young stories

Barbara Walters has a new book out entitled, Audition; a story of her life. In it she makes one statement about her famous interviews over the years that reveal one of her strategies. She always makes it a point to inquire about the subject’s childhood for she feels that much of our life is shaped by our young and growing up years. For herself, she tells how she was raised in a somewhat dysfunctional home where her parents’ marriage was weak and, at one point, extremely tenuous. Her father was seldom home due to a successful career managing nightclubs that sometimes brought her into contact with the rich and famous. She had a special-needs older sister for whom she felt a keen responsibility. She developed some negotiating skills just holding this family together. It was not an easy life as one might suspect.

I’ve been reading a book, Makers of the Modern World, by Louis Untermeyer, which fills in some short periods of solitude with quick reads regarding the various movers and shakers of our modern age from Herman Melville to Karl Marx to Mary Baker Eddy. I find that it is richly informing the way I view these famous personages.

Melville suffered a traumatic change of familial circumstances around age 11 when his father’s business failed. Never recovering from this reverse, the father became physically and mentally ill eventually dying of a stroke while in his forties. Herman struggled to finish school, tried his hand at teaching, and finally signed up as a cabin boy at age 20 on a ship headed for Liverpool. It was here that he became enthralled and repelled by a life at sea. Another trip in 1841 took him on board a whaling ship which he later declared to be his Yale College and his Harvard. Jumping ship at a tropical waypoint, he lived among cannibals for a while until escaping to another whaling ship, suffered through a full mutiny, and ended up joining the U.S. Navy. At age 25, he finally headed home to live with his mother and began to write. At age 31, he began his masterpiece, Moby Dick, and went on to live a life of relative obscurity, financial hardship, and general unhappiness.

Walt Whitman was the 2nd of nine children born to a country carpenter and illiterate mother, a family distinguished only in fruitlessness. His schooling was over at age 11 and at age 12, he was a printer’s apprentice and soon migrated into newspaper work. His early writing was described as “turgid” and “lurid” and his poetry even worse. He turned out hackwork and bounced around from job to job. Finally, at age 35, his experimentations with free verse took root, and he came out with his first version of “Leaves of Grass.” He cultivated a new image of the common man and battled poor reviews with his own self-promotion. Critics called his poetry a “mass of bombast, egotism, vulgarity, and nonsense.” They equated him with “some escaped lunatic raving in pitiable delirium.” Whitman redeemed his image through service as a nurse during the civil war, but soon fell into old age riddled by poverty and illness; living out his last days in a dingy room next to a railway crossing, kept alive by the charity of others.

These stories make me want to go back and pick up their writings and read them through entirely new lenses. Everyone has a story, and it has in large part shaped the person they have become. I rejoice at the happy childhoods I see around me everyday for these will be the solid ones when others are losing their way. Take time to share your story with them so that they, too, will see you as more than just “mom” and just “dad.” It will bond them closer to you and help them understand much for knowing your journey.

Expelled

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Ps. 139:14 NIV

Who are the dangerous ones, believers or unbelievers? This was just one of the questions explored on screen in the new movie released this last week, “Expelled,” with Ben Stein. It is not a movie for everybody. No crashing helicopters, no daredevil exploits by daring stuntmen, no chase scenes, or glamorous Hollywood starlets. But, if you are one of those odd few who like the chase of ideas presented in graphic first person interviews with some of the most brilliant minds of our time, this is your movie; this is your Indiana Jones equivalent thriller. “Expelled” is a documentary laced with comic relief supplied by entertaining footage from dozens of old films, both historical and dramatic. Ben Stein, a tantalizingly dead-panned provocateur, dares to tread where no man has gone before. He takes on the challenge of the evolutionary establishment who presently have a choke hold on all the positions of power within academia. It should be required viewing for every pre-college, Christian student.

The over riding issue is freedom. Is there any room for divergent thinking within the realm of science to any other explanation of origins? The evidence he mounts has got to be embarrassing for he brings before the world the plain spoken words of the proponents of materialistic evolution from their own mouths. He gives more than ample time for the prestigious representatives of Darwinian thinking to spill their hard bitten prejudice against any and all who would dare question the sanctity of standard evolutionary dogma. The enemy is not simply any Christian or creationist, for whom they reserve their greatest scorn, but also against any who would argue a case for intelligent design, even from a non-theistic base.

Ben Stein takes one on a journey as he explores the avenues of his questioning down some very significant paths. Who are the dangerous ones? Many secular thinkers classify religion as the source of the greatest danger to world peace. Yet, Stein takes one on a trip through the history of eugenics built squarely upon evolutionary thinking. His visit to the edifices of Nazi-ism were especially haunting. As he listens to a guide explain the workings of a Nazi hospital where the weak and handicapped were routinely executed, he asks the guide, “So what would you say to the Nazi doctor in charge of this hospital if you could?” Her ready answers came to a screeching halt as she could offer nothing, no pronouncement, no judgment, no warning, no rebuke. Her speechlessness made me gasp. It was postmodernism at its naked worst.

This helped frame the whole question as to what is at stake in this war of ideology. If the origin of life is pure chance, all morality is capricious choice. Human freedom is a myth. Purpose is made void. Death is final. Man is not special. These implications were brought forth in clear relief even by an unbeliever. But most of all, the integrity of science itself is forfeit if it becomes prisoner to a particular world view. And apparently, this is what has happened. Materialistic evolution has become the mantra of the establishment because of a secular world view that finds life without God quite liberating.

The Achilles heel of evolutionary thinking, however, is found within the realm of science itself. If a single, self-replicating cell, known as the foundation of life, was understood in Darwin’s day as complicated as an automobile, scientists now know that it is as complicated as a Saturn V rocket or even a galaxy by comparison. The DNA of a single cell contains so much information that chance is no longer a viable explanation. God has imprinted enough mystery in nature to confound the wise even into our time.

anybody listening?

But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jer. 20:9 NIV

Have you ever wondered if anyone is listening? Teachers suffer this trauma on a regular basis but manage to put it out of their minds or else they will all become used car salesmen. Parents have to wonder, as well, when simple tasks that should be automatic go undone by their children. Wives know for a fact that husbands cannot recall a thing said over breakfast but that they can recall Roberto Clemente’s life-time batting average. Men would not notice if their male counterparts wore the same shirt 5 days in a row, which is comforting if you are a man. But it is maddening if you are a woman who labors over her choice of a daily outfit only to be totally ignored.

The truth is that someone is always listening, always observing. We have so little clue as to who that is and what gems are being stored away in another’s hard drive of memory. I post a Scripture verse out front most every morning and have wondered if anyone ever reads them. The other day, Mary C------ walked in the front door and made reference to the daily Scripture verse and knocked me off balance by saying, “I read those every day.” I felt as if I had been thoroughly and soundly rebuked!

A wedding invitation came in the mail the other day from a student I had ten years ago in a Bible class during a year of teaching that was permeated from start to finish with spiritual struggle that left me utterly drained. I have put much of that time out of my memory because of the daily fight to keep the plow in the ground and my eyes straight ahead. Doubts flooded over me regarding my ability, my calling, and my message. There were some good times, but the bad times are always more livid in our memories. Anyhow, I felt somewhat awed that I was even remembered with an invitation from a student way back then, but also, there was the scrawled note in the corner: “I can’t believe it’s been 10 years. I still have fond memories of playing guitar with you in Bible class (we sang Scripture songs). Thank you for teaching us God’s truth and striving to prepare us for the real world of ‘not-so-Christian world views.’ I will never forget you. It would be great to see you in May.” A ghost out of Christmas past would not have had any less effect upon me as those few lines. My Scrooge-like memories lost their hard-bitten edge as I was transformed by the thought, “Yes, somebody was listening.” But from there, it is one small step to reflect upon the notion that if my “widow’s mite” worth of witness touched another soul, then how much more could I have done or should have I done with the time and opportunity that were granted?

