can see the front better while seated, not kneeling on the pew; kneeling leads to squirming and blocks the view of others).

Each child has a Bible, offering money, and worship folder at hand; so he doesn’t have to scramble and dig during the worship time. During the prelude, if I notice in the bulletin something unusual for which we need to be prepared (a responsive reading or congregational prayers, for example), I quietly point it out to a child who is old enough to participate. 

Afterward

When the service has ended, my first words are praise to the child who has behaved well. In addition to the praise, I might also mention one or two things that we both hope will be better next time.

But what if there has been disregard of our established expectations and little attempt to behave? The first thing that happens following the service is a silent and immediate trip to the most private place we can find. Then the deserved words are spoken and consequences administered or promised.

Closeness and Warmth

On the rare occasions when my pastor-husband can sit with the rest of us, the youngest one climbs right into his lap—and is more attentive and still than usual.What a wonderful thing for a young mind to closely associate the closeness and warmth of a parent’s lap with special God-times.

A child beyond the lap stage can get the same feeling from being next to his parent or from an arm around the shoulder or an affectionate hand on the knee.

The setting of the tight family circle focusing toward God will be a nonverbal picture growing richer and richer in the child’s mind and heart as he matures in appreciation for his family and in awe at the greatness of God.

Pu b l i s h e d o r i g i n a l ly i n THE STANDARD, Marc h 1 9 8 6 . Rev i s e d , Nove m b e r 1 9 9 9 .