Keeping Opportunity on the Menu.

As a Christian parent, I know that I'm supposed to initiate all manner of deep spiritual conversations with my kids, right? My wife and I generally use the family mealtime following Sunday worship to try to stir up said conversations. Perhaps you can relate to such attempts often falling pretty flat, as the aim of our two teenage sons, on such occasions, seems to be to maintain the highest level of brevity toward our “getting all spiritual”. Nonetheless, perhaps partly out of a sense of duty and partly out of a sense of longing and hope, we continue to prod away, week after week.

How marvelous it was one weekday when one of my boys, unsolicited by either his mother or me, suddenly began sharing about what he was learning in Bible class. Not only did his comments lead to an invigorating conversation, but it left us encouraged and deeply grateful that this child of ours was genuinely excited by God's word.

Now, it may be that this exchange would have happened even if we hadn't established a casual culture of sharing on a spiritual level around the dinner table; however, a part of me can't help but wonder if having established that sort of tradition didn't make it just a little bit easier for this teen boy to open up and "get all spiritual".

Stu Duncan

Project BestLife Educator