Family & Parenting
We tried doing family devotions and it was a disaster. Is this actually worth persisting with?
“Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD.”
David wrote this psalm after escaping a foreign king by pretending to be insane, and partway through it he turns and addresses children directly, offering to teach them. The shift is worth noticing. Someone who had just been through something humiliating and frightening decided the natural next move was to explain to the next generation what he had learned about God.
“But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
The disciples were doing exactly what responsible adults do, keeping noisy children away from an important man who was working. Jesus was displeased with them for it. He puts children at the center rather than at the edges, and he does it publicly. Whatever family devotions are meant to be, they are not a small formal event that children are lucky to be permitted into.
A path forward
Cut it to five minutes and attach it to a time that already exists, usually a meal or bedtime. Most family devotions fail because they were scheduled into a slot in the day that never actually happens.
Read one short passage and ask one question, then stop while everyone still has attention left. Ending early is the thing that makes children willing to come back tomorrow.
Let it be noisy and imperfect and count it as done. Comparing your five chaotic minutes with a picture of a hushed family around an open Bible will kill the habit faster than any missed evening.
Closing verse
“For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.”
- Zechariah 4:10
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