Heaven in a Mini-Van
- jon76903
- Mar 26, 2014
- 3 min read
One Sunday morning several weeks ago, I was riding to church with my wife Bethany and my three young children, Zach (8), Nina (3) and Chloe (1). Getting everyone dressed and ready to leave on time makes for a busy morning. Beth had graciously offered to drive so that I could make a final review of the Sunday school lesson I had prepared.
Halfway to church, as I sung softly along to the local Christian radio station’s Sunday morning worship program, God allowed me to really hear what was going on in our mini-van. I was not the only one singing. As usual, Beth’s voice joined mine, but I could also hear Zach and Nina from the very back row belting out:
Christ is enough for me,
Christ is enough for me,
Everything I need is in you,
Everything I need
Tears came to my eyes as we shared a moment of mobile family worship together. There are few things as precious to a father as hearing his children praise Jesus, and I wanted those moments to last forever. I do not think I finished reviewing the last third of the Sunday school lesson, but I consider it more than a fair trade.
Like many of my generation, I often struggle with an excess of cynicism. That part of me says that these two young children are just repeating what they have heard, parroting back the praises of God but not necessarily fully comprehending the words coming out of their mouths. Perhaps there is some truth to that. But is it such a bad thing?
When God gave the Israelites the Law, He commanded them to teach His words to their children, to be talking about them at all times and in all places (Deut. 6:4-9). There is every reason to assume He wishes for us to do the same today - even more so now that His final Word has been spoken through the gospel in Christ.
Sure, my children worship God largely because my wife and I do, and we have taught them to do the same. As they grow, they will need to make the Christian faith more and more their own. Throughout that process, my wife and I count it an awesome privilege to teach them the Bible, to pray with them and for them, and to worship God together with them. This is discipleship on the family scale, church wherever we are - inside the home, around the neighborhood, even in the mini-van.
As my children encounter the joys and struggles of their coming years, childhood to adulthood through old age and into eternity, we pray that by God’s grace we have given them the tools to respond to them appropriately. They will know that God alone is worthy of worship and that Christ traded our sin for his righteousness. They will know to cast all their burdens on Jesus because he cares for them, to rejoice in the Lord always, to be content with much or little, to not grow weary in doing good and to press on toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. They will know these things because Beth and I try our best to practice them, because we speak of them, because we sing about them.
I am far from a perfect father. My wife and I make many mistakes (daily), and my children can go from worshippers of the living God to insane in a matter of minutes. Thank God for grace! For it is by that grace that one day, God-willing, the five of us will stand before the throne of our Heavenly Father and worship Him together, praising Christ with the hosts of heaven and all the saints for creation and redemption. I do not know exactly what that will look like, but I have some small idea of what it will sound like.
Kelly Walker serves as a deacon, teacher, and missionary within his church and overseas, while also shepherding his family of 5 in Houston, Texas.
