We have been stuck at home for about 26 days by now. Have you been happy, sad, or is there a lot of anger? For some people, being able to work from home is a dream come true. Don’t we always say we want to spend more time with our families? Now it’s government mandated to stay home with our families. Every day is like weekend. To some it’s a dream come true. But to others, it’s a nightmare. Perhaps in the first week of the Circuit Breaker, it felt okay. But from the second week onwards, we start to wish we could go back to office, because it’s not just us at home, there’s other people too. Young kids at home may cause a lot of noise. You may be in the middle of a meeting and suddenly your children run in. You apologise and quickly turn the video off. Truly having kids at home makes working from home more difficult. Have the last 26 days been happy or unhappy days? Have you and your spouse grown in your love or the number of arguments? Do you complain that your spouse has cooked yet the same thing again? Do you complain about your parents who keep nagging at you for sleeping too long, for bothering you once you rest and watch TV?

These 26 days are good because it has allowed us to understand our interactions with our family members at home, and what our relationship is really like; what areas we have to improve on.

Even after the 26 days are over, we will be family till we leave this earth. There may be arguments in these 26 days, but what we can thank God for is the opportunity to discover these shortcomings and work on it. Now our government has given us 1 more month to do this! We have an extra opportunity to improve.

How can we truly make our family one that is joyful and happy?

1. Everyone has to respect each other

Who has the most authority in the family? The head of the household. According to the Bible, the head of the household is our parents. The authority of the head of the household thus comes from God. In the 10 commandments, God specially includes the 5th to obey: Honour your father and your mother. If we all know how to respect and honour our parents, we should have a happy family. Why would there be room for disagreements if we obey everything our parents say? And for our obedience, our parents reward us as well. Since this is the command of God, He too will be pleased and bless us. If we obey our parents, we should be able to achieve a happy family. But it doesn’t seem to be the case. Although some parents may be godly people and worship God, their home is not devoid of arguments. There are parents that are irresponsible which makes it hard for the family to have joy. But even parents who worship God have difficulty achieving having a joyful family.

Besides the commandment to obey our parents, there’re other things we have to consider as well. Paul has a few things to encourage us in.

Eph 6:1-4
v1 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” is a reminder to children to obey your parents, for this is right, because this is the arrangement of God. But Paul continues to say in v4 that fathers shouldn’t provoke their children to wrath. Which group of people is Paul talking to? Are the fathers referring to Gentiles or Christians? The letter was written to the church so he was referring to Christians. Believers should have godly behaviour but Paul in his pastoring of the church discovered there were situations fathers provoked their children. If we look at these two things together: children obeying their parents is right, but fathers should not because of their authority that they have misuse it to provoke their children. Even though we are believers, we are also human. We are together pursuing to become better Christians. As we walk the path to become better Christians, parents may make mistakes as well. Those who are parents know that sometimes when we are in a bad mood, we take it out on our children. This may provoke our children to wrath. This is some good advice from Paul on how to build a happy family. What’s his main point? We need to respect each other. Children need to honour and respect their parents, but parents also need to learn how to respect their children. Parents may be thinking: You must be kidding me? How can you ask me to respect my children?

Rom 12:10
Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another
This addresses everyone. To everyone, we need to be kindly affectionate. We need to honour one another; we need to honour EVERYONE. So we need to honour our children too. Our children may be younger than us but what age did Paul specify? Did Paul just say to respect those of a certain age or only those of our own age? As long as we are brethren, we need to treat each other with honour. Of course little children may not understand everything, so we guide them. This doesn’t mean we don’t treat them with respect. In our house, if the senior ones know how to respect the younger ones also, the relationship between parents and children will grow closer. Because they won’t feel the parents are unreasonable. Why do children rebel sometimes? Because they feel what their parents say is unreasonable.

There’s a saying older people often quote: I’ve eaten more salt than you’ve eaten rice!
In response, we may say, “But you’ve not lived the same life I’ve lived.” Our experiences differ. Children are raised by parents but they are not identical to their parents. As we’re all different, there’re some things parents think are reasonable but children think are unreasonable. What’s worse is when the parents say, “I’m doing this for your own good!” If it’s reasonable, it’s still okay. But if it’s not, how can you expect your children to listen? We must learn to respect one another.

Eph 6:4b
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
Bring them up in the training and admonishment if they Lord. In order to achieve a happy family, this is also very important. Both parents and children must know the words of God. If we know God’s words and live according to it, we will know what is reasonable or not. Many decisions made will be based on reason and not on emotion, because the word of God is something extremely reasonable. If we learn God’s word, we will become reasonable people. When we teach children at home, we should teach them what is reasonable. Not according to our reasons but according to the reasons of the Bible. If that’s the case, we will truly have a happy family.

We must learn how to respect each other at home, whether parent or child.

