The 7 Things American Families Stopped Doing at Home (My Mexican Mother Never Stopped a Single One)

There is a sound you have not heard in most houses in thirty years. Six chairs being pulled in to one table at the same time. And then two seconds of quiet, before anybody was allowed to touch the food. Somewhere between your grandmother's kitchen and your grandchildren's, it stopped. Nobody voted on it. One year there were six chairs, and a few years later there was a tray in front of the television, a plate carried to a bedroom, and a bag passed through a car window. If your family stopped, you are not a bad mother. You did not stop because you stopped loving God. You stopped because you were working two jobs and you were so tired you could have cried. There is no shame in this video. There is only a door, and it is still open. "Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain." (Psalm 127:1) In this episode of The Mexican Mother's Bible, Bertha counts the seven small things families did at home for generations and then quietly put down, what her mother did instead, and where each one is in the Book: • Grace before the meal. Paul gave thanks over bread on a sinking ship, "in front of them all." (Deuteronomy 8:10; Acts 27:35) • The whole family at one table. When God drew the picture of a blessed house, He drew it at supper. (Psalm 128:3; Luke 22:15) • Blessing the children at the door. A hand on the head and one sentence, every time anybody left. (Genesis 48:15-16; Psalm 121:8) • Sunday set apart. The Book does not call it a rule. It calls it a delight. (Isaiah 58:13-14) • The Scripture read out loud. "From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures." A baby cannot read. Somebody read it to him. (2 Timothy 1:5; 3:15; Revelation 1:3) • Praying at the side of the bed, WITH somebody and not only for them. "Just as he had done before." (Daniel 6:10; Psalm 4:8) • Taking food to the sick and the grieving, without asking first. It is not about the food. It is about the knock. (Matthew 25:35-40; Nehemiah 8:10) Not one of them costs money. Not one of them needs a building or a program. Each one has a free way to start again tonight. And she holds back two things for the end. First, the house that stopped all seven, which she knows very well. And then the one verse that tells you exactly how to start again, in seven words. Stay to the finish. "Do the things you did at first." (Revelation 2:5) 💛 A gentle word: these are not payments. God does not love the family at the table more than the family in the drive-through. If you work Sundays because that is the shift they gave you, there is no guilt here for you. And Bertha is not telling anybody why anything happened to this country or to anyone's church. She is only telling you what her mother did. If your house does it differently and it is working, God bless your house (Romans 14). I am not a pastor. I have no letters after my name and no pulpit to stand behind. I am a mother with a worn Bible, passing down what was passed down to me. Everything here, go and check for yourself. Do not take my word for it. Take His. If you can still hear those chairs, please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE so this reaches a family that is ready to pull them in again. God bless you, mija. 📖 Tell me in the comments: which of the seven did your family KEEP, and which one did it STOP? If you can remember, tell me the year, or what replaced it. Was it the trays? The second job? I think many of us will find it was the same few years. And tell me your county. I read every one.