Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Heaven: List three things you’d like to do when you get there.” A simple activity to conclude our family worship focused on the events after the Second Coming and the millennium. Seven of us wrote down our top three wishes and placed them on the table. Then each of us had to guess whose wish list we were reading. The room was filled with surprises and laughter. We enjoyed this activity. We had something to look forward to.

The lists contained a wide variety of wishes ranging from flying with angels, visiting other worlds, riding a lion or a wolf, to asking Jesus how we even made it, and thanking Him for His boundless love. The wishes spoke of our desire to be part of God’s glorious kingdom. In the midst of a pandemic, the hope of meeting Jesus and being part of His kingdom keeps burning within.

COVID-19 has slowed down life and has brought us back to basics. We are in survival mode. As a new normal is taking shape, we are led to ponder the times we are living in. While some look for temporary accommodations and others try to make ends meet, many are just grateful for food on their tables and jobs they still have.

My husband recently said, “God has brought us where He wants us to be, at home.” Home is where worship, values, and relationships are cultivated. Home is where courage is built and love is grown. For far too long Satan has managed to fill our lives with busy schedules and many distractions. This has limited quality family time. Now we have the chance to start over, to reset, to rebuild our families on a Christ-centered foundation.

God has His ways of getting our attention. When we worship, at first there is a spark, then a flame that burns within us but never consumes us. Family worship is a means of speaking to God as a group—then listening for His voice. Worshipping God as a family during the lockdown helps us to reconnect and draw closer to our Savior.

This time of uncertainty has helped me understand my human need of a divine Savior. When I read John’s descriptions of the heavenly throne room (Rev. 5:11), with myriads of angels and heavenly beings honoring the Lamb of God, I realize that God is worthy of our worship. Our Creator is worthy of all praise. When we worship Him, we experience a longing quenched, and an emptiness made whole. We find our worth in Him, in the One we worship.

We often spend our lives warming ourselves by the fires of other people’s stories and spiritual experiences. It’s time to experience God for ourselves— personally and wholeheartedly. No matter how cold and broken the hallelujah might be, we are promised that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18, NIV).

Ellen White writes, “If ever there was a time when every house should be a house of prayer, it is now.”* We are rediscovering the spiritual importance of the family unit, the building block of society, church, and nation. We can also see this on the campus of Lowry Memorial College. We hear our neighbors singing and worshipping each evening. Their songs and prayers are encouraging and remind us that God is at work. When a family worships together, the forces of darkness tremble at the name of Jesus, family bonds are strengthened, and God is able to use them to bless the world.

* Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1948), vol. 7, p. 42.