Bittersweet Farm

Snow Day on Bittersweet Farm

It’s a snow day out on Bittersweet Farm. Snow days are “hole-up-and-write” days for me. I get up in the corner of my room next to the window looking out on the woods across the road to the south, and I put my head down and write. A couple years ago I finished my book Finding Bittersweet during a couple wonderful snow days when no one expects anything of you. I brew coffee and put on comfortable clothes and just start klacking away on the keyboard. On a snow day do you get off work? How do you like to spend a snow day? Do you have a unique snow day memory?

Maybe We Should Hit The “Reset Button” on Church.

I’ve been thinking about church and homes that honor God and influence children to love God and follow God.

In our home growing up Saturdays were pretty utilitarian. Dad was a pastor and a school teacher most of the time so we had things to get done on Saturday. There were chores and care maintenance. In the fall there was usually time for a football game. Sometimes we listened to the game on the radio while working on the car. At about six o’clock in the evening on Saturdays there was an atmospheric change. We began to prepare for the Lord’s Day. We shined shoes and lined them up. We laid out clothes. We prepared the care. We studied our lessons. Back then we called it “Doing our Quarterly.” We laid out our clothes. Mom practiced her music. Dad put the finishing flourishes on his sermon. The atmosphere just changed.

When Lois and I were raising the kids I would study on Saturday night and Lois would listen to gospel music on the radio and spit-shine the kids and get them ready. For forty years in a row she had them lined up on the pastor’s pew on Sunday morning, sitting, clothed, and in their right minds. They were always there and they looked good and behaved well like clockwork. We had a routine and a ritual and a tradition and it grew out of our desire to put Jesus first in our home. We believed that God’s ways were best and God’s ways involved faithfulness in God’s church.

Sunday afternoons were for Sunday dinner and naps and Sunday nights back then were devoted to evening church and occasional youth activities. The boys played baseball, but not on Sunday. We set aside the Lord’s Day for worship. Sunday night we would order a couple pizzas and find something tolerable to watch on television together as a family. When the kids started dating and courting and sparking and romancing, we would usually have someone over for the evening.

In the last year church life has been, for the most part, legitimately disrupted and interrupted. There are those who have had good reason not to assemble. Many who love the Lord have been legitimately cautious, but this has taken a toll on churches and the time has some now for faithful people to return to patterns of faithfulness—even if the whole culture is collectively ignoring God, the faithful should be faithful. What patterns of faithfulness have you established? What do you do in place of obeying God? Who or what do you serve when you should be serving God?

Maybe it is time for a family meeting.