On a recent Sunday morning, I had trouble paying attention in worship. A single mom and her two kids sat in the pew in front of us. It was a difficult Sunday for that little family. The middle school daughter was visibly upset over something, and her younger brother was a tornado in the pew. He was pure energy. Mom did her best to console the girl and quiet the boy. Mom really did a beautiful job of loving her children in real time, but they were terribly distracted, and by extension, so were all who sat around them. My wife and I wrote little notes to one another, and passed winks and half smiles to rally one another with patience. I kept saying to myself, “It’s okay that you are distracted. This mom and her kids need to be here every bit as much as you do. AND Jesus WANTS them here every bit as much as he wants you here.” Still it was a challenge to pay attention. Finally, Mom made one last ditch effort to keep her son somewhat contained - she got out a backpack and unloaded markers, and crayons, and colored pencils, spiral notebooks and Sunday School papers. The boy took the supplies and went to work. He spun out of the pew onto the floor and spread his papers and notebooks across the seat and went to work scribbling manically. At one point we were directed to stand to sing a hymn, or recite a creed, and I glanced down in the pew in front of us and saw the debris the little tornado left strewn behind him. It was a ROUGH morning. Then, as ushers moved down the aisles passing offering plates up and down, they passed by Mom and her little family. The little tornado called out in a loud whisper, “WAIT!” The usher moved back one pew as the boy rifled back and forth through one of his spiral notebooks until he found the drawing he was looking for. He ripped it out and dropped it in the offering plate. The boy looked up at the usher and smiled. The usher smiled back. Unseen by anyone else, I smiled in the pew behind.
By anyone’s account the little tornado got NOTHING out of that worship service. Or did he? Maybe, somehow in the midst of his own little storm, Jesus met him, out of view and notice of the rest of us. One thing is sure. The most valuable offering made that Sunday was the drawing dropped in the plate by a boy having a hard Sunday.
That’s the way it often goes in family worship, too. Many times in family worship it appears as if nothing much is happening - the kids don’t seem to be paying attention, not willingly anyway, and parents are dutiful but no more engaged than the kids. Sometimes in family worship, everyone seems checked out and elsewhere. There are times when family worship seems to have no effect on us at all. But that’s only according to what we can SEE. Most of it happens out of sight, beyond our reason and ability to read the evidence. Then, after weeks of apparent futility, someone says something that makes us realize Jesus has NEVER stopped working AMONG and IN us.
Family worship is an ordinary miracle like so many other miracles of Jesus. When Jesus fed the 5000, no one saw what happened until the end. At the start, Jesus took 5 loaves and 2 fish and blessed them and passed them around. And they never ran out. It didn’t look like there was nearly enough, but it never ran out. We want the miracle to look like a lunch instantly transformed to a mountain of food at the start of it - BEFORE it is passed around. But Jesus does something more beautiful. More faith inducing. More breathless, thank God. And he does the same in family worship. You’d swear NOTHING is happening. You’d SWEAR it. And you’d be wrong. Jesus NEVER stops working AMONG us and IN us. He works in our kids who are as well behaved as cherubs, and he works in our little saintly tornadoes, too. Jesus LOVES little tornadoes. Thank God.
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