Once when I was working for TVA, a fellow employee relayed to me how someone else thought I was a bit crazy. I wonder that about myself quite often so I was quite ready to hear additional evidence. Instead, the explanation left me both pleased and scared. It appeared that one of my fellow workers was standing in line behind me in a hardware store as I made a few small purchases. Among those items were some small flashlight bulbs. His conclusion was simple. I must be ‘nuts,’ for anybody could simply walk away from TVA with all the flashlight bulbs they would ever need or want. Why would anyone go out and buy them? That episode haunts me to this day. Someone was watching. They caught me in a good deed for which I was thankful. How many have watched me when I was less than at my Christian best?

Yes, Virginia, there is someone listening, watching, observing. The reminders may be few and far between, but they are there. Our duty is to be faithful regardless of the crowd, the recognition, the response, or those spells of dull and defeating silence. Even a little light defeats darkness. Nay, pierces it.

comparisons

“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”- Isaiah 49:16 NIV

We are in the midst of interviewing new families enrolling students for next year. It is one of the joys of my job to sit and get to know so many interesting people, each with their own unique story to tell. I glance over their applications and can form a mini-judgment before I even see them. Then we meet, and I usually have to discard those expectations as I see someone totally different walk through the door. Even my first impressions upon meeting are often thoroughly shaken by listening to their life stories unfold.

I am learning again and again not to judge a book by its cover. How often it is that I see someone I think worthy to admire, yea, even envy, in terms of their personal polish, achievement, position, marriage, and wealth. And then I learn of great personal burdens they bear or great pain they have experienced. There goes that picture perfect family. I have come to wonder if there is such a thing. Just when I think I have met the Ozzie and Harriet ideal,* someone loses a job or a close loved one, is struck with a debilitating illness, or faces other untold catastrophes. I have seen just about everything so far here at CFC.

Apart from learning caution in making judgments, what do I take from this? For one thing, I surely do not ever dare envy anyone ever again. I have lived a relatively simple and obscure life up to this point. Very few have ever been able to pronounce my name let alone be impressed by it. Financial security was never a “given.” Our first couch came after 4 years of marriage, cost $10, and had a good sized cigarette burn hole in the middle. We never had to worry about our children’s eligibility for “gifted” classes, but all made us proud, eventually. Both of us contend that the other got the worst of the bargain in marrying into families of class and status. I have never been voted “most popular,” “mister personality,” “most handsome,” or “most valuable player” of any group, class, or team. I was always picked last in sports and had a lock on right field when I could get it. I felt trapped in dead-end jobs most of my life where recognition was a finite and rare commodity. Yet, I now know that I have been blessed beyond all measure and would not trade this hum-drum life with anyone.

When tempted to compare lives, I look around and see that none of the precious fences of status, accomplishment, privilege, or wealth have ever been able to keep out random agony or tragedy. The first high school classmate of mine to die was a relatively ordinary girl who had metamorphasized into a college homecoming queen. Stalked by a madman, she was shot five times at close range as she sat with friends in the student union. My boyhood friend parlayed a piece of fairly worthless property into a million dollar windfall, surely the envy of many who did not know him. Stricken with cancer, he took his own life within weeks of the sale. And if ever I really get to feeling sorry for myself, I think of my cousin, Eugene Nordmoe, whose young life was ended by a Japanese bullet before he ever got off the landing craft at Iwo Jima.

These are the extreme cases, but nevertheless, they are potent reminders of how precious and blessed is my mundane and average existence. Discussing the highs and lows of the life of Chistopher Reeves this last week with one of our 7th graders, I posed the question: “Which would you rather be: someone who was stage-beautiful, a celebrated film star, rich, well married, but paralyzed at 43 and dead by 52? Or to be a completely unknown, relatively poor person living an ordinary life well into old age?” She chose the latter. I could have saved myself a lot of morose introspection had I come to that conclusion at her age.

Work

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;” Genesis 1:27

Occasionally I will entertain myself by imagining odd uses for everyday implements. What would it be like to use an axe as a fly swatter, a tooth brush as a weed wacker, or a golf club for a windshield wiper? You get the idea: the more ridiculous, the greater the entertainment value. All these tools and implements that surround us and infest our closets and garages have specific tasks for which they are designed. And when we misapply them to inappropriate tasks, such as using a lawnmower as a hedge trimmer, we get in serious trouble or look awfully ridiculous at the very least.

Is it fair to think for a minute as to what we were designed for? Christians everywhere ascribe to the simple statement of faith that we are made in the image of God. That should give us some major clues as to what end we are intended. The first thing we learn about God is that in the beginning He created. No doubt about it. Our God is a creative God. A fresh look about us should be sufficient proof for anyone. From the ant to the elephant, we are surrounded by creatures that defy the imaginations of generations of the most gifted of artists or engineers to ever contemplate designing or building, even if they could do such a thing. Bees that turn pollen into honey, creatures (fish) who thrive only under water, and giraffes who seem almost made for the fun of it; all fill us with a sense of wonder, each in their own right. If that is not enough, just look at humankind. Each of us are so alike that modern medicine works consistently well around the world and yet each of us are so different as to make individual identification a fairly simple process. Identical twins are all the more marvelous because of their rarity yet their own mothers quickly become quite adept in telling them apart.

If we are made in the image of God, we are meant to be creative beings as well. God’s handiwork is a hard act to follow, but each of us, in our own unique way, I believe, is wired with an inbuilt need to be a creative being. Look at children. We dare not even think of locking them in a bare room with nothing to do, like cattle in a stall. Even they, as soon as they can crawl and walk, desperately need something to do with their hands and minds, and so we give them toys, books, and balls. Punishment in our society is to confine children to corners or to their rooms while adults are sent to jail cells. Each of these prohibit freedom of choice, movement, and action which we find horrendous. Animals are often treated this way every day and yet very few suffer any ill effects. But fiction and history are rich in stories of men and women who find themselves locked in cells and dungeons who manage to find creative things to do with their minds in a desperate effort to keep their sanity.

Creativity comes in many forms. We tend to think of creativity only in terms of the arts. I insist that it is much broader than that. To be creative is to be productive. Even the assembly line worker can take pride in a pile of any number of widgets created at days end. Plumbers, auto mechanics, coaches, tailors, housewives, all have one thing in common with the artist: they bring, or create, order out of chaos. God moved upon the face of an earth that was without form and void replacing chaos with order and beauty.

We, too, are meant for that end: to bring order out of chaos, to be productive. To seek a life of lottery-winning ease, to become enthralled by our culture of entertainment, to shun work at any opportunity is to thwart the very nature of our created being. It is to use the axe as a fly swatter, etc. Something will come out damaged in the process for sure. Work is our friend; idleness our enemy.

