A Healthy Habit

It's Sunday morning and I am going to go to church. I do this every Sunday and have done this all of my life. It's my habit. Not all habits are bad habits but that seems to be all we ever hear about. It's important to develop healthy habits and make them part of our very being.

As parents we need to foster healthy habits in our children too and this goes beyond just giving them healthy food choices. It goes towards their spiritual health too. As a pastor's wife I have heard just about every excuse under the sun as to why people don't attend church but I think my all time least favourite one as to why they don't bring their children to church is this: "I want them to make that choice for themselves". Maybe I'm just not getting it, but if you never expose your child to Sunday School or church services, why would they ever choose to go once they are older? I have never eaten a kumquat, and eating one is not part of my weekly routine, so why would I just suddenly want to eat one? Yes, there is a chance that someone could invite me to try one and I might but it would be something so foreign that I may not even want to try one. Do you see my point?

When my younger brother was around ten years old he came into the kitchen in his pyjamas one Sunday morning and asked if he had to go to church today. My mother answered him with 'is it Sunday?' and that was the end of that discussion. What she was saying is that church attendance is not an option. It's pretty simple: it's Sunday so you go to church. Maybe that seems pretty hardlined to you but my mother also made us eat all our vegetables and brush our teeth every day and go to school. Yup, she was pretty hardlined about things that were good for us. She didn't say 'I'll let them choose for themselves if they want to brush their teeth or go to schhol or eat their vegetables', no she made that decision for us and I'm glad she did.

The psalmist David said "Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." Psalm 23:6 and in Psalm 84:10 he says: "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked."  And my favourite says: "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple." Psalm 27:4

 He was determined to be in the house of the Lord forever. That's a healthy habit we can all adopt. God bless.