Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

Pastor's Pen's:
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Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2007

Grace Church of Burlington December 30, 2007 “Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.”    Proverbs 15:17             I hope all of you have recovered from a wonderful Christmas Day feast. This past week millions of American families gathered around the dinner table, even if some of them had to be dragged away from the new game, gadget or toy. Most of them gorged themselves on special food specifically prepared for this joyous occasion of Christmas. Some people flew or drove hundreds of miles to be together. Christmas is important enough to us that we will make great effort to gather with our loved ones around the table. But what about the other 364 days of the year?             Sadly, for many families, the effort of gathering for a family meal on an ordinary day is just too much, it seems. Parents have to work late. Kids have soccer practice or band practice or dance practice. Sometimes they are practicing practice. In the frantic effort to juggle schedules and make sure nobody goes hungry, it is often easier to feed the kids fast food, or everybody eats on the run.             And though we know there is something wrong with this state of affairs, we don't always realize how serious the problem is. After all, it's just a meal, right? That's why Miriam Weinstein's book, The Surprising Power of Family Meals, is so valuable. As other authors have done, Weinstein tells us fewer and fewer families are taking the time to eat dinner together. Then she delves into the reasons why we should eat with our families, looking at various studies on the benefits of family dinners. Believe it or not, researchers have carefully studied dinnertime—from the kind of conversation that goes on around the table to the lifelong effect that regular mealtimes have on children's eating habits.             The research indicates that many young adults with eating disorders never had a regular dinnertime when they were growing up. They literally never learned how to eat a proper meal. Weinstein tells us that when the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse studied ways to keep kids from destructive behaviors, family dinners were “more important than church attendance, more important even than grades at school.” The Center has repeated that study several times since then, "and every year, eating supper together regularly as a family tops the list of variables that are within our control."             The fact is that there is a lot more to family dinners than meets the eye. They have "the power of ritual," giving parents and kids the chance to connect, adding a sense of security to the daily routine. They’re an opportunity for parents to teach about family history and traditions, so that they give kids a sense of identity. Even dysfunctional families seem to work just a little bit better when they make time to eat together. The point is, family meals are not just about food. As Weinstein puts it, "Supper is about nourishment of all kinds." That includes physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.             We’re on the verge of a new year. Let me encourage you to make the family meal time a priority. Remember: Eating together can make a big difference for us and our children when this year's Christmas dinner is just a distant memory. And around the Carson household, we put it something like this, “United we stand, provided we eat.”