Manchester

“When I was my father’s son,…he also taught me, and said to me…” –Pro. 4:3-4

One of my 25 cent books from the Friends of the Library sale grabbed my attention and imagination last week and ended up to be an engrossing read. Goodbye, Darkness is a memoir of the Pacific campaign during WWII by William Manchester, an author I had grown to admire for his biography of Douglas MacArthur. In the 1970’s, Manchester revisited the places he had gone ashore in battle against the Japanese as a young Marine. It was on Tarawa, known to many as “Terrible Tarawa,” that he pondered as to where the courage, dedication, and steely discipline came from as he recounted how wave after wave of U.S.Marines suffered terrible casualties in taking that small but well fortified island. His conclusions staggered me especially as they came from a man who was not naturally inclined to patriotic flag waving or righteous grandstanding.

He had to admit that the America of WWII was different from that of today, and there was no way of understanding the way its sons threw down their lives so willingly and almost carelessly without understanding the culture of that time. He describes the United States of pre-WWII as a tightly disciplined society with rigid standards and where “counterculture” did not exist as either a word or a concept. And here is the lengthy quote which came so unexpectedly:

“The bastion of social stability was the family. Children were guided, not by radar beams picking up trends and directions from other children, but by gyroscopes built into their superegos at home. Parents had a tremendous influence on them. If adolescents wanted to read pulp magazines, or smoke, or listen to Ben Bernie or the Lucky Strike Hit Parade on the radio, they needed parental permission; if they wanted to see ‘The Philadelphia Story,’ their fathers decided whether or not it would be bad for their morals; if they made money shoveling snow or cutting lawns, their fathers, again, told them whether they should save it for college, or, if it was to be spent, what they could buy. There was no teenage ethos; indeed ‘teenage’ meant ‘brushwood used for fences and hedges.’ Young people were called ‘youngsters,’ and since the brooding omnipotence of the peer group had not yet arrived, children rarely felt any conflict between their friends and their families. No youngster would dream of discussing familial conflicts with other youngsters. An insult to either parent had to be avenged. …Fathers had always ruled like sultans, but the Depression had increased all family activities over which patresfamilias reigned; a study of over a hundred families in Pittsburgh discovered that a majority had increased family recreation – Ping Pong, jigsaw puzzles, checkers, bridge, and parlor games, notably Monopoly. There was also plenty of time for the householders, the doughboys of 1918, to explain to their sons the indissoluble relationship between virility and valor.” (p. 247, copyright 1979; Little, Brown & Co.)

There; a long quote but one which so many of you should find encouraging. I see you doing these very things today; instilling those “gyroscopes,” attempting to shield your children from the “brooding omnipotence” of modern teen culture, instilling “absolute” notions of truth and morality, and keeping your families together at all costs. Some of you may have thought you were alone and bordering on the bizarre. Take heart. You stand in the grand tradition of those who raised what Tom Brokaw has labeled “The Greatest Generation.” I grow increasingly impressed with what those young men did who pushed back the forces of evil in WWII at such great expense. I have high hopes for our young people, as well, in standing against the Evil One who comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Keep up your good work.

Spring Break

The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. - Job 33:4

So what did you do with your Spring Break, Mr. Moe? The gift of several days free time is an awesome gift that brings with it awesome responsibility. I cannot help but judge myself for how well I spend such free time. I have wasted enough of it to know that doing so leaves me feeling empty, spent, angry, and cheated all at the same time. “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of,” so says the old American sage, Ben Franklin.

Some of my time was commandeered by forces outside of my control. There were daily visits to the hospital as my mom struggled through some surgery. I dare not bear resentment over the constraints of obligations bearing upon my time for no man is an island unto himself. Only the totally self-consumed are so and condemn themselves to shriveling souls that hoard their time like secret gold. And so, there were still duties to perform which tested whether or not I viewed my time as strictly my own. Any and all vacations should start there: a living gift placed upon the altar and precious all the more when it is given back in whole or part. There is nothing like gratitude to awaken the senses.

With the remainder (and there was plenty), I purposely set about to give refreshment to body, soul, and spirit for each have needs unique unto their own. For the body, I elected replanting a number of dead shrubs about the house and mulching them accordingly. Not very glamorous, I admit, yet there is a certain amount of satisfaction from turning the earth, restoring nature, and pure common labor. It did please others and could have been considered one of the above obligations, yet my body felt refreshed from working it so, and I rejoiced for having the strength to accomplish these mundane tasks. Later in the week, I broke free of all obligations and hiked up the Rich Mountain Loop Trail above Cades Cove. My lungs and legs strained under the load of pack and winter fat as I slowly climbed the miles up to a lofty campsite. My spirit was refreshed as well by luxuriously lunching while laying in a bed of leaves with my face to the warming sun. No expensive restaurant was ever so rich as that hillside spot in a quiet wood. And then to sit around a dying fire while the moon rose to bathe our little company in its magic light was pure joy.

For the soul, my wife and I indulged ourselves in some hours of kid-in-the-candy-shop pure fun at the Friends of the Library Book Sale. It was the last day and books were going for $5 a box. We poured over hundreds and hundreds of books rejoicing each time we found a “keeper.” We finally left with five boxfuls feeling like lottery winners. The joy continues as we have been able to delve into our new treasures and feed upon stories taking us to far places and times and consider whole new worlds of ideas.

It is hard to tell where the soul ends and the spirit begins. Some would laugh and say it foolish to think them different. Of little matter, I guess, but the Easter Season enriched my break as indeed it always used to before our calendar keepers turned so secular. A special Maundy Thursday service left us reeling from the beauty of such sweet sacrifice. And this, followed by the smashing power of the resurrection. Rich!

There were other things too, a couple of movies, catching up on correspondence and bills, a couple of lazy morning breakfasts, some family dinner parties, several good bike rides, three birthdays, sadly a couple of funerals, a car washing, the stopping of a leaky faucet, and lunch with some friends. In the end, no regrets; no looking back on wasted days. I take it as the proof of loving life; most satisfactory.

hike report 3/24/08

Hate to put it to you this way but you missed it.

Friend Caleb and I ventured up the Rich Mountain Loop Trail on Friday amidst glorious sunshine and balmy temperatures. There was sufficient exercise going the long way to #6 campsite and plenty of views of both Cades and Tuckaleechy (sp) Coves. We got in early enough to do some reading before dinner. Plenty of firewood and also some good company from Georgia. Some folks on the trail just shy of the campsite said a bobcat had just crossed the trail scowling at them. A pair of does wandered our campsite in the morning looking for salty tidbits. The night sky was gorgeous with a full moon bathing our site. Air was breezy but warm through the night. Sat. was perfection with warm and sunny weather all the way home. Only bummer was that the Lazy Daze Campground ice cream machine is not up and running until Apr. 15.

This trip was about next to perfection as it gets.

Hope to see you next trip.

Poisonous Roots

If there was one thing that Francis Schaeffer tried to teach us, it was that ideas have consequences. It was a short step from Rousseau’s desire to follow nature to the Marquis de Sade and his treatment of women because nature had made men the stronger of the sexes. After Darwin burst his idea of survival of the fittest upon the world, many quickly bent it to their purposes and thereby justified all sorts of inhuman treatment of their fellow man. And when one convinces himself that he speaks for the proletariat, the suppressed masses of the world, no crime becomes unthinkable.

