A RECENT SHOCKING STUDY OF FATHERS AND CHILDREN IN AMERICA showed that the average father spends only 37 seconds each day actually talking and listening to his child. Inside our families, we can live separate lives in our own worlds. Even though we live together, we don’t really know each other, don’t know what each of us is feeling and going through.

Sometimes we read weather signs better than we can read our own kids. Often we don’t know what they’re facing and feeling. We don’t know their fears, hurts, or frustrations. Are we really listening and understanding each other? Or do we just go through the motions every day, but actually close our ears and hearts to them?

It is because we’re not really interested? Or do we simply not want to know the truth because we’re not sure how to handle it? Sometimes we choose to put our time and energy into jobs and careers because it’s easier than really dealing with our kids or our spouses. But the more we escape from each other and from the challenges of our relationships, the more distant and lonely we become.

Why not start a new relationship with your mate and children? You can start changing today. You can start tearing down the walls between you and your loved ones, and start building a new, closer relationship with them.

First, we have to let go of old hurts and anger toward each other. We must choose to forgive them and begin again. We also must stop having such unfair, high expectations of our kids and spouses, expectations which make them feel that we’ll only love them if they do what we want.

It all begins in our relationship with the One who gave us each other. He’s the One who can give us His kind of love and power, the kind we need every day to start building and enjoying the close, happy families we want.  --- William Dover

“Be kind to each other and be gentle. *Do not cause your children to be angry, so they will not be discouraged. *And all they children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” EPHESIANS 4:32; COLOSSIANS 3:21; ISAIAH 54:13 KJV

WHEN THE SAVIOUS IS ENTHRONED IN ANY HOME, regardless of size, location and appearance --- when He is worshipped in any family circle, irrespective of financial or social rating --- when His Word is read and reverenced, His Name invoked in personal prayer --- that home becomes a sanctuary, a temple of the living Christ. By His own promise, “Where two or three are gathered in my Name, there am I in the midst of them,” that family becomes a church, a house of God. ---  Walter A. Maier (adapted)