By Krissa Rumsey
I love car rides and road trips. The longer, the better. When I consider why I love them so much, I think it boils down to the opportunities they provide for uninterrupted interaction with my family (provided I can get the kids to unplug from their iPods and iPads.) Where else are your children confined in a 4 x 6 space where they cannot run away from you without risking serious injury?
And, for me, being confined in a moving vehicle means I cannot be distracted by the load of laundry waiting to be folded or the dust that has settled, yet again, on the sofa table and several lamp bases. There is nothing but the presence of people I enjoy who are, similarly, not distracted by their own daily tasks, chores, and neighborhood friends.
Recently, given the virtues of car travel, I’ve concluded that there is almost no better place to spend time in family devotion. My oldest daughter has been heavily involved with a travel softball team. This means we travel to many weekend tournaments.
Some are 30 minutes away, and others are nearly an hour. I was distressed, at first, to learn that many of these tournaments require Sunday morning games.
I mean, really distressed. And, although I’m ashamed to admit it, I used to chastise parents who allowed their children to be involved in Sunday morning activities outside of church. Now, I am one of those parents and, surprisingly, am not so quick to judge.
To ameliorate our initial guilt, my husband and I decided to use our time in the car, traveling to said tournaments and games, as devotional time. We’ve been reading a book by Chuck Strobel called The Case for Christ: For Kids.
It presents a discussion of who Christ really is, refuting the arguments that skeptics may use to question Him. My girls enjoy taking turns reading, and, although we are usually still transitioning our brains from sleepy to alert, we attempt to respond to the discussion questions Strobel poses.
Being away from our church family on Sunday mornings is certainly not ideal, but we do try to honor the Lord by spending time with Him as a family in the car. My prayer is that this prepares us to follow Jesus more closely and demonstrate His love to our newfound softball family on and off the playing field.
To read another blog on devotions in the car check out Pastor Justin’s blog Prayer on the Go.
To read another blog on family devotions check out Steve and Jamie Wiechman’s post An Ongoing Conversation with God.
Read more from our Summer Family Discipleship blog series.
