Thinking About Legacy

Today in home church we covered the story of Ruth.  The following Scripture is in my head and I'm thinking and thinking and thinking about it.  "Where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God." Ruth 1:16

What does it say about our legacy?  Ruth says this to her mother-in-law, Naomi, when Naomi is returning to her homeland of Judah.  Naomi's sons have died and her two daughters-in-law have followed her half-way home.  She bids them goodbye, but Ruth insists she is going with her and says:

"Where you go I will go, where you stay I will stay, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God." Ruth 1:16

Naomi concedes and takes Ruth with her back to Judah.  Once there, Ruth works with the gleaners to gather enough grain for their sustenance.  Little does she know, but she is gleaning from a field owned by Boaz, who is a relative of Naomi.  Eventually, Boaz and Ruth marry and Ruth bears Obed.  Obed matures, marries, and fathers Jesse.  Jesse becomes the father of David.

David, if you will remember, is the David of "David and Goliath" fame.  He also grows up to become King of Israel.  He pens most of the Psalms.  God calls David a "man after his own heart."  David is the one who taught me, through the Psalms, that there is nothing I can say or do or feel that will make God stop loving me.  David taught me that God is bigger than anything I can throw at Him.  David taught me what it looks like to truly trust God.  David is no joke!  And, through David's line comes ... do you remember?  Jesus.

Legacy.

Ruth embraced Naomi's God and pledged herself to live as a Hebrew.  Through her faithfulness she was part of the blessing to come.  Our faith, our devotion to the Lord affects our children.  Our prayers touch the generations to come.

My faithfulness, my worship life, my prayer life, my devotion to God have a direct effect on my children, their children, and their children and beyond.  I have no idea who my great-great grandchildren will be and what plan the Lord has for them.

What am I doing that ensures God's blessings on my children?  Is it just putting Scripture around the house where the kids can see it?  Is it just going to church (or home churching)?  Are they hearing me when I talk to them about God?  Or is overhearing me talk to my girlfriends about God helping, too?  Am I doing enough to train up my children in the way they shall go so when they grow old they will not stray from it?

So again, as I tend to do in my mothering, I'm looking at our lives.  I'm judging what we're doing and weighing the consequences.  What's good, what needs tweaking, what's in need of excising?  Above all, though, I wonder... and I worry and try to remember to give my worry to God... are the tracks I'm laying in my children's hearts be what they will follow?  Will they accept this legacy of faith?  And am I doing enough?

What is my legacy?

~ G

Home Church, Pt.2

It's official.  I like Home Church.  I like it better than I ever thought possible.

When I was pregnant with Middle One, we visited with a family that home churched with several other families.  It seemed so... weird to me.  How could you church at home?  How could you not have an organist or a congregation or potlucks?  How could you not have a dozen committees wanting your time?

The answer is: rather easily.

I think I love this.

Here's what we do:

Right after breakfast, while I'm cleaning the kitchen, Darling sits down at the piano in the living room and starts playing from the hymnal.  The kids are playing or doing whatever around the house, but they can hear the music.  Darling usually plays a couple songs he likes, but also works in the traditional doxology for me.  He also, God bless that man, plays my favorite song.  I cannot sing this song without crying and someday, when I die, I want it sung at my funeral.  "Here I Am" gives words and music to what's in my heart.  Here's a You Tube video I found for you.  I chose it because it has the lyrics written out.  Darling plays it a little faster (I prefer it a tad faster than in this video), but it gets the family in the worship mood.




After music, we come together and pray.  Then Darling leads us in a reading from one of the kids' Bibles we found on our date night.  We watch the video for the lesson we're learning, then we sing the songs after the video teaching.  It's kind of neat.  I like that it's concise without dumbing down the Bible stories.

What I enjoy the most about home churching is that we have started pulling a Scripture from the lesson to learn and discuss for the week.  We write it on a dry erase board we have in the kitchen and every night at dinner, we make a point of reading and discussing it.  I don't know that the kids are actually memorizing it.  I also don't know that the kids are even thinking deeply about it.

What I do know is that for the first time, we're focusing on Scripture in our home.  Even if the kids aren't remembering the verses verbatim, we are laying the tracks in their hearts.

I wasn't sure how we'd settle into home church.  Some Sundays are better than others.  But, on the whole, right now, it's working.  We may head back to church some day, but that day isn't in the immediate future.

~ G

Home Church

We've been home-churching for several months now.  At first it was a reaction to never seeming to be able to make it to church.  If we didn't have out-of-town guests, we had a sick kid.  If we didn't have a sick kid, we had some other reason we couldn't go.  Finally, instead of surrendering and not getting any churching into our kids, we opted to home church.

The initial decision was kind of a knee-jerk thing.  Someone, maybe me, pitched an unholy fit about the kids not getting the Bible stories they need to "train them up" in the way they should go.  Darling grabbed a Veggie Tales off the shelf, popped it in the DVD player and we had church.  We watched the video, talked, prayed, and home church was over.

I kind of liked it.  I kind of liked that I knew exactly what the kids had learned in church and I liked that we had the same lesson to discuss all week.

A few weeks ago, though, Veggie Tales became too animated for us.  Big Kid and Middle One know all these videos by heart, so using them as church material wasn't exactly keeping them attentive.  So, on date night, Darling and I stopped at the Christian book store and selected a couple books to help us.

So far, so good.

~ G