Schaeffer was quixotically tilting against powerful windmills, however, for his message matured just as the West was in the process of dumping the very idea that truth existed in a relativistic, post-modern fit of righteous self-cleansing. Tolerance replaced truth as the supreme virtue. All would have lived happily ever after except for the inconvenient truth of 9-11. We were rudely shown that there are still some very powerful and dangerous ideas running amok out there for which many would gladly sacrifice their lives in balls of flaming death falling from the skies.

It should be no surprise that our leaders and the elite of our society seem powerless and ill-equipped to deal with this threat. They were raised on the pabulum of tolerance as virtue and can’t understand why all men of reason do not respond in kind. But fight they must, and so they have committed us to a war of weapons and treasure with some lip service given to freedom and democracy. But we are up against a people that are interested in neither freedom nor democracy. There is not enough money to buy them nor can we force them to be free, a very un-democratic action, indeed.

There is a missing component in this war, and it is that of ideology. Compare our behavior in Iraq with that of our forces in Japan at the end of WWII. Gen. MacArthur entered Japan with near dictatorial powers and with a clear vision for going down in history not as a great general but as someone who brought “the solace and hope and faith of Christian morals” to the land of a vanquished foe. Japan was a tradition-directed culture where the individual was subsumed into a collective mindset not seen in the West since the middle ages. The Emperor was divine, women were inferior beings, peasants were sharecroppers shackled to the land, and Shintoism promoted martial virtues and the inferiority of other races. There were no civil rights or liberties and power was wielded by the gumbatsu (militarists) and the zaibatsu (11 industrial families). Japan was a totalitarian society more akin to ancient Sparta than any modern nation.

MacArthur suspended the Emperor’s functions, brought freedom of the press, instituted civil liberties, released all political prisoners, demanded women’s suffrage, and informed the public of Japan’s war crimes. Most importantly, he sought to turn their idolatry for the warrior class into hatred and contempt by removing all militaristic propaganda from school textbooks. He established academic freedom, forbid all discrimination, and opened schools to women. In a new constitution he virtually dictated, the armed forces were abolished and war was renounced as a sovereign right of the nation. Dozens of other drastic changes were made, far too many to mention here.

As a result of his cultural meddling, the national income surpassed pre-war levels in just 5 years, 90% of land ended up in the hands of people who farmed it, cholera was wiped out, and the life expectancy of men increased by 8 years and women 14 years. Most importantly, the Shinto, militaristic, and totalitarian mindset disappeared. Eight years after VJ Day, Theodor Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”) visited Japan and conducted an extensive survey of Japanese children who were encouraged to draw pictures of what they wanted to become. Every profession was noted from doctors to wrestlers, but only one child drew a soldier. And he wanted to become a MacArthur.

Contrast this to our war in Iraq which targets Al Qaeda fighters but not the philosophy and mentality that propels them. For every one we kill, there may be two or three willing to take their place. Our troops have to wind their way through dangerous streets while mosque loudspeakers boom forth anti-American tirades over the heads of those sent there to protect them. We dare not enter a mosque where they are busy inculcating another generation with the poison of anti-Israel venom and Arab imperialism through Jihad. Terrorism is not a deviant of misplaced Islamic fundamentalism. It is part and parcel of Jihad which is clearly understood in the Arab world as holy war, not an internal struggle.

While Christianity suffered from the hands of extremists in the middle-ages, witch burning and the inquisition were doomed from the start because they were so against the grain of Christ’s teaching. These practices pale against the crimes of Jihad today which sanctions the killing of infidels and glorifies the assassins with sainthood: all this very clearly consistent with the teachings and practices of Islam’s first and greatest prophet.

The main goal of much of Arab education is to instill a rabid commitment to destroy Israel. Everything from nursery rhymes to textbooks teaches children about Jews being pigs, dogs, and devils out to steal their land. “May God bless us with shahada (martyrdom)” is their prayer. A totalitarian control grips their lives with fear used to direct blind vengeance against the Jew and the forces of modernism that come from the West. The Muslim faith is assured through fear, shame, intimidation, imprisonment, or death. Women lead second class lives, fatalism is endemic to the culture, personal responsibility is a foreign concept, and lying to protect family or culture from outsiders is considered a virtue. Preserving family honor is more important than happiness or a healthy life. Hate speech pervades Arab TV and the mosques. Contrary to common perception, Islamic radicalism is not a product of ignorance and poverty even though Arab lands boast some of the highest illiteracy rates in the world. The majority of the radicals are coming out of the upper classes and medical schools. These zealots are simply acting out what they have been taught from childhood: kill infidels, Americans, Jews, and Christians and gain the rewards and honors for those who die in Jihad.

Unfortunately, our state department does not want to get involved in ideological warfare. They have been educated in America where we do not want to make judgments involving cultures or religions. Our president has called Islam a “religion of peace” and said that he worships the same god as they; two statements which are greeted with incredulous unbelief in the Arab world as hopelessly naive. But in this wishful thinking, he is well at home among the campuses of America where non-judgmental relativism reigns.

We are caught on the horns of a terrible dilemma. We have engaged the most radical believers of Islam in armed conflict but do not have the heart or conviction to tell them that they embrace a false and horribly self-destructive world view. Without curing the cause, we are condemned to continue the conflict with no end in sight. As someone has said, “We have the means to destroy them but not the will. They have the will to destroy us but not the means.” The possession of those means, however, is only a matter of time.

The answer is not to destroy them first. We can, however, address the cultural imbalance that exists between us and the Arab world. We can demand access for access, freedom for freedom as the price of doing business with the Western world. We grant them religious freedom here. It should be matched by equal freedom within their nations. My friends can’t even take their personal Bibles with them when traveling to Saudi Arabia. For every mosque built in America, they need to permit the building of churches in Mecca and around the Arab world. If American wealth and blood are being spilt to renew Afghanistan, we should insist that they guarantee Christian believers the right to life and limb and make freedom of religion a foundation of their law.

Secondly, we need to challenge Islamic clerics and intellectuals to save Islam through reform. They will either reform it or risk starting WWIII. The Jihad needs to be renounced for the relic of the middle-ages that it is. On that point of belief we could easily discover who our friends are in the Islamic world. Without that renunciation, we face an intransigent foe. If Islam is the religion of peace promoting understanding as many of them say, it needs to be taught to their own children. That is the proof we need.

MacArthur realized we needed to change Japanese culture from the ground up and the ideas it was built upon; not just defeat them in battle. Without that change, the death dealing pilots of 9-11 could just as well have been the descendants of the kamikaze suicide bombers of old. Ideas do have consequences.


Sources: American Caesar, William Manchester, Little, Brown and Co, 1978.
Now They Call Me Infidel, Nonie Darwish, Sentinel, The Penguin Group, 2006.

Prosperity

"By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.” –Pro. 22:4

Last week I left you with a question to ponder: what does the inclination of humans to forget God in the midst of prosperity have to do with families and children? One answer can be found in a book entitled, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids (HarperCollins) written by Madeline Levine, a practicing psychologist in Northern California. Her target study group were families enjoying 6 figure incomes, but what she learned is applicable to all. She discovered that: a) 30 to 40 % of affluent teens experience significant emotional problems (3 times the national average), b) depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and psychosomatic disorders are higher among affluent teens than among teens in any other socioeconomic group, and c) affluent kids feel less close to their parents than any other group of teens. Levine concluded that these parents are trying to fill their children with the wrong things – material goods, super achievement, worldly success, and status. At the same time, the importance of values, character, unconditional love, and a work ethic are neglected or short-changed.

