Yes

...

it certainly is, is one of the people's favorites.

But the reason we chose the Gospel of Mark is because of a number of f- factors about it that I think set it apart and make it a really good thing to spend a time together in a family devotional.

One simple, practical thing is that Mark is the shortest gospel.

Um, you know, one of, one of the things that happens in, in devotionals is I think people try to tackle too much, and one of the things in a, in, in this family devotional is we're, we're not trying to do the whole Bible in a year.

We're not trying to do the longest book in a year.

[laughs] Exactly.

Why is he doing that? Is that an apologetic? Is that how church history is done?

Exactly.

Well, it depends who you talk to.

I mean, clearly there's an apologetic strain that runs deep through church history, right? He's very much trying to say, hey, there's There's a uniformity of apostolic succession.

The heretics were later than the Orthodox.

He very much talks about the role of the martyrs and so forth.

And so Eusebius has come under fire for some of his reconstructions of things.

How would you then think through Eusebius' contribution to the overall formation of canon, or we should probably say to the recognition of canon by the church? Is he moving the dial forward, or is he describing the situation on the ground, or a bit of both?

Yeah.

Um, this is all of us.

Um, there's no parents that don't experience that.

Um, you know, having been parents for a long time and now r- having written a book on family devotionals, I, I hope no one gets the impression that, that it went that way for us all the time.

Uh, every once in a while we would realize, wow, it's been a stretch here since we've really been able to do this with the way we want.

So I, I give parents a couple thoughts on that.

One is, um, it, it...

Why?

Right

...

I'm learning with you, and we're doing this together as a family.

And sometimes it's legitimate to say, "I don't know, and I'm gonna look into that this week, and we can talk more about it next week." I think that's a great lesson for kids, so there's not the sense that there's, there's people out there who al- who know everything, and then there's me, who knows nothing.

No, all of us are on this, this journey.

Here's, here's the other thing I would say about people who are wondering about, "Well, what about these particulars I c- I can't understand or answer?" This is actually one of the reasons we wro- wrote the, the, the devotionals.

Each week, we put together an analysis of this text which we think is accessible and clear, hopefully inspirational, but also helps highlight some of the things in the text that may be confusing or hard to understand to help parents have some guidance when they come across these passages that might have some tough parts.

Hmm.