Famiy Values

I don't know why it's taken us so long to do this. I may be wrong, but I suspect our family dynamics and the overall health of our family might be better had we done something like this long ago.

It's not that our family is falling apart or anything. We're a normal family who have times of joy and love--times we deeply cherish and wonder if we could have it any better. But we also have moments of great tension, anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, and raising voices.

We're a typical human family. Nothing to hide. No one to impress. No image to put up.

I don't know that we'd have less struggle if we'd done things differently. I do suspect we'd have more direction and a general sense of family unity and identity, though. Again, it's not that we don't have these now, but I suspect unity and identity might be clearer and that might play out in how we live, what decisions we make, and such.

I'm talking about developing a "Family Values" statement.

Habits of Enhancement: Serving "The Least"

As we've been talking about family worship, we've been working to think in a couple directions. First, to think of worship as more than singing songs. Second, to think of worship in our families as how we live and order our home lives.


We've looked specifically at the idea of worship as a life offered to God. And we've looked at things like prayer, Scripture reading, and music not as worship in themselves, but important habits that enhance our lives of worship offered to God.


Many of us are used to associating the words "serve" and "worship" in the context of serving in a worship service. We serve by helping out with some part of the public worship service on a Sunday morning, whether that's acolyting, ushering, helping with communion, playing music, or leading a prayer.


But what if the words "serving" and "worship" should go together in a different way than this? What if associating serving and worship like we've known in the context of the Sunday worship service is not quite on track?
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