Home School Opera

We live in a world of sound pollution-too much sound all the time. We spend so much time listening to indiscriminate sounds that we often fail to hear the music of life. We need to reduce the pollution and start listening to the most imported music-the sound that makes a Christian household a Christian household.

There is music in the sound of family worshipping the Lord together. There is music in the sound of babies laughing, of children studying at the family table, of sisters preparing meals for their family, and of mom's reading bedtime stories to little ones. When these sounds truly reflect hearts that long to please their heavenly father, they make up the aroma of life well lived before the Lord.

Of course, the most beautiful music to a fathers ear are any sounds which allow him to experience the blessing of which his children walked in truth. On this point Jesus Christ, the author of the Holy Scripture, wrote, "I have no greater joy then to hear that my children walk in truth" 3 John 1:4. I am persuaded that the sounds of a household are a window into the soul of the family.

For most American families today, the sounds being projected today are filled with the noise pollution of the television or even with the discordant shouts of family turmoil. In other cases, the modern household is an empty tomb-a shadow of what family life was meant to be. In these households, there is little sound because there are no children. Or perhaps the silence stems from years of family fragmentation in which mother, father, and children each have their own individualized lives largely lived out far from home.

The Christian household is meant to be different. It is a place of love and living.

And that means noise. It means houses filled with the glorious echoes of babies crying, of children playing, of mothers teaching, of fathers training, and even a few animals chirping, meowing, or woofing. It means life with all it's glory, sadness, and joy. It means happy homes of highly eccentric families, each with their own unique vision, style, personality traits, and expressions.

These homes are not museums. That means that they are rarely immaculate. Gloriously organized chaos is sometimes a more apt description. They are homes made up of grateful and forgiving sinners who recognize that their is no greater joy then to daily experience the nobility of the commonplace, for the simple disciplines of Christian life-prayers, studies, work-to the thrill of watching fathers eating the fruit of their labor, of moms who radiate the glory of being fruitful vines, and of brothers and sisters who gather around the family table like precious olive plants Psalms 128.

Look for these households. For there number is growing. They are part of a great spiritual work where the hearts of the parents are turning to their children and the children to their parents Malachi 4:6. And when you find them, listen. If you listen carefully enough, you may hear the sounds of little children singing. They will likely be singing psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, or perhaps even the sweet refrains of nursery rhymes and childhood ditties.

But for my taste, there is no sound as exalting to the spirit then the sometimes melodious but always enchanting, lyric exclamations of little ones engaged in a sacred art of home school opera.

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. "1 Chronicles 16:29"


Excerpts from The Little Boy Down The Road by Douglas W. Philips