Book 2 of 15: Family Worship by Donald S. Whitney

Family Worship: in the Bible, in History and in Your Home by Donald S. Whitney is very short - a break from yesterday's long-haul. It reads like a college essay, but a very good one, making its points in brief, clear language.

Whitney argues that family worship - basically, a daily family devotional time consisting of prayer, Bible-reading and singing - should be practiced in every Christian family. He acknowledges that this is not explicitly stated in the Bible but argues that it's very easy to infer it, and also that it's clear it has been regularly practiced throughout church history.

The "throughout church history" part is where Whitney shows his bias most clearly: he gives one  example from the New Testament era church and then skips all the way forward to the Reformation and past for the rest of his examples. He also places a big emphasis on the devotions being led by the father of the family - and possibly even the oldest son, in a fatherless family. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the flavor was, to me at least, very Southern Baptist.

But I did enjoy reading his exhortations to lead our children in prayer. The whole tone is very straight-forward and sincere. I was encouraged by this to add singing back to our family prayer time at night. It slipped out sometime this past year, and I appreciated the reminder that home is also a good place to sing praises to the Lord.

In other news: I'm enjoying this challenge. I know my selections are sort of odd: they really just are the books that have been accumulating, unread, on my shelves. Since today's Sunday, I'm letting myself enjoy a light romance, but I'm also using the time from yesterday and today's shorter books to get a head start on some of the longer ones in my pile. 

Links to other reviews can be found over at Girl Dectective's blog.

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell