Bunk-Bed Gravity, Getting My Groove On, and My Singing Kids

[Ed's note: over the weekend my wife went to a baby shower of some old college friends who complained that my posts of late had been overly-theological and not enough cute kid stories. I hope that this post might assuage my mommy demographic. To the ladies of Labor Day!]

The de facto arrangement between my wife and I is that I bat lead-off and clean-up with the kids. I get up with them and get them breakfast and get the day started. And I put them to bed at night--stories, songs, prayers. She does all the hard stuff: life in-between.

In my extended family I am surrounded by musical genius. My mom, grandfather, and multiple aunts and cousins are (or were at one point) professional musicians. Those genes somehow skipped over me. I'm not abysmal musically, just extremely average.

But at night, singing to my kids, I'm a rock star. They most often request "campus songs"--worship songs that we would sing at our weekly large group meeting or that they heard at Rockbridge, our year-end camp that my kids attend along with the students.

And recently their favorite song is a gospel song, "Bless the Lord," which is one of the coolest songs ever. And of course, since it's a gospel song it requires not just vocals but a little groove as well. If you've never heard it you can groove and listen to it here for yourself.

We've sung "Bless the Lord" so much over the past six weeks that they know it by heart now. So this week instead of me singing to them at bedtime, all three of them delight to sing the song to me. Each night, I get a solo (or accompanied by dad) performance of a song where they command their soul (like the Psalmist does) to "bless the Lord."

Unfortunately, they have their father's singing voice. But worshipping alongside my two, four, and six year old is enough to make me well up with joy each night.

I can hear the angry cynic's objection: "You're just socializing your kids into singing a song to a 'God' who might not even exist. Why not just let them make their own decision? Why must you force them into something that works for you but not not work for them?"

My response: guilty as charged.

I am raising up my kids to worship the God who made them. I believe that this is as much a fact as the realities of gravity. I am teaching them to trust and revere and understand the workings of gravity in ways that they can understand at this stage. And of course they will understand much more as they grow.

But they need to know some things about gravity now--that they need to be careful coming down the stairs, that the railing on the bunk bed is there to keep them safe at night.

And I am teaching them to worship the God who made them. If they do not worship Him, they will worship something else that will enslave them. My kids were made to worship Jesus. That's what ultimately will make them most human. One day, by God's grace, we will all five worship God together in perfect and un-ending joy forever more.

And they will have many decisions to make as they grow up. What will they do with gravity and what they will do with the God who made them to worship him are both important decisions. I cannot make those decisions for them and I do not wish to do so.

But in the mean time, we will talk about the workings of gravity and we will sing worship songs to God together. We will bless the Lord together now in the hopes that they will grow up into a full-fledged understanding of who they're worshipping--and why.

The songs will change, as will their understanding of why we would sing at all. But the God and the gravity that are ever-present in their lives demand recognition now. And so we'll sing.

I'm just relieved that they don't keep score of my musical abilities.