Betsy Hart, who reviewed the book (News-Sent. 1-26-08), argues that “too many of our kids have been abandoned to a secular culture and have little or no transcendent spiritual values being imparted to them.”Both highlight the need for balancing the need for academic achievement with the experience of success and satisfaction that comes from being a contributing member of the family group and acquiring a strong work ethic. The inference is that instead of a steady diet of soccer, violin lessons, ballet, and little league all on top of honor-roll level homework, there should first be a substantial portion of taking out the garbage, digging flower beds, washing dogs, vacuuming under furniture, and mowing lawns. From these things, they learn the value of good deeds, the ability to cooperate and be a contributing member of a group, and the accumulation of daily living skills.

There was a day when I did not look so kindly on those ideals. My experience growing up on a farm included any number of daily chores many of which I found highly odious. But we knew that our living was directly tied to the strength of Dad’s back and Mom’s arms. To not assist them would be nothing short of criminal. And when the barn was filled with hay at the end of a summer and when the corn cribs bulged, there was a sense of pride, satisfaction, and security that touched even my often dulled, teen-aged mind. I also learned how adversity could be overcome every time the decrepit old, family hay-baler broke down in the middle of the field. Dad found a way to fix it even if it took the rest of the day and several trips to town. We learned to endure adversity when the market prices plummeted. And we learned to share the joys of fresh strawberries in season topped with mountains of whipped cream from the milk of our own cow, the same cow I herded up from the fields every day after school.

I am always thrilled when I see our CFC families working together as teams, where each child lends a hand in some capacity or another. It is a valuable part of their education. Levine backs you up on this but also stresses letting kids work through frustrations and adversity instead of us constantly solving all their problems for them. Add to this a lesson in letting them know that parents have needs, too. But above all, love the kids you have, not the ones you are trying to create. In so doing, we can avoid the traps created by excessive prosperity. No, affluent kids do not have it all. And we certainly do not need to emulate their dysfunctions. Work, teamwork, affection, life skills, adversity, and eternal values are time tested ways to remove the poison from the prosperity in which we stand knee-deep.

Haiti

“I spoke to you in your prosperity; but you said, ‘I will not listen.’” –Jer. 22:21

Several weeks ago, a riveting photo was run in the newspaper of Haitian women making mud cookies for their hungry children. Scarcity and inflation were pushing these poor to turn to a mixture of mud, salt, and vegetable oil, baked on a hot roof, to satiate the hunger of themselves and their little ones. I cringed with that photo burned in my mind as I stood and scraped leftover food into the garbage can after our Wed. night church dinner. The disparity between our two countries is beyond belief. How can this happen? I think the more appropriate question is, “How did this happen?”

Anyone at all familiar with the history of Haiti knows of its dance with satanic voodooism. When the sugar plantation slaves rose up in rebellion against the French, the rebels actually met and made a pact with the devil telling their dark lord that their new country would serve him for two hundred years if he would help them throw off the French yoke. They were successful, and the French sailed off leaving them to their ways. Cultural anthropologists tell us that if you want to know what Africa looked like 200 years ago, travel to Haiti, not Africa. They have preserved all the raw and primitive practices of that formerly “dark” continent.

Jeremiah says that those who turn away from the Lord will be like a bush in the desert and will not see prosperity. Their dwelling place will be a stony waste and a land of salt (Jeremiah 17:5-8). If that is true, Haiti is exhibit “A” with the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children, generation after generation. They stand in marked contrast with the other half of their same island, the Dominican Republic which boasts a decent standard of living by comparison and a modern economy. I am convinced that Christian values and morality bring prosperity in their wake regardless of the blessing or curse of natural geography. For that reason, the gospel is the most radical form of economic aid we can give.

The trouble with this is that once affluence abounds, we become self-satisfied and our hearts grow cold. We have no needs. Today, the church of America tortures itself with trying to find new strategies to reach the lost; a source of endless debate and huge investments. Family life centers, seeker-friendly services, contemporary music, electronic wizardry are tried in endless variety to entice the un-churched to come in and to make them feel comfortable. The ironic truth coming out is that while we are trying everything new under the sun to make church attractive, the persecuted Christian church in China and the Sudan is growing exponentially. In the midst of Southern Sudan, a predominantly Muslim country, there are, by some accounts, four times as many Christians today as there were before persecution broke out 20 years ago. World Magazine published a photo of a thatched hut where 500 people were now meeting at Daga Post where only 5 years before there was no church at all.

In the midst of pronouncing blessings and curses upon those who either followed or rejected the Lord, Jeremiah also complained about speaking to his generation in their prosperity but they said, “I will not listen.” Let’s see, now. The gospel brings prosperity, prosperity brings unbelief, unbelief brings suffering, suffering and persecution bring people to the Lord. When will we ever learn? (Need to write a song about that.) What has this got to do with families and children? I am going to deliberate a little before going there. But for now, I would invite you to consider the question and see where it leads you.

dogs

“Correct your son, and he will give you rest…(and) delight to your soul.” - Pro. 29:17

I had the pleasure of making two new friends this last weekend. Completely friendly and entertaining, they accompanied me on a camping trip into the heart of the Big South Fork wilderness. As I got to know them, as one naturally soon does with spending a little trail time together, I came to have a deep admiration for the boundless joy that these two showed in embracing the outdoors but also their sense of restraint for the boundaries of others. They didn’t say a lot, but they were well mannered individuals that quickly warmed up to complete strangers. Their names were a bit odd, Sidney and Indy, but they shared the cold, the stream crossings, and the hard ground with not a word of complaint. It was all great fun to them, especially when the scent of a bird crossed their path or when told to fetch a branch or a pug thrown into the woods. They were dogs, after all; Sidney the black lab and Indy, the short-haired pointer.

The two had been carefully chosen as pups by my two separate friends and each reared with careful training for a specific purpose in mind. Sidney was becoming the skilled retriever that a duck hunter depends upon. Indy was being groomed as a bird-hunting dog. Each had been the object of countless hours of careful training by their masters. I was amazed to see them come on command, heel, and lay down at just a single word. Sidney would obediently watch as her pug was thrown into the woods beyond a stream. She waited until the word was given to retrieve. Then she bounded up and brought back her “prey” until told to sit on the other side of the stream. She sat picture-perfect still with the pug in her mouth. On command, she returned the rest of the way and “held” the pug gently in her mouth until given the command to “give.” In camp, each of the dogs would lay obediently on the ground in their assigned positions if they got too carried away by frisky play. At the word “kennel,” they would go back to their respective tents and await further instructions.

I was intrigued by the devotion, obedience, and joy which these man and dog teams exhibited. Questioning revealed the training involved. The effort was considerable. I, being the grandfather, immediately challenged them to exercise similar effort and care in raising their future children. They admitted that it was great preparation. Indeed. There were things to be learned here. They had done many of the right things. Sidney’s owner told of seeking out help from someone who had knowledge and experience in training. Ahh! Lesson number one. When raising sons and daughters, it is wise to not go-it-alone but to seek out the counsel of others who can speak from wisdom and experience. Smart.

What he was told was that there were three things to remember in any training program: care, calm, and consistency. Not bad words to remember in the raising of children, I thought. Care – that tangible and unqualified expression of love and concern for the child that is clearly expressed in countless ways. Calm – that disciplined sense of self-control that communicates order, steadiness, and self-assurance. Consistency – that day after day evenness that produces reliable expectations and uniformity of results.

