Failing and Re-Learning Family Worship
Consistent, meaningful times of family worship have long been a goal of mine. When Stacy was pregnant with Jude, she obsessed over cloth diapers and baby slings while I spent my time perusing Amazon and bookstores for resources for family worship. I imagined reading and re-reading the Bible storybooks until we all had them practically memorized. I imagined catechizing Jude and hearing him say with a little kid voice that our chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
With this enthusiasm, I started family worship early with Jude. He was barely able to sit in his high chair when every morning after breakfast we began reading a chapter of The Big Picture Story Bible followed by prayer for our day and for an unreached people group. We did this faithfully for almost a year and a half, but over time we became increasingly frustrated with Jude’s lack of engagement. I would swing him in our backyard in Moldova repeatedly asking him the most basic catechetical question: “Jude, who created you? God. Jude, who created this tree? God. Jude, who created Peanut and Heidi (the dogs)? God.” Over and over and over again, I would ask and answer the creation question just hoping that he would attempt to say, “God,” even if it was only because he thought it an amusing sound to make.
Of course, at this same time, we were becoming aware of Jude’s developmental delays, which has only recently been diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder. Feeling defeated by my inability to gain Jude’s interest, I put the story Bible on the bookshelf and left it there. “Some day in the future,” I told myself, “when we overcome these problems, I’ll start family worship again.” After this came our move back to America and the resultant hectic schedule. Any random attempts to revive family worship have been unsuccessful.
When I saw on my syllabus this semester that Dr. Whitney would be teaching on family worship, I thought cynically, “I’m sure he’s never tried to lead a child on the Autism Spectrum in family worship,” and when the day came for his lecture on the subject, I entered the hour with bitterness in my heart. However, my bitterness dissipated as Dr. Whitney made a point that I had never understood before. I had restricted the goal of family worship to engaging children, but Dr. Whitney emphasized that even newlyweds should be worshiping together through Scripture reading, prayer, and song.
Family worship isn’t for children alone. It is for any and every family member capable of being involved. Stacy Leigh and I both need to worship together. As we fight the spiritual battles of discouragement, depression, and despair, we need to strengthen one another through times of worship together, and, as a husband, it is my duty before God to provide such experiences. Previously, my misguided expectations resulted in an unsuccessful practice. With Advent beginning this Sunday, I want to recommit to the practice of leading my family—and more specifically my wife—in worship. I know that doing so will never be easy as Satan desires to keep us from the worship of God and to deprive our family of spiritual food. Yet, I am confident that a clearer, truer expectation for family worship will result in a more profitable experience, and I hope that one day when Jude is capable of joining us, we will have already established a consistent, meaningful family tradition.
The Bitter Blessing of Autism Spectrum Disorder
No one plans to have a child on the autism spectrum. We review the worlds that we create in our prenatal imaginations and declare, “It is good.” Sure, there are scraped knees and runny noses in those worlds, but we imagine our children to be unhindered by diseases, disorders, or disabilities. In our minds, we create our children in our own image, only better than ourselves. Of course, to some degree or another, we all lose that imaginary world. It just isn’t possible. No child is perfect.
We weren’t surprised when a psychologist diagnosed Jude with Autism Spectrum Disorder earlier this month. The diagnosis was only the culmination of what had been a growing suspicion over the past year. In fact, in many ways, we felt relieved by the diagnosis. We finally knew what was wrong. We finally knew what we were up against. Even so, this knowledge didn’t make life easier. You can never truly appreciate the value of communication until you have a child who cannot communicate. I will never look at words the same after parenting a child who doesn’t know how to use them and only uses whines, screams, and cries in their place. Few things break a parent’s heart more than being unable to give their child words of comfort.
My prenatal imagination was an arrogant act of self-worship, and God, in his kindness, chose to destroy that idolatry. I do not mean that Jude’s autism is God’s punishment for my sin. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). Rather, for the Christian, the trials of this life are means of grace whereby God delivers us from our sin and makes us more like Christ. Paul encouraged the new churches of Galatia with this very thought: “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). God is preparing us for his kingdom. God is taking us down that path, and we know that we are truly on the glorious pilgrimage through the mass of tribulations that we face. Like the newly liberated nation of Israel, he does not take us to the Promised Land via the direct highway because the hard, meandering route through the wilderness displays God’s glory to a greater degree, and only by seeing his all-sufficient, all-satisfying glory in the desert will we be prepared to behold him in the renewed earth where his glory shines like the sun.
