Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we're asking the question, can ping pong save your family? This is prompted by an article I read in the Wall Street Journal that was looking at how people are reimagining spaces in their house to try to facilitate actual community.

In particular, families are making the move back to game rooms or rec rooms, rooms with pool tables or, board game tables or, in this case, ping pong, trying to break themselves of screen addiction, creating screen free environments where, multigenerational bonding can take place. These rooms are expressive of a kind of cultural hunger for actual connection, for presence over performance, for people over tasks. At least that's what the parents who are reclaiming these spaces are hoping. And what the article suggests is that by and large, it's working. The homes that are prioritizing relational space are seeing an uptick in relational connectivity among their families.

I have to say I love this trend. I I've done this in my own family. About a year and a half ago, my wife and I purchased a ping pong table and made one room in our house kind of the ping pong room. And just yesterday, I spent about an hour down there with my eight year old son laughing and joking around and winning and spending great time together playing ping pong. Much more time than we would have spent if I was on my phone or if he was on his tablet.

I I think this is an example of looking at your home as a space, a physical opportunity for facilitating some things that the Bible says are really meaningful for us. And I wanted to just offer some thoughts in that direction. The first point is simply this. The Bible tells us that rest matters. In the very beginning in Genesis, when God creates the earth and gives it to Adam and Eve, he establishes a rhythm, his own rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest.

Throughout the old testament, God calls Israel to this kind of rest because he's reminding them that they're more than just work, that their life is about more than what they accomplish in their actual task. It's about relationship between them and him and them with each other. The new testament picks up on this thing. The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus enters us into a kind of permanent rest. And while that is primarily spiritual, it's also physical, meaning that Jesus has set us free from the need to, achieve or earn our identity in all the ways we try to do it.

Creating spaces in our home that are only about rest, our physical reminders that rest is important. There are also spaces in which actual meaningful conversation can take place. In Deuteronomy six, which tells me that my job as a father and a husband is to make sure that the scriptures are saturating my home. That isn't just at family devotion time. It's meaning I'm spending time with my son, and I'm asking him how his day was, what were his best moments, his worst moments, and bringing the gospel to bear on those things.

It's amazing how much kids will open up to you, and I'm even including teenagers here, when they don't think that talking is the whole point. If I ask my kids, how was your day? And that's all we're doing, talking, I get the answer that you get. Fine. But if we're playing ping pong and I say, tell me something funny that happened today, he'll be loquacious.

That's because his mind is on ping pong. His mouth is sharing his heart. Intentional spaces are great for that. It's also a reminder that we need to constantly be asking if the rhythms of our lives, the spaces in our lives actually reflect our values. Are our homes indicative of the fact that we want a talking culture, a connected culture?

If you look at your home right now, is that what it's saying? Or is it really saying that we're all just here biding our time in between work or in between school? We created homes where people can actually retreat and isolate from each other, but there's no actual space for them to meaningful connect meaningfully connect with each other. Rec rooms are about saying, hey. It matters.

Every time I walk past the ping pong room, and it's been a little while since we've played, I'm reminded to make more space for my kids. Fun space, relational space, space to connect. After all, the book of Romans tells us if we want to be transformed, it happens to the renewing of our mind. In other words, physical and relational change comes from a change in my thinking, and a change in my thinking will ultimately result in the change I've organized my house by. Listen.

Where can you create space? Physical, intentional, meaningful space for your family to reconnect. I promise you, if you will build it, at least in this instance, relationship will come. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it.

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