Tonight we started worshiping formally as a family after dinner. It is a little awkward at first, the standing and sitting and chanting in your own dining room. But after you get going, it feels very natural.
We are going to try to memorize the Vespers service from the old Lutheran Hymnal as a family so that we can say it together as we clean the kitchen, stopping only to read the particular collect and scripture for the day. I am certain that this will carve the liturgy into our children’s heads for life. And we will be so blessed to announce the Word to each other as a family every night.
Tonight we worshiped while Olivia ran around the living room begging to watch a “diveo” and Elise fell asleep in my arms. Then at the end of it all, Olivia was sad that she missed it (just like I anticipated she would be) and she pulled her pink rocking horse, Esther, into the dining room and asked if we could worship with Esther. So we said the Apostle’s Creed again while Liv rocked. She cracks me up!
Yeah, Family worship is kindof funny with little ones…but it’s still great. Today, we were trying to read Deacon a bible story, but he thought he would rather tell us the story both by “talking” very loudly over Andy and by banging his rattle on the book. Then, during our psalm singing, he kept on putting his finger deep into my mouth. It ended with us praying and Deacon nursing/sleeping. But its still a delight!
The pounding on the kiddie-Bible with the rattle of course reminded me of Luther’s agonizing exegetical sessions, in which he pounded on the text demanding to know what St. Paul meant by this or that. Apparently that was before Eugene Peterson’s book came out (see your blog’s subscript above). Or maybe Peterson came out first, and Luther thought he spoke a sloshy, low-brow form of German.
I forgot we were talking about “worshipping formally as a family after dinner”. I actually think that the Westminster Confession is instructive on this point: “God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and in truth; as in private families daily, and in secret each one by himself, so more solemnly in the public assemblies”. Your idea of rehearsing the liturgy while tidying up the kitchen is nice because it has formality in the sense that it’s structured, but does not force the solemnity that accompanies public worship. The key idea here is, like you said, beating this best-damn-story-out-there into these little people biting our ankles. I think that in the process it really beats it into us big kids as well.
Oh yes. I want to be singing the doxology to myself while I drive, and I want my kids reciting the Apostle’s Creed in the bath tub. The more we hear it the more we believe it, and the more we believe it the more it comforts us.
Speaking of reciting the Apostle’s Creed in the bath tub this reminds me of another blog post I wanted to write.