One of the hymns we often sang at school was “Dear Lord and Father of mankind”, the words for which were taken from a poem by John Whittier. The hymn dwells on the tender whisper of the Lord’s call and concludes with an echo of 1 Kings 19 and the Lord’s still, small voice of calm.

With three children under five, my wife and I run an appreciable risk of our words and works drowning out that tender whisper and being drivers of a family vehicle which oscillates between being reactive and cruising on autopilot.

Like all parents, our primary focus is the safety, wellbeing and development of our children. Yet, as our youngest turns one and we come up for air, we are challenged to consider what role our family has to play in the kingdom, and how, in turn, that should direct the use of our time, energy and resources. 

It is tempting and reassuring to follow the same safe and well-trodden path as those around us when it comes to choosing schools, neighbourhood, activities, work, even a church, instead of listening for the tender whisper and asking ourselves what vision the Lord might have for our family. We don’t want to find ourselves coming out the other side of parenthood blinking in the sunlight as one would emerging from a movie theatre in the middle of the afternoon. We don’t want to find ourselves wondering where life had hurried to and what opportunities we might have missed to partner with God in the work we must believe he is doing.

My wife and I don’t have an answer to this problem, but we do have a plan, or perhaps more accurately, an experiment. We have decided to take some time as a couple (and one baby) away from two of the not-so-still and not-so-calm small voices in our life (read: send the children for a weekend with their grandparents) to pray, listen, discern, imagine and plan what this chapter of our lives could look like. In particular, we hope that by choosing which core activities, relationships, fruits and disciplines to focus on, the smaller and secondary decisions may flow more readily and coherently as we grow in our faith as a couple and as a family.

I’m sure there is nothing new in what we plan to do, but it will be new for us and we know God can grow big trees from the smallest seeds. And at worst, I will get a weekend off making porridge.  

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