I had a chance to talk to my neighbor yesterday, and he said something that caught my attention. "We are having dinner together as a family again," he said, "and I don't remember the last time that happened." Obviously because of the quarantine, everyone is home, everything is closed, and it is bringing back something that apparently is not happening very often in American households anymore. After the conversation, I kept thinking about this and remembered that on the radio a few days ago the host of a Christian radio station also said something along the same lines, expect she said, "Before, we would grab our plate and go eat in front of a TV." To me, this is somewhat shocking. Maybe I'm just too old school, but eating dinner in different corners of the house is just crazy to me. Now, I'm not here to write on how you should eat your dinner, but I think it does shed some light on family dynamics.
Looking at some recent statistics, over 60% of kids feel like their parents are too busy to talk to them, and over 80% of parents feel like their kids don't want to talk to them. You don't have to look far to find a child who does not have a good relationship with their parents. Having the opportunity to talk to many young people that still live at home with their parents, I see the evidence of this, and a lack of relationship is usually due to little or no communication. Growing up, my parents would literally force us kids to sit down and just talk about our day and on various topics that never seemed of much importance to me. I am grateful to God for the relationship I have with my parents, and I believe it is in part due to their effort to gather us together for family time and dialogue.
Throughout this entire quarantine, I know there are many lessons God is trying to teach us, and I've been thinking and praying to understand what those might be. It would be tragic to go through something like this and not take anything away from it. This morning, while praying, I had my Bible out in front of me, and I was praying that exact prayer "Lord, help us understand what it is you might be trying to tell us." I never usually do this, but for some reason I opened the Bible randomly while still having my eyes closed, and the Bible opened to Malachi 4:6. If you are familiar with this verse, this is the last verse of the Old Testament, and in my personal Bible, it is the only verse on the entire page, and on the next page over is the New Testament divider, so it is literally the only Bible verse I had the option of reading, and it says, "He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse."
Perhaps in the side effects of what is happening, while families are locked up in the house for a few months, God is working to bring us a little closer together. The devil has an agenda to destroy the family-- to plant dissension, distrust, miscommunication, and even hate. Those who live with their parents, or parents who have kids, take some time to have heart-to-heart conversations with them. Right some wrongs, forgive some old feuds, swallow some pride, and allow God to restore the heart of the parents to the children and children to the parents.
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