The Biggest Story Family Devotional

On the Blog Curse, chevrons, and beginnings

Ages ago, when all of us moms had family blogs and the predominate color schemes were chocolate and teal—and chevrons were on everything—a friend and I had tea together while our combined half-dozen kids scattered Duplos around her house.

“Have you ever noticed,” she asked, reflecting on her own blog, “how every time you post about something it stops happening?”

I had noticed this. Were we enjoying a reprieve from tooth-disrupted sleep? If I mentioned it on my blog, it was bound to end. Were we making progress on reading or finding a good rhythm with getting outdoors? If I wrote about it, our progress would surely stall.

This became such a joke that we’d laugh, “Well, that’s over,” whenever we posted about something specific, something we really enjoyed. And for whatever reason, it often was. Maybe by the time we wrote about it, the thing was already winding down? I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I’m a little superstitious about writing today’s letter, because I don’t want this particular season to be over, you know? For someone who has reviewed a ridiculous amount of family devotionals over the years, I must confess we’ve found it hard to stick with any of them as a family for very long. But this year seems to have ushered in a golden age in family Bible time—one only a month long, so surely it’s too soon for it to be winding down? And The Biggest Story Family Devotional just might be the secret ingredient.

This book is extremely simple, in the best and most do-able way: just a short reading each night (usually between one and five verses long), accompanied by a single question. This one question makes it count: rather than serving as a sort of “where you listening or were you just playing with Legos?” reading comprehension question, as devotional questions for young kids often do, these questions are open-ended, big, and quickly draw us into a discussion. With kids ranging from eight to sixteen, it’s hard to find a book that does this well, but so far this one is crushing it.

One short reading at a time, The Biggest Story Family Devotional traces the overarching narrative of Scripture, connecting the Old Testament to the New and helping us to see Jesus throughout the Bible. Despite a few first nights where no one wanted to read, now our girls seems eager to read and sometimes even argue about who gets to read the Bible passage. (That was an unexpected twist.)

But in writing about this, have I activated the Blog Curse? I certainly hope not! Because I’m enjoying these evenings immensely, talking through these big ideas as a family. May this be simply the beginning of a long and lovely season.