Family Devotions

Brandon has been teaching a new class at church. It is called "Parenting on Purpose", and we have been so blessed to get to know the families that are participating. Each week, we talk about raising our children for the Lord. There is some great conversation and lots of laughs! Brandon and I have mentioned that we have a family devotional, and in full disclosure, I thought I'd let everyone have a glimpse of our precious, serious, serene, calm, highly spiritual time of reading God's Word and memorizing scripture together...

We try to have our family devo during the end of our breakfast time. Breakfast is a time that we are usually all together each day, and it makes for the easiest time to grab a Bible and chat for a bit. Here's how this morning went: As Brandon leads us in our Scripture for the week, it reminds me of a song. I sing. Libby smiles and heads to her craft table which is covered with her's and Clara's various projects. Clara follows her whining, "I want to do MY stickers!!! Where are my stickers?!?" Brandon calmly tells them to get back in their seats. I finish singing. They are searching for stickers. Brandon tells them again to get back to the table. I tell Libby that she had better get that table cleaned up right after breakfast, and Clara is still whining about her stickers. Somewhere during all of this, we are still trying to recite our scripture for the day. I think we are all glad that it has something to do with gold and honey because we can relate to this much better than statutes and precepts. Our patience has thinned, and we are now commanding the girls to get back to their chairs. Clara is crying because she is sure her stickers have been thrown away. At last, we have said the scripture, and life can move on.

I told Brandon that we should really let people know that this is how our devos go sometimes...to which he responds, "Sometimes?" We all had a good laugh thinking about that one. Yes, it's true, there is sometimes more chaos than calmness during our family devo time. However, we are trying and are learning how to do this. It is precious, and God will use His word in all of us!