End of the weekend.

Every week we host a "small" group. We get together with a group of people from all walks of life and talk about the bible and what God is doing in our lives. This last week we ended up talking about our families struggle with "church". Should we go, how much, is it even important. All of these questions we go back and forth on. We like our church that we currantly attend, I mean in all honesty it is a little boring and redundant, but that's not the end of the world and you could argue about whether that should even be a factor in the attending church factor.

So the conversation in our group circled around and around with people on both sides, but no one saying a firm "yes" or "no". Which is nice.

One person in our group who is quiet and thoughtful started talking about his church experience growing up in Pensylvania. He talked about the pastor who was an amazing speaker and about how the building was very historic and had lots of secret tunnels and cool things for little boys to explore. He also talked about the memories of sitting with his mom and dad and getting mints from his grandma.

I thought about what he said in the days that followed and the question arose, "What memories and traditions are we creating for our kids?"

This is such a broad topic, but one worth thinking about. Tradition for tradition sake seams futile and without meaning, so I do want church to be more than memories and good feelings. On the other hand giving our kids the gift of memories is also invaluable in fostering the growth towards whole people.

All these ideas were swirling around in my head competing with the very real fealings of, "just not wanting to go" in me. When I remembered that way back in July I committed to teaching an art lesson second hour at church. This seamed like divine planning!

So, Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed, got the kids ready and we headed out the door with everyone protesting!

Five minutes into the second hour children's time the kids were asking me if we could come back every Sunday. And trully what I saw was not the Sunday school of my childhood church experience, but real learning about Jesus and the bible and real language being used and some good topics being discussed.

It then occured to me that church might not be so much about me anymore and more about what lessons and memories could be written on my children's hearts to carry them through their lives into their adulthood.

Peace on a rainy Sunday evening,

Lucia