I pray that Jude will be healed. I pray that his therapy and diet will be effective, but I don’t question the path of my pilgrimage. I don’t resent the fact that I have a child on the autism spectrum. I am happy and blessed to be Jude’s father. As John Piper has titled a book, this providence is simultaneously sweet and bitter, but I am convinced that God’s world is better than my world. Even though this world is fallen, almighty God continues to direct even the brokenness, in some inexplicable way, for the good of his people and the glory of his name. I praise God for the blessing of Jude. I even praise God for the bitter blessing of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Children need nature for the healthy development of their senses, and, therefore, for learning and creativity. This need is revealed in two ways: by an examination of what happens to the senses of the young when they lose connection with nature; and by witnessing the sensory magic that occurs when young people—even those beyond childhood—are exposed to even the smallest direct experience of a natural setting.
God’s Refreshing Revelation
This weekend I made it a deliberate point to get Jude and myself outside (Stacy Leigh was sick so she didn’t join us much). I wanted to do this because interaction with God’s Creation inevitably results in refreshment for God’s image-bearing creatures. Unfortunately for seminarians, the outdoors are often merely a portal we pass through between home and school and work, and for Jude, I had begun to realize that the outdoors were becoming the place you go through to get to the playground with its Crayola-colored plastic equipment and its mind-deadening swings. Certainly the playground offers lots of fun and some good physical challenges along with obstacles that stimulate problem-solving skills, but there is little wonder and awe in a man-made playground.
So, instead Jude and I headed out to the huge front lawn of the apartment complex. We ran and fell belly-first onto the thick grass. We picked up some of the fallen leaves and acorns to examine them up close, and we played with sticks that had fallen from trees so old they may have observed George Rogers Clark as he founded the city of Louisville. We breathed in the fresh air and felt the genuine refreshment of mind, body, and soul that little else can give.
I received this inspiration from Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods. I must admit that I’ve only read half of it. It was one of those many books I have unwisely begun just weeks before a new semester, which must then be shelved until “someday.” Louv believes that “just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep” they also need contact with nature, and he cites enough sources to back it up (3). Children today suffer from what he terms nature-deficit disorder (He doesn’t mean this as a diagnostic label but merely as a convenient term for identifying and discussing the problem). Recent studies even suggest that a number of modern childhood problems including ADHD, anxiety, and autism can be remedied by contact with the outdoors.
If “the heavens declare the glory of God,” why shouldn’t we be humbled at the sight of them (Psa 19:1)? God’s “invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature” have been clearly revealed “in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20).
No sober-minded Christian would isolate him or herself from God’s special revelation—the Bible—because the Bible is life-giving. It revives the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eyes (Psa 19:7-8), and if God’s special revelation possesses such power, does it not also logically follow that his general revelation of himself through Creation would possess similar—though lesser—power? I think Paul would answer a strong affirmative. Notice what he says to the Gentiles at Lystra: “[God] did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). Isn’t it strange that Paul would point out that God’s revelation of himself in Creation is for the purpose of satisfying the hearts of pagan Gentiles? What is happening through Creation is more than God’s merciful satisfaction of the Lystrans’ stomachs. He is in fact giving them gladness.
Now more than ever, we must learn this truth. Our Western way of life differs from almost the entirety of human history and the majority of the world even today. Agriculture has been misplaced from its central position in our society by industry and technology. Where agriculture is primary, contact with the outdoors is taken for granted. Only we in the West can adequately shelter ourselves—deprive ourselves—from genuine, awe-inspiring contact with Creation, and when we do so we deprive ourselves from a means of blessing. We cut ourselves off from God’s self-revelation in Creation, and we rob ourselves of the rest, refreshment, and gladness that God has designed this world to give to his image-bearing creatures.
We believe in the Incarnation rather than docetism, and yet we try to live a docetic existence rather than enjoying our relationship to Creation, an essential piece to true humanity. Instead, we must practice what we sing: We must in awesome wonder consider all the works God’s hand has made. We must see the stars and hear the mighty thunder and observe God’s power throughout the universe displayed. We must wander through the woods and forest glade to hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees. We must look down from the lofty mountain grandeur and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze, and in this setting we must allow our soul to sing out: “My Savior God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art!”
The goal of the home is not riches or comfort but the praise of God in all things.
