Every once in a while, Ryan and I justify a church skip day by claiming the “God commanded a day of rest” excuse and invoking the home-church substitution. The last time we did this we faced disastrous results (a.k.a. justice?) Our day of extra rest turned into a day of extra yelling at the boys to be quiet so we could “watch church”—a DVD about the Bible. So this time, we were smarter. We decided to have a kid-friendly service, followed by the adult sermon and play-in-your-room Sunday school. Ryan carefully selected a DVD complete with “magic” tricks to help illustrate salvation messages. The boys were really into it. We even paused the show and recreated one particular trick—a cute story to accompany strategic scissor snips that resulted in a folded up cross and the letters “HELL” to contrast two different choices. The boys were even more impressed with our real-life version than they were with the one on the screen. We should’ve quit while we were ahead. Instead, we turned the movie back on to learn some more object lessons.
Let me pause to explain the differing learning styles of our two oldest. Reed, the visual learner, will zone out to the TV as long as it’s on. As soon as we turned the show back on, he was back into it. Calvin, on the other hand, is very kinesthetic. He likes to DO stuff. So, now with something in his hands (a cross and a few choice letters), Calvin began to play. Apparently, he was role-playing, bouncing the cross up and down and declaring repeatedly his character’s name. Ryan warned and warned, but the line that ended it for us all (mainly because we couldn’t hide our slightly sacrilegious laughter) was this, “Calvin, you’re not Jesus. Now do you want a time-out or not?!”
We’ll be in the pews next Sunday.
