I Remember This!

With the advent of a dedicated education hour on Sunday's at my church (beginning with 2009), I've been teaching on Sunday mornings during that time and my boys have then gone to Sunday school while I teach. We go to Saturday evening service and there is Sunday school during the worship on Saturday's which they had always gone to but we've tried starting to get my soon to be 6 year old to stay in worship the whole time and then go to Sunday school during the education hour on Sundays. We've had a mixture of success and failures in the few weeks we've tried.

Tonight, the service was built around 1 John 2: 18-29 (warning about antichrists) using the Yellow Light as a symbol. In front of the church was a large traffic signal with the yellow light illuminated and so, though my son had insisted on the way to church he didn't want to stay in worship with me, once he saw that, he said he wanted to find out more about it.

He really did pay attention to the sermon and its message connections to traffic lights. I was really surprised at how well he did and seeing a 5year old connect with the message of the sermon...great stuff. Before that though, he had a break through moment as we recited the Apostle's Creed as a congregation (something we don't do very often on Saturday nights due to the contemporary nature of that service). As we said the words, my son looked up at me and said:

"DAD! I REMEMBER THIS!" and he listened with mouth agape, as in awe and wonder over being connected to what was going on in worship. Behold the power of liturgy! As stated in 2 Timothy 13 (NKJV):"Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus" There's something to be said about the power of liturgy in reaching even a child of the 21st century.

PHC ~ The Second Year

Ok, I took a few weeks off after concluding the first complete year of this blog to refresh, renew, and reexamine. When I started this, I established a calendar rotation to provide structure and force me to think and work on things that I needed to work on. So I set out the first year with Sundays dedicated to devotion to Our Lord and Savior, Mondays to my beloved wife and our relationship, Tuesdays to my wonderful children and our relationships, Wednesdays to my family of believers, the Body of Christ, and Thursdays to my role as a Man in God's plan. Fridays I kept it light with some wit and/or poetry and Saturdays I took the day off. This year I think I will remove a bit of the structure, and though I'll often post a devotion on a Sunday or talk about my beautiful wife on a Monday, I won't be limiting myself by the day of the week but rather share whats on my heart and mind as it comes up. This is more a reflection on growth in the last year, and I do think the structure was useful and necessary to get me to this point. Now I'm better prepared to take it from here. I therefore might miss a day or two, but then return with three or four posts on a day. Besides...a heap shouldn't really be so rigid and structured now should it?