family worship

living in japan has been pretty tough to go to church on sundays. school functions, PTA functions, ikuseikai events, and ballet rehearsals always fall on sundays and sadly, this past 4 sundays were filled with one of those events and we weren't able to go to church at all. my son commented how he wished there were saturday worship service (like the one in CA Assembly) so we won't feel dry (spiritually) during the week. i so agree! for me, i can tap into sunday worship services online but my kids' attention span is short when watching the sermon on computer screen. so, i suggested we do a family worship/bible study at home.

i vividly remember the family worship we had when i was young with my family. my dad pulled the reading from luke 8. yup, the parable of the sower. having a fond memory of how much i've learned from each other, i did the same. it was good to read the scripture in japanese and english at loud. for every places, we had imagined how it would be like. it was like an enlightment of what actually the soil would look like in our time. my daughter shared that the seed on path is like the road in front of our house where there's lots of cars passing by. the seed fell on the rock is like our pathway where there are a thin layer of dirt here and there but nothing really grows. for the seed among the thorns, my son suggested it as just like ojichan's rose garden with ivy. ivy is so strong that nothing else grows there. lastly, the good soil is like our friend's hatake where she grows satsumaimo and spinich which grows in size bigger than the ones bought in stores. when discussing what seed, sower, and the soil represent, my daughter was like... "aaaaah! so dattano?" (translation: that's what it means!) then we went around sharing how our soil is like and how can we try to be a better soil... even though my kids know the parable very well, it was good to verbalize their thoughts and share more deeply of how we can grow in Christ and how we can yield a crop (reaching out to our friends. )

after spending time in prayer, my kids' really loved the family worship and my son asked, "can we do this more often?" my heart cried out, "yeay!" but then my daughter said, "it's better than worship service at church!" oh oh! i hope they don't see this as a replacement of sunday worship at church!