Few things are sweeter than seeing our children engage with the Divine Service. When we hear their voices echoing the words of the Lord back to Him in the liturgy and see them following how we as parents model our response to God’s gifts from the pew, it is simply beautiful to witness. It is one of my favorite things, and I love having a resource that assists the cultivation of our children’s engagement in the Enduring Grace Church Year journal.
Growing Up in the Faith
When I was a little kid, I attended church every Sunday with my family—sometimes even two services every Sunday. We also attended Sunday School and midweek youth groups, and my parents, at several points, held a variety of leadership positions in that congregation. Suffice it to say, we were at church a lot, and my young mind, like most young minds, was apt to wander during the service. Or it would yearn to play outside in the sun instead of the endless sitting still that my siblings, friends, and I impatiently withstood.
Enter the good Mrs. Marshall, bless her. She is most assuredly with Jesus now, but back then, Mrs. Marshall was a kindly elder lady who quietly encouraged service participation from the children in our congregation with cold, hard incentivizing—with candy. Specifically, peppermints, strawberry-flavored chews, and that classic, hard butterscotch we all know and love. We children earned it by showing her the notes we’d taken during the sermon, or, in some cases, the doodles we’d created from the Scripture lessons for the day. The memory of these notes, doodles, and that special arrangement with Mrs. Marshall is still sweet to me, even now. And I always smile when I see my daughters reaching for pens and paper to do the same as I did (though, granted, without the benefactor).
A Beloved Church Journal
But now enter Enduring Grace. Until recently, my younger daughter, especially, would tend toward this practice of artistic and studious expression during church. She would scavenge scraps of paper from the bulletin or bring a notebook from home for her musings. But with the Enduring Grace journal for kids, there are built-in sections in each Sunday’s pages for coloring, doodling, and note-taking. This is perfect—not only do we now have a medium in her hands that allows for creativity and budding theological thought, but it also cultivates two other things for our family: (1) it dials my daughter directly into the service, which helps us teach her how to take part with intentionality, and (2) it serves as a cherished connection between our two generations.
Impatient for Heaven
To be fair, we do somewhat incentivize our kids to be patient and to participate on Sundays (though it’s usually with brunch after church in lieu of candy). They’re still young, after all. But you know what? It’s such a realistic depiction of our lot on this earth—impatience and striving until we rest. I find so much joy in the knowledge that the ultimate sweet treat at the end of all our impatient withstanding in this life is the fruit of every Sunday morning: the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus and its saving grace. We sing of it often in our hymns—check out stanza 7 of “Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face”:
Feast after feast thus comes and passes by,
Yet, passing, points to that glad feast above,
Giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy,
The Lamb’s great marriage feast of bliss and love.
—LSB 631
And how can we forget what the psalmist sings?
“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103)
How sweet it is to look forward to that day, and how sweet it is to steep our children in the little taste of eternity we receive in the Lord’s house among His people every week. The Enduring Grace journal for kids has been an excellent means of doing this for our family.
Get your little ones engaged in the church service with Enduring Grace: A Church Year Journal for Kids.
