Around the Kitchen Table
They’re all back! All of them! After years of having a spread-out family, John and I now have our four children, their spouses, plus our five grandchildren living in Lancaster County. What a delight!
The other week I had the whole gang over for a cook-out. After supper was over, and the little ones settled in their beds, the adults sat around our kitchen table (my favorite place in the house!) and just talked… and talked… and talked some more.
Our children began asking my husband and me questions about our “journeys of faith.” Funny, we kind of assumed that our children knew how we came to be where we are today. Because of our job as Christian marriage counselors, we often talk about spiritual issues with our clients and share our personal testimonies of God’s work in our lives. And of course, as the children were growing up we had taken very seriously their spiritual training. But this late-night chat revealed new information about our faith walk to several of our children and/or their spouses.
It was truly a special time of family closeness! I couldn’t help but think afterward about the numerous admonitions in Scripture to pass down to our children and grandchildren the accounts of what God has done for us.
We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done… so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. (Psalm 78:4, 6 & 7)
So I was convicted of not sharing enough “God” events from my own life with my children. “Please forgive me, Lord! I should have and could have done so much better!”
And I’m challenged today to begin speaking more frequently about the doubts, the struggles, the joys, the victories, the lessons I’ve learned as a follower of Jesus.
John and I rejoice that all of our children and their spouses are part of God’s family. They each are walking with the Lord. But maybe a little more honest sharing from Dad and Mom will help cheer them on when the going gets tough (as it always does sooner or later!). And of course there will be more grandchildren coming… and they’ll grow up and bring their spouses into the family. So I believe we’ll have lots more opportunities… or, we’ll purposefully make lots more opportunities to pass on our true accounts of God at work in our lives.
Maybe we’ll have to get a bigger kitchen table!