2. Know how to bear with one another at home

Know what kind of person the other party is to bear with the person. If we don’t try to understand where the person is coming from, it’ll be difficult to bear with them. If we don’t try to find out why a person is angry, we treat the other party with the only way we know: we get angry as well. Perhaps the other person has gone through something terrible. If we understand this we should show compassion and comfort the person.

1 Pet 3:7
Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.
Peter tells everyone, especially to husbands, to dwell with their wives with understanding. Why? Because they are the weaker vessel. Here Peter is only talking to husband and wife but this can be extended to the entire family. We must dwell with our family with understanding. There’s a reason for this. Today when we are living with all our family members, we must be understanding to one another. If not there will be arguments. A common occurrence in the past few weeks may be: “I’m so busy here and you’re so free! I have meetings from morning to night! (Some are busier working from home than at the office.) My wife is not working but still asks me to do this and that.” But we don’t consider the wife has a lot of work to do too. It’s not easy to cook everyday. She has to take care of the kids everyday so you can have meetings in peace. But sometimes when we are stressed and get angry we fail to understand from the perspective of the other party. Peter’s encouragement here is hence very realistic.

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding
In the original text, ‘understanding’ says knowledge. The word knowledge is quite different from how we interpret it in English. Knowledge appears to just refer to information we have accumulated. So what does knowledge have to do with understanding? If we think about it deeper, knowledge is closely related to understanding. We must understand and know what has happened to the other person. If we don’t even know what the other person has gone through, how can we understand them? Something what gets in our way of understanding is that we don’t take the time to know what the person has gone through. When we don’t understand and know what has happened, what happens after that? We become impatient and don’t bear with the other person. This is what leads to arguments and disagreements. Have we thought about the word ‘patience’? Have we realised that people who go to the hospital are call ‘patients’ too? Why not use a different word? In Chinese, we also call them 病人 (sick people). Why don’t we do that for English as well? A troublesome person would be called 麻烦. Indeed there’re some patients who are very troublesome and always press the bell for the nurse. Why is the English word for a sick person in the hospital ‘patient’? The original word means ‘suffering’. A person who is sick means suffering. The word ‘patient’ means the person is suffering. When we are unable to be have patience with someone, it’s because we cannot understand a person’s suffering. If we go and find out how a person is suffering right now, we will know how to be understanding. We can have the patience to go through with this with the person. Sometimes we think we don’t need to put in effort for our family because they’ll still be our family the next day. We treat our friends better than our family. When our friends go through suffering we bear with them, but when our families tell us the suffering they go through, we are less patient.

The family is the most basic social unit. If we want to be happy with our families, it’s very important to be more understanding with one another. May we be patient with our family and understand one another till 1 June.

3. Make our home a church

There was a cartoon which had the following dialogue:
Devil: With COVID-19, I have closed all your churches!
God: On the contrary, I just opened one in every home!

This seems to accurately summarise what’s happening now. Because of the situation we are able to have more services. If this pandemic happened 10 years ago, we would have no way to have service online. Perhaps we would all have to rush to burn some CDs to watch sermons at home. Even though this situation occurred, we can go online to have service. But have we thought about whether our home has truly become a church?

Matt 18:20
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.
Jesus has already said this 2000 years ago: as long as 2 or 3 gather in His name, He is there. The church is not a physical building; as long as 2-3 people gather in His name, Jesus is gathered in their midst. This makes the above dialogue between the devil and God a bit inaccurate. Even before COVID-19, our homes are already churches.

Luke 17:20-21
Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” The Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would be coming. Jesus answered that the Kingdom of God cannot be seen because it’s within us, in our hearts. Each of us is a church within ourselves. The Kingdom of God should be manifest within us. In 1 Cor, Paul says we have the seal which is the Holy Spirit. He says we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, so each and everyone of us should be a church. The above dialogue is hence not really Biblically accurate. But do we feel like we are a church with God’s abidance? Do we see that the people around us, our father/mother/siblings, are all churches and all of us at home are one big church? If we think this way, wouldn’t there naturally be joy at home? But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Home seems to be a gladiator arena. Two people seem to be fighting to the death. It seems like there’re two lions at home competing who is louder. Vulgarities seem to be flying everywhere like in BMT. The talk at home seems to be about nothing but money. “I can do this to earn some money. Rent our house. Invest this.” Some families are full of anger and grudges. Each one in the family hates another person. “Don’t talk about forgiveness in the family!” That’s strange because isn’t the Kingdom of God supposed to be in us? Our family member doesn’t seem to be a Christian. How about us? If no one thinks that we are a church and the Kingdom of God is within us, then God is not able to work within our families to lead all of us. We will find our home isn’t like a church. We don’t even need to talk about respecting understanding bearing one another, because God is not in our hearts.

In these 26 days, does the topic of God come up frequently? Or do we still talk about what we have been talking about (e.g. money)? Do we look forward to online services? We must spiritually nurture ourselves at home. Think of how we can take this time to draw near to God. As long as everyone at home has the Kingdom of Heaven within us and the family, then our family will have joy.