I also saw these animals imbued with a sense of purpose and given the skills to accomplish these ends. We can’t order up children according to a desired propensity, but we can awake in them a sense of purpose in the grand scheme of the kingdom of God, help them discover their individual giftedness, and equip them for a productive life. The result: great teamwork of parent and child where each becomes a joy to the other and a pleasure to behold. The things you learn on camping trips!

Internet

“For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive…” 2 Timothy 3:1-7

Up until now, I was under the impression that pornography was the gravest threat that was posed by the internet. No longer. For any parent who watched “Growing up online” on PBS in late January, I now share your terror of raising children in this brave new world. This was not a battle I had to fight in raising my children. But then, we had to fight things my parents never had to face. Each generation faces new challenges unique to its age. Unfortunately, the computer revolution has happened so quickly that many parents today are only vaguely familiar with what is happening on-line and are easy victims of a techno-generation gap. Some cannot even email while their children can surf the complexities of the internet with ease. For those of you who are not aware of the dangers on-line and who did not see this PBS horror show, I offer you a glossary of terms and worries that you can add to your anxiety closet. Sorry.

Internet addiction – the internet can be highly addictive to teens. When this occurs, they will spend every spare moment of time on the net surfing and conversing with thousands of other friends and perfect strangers. Removing computer access is difficult because of access through cell phones, friends, and public libraries. Symptoms include withdrawal, sleep deprivation, 3 syllable sentences, and secrecy.

Alter identities – teens can create alternative identities for themselves on-line. New names, new personas are adopted to fulfill fantasies and compensate for perceived weaknesses. Costuming and photography can portray images totally foreign to friends and family. Beware strange clothing (feather boas, leather collars, etc.) and the family digital camera showing up at the same place and same time.

Cyber bullying – internet communication can be an incredibly easy avenue to receiving threats and demeaning trash talk both from known and unknown sources. Boy-girl relationships offer great potential for humiliation and total destruction when treated with malevolence and maliciousness on-line. Anonymous messaging can be totally brutal and untraceable. Symptoms include ‘spontaneous’ fights at school, loss of self-esteem, ruined reputation, depression, and suicide.

Cyber assassination – a terrific and easy way to attack or destroy others. Similar to cyber bullying but done with greater creativity and designed for a wider audience. Most commonly done by posting photos and text in target-person’s name. Most effective ones are usually quite viciously humorous. Results can be total defamation and humiliation with occasional lawsuits or prosecution.

Virtual friends – through sites like Facebook.com and Myspace.com, teens can collect “friends” who may be known or unknown. Some try to make a contest out of it to see who can collect the most friends which, at times, can number in the thousands. This is often a fantasy world where teens have little or no assurance as to the validity of a “friend’s” age or id, their character, or their trustworthiness. This world of friends can be sealed against parental knowledge through a password known only to your teen. Symptoms include following bad counsel, intensified peer pressure, loss of desire to make real flesh-and-blood friends, rebellion, and knowledge of new and creepy websites.

Parental denial – a willful and intransigent belief that all is well in cyberspace. Even when receiving warnings about their teen, some parents continue to allow full, unsupervised internet access without questioning. This is usually accompanied by an unwavering faith in the internet as a good thing which promotes learning and technological prowess that could lead to a good job someday. Usually results in surprise and shock at later manifestations of deviant behavior.

Britannica.com – an innocuous website which techno-savvy teens can pull up and display when they see that a parent is monitoring their computer from another source. They can then continue to surf or chat while the proud and self-satisfied parent thinks junior is researching penguins for school.

Sparknotes.com – website which allows students to “read” most any work of classic literature in 5-10 minutes. Invaluable source for time-pressed teens in satisfying homework assignments or passing tests.

Secret lives – teens can live and explore a secret life on-line. Bulimics and anorexics can network with others of their ilk and surf websites dedicated to their compulsions. They can rapidly become an experienced pro with group support all without parents having a clue. Similar networks exist for those preoccupied with death and suicide, the occult, or simple terrorism. Symptoms for parents vary from blissful ignorance to head-line grabbing scandals.

Termpapersites.com – quick resource for plagiarizing material to satisfy all sorts of homework assignments. Symptoms include high proficiency with ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ options on their computers and generally good grades with some occasional, glaring exceptions.

Cyber predator – largely a bogey-man invented by adults to scare kids. Teens seem quite able to identify and delete those making inappropriate approaches. Any who actually agree to meet someone are considered ‘stupid’ or ‘extremely needy’ by their peers. Still, the existence of predators is real, and they regularly troll the net looking for the weak and unsuspecting. Most troubling aspect is that teens seem to value their anonymity above all. This is a world where intimacy is combined with anonymity.

On-line voyeurism - an added blessing of digital photography. Teens can trade revealing photos of themselves in a largely anonymous fashion. Photos are password protected but can turn up in various places and times in embarrassing fashion. YouTube.com allows for transmission of videos of all sorts. Cell phone footage of school fights is especially popular. Symptoms and results too diverse to mention. Biggest danger is that once a photo is “out there,” it becomes property of the whole world.

Opportunity Loss – the hidden cost of spending countless hours in on-line games, texting, and recreational gabbing. Symptoms include dullness of mind, fear of eye-to-eye contact with real people, and the possible realization that one’s teen years have been spent in shallow flirtation with empty amusements at a high cost of skills not acquired, books not read, and real friendships not made.

The teen culture has always been a very real and powerful voice in the lives of our young. Through the internet, however, that voice can be powerfully amplified and transmitted in unlimited quantity directly into homes around the world, all without parental knowledge of any kind. The danger is real, but except for the means of delivery, should not come as a surprise. Paul warned that “…in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” ( 2 Tim. 3:1-7) We just marvel at the manner in which these voices are now able to creep into houses and lead the shallow and the silly away. On-line access should be treated like a license to drive a 2000 lb. automobile down a public street. The potential for damage is incredible. Instructions should abound, safeguards built in, and responsibility rewarded accordingly. May God equip you to do so with all discernment and wisdom.

Reading

“…whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” -Philippians 4:8

Liz Brabson, a Tennessee middle school teacher, recently lamented the decline of the literary aspect of our modern American culture in an editorial in the News-Sentinel (1-12-08). Quoting a study by the National Endowment for the Arts, she mourned the fact that less than one-third of American 13-year-olds are daily readers. While this is admittedly sad, I suspect that the daily reading habits of adults in this country sag even below that. The decline of the printed word is well documented as we watch the number of daily newspapers steadily shrink with some questioning their future existence all together. While some are simply switching to on-line sources of news and stimulation, ours is becoming an increasingly oral and visual culture. Attention spans have shrunk drastically (watch an old movie and try not get impatient with the pace) and our vocabularies have withered to Reader’s Digest standards (6th grade?).

As an indicator of where we are today compared to over 100 years ago, try picking up and giving “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” a quick read. Here was a penny novelette, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, designed and destined for the pop-fiction rack at the local train station and newsstand. It quickly was selling out edition after edition at a shilling a copy in the everyday marketplace. I daresay most of us with college educations would struggle with Stevenson’s wide-ranging language (‘amities’-‘distained’- ‘troglodytic’) let alone be patient enough to follow his in-depth ponderings of human nature that comes close to the book of Romans in profundity. No publisher would touch it in today’s action-saturated and word-challenged culture.

