The Weekly Word
The greatest tool for bringing your family together might be sitting in your dining room right now. You see that long wooden thing in there on four legs, with chairs gathered around it? That’s right, it’s your dining table and it might just be your family’s best friend.
Back in the day, nightly meals with the family were the norm rather than the exception. It seems that those days, when if you weren’t home by dinner time, everyone was to be seated and eating, you’d have to have a seriously good excuse or you were surely going to get it, are long gone.
Those were the days when parents and children would gather and discuss the day’s happenings, to laugh, to share, to bond. This is where children and TEENagers came to understand what their parents stood for, and in the long run, what their faith stood for.
Around the family table is where family faith was handed down, where children inherited their parents’ values and where they were able to air the day’s victories and heartbreaks with someone who really cared about them.
Sadly enough, a lot of dining room tables are not being used for this any more. They have become work desks, gathering either paper, dust or both. The life which used to come from the sharing of family food and love is no longer there. Each member of the family, which was once thought of as being a unit, has now found their own place of solitude, where they can be their ‘own person’ and disregard the strength and resilience that can be found in unity.
To do this week:
Cook dinner for you and your family. Sit together, even if you don’t have a dining table and just talk about what happened that day or even that week. You’ll be happy you did.