Our daughter Jill is here from Oklahoma with her son Drew this week. She arrived Friday evening and is here for some training that is happening on Tuesday and Wednesday in Carmel. Anyway, we were getting ready for Sunday evening dinner and I headed out to the restaurant to get carryout. I returned home, we all sat down to eat and, of course, we settled in for me to say grace.
As I looked across the table, there was Drew, sitting in a chair that I used to have when I was three years old. It’s not a high chair but it is a “high” chair in that it is smaller and taller than regular dinner table chairs. Grandpa got it for me way back when I was too small to sit at the table in a regular chair, but too big for a chair with a tray attached. I remembered sitting in that chair myself on Sunday evenings as we had dinner with Grandpa and Grandma before we sat down to watch the Wonderful World of Disney or the Ed Sullivan Show.
I always sat to Grandpa’s left – right there where he could instruct me as I grew up throughout the years. First it was about table manners and listening quietly as the adults engaged in conversation. Later it was about business, but that was years after I no longer used the special chair… After all, I was the oldest child and Grandpa thought it was really important that I learned all there was to know about leadership in the family… he fully expected me to take the mantel of responsibility some day. But that was far in the future.
On Sunday evenings, our family got to the point where Grandpa thought it was important for the children to say grace. I, as you already know, was oldest, so I had to learn to say grace before my younger brothers. Our family wasn’t very creative in those days, so Grandpa taught me the simplest grace that most of us recall from our childhoods. You know it, I’m sure…
“God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food – Amen…” Well, as I was sitting at the table this evening, all I could think of was saying grace with Grandpa and for some reason, it popped into my head that tonight was the perfect time for Drew to learn the same grace that I learned when I was about his age. So, for the first time with Drew, I said grace one sentence at a time, then he repeated it, until we finished the entire short prayer. He was so proud that he had said grace.
That’s a good lesson for the rest of us. Sometimes, we forget to worship and love God in our daily activities – the things that are so commonplace for us – like grace. The verse for this evening is from Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ My encouragement this evening is to make sure that you pass on the patterns of worship in your family to the younger generations coming up through the ranks. My prayer is that you will be a model of behavior for your family and that you will continue to be an ambassador of the kingdom of God to our future believers. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…