For those of you who have read the letters of even the simple and uneducated persons of the 1800’s, one can scarce escape notice of the grace and eloquence that so often typifies their language. There was a simple beauty there which echoed the stylish long-hand script with which they wrote. Contrast that to the newly evolving language of text messaging and its butchered spelling, and one can easily work up a case of despair and despondency.

Yet Ms. Brabson’s complaint also lashed out against Christians who would keep books such as the newly controversial “The Golden Compass” from their children’s hands. She claimed that it would be irresponsible for anyone to discourage reading of any kind (‘within reason,’ she adds, but whose?). How easily does reading become an end in itself which is demonstrated again and again by the garish and provocative offerings of our school and public libraries. Our literary elite have come to justify most any fare if it will “get them to read.” Following this mantra, we find horror novels and the occult promoted in our public school libraries along with such uplifting periodicals such as Rolling Stone, GQ, and Cosmopolitan dealing every sex secret known to man into the hands of curious teens.

We forget so easily that our forefathers came to this land and quickly started schools and colleges teaching their children to read for one over-arching, Protestant obsession: that each person would be able to read the Bible for themselves and direct their lives accordingly. There lies the rub of cultural slippage. It is so easy to divorce good Christian values from their Christian base, and then the mischief begins. C.S. Lewis writes repeatedly of motherly compassion as a very damaging force when taken to extreme and not constrained by other equally important truths and values. Communism is essentially a Christian heresy where concern for the poor and downtrodden morphed into the most bloody and destructive movement of the 20th century.

The object and end view which Ms. Brabson and others so easily overlook is that reading is a skill that enables us to more efficiently and easily search for wisdom. Reading is a means to an end and not an end in itself. The Bible says it quite simply, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom.” Yes, searching and questioning are good tools in the toolbox which periodically involves examining even opposing points of view. Yet, we are the adults. If we have any sense at all as to what constitutes true wisdom, any notion whatsoever of truth as distinguished from error, of good being distanced from evil, we would be most foolish and most horribly negligent not to pass that skill along as well as the skills of reading and questioning. We are the keepers of our children’s souls and minds. From us they will get their first inclinations as to what is the true and the beautiful.

“The Golden Compass” is a no-brainer. While I will not forbid it, I choose to believe its author’s open intent and declare it not worth the reading. There are too many other good books out there that it would be a foolish waste of time to purposely steer my children down that detour. And that is what the Catholic League and other groups are simply doing: alerting us to the dead-end destination of Philip Pullman. Wisdom is essentially a matter of discernment. I want my children to be discerning, discriminating consumers in the welter of the public square: a place where the coarse, the false, and the evil are offered up in quantities far surpassing the good, the true, and the beautiful. Discernment is an ability to be taught and demonstrated by parents first of all, followed by librarians, teachers, schools, and all the gate-keepers of society. It is a shame that so many have abandoned their posts or stand so compromised by moral ambiguity and intellectual relativism that they can no longer tell the difference between the sheep and the wolves. Or they are silenced by a paralyzing fear of disrupting our cultural ease with a simple cry of alarm.

All said and done, if I have to use the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit edition in order to interest my son, or yours, in reading, something is already dreadfully wrong. I have my limits, and surely Ms. Brabson has hers as well. She would be well served by being less churlish with those who draw the line further back than she.

Revival 2

Here is the latest and greatest. It represents a departure from the norm as I engage one of our readers in a dialogue regarding the last issue. I received some feed-back last week from my friend Dr. Jesse --, a professor of music at Malone College, who prays and weeps regularly for revival. I thought his heart-felt fervor worth printing:

All that you write about how we as individuals affect the world around us is true, but I still think that a small impact is, nevertheless, still small and that we should be VERY uneasy about the impact question. But I don't think the answer lies in cleverly devised human programs. What would happen in our communities if even 2 or 3 believers met regularly, fasting, on their knees, desperate before God, openly saying, "Lord, we see so little impact, so few hungry for You. Is there nothing in us that makes them want to 'taste and see?' Does my flesh obscure your Spirit in me to such an extent that I am not reflecting your image? Lord, we hear about thousands getting saved every day in Uganda. Why not here? Lord, make us desperate. Wake us up. Draw others to join us in seeking you. We can't manufacture anything on our own. We need your Wind to blow life into these dry bones." I believe we are in a time when the only "programs" we need are intense, corporate worship and tearful intercession. Nothing polite, nothing dignified. Nothing running on a strict schedule. At church and in our homes, on our knees, weeping, noses running, a no-holds-barred, "I don't care who hears me" cry for mercy for ourselves and for our neighborhoods. Revival is not the end goal here, it is but step two. (Step one is to realize we are dying on the vine, a refusal to live in the town of Status Quo any longer.) Revival is God's Intensive Care for patients whose spiritual breath can hardly fog a mirror, and I fear that is a pretty accurate description of most churches and church members, including myself. How can we expect to impact our communities when we're as sick and poor and needy as the unsaved? Revival is God mercifully bringing the spiritual and emotional healing we can not possibly bring about ourselves. Like the defibrillator paddles, revival is a jump start to get our heart beating again. What we want is transformation; transformation of communities, schools, churches, commerce, and government, where in our towns the works of Christ are more evident than the works of the Enemy.

Mr. Moe responds:
Thanks for the response. You are, of course, admirably right in wanting more than just the average, the good, and, surely, just the mediocre impact on the world in which we live: a self-satisfied, sophisticated, prosperous, society that is super-saturated with entertainments at every hand (unlike Uganda). We pray, or should be praying, for the eruptions of Pentecost to once again break forth in our midst. Yet, in the meantime, we must not despair, because to remove the salt-of-the-earth people we rub shoulders with every day from this present society would surely bring chaos and collapse of unimaginable proportions. So, there are two truths here. We both inform and sustain society to a level of humanity and justice we presently see (which we should not underestimate and for which we should be thankful). But then we live with the knowledge that, in many ways, we could be doing that a whole lot better if we could only purify ourselves to live a more Christ-like life (What would happen if all Christians suddenly stopped doing commerce on Sunday? Or voted?). And, like you mention so clearly, we have no idea what effect we could have if we were to don some appropriate form of sack cloth and ashes in repentance for our communities. But the Spirit blows where it will, and we can do little to command it. Revival comes sometimes in the midst of chaos and seeming defeat and other times when good people seek it eagerly. I hope I can be a balanced servant who prays for revival on one hand and with the other reaches out for my lunch box and goes to work in the full faith and knowledge that simple faith and obedience goes a long way in steadying the societal ship.

Responses and dialogue welcome
How selfish of me to not invite and welcome a “letter to the editor” response from all faithful readers to Mercy and Truth. I hope this will inspire others to respond. No such response will be printed without your final permission. Address all inquiries, rebuttals, praise, and hate-mail to the comments section.

Here are some final tidbits from the Jesse – Moe exchange:

Mr. Moe writes: Many folks seem to stand at the brink of despair and doubt when faced with the question of what difference they are making in the world. When it is a plague of doubt and depression from the evil one, it is a bad thing. When that is a holy dissatisfaction with the status quo coming from the Holy Spirit, it is a good thing. We need to speak to both. I talked to the first last week. You are talking to the second.

