Discipline

My boys do I Am 3rd basketball. I have no complaints about it, really. It's a good league. The basketball instruction is solid. I don't mind the combination of the religious and the athletic. There's a fair amount of discipline in both. It seems appropriate. But I do wonder about the devotional time before each game.

We're in a noisy gym right now. I'm typing this from my phone. It's chaotic, almost unsettlingly so. There's two games underway right now with two more about to start. There's kids everywhere, and all of the energy and bustle and noise that comes with that. And yet, before the next games tip off, all of the kids will be gathered together amidst this chaos to read scripture and pray together. This is somehow existentially jarring to me.

Why do we do this? Are we checking off the spiritual box before we can do the physical? Is reading the Bible and praying together that which must be endured before we get to what we want to be doing?

Obviously I have no issue with daily devotion. I think following Christ pretty much demands it. But how much can you get out of it in this environment? Are we teaching our children that this is a requirement, something to be endured before they can do what they REALLY want to? I don't want to view this too harshly. Is the assumption that we as parents are not doing our job to teach our children to follow God and so it must be done by someone else in this crazy environment?

I set aside time each morning to sit in the quiet and stillness and seek to know and to follow the will of God. Can that be done in the chaotic, as well? I just don't know what to make of it. I'm not against it, I just don't understand.