Before my wife, Gloria, and I even married, we vowed to establish a rock-solid family tradition of daily devotions together. But after almost 25 years of marriage and building a family, we could count on a single hand the longest streak of consecutive days when every member had come together for family worship or devotions or Scripture reading. From one year to the next, our routines only got busier. Even the responsibilities of Christian ministry seemed to be an obstacle of our family devotion time.
Then in March 2020, Coronavirus came to town in a big way, and everything changed. Shutdown. Quarantine. Isolation. Like most, my family sequestered together. It wasn’t but a few days into “Stay Home—Save Lives” when instead of going to our corners of the house and our electronics, we stayed seated together after the evening meal and opened the Book. Actually, we turned the Book on, on our phones.
Since then, in the seemingly endless expanse of the constantly shifting sands of misinformation, opinions posing as facts, and outright lies in the guise of truths, God has put on display the superiority of his unchanging word. Since starting our daily family devotions, my family has hardly missed a day to sink our roots into God’s word together. And when there have been those rare occasions to miss, two rounds are scheduled for the following day—not because we have to, but because we want to. We need to sit together in God’s word and in his presence.
So what’s the new record, you may ask. How many consecutive days of devotions have we had together? Who knows? We stopped counting when we ran out of hands, fingers, and thumbs. It’s a habit. It’s becoming a tradition. Long after this awful season becomes a memory, God’s word will prove trustworthy.
“The entirety of your word is truth, each of your righteous judgments endures forever” (Psalm 119:160).
John Yi is an IBSA church planting catalyst in northeast Illinois.