Jesse responds: Thank you for reminding me of sack cloth. I should have had "heart-rending repentance" at the top of my list of "programs." To obey is better than sacrifice. No, in the meantime we must not despair, but we MUST become desperate for godly change, desperate enough to turn off the TV and gather our Christian friends to meet regularly to intercede for our city, with the understanding we will not let up until transformation is evident.

Savings and Loan

“As for the saints that are in the earth, they are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.” –Ps.16:3NASV

I was privileged to participate in a very heartfelt discussion last week about the effectiveness of my church. We were several men given the gift of time to reflect upon who we were and where we were going. The question was raised with pointed effect, “Are we impacting our community where we live?” There was a considerable portion of skepticism attached to that inquiry for the life of our church was not attended by waves of the unsaved coming down the aisles or by an overflowing parking lot full of visitors trying to find a slot. Life is fairly routine on any Sunday morning or Wednesday night and attendees are predictable and typically stolid in outward appearance. It was not too difficult to understand the gravity of the question at hand. We all stumbled in attempting to answer the question and were tempted to come to all sorts of conclusions of where the fault and failure lay. Such introspection invariably leads to doubt and restlessness as we see little that is “majestic” in ourselves.

I slept uneasily turning over the question through the night. Then it came to me. Yes, we did impact our community, and I became more convinced of that with each new thought. Every time the hand-bell choir stepped up to ring a witness of truth and beauty into my soul, every time a soloist would sing God’s praise with sincerity and passion, every time the choir would hit a home run to a chorus of amens, and every time the pastor would make my spirit fly on wings of the eternal Word; all these things helped keep this poor boy on the straight and narrow for another week. That, in itself, was no small accomplishment. I am to be the salt of my community and my church is keenly doing its duty in attempting to keep that saltiness alive and well. I thought of a fellow member, Anthony, who pauses every morning in the parking lot of the paint store where he works. He stops to read the Word and pray and then proceeds to enter that store, armed and dangerous, a man who takes no prisoners when given a chance to speak for his Lord. Yes, we impact our community. I think of my friend, Jim, walking the halls of his work-place, a nursing home, where he is an amazing embodiment of our Lord in ministering to the old and feeble of our world. I have seen him talking softly with genuine care in his voice as he clips fingernails and lifts spirits. Yes, we touch the weak and worn of our community. I see young couples raising Godly children who respect authority and have eager eyes and hearts to learn truth wherever they find it. Then they spill them out into our community where they are eagerly received by beleaguered teachers and despondent employers. Yes, we are touching our world for good.

No, it is not flashy or headline-grabbing nor are folks lining up to take seminars to learn the secret of our success. It is the kind of thing pounded out in a life of daily living, routine righteousness, and habitual compassion. But it is that which builds nations and makes them strong. It is easy to despair of our churches with all their warts, our marriages and families with all their problems and quirks, and even our school with all its faults. But when we do, we need to stop and look at them from the other end of the telescope and see their power and beauty, giving thanks for the work of the Holy Spirit who brings forth growth through even the most humble of human agencies when it seeks to follow in the Lord’s steps.

And if we haven’t already, we need to pull out “It’s a Wonderful Life” and watch it one more time. We all struggle with our own “crummy old Savings and Loan” resentments against those institutions in our lives which appear drab, ordinary, and possessing. May we catch a glimpse of what God is doing through them, through us, over time, in quiet and wonderful ways we find hard to recognize or comprehend.

Generation Gap

“And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.” -Luke 1:17

We are now experiencing in our churches what some are calling “worship wars.” It is all about the music. Church growth experts are happily writing prescriptions for reaching generation X, Y, and Z using certain musical formats that involve a particular instrumentation and song genre that appeals to every new and identifiable sub-group that comes along. Some cutting edge churches proudly feature a smorgasbord of services available according to one’s musical tastes which usually falls out along generational lines.

Inter-generational conflict has long been a staple of secular literature and political thought. And I have often felt that the greatest challenge facing any congregation of vibrant believers is to be able to hand down their faith to the next generation. Is the so called “generation gap” a real obstacle to overcome and must the gospel be repackaged every 40 years into “new wineskins” so that the transition be successful?

There is little doubt that nothing ever stays the same. Forms, styles, and cultures all change over time. Yet I refuse to accept the model that each generation must find its own way, that the old cannot speak to the young, nor that the new must first needs destroy the old. The Christmas story gives me great hope in this regard. The first of the angelic visitations came to Zacharias in the temple and announced the coming of John. The clear cut prophecy was that he would go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah as spoken in the last verse of the Old Testament. That spirit would turn the hearts of fathers and children to one another in some powerful and unique way.

I am quite sure I do not fully understand the depth and breadth of that prophecy, but it surely includes a dissolving of any generational conflicts. Evidently that spirit was powerful in Elijah as well as re-energized and emergent in John, the “greatest” of the prophets. In some significant and mighty way, these two giants of Scripture are cross-linked with a ministry that was distinctively marked as one which united rather than divided. Both are fore-runners of the Christ, and each would bear this spirit of reconciliation as one of their distinguishable attributes. It should follow as no surprise that Christ came in the spirit of reconciliation as well. Quite obviously, it is He that would reconcile the world unto Himself by seeking the lost. But I love the foreshadowing of this in His birth.

The Christmas story finds God speaking to both old and young alike, from Zacharias, Simeon, and Anna to the maid, Mary, and her young espoused. No generation is excluded. The story reaches across socio- economic lines and incorporates both rich and poor, educated and uneducated, with the shepherds and the Maji. It reaches out and across racial and cultural lines with Joseph carrying within his bloodline the heritage of foreigners as well as the patriarchs. And who were these foreign kings come to worship?

Yes, we are all met at the manger; both Jew and Gentile, bond and free, male and female, rich and poor, young and old, for we are all one in Him. And soon He would make us all equal at the foot of the cross. I continue to believe He is able to unite us today when we allow His Holy Spirit to hold sway above all our petty differences. He is the ultimate solute that dissolves the walls and kingdoms we erect. When we talk of building unified families, we need go no further than to gather at the manger and enjoy this diverse and odd company bound together by worship that comes of bended knees, not blended or un-blended music.

Miracles

“For with God nothing shall be impossible.” - Luke 1:37

My friend, Ron, was surprised on his birthday this last week by myself and a bunch of men from his life. We had assembled to salute this good friend on turning 60, and after the initial commotion and hubbub, we all settled down for some reflective moments. Somewhat overwhelmed at this sudden gathering of male counterparts, Ron fought back his emotions by recounting the words of an old missionary. This missionary had seen numerous miraculous events in his day but recounted that as far as staying power was concerned, the emotions generated by miracles were only good enough to carry believers through for a day. Ron toyed with us and said that this unforeseen gathering and tribute would be good enough to carry him through at least a week.

As we enter the Christmas season, I once again revel in the miracles associated with the Christmas story. I love turning each one over again in my hands and heart like some highly polished and treasured stone. From the mute Zacharias emerging from the holy of holies to Gabriel’s startling words to an obscure, teen-aged girl; from the orchestrating of political timetables so that humble players appeared on the correct spot of age-old prophecies to the dealing with the troubled spirit of Mary’s suitor; from sending foreign star-gazers an unmistakable call to embark across a desert to the use of common shepherds as eyewitnesses; from miraculous deliverance from sure death to the startling pronouncement of Simeon when