Family Faith and Fun Fridays: On Juggling and Jesus
For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. -Hebrews 4:12Welcome to Family Faith and Fun Fridays!
As the week winds down and I anticipate more family time over the weekend, I often ask God for one good idea that will enable me to bring the Word to life and bring our family together. Usually, the activity overflows out of something the Lord has been teaching me through the scriptures.
Are you ready for some family fun? We’d love to have you join us as we seek to fan the flames of faith and let the Word of Christ to have the run of our house!
On Juggling and Jesus…
For me, one of the hardest parts of leaving summer behind is gearing up for the juggle that comes with a new school year. Sport practices, homework, youth group, piano lessons, dance class–the calendar becomes a jammed jumble of schedules and reminders.
And, sadly, our true priority isn’t scribbled on the calendar squares. Time with Jesus doesn’t get highlighted in pink and marked down on the daily agenda. But it should!
But decades of school years have taught me that time in the Word and in prayer, time spent discussing faith issues and just lingering with Jesus in quiet moments doesn’t just happen naturally, especially during the bustle of a busy school year. Keeping Jesus first in the tug and pull of life is a choice.
This is the reality that we’ve been talking about at our house lately. How do we seek first His kingdom in the midst of homework and football games and trumpet practice? How do we continue to walk closely with Jesus even on the days when we’re racing from school to the soccer field?
The truth is, we can’t have it all. And neither can our kids.
No matter what the world says, we simply can not pursue a dozen things and chase Jesus, too. If we want Jesus to be our first love, we must keep Him first. He won’t just become our priority by happen-chance.
In order to help my children understand this, we staged a simple game of catch in the backyard.
I took six tennis balls and used a Sharpie to mark just one with a small red cross.
Then we placed the kids on the trampoline while Rob stood on the deck with all six balls in hand.
(You can easily do this without a deck or a trampoline. Just find a spot outside where you can stand about ten feet away from your child and throw six balls high in the air.)
We told the kids that we were going to toss all the balls at once and the object of the game was to catch as many balls in one try as they could.
As expected, when Rob tossed the six balls, most of our participants didn’t even catch one.
We gave each child three tries to catch the balls and the results continued to be the same.
At one point, our eldest did catch one ball, but it wasn’t the ball marked with a cross.
( If by some odd chance your child would catch the cross ball, just do the activity several times in a row-that will prove just how difficult it is to consistently catch that specific ball in the midst of all the others. )
After everyone had taken enough turns, we talked about what we could learn from such a simple exercise.
I explained that the six balls represent different parts of our school year.
One ball represents school and school work, another represents sports, another music lessons, another time with friends, yet another chores at home. And one ball- I showed them the ball with the cross drawn on it- represents one-on-one time spent with Jesus.
Then I asked, “Why was it so hard to catch the balls?”
The kids responded, “Because they were all coming at us at once.”
“Did anybody catch the cross?”
No one had.
“What could we do to improve your chances of catching this ball with the cross on it?”
Lizzy suggested that we throw the cross tennis ball first.
And so we tried it again, this time tossing the cross ball first.
We instructed the kids to secure that ball before we threw any others. We encouraged them to reach for it and chase it and get it in their hands even if they didn’t catch it on the first try.
And that’s what they did. They focused on catching the one ball that mattered and each child succeeded in that challenge.
Once the cross was in hand, we threw the rest of the tennis balls.
When round two was finished, I asked,
“What can we learn from this little game?”
The kids’ answers stated the obvious:
*We won’t just naturally “catch” time with Jesus.
*It’s easy to let our time in the Word slip when we start juggling lots of other things.
*It’s hard to do lots of things at once.
*Jesus can just get clumped in with all the rest of our activities if we don’t deliberately keep Him first.
* We’ll probably miss out on our time with Jesus if we don’t set aside time to be focused on only Him.
We wrapped up our family time with this simple question, “What is your plan to keep Jesus first this school year?”
Each school-ager came up with a personal plan for reading the Bible and spending time with Jesus. And we all agreed that we would help hold one another accountable as the year progressed.
Now, if only this juggling mama can remember the lesson of the tennis balls and keep first things first!
How about you, friends? How do you keep Jesus first as you juggle your way through your days? I’d love to hear from you!
The Overflow: But put God’s kingdom first. Do what he wants you to do…. Matthew 6:33a
Your creativity never ceases to awe me, Alicia.
Thank you for this practical illustration.
(And for those great “action” pics!)
Are we twins or do you just happen to always hit my emotions dead on??? Mark and I were seriously talking about this an hour ago! I love the demonstration…and I will be doing this with my kids for family night this week! It’s perfect!! I miss and adore you!
This is a fascinating blog! I want to use this post to tell the same things to my kids. Thank you.
What a wonderful activity! So creative in illustrating this truth. Thank you for sharing this beautiful picture of your family time, Alicia.
wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! I love the ball game idea. We struggled with the same thing so we have set times now where we stop and read God’s Word together as a family. Usually after breakfast, lunch and dinner. We homeschool so we are able to make three definite stops during the day, but 2 would be a start too. It has sparked some great discussions about what we have read in His Word 🙂 Thanks for your kind comment on my blog xo