A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Letter, comments or articles may be submitted to the Worship Editor Rev. Calvin Brown, 602 Kootenay St., Nelson, B.C. V1L 1L2.
The practice of family worship, although everywhere encouraged, is often a source of pain and struggle for many of us. In my own home the wiggles and protests of children sometimes make me wonder if this “holy discipline” doesn’t do more harm than good. However I earnestly believe that the neglect of the attempt will do more harm than continuing the struggle. There are those days when glorious breakthroughs seem to occur – everyone is attentive and meaningful dialogue even with pre-schoolers occurs. In the end, I believe that they will at least remember that worship at the family altar was felt to be important and that the word of God and trying to please Jesus were central to who we as a family were. Family worship is only the formal expression of that reality and unless the life of faith and love is expressed in daily integrity then the struggle may do more harm than good.
There are helps for making family worship more meaningful, such as keeping it short, especially with young children; using age-sensitive family material; encouraging everyone to participate; altering the approach from time to time. In the end there may simply have to be at times the enduring witness that traditionally was the long suit of Presbyterians.
The article that follows reminds us of both the struggle and the benefit of the family altar. All three sons of Donald Reid, the man in the account who led his household each day to the altar, are elders in Christian churches. The writer is the eldest son, a former principal at Guelph, Ontario and his two brothers, John and Wilfred Reid are elders at Geneva Presbyterian Church in Chesley, Ontario near the original family home.
The Rev. Calvin Brown
Worship editor
Every morning of the year, and not on Sundays only, there would be family worship in the farm kitchen. This occurred between seven and eight o’clock and involved everyone in the family until the time when we left home to attend school in town or went elsewhere to work. Guests who were relatives took part; hired men did so if they wished; occasional guests like the threshing crew were not expected to participate, but even on threshing days the time of worship was only adjusted so as not to interfere with the work.
First, there were certain preliminaries. Having got out of bed by six in winter, or considerably earlier in other seasons, my father would cut some curly, aromatic shavings, using the butcher knife, from a stove-length of pine or cedar. Adding some torn newspaper and chips from the chipyard, and some fine splinters of maple or beech, he would soon have a fire roaring in the kitchen range. Then he went to the stable for a half-hour of chores, feeding and watering the animals.
As the morning chill of the kitchen gradually disappeared, my mother would have brought the kettle to a boil and made the oatmeal porridge. She would have boiled, fried or scrambled some eggs, or maybe fried some salt pork. Toast would be made in a wire frame, hand-held over the open fire with a stove-lid removed. When my father came back, he said grace.
Our breakfasts never included corn flakes or orange juice or coffee, and tea was for adults. Porridge, with milk and brown sugar, was endured rather than enjoyed. Even now, sixty years later, when I have learned to enjoy it, the sensation of hot oatmeal on the roof of my mouth makes me drowsy, a reversion to the half-awake state in which, as a boy, I began the day. After breakfast, chairs were pushed back, and all were silent. My father took the old pigskin-covered Bible from its place in the kitchen cupboard.
The reading was always done solemnly and quietly, by my father himself. We younger ones listened silently and attentively. The passages read might be from anywhere in the Scriptures and were often the length of a chapter. There was no comment by my father or by anyone. Then, without a word, he would close the book and lay it on the table, dropping to his knees on the floor as he leaned his head on his hands, with his eyes closed, resting on the seat of his chair. All of us did the same.
And then my father prayed, usually beginning, “O God, our Heavenly Father …” He spoke in the same quiet and low-pitched tone in which he had read, almost huskily, in volume slightly lower than in ordinary conversation. It seemed as if God were very close, having no need to be hailed or shouted at. The approach to God was sober, deferential, full of awe and respect. I think I learned from this daily experience what was meant by “the fear of God.” It did not mean fright or terror, but the utmost reverence for the One “whose name is above every name, and before whom every knee shall bow.” Above all, he was there, “closer than hands or feet.” He was real, rock-like in his trustworthiness, and this was so obviously understood by my father and by us that there would not have been the slightest need for any of us children to be reminded that we should be quiet, or that levity was out of place.
The memory of family worship is a reminder that it worked strongly to shape attitudes, convictions, and the deepest parts of our own faith.
I wish I could remember the words of his prayer; but since its length was from five to ten minutes, and, I believe, was never exactly the same on consecutive days, I cannot recall a whole prayer. Some phrases and impressions, though, are unforgettable, many of them reminiscent of the Old Testament. Here are a few:
– “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
– “Thou knowest our frame. Thou rememberest that we are dust.”
– “As for man, his days are as the grass. As the flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it; and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
– “Thou knowest our need before we ask it.”
– “Thou art of too pure eyes to behold iniquity.”
– “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”
– “His mercy endureth forever.”
– “In my Father’s house are many mansions, I go to prepare a place for you.”
Christ and his ministry was often mentioned; but the emphasis was on the Father. We understood the Sonship of Jesus, but I am not sure that we children understood who the Holy Ghost was. Perhaps vaguely we were groping toward understanding, and not without the kind of error into which I fell once. Our minister had used a text containing the words “the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” For a day or two I was in a state of alarm caused by the “zeal,” which I had taken to be a ferocious and predatory animal of some kind.
The style of prayer exemplified by my father was the same as my Uncle Neil’s. I heard Uncle Neil pray occasionally when I happened to be at his place for morning worship. In the same tradition too was our neighbour, Alex MacKay, who acted as a teacher and as superintendent in the Sunday School held in the summer in the local Cantire school building. I suppose praying of this kind was in the solemn Calvinist mold, full of a sense of the majesty of God the Father, almighty, eternal, and in an earlier day also described as the terrible, the punisher of sinners.
I experienced later a very different style of prayer in a community with a different heritage. Here, not in morning family worship, but in the regular church service, in prayer meetings, and in sessions of the young people or of other groups, it was common for brother So-and-so to be asked, without previous notice, to “give a word of prayer,” whereupon the brother so summoned would respond with the utmost readiness and fluency. Although equally reverent, the approach was far more impromptu, informal, and apparently light-hearted than in those prayers with which I had been familiar. The pitch of the voice was higher, and inflected in a conversational rather than a solemn manner. The vocabulary was colloquial and ordinary rather than in the continuously biblical strain which I knew. There were many references to the gospel of eighteenth and nineteenth century evangelism. Petitions were often specific, for real and concrete blessings in the world of here and now, as well as in the hereafter. The spontaneity and vitality of these prayers was very evident.
I cannot say that either of these approaches was more genuine or effective than the other; but I had learned to expect the first.
I think that we youngsters realized that the custom of family worship even then was not observed in many of our neighbours’ homes and was declining everywhere. It has long ago all but disappeared in my generation. We were conscious, very conscious, that our ways were becoming increasingly different from those of our own father’s; and we know that the change goes on still. The memory of family worship is a reminder that it worked strongly to shape attitudes, convictions, and the deepest parts of our own faith.
Perhaps my father’s prayers which so often asked God to “lighten our darkness,” have been more fully answered than he could know. His everyday speech only rarely used the biblical phrases of which his prayers were made. The lofty and poetic language of the Bible seemed suitable for addressing God in a contact which was never ordinary even if it was daily. I cannot remember a single act of my father in which he did not try to follow those Christian principles of which he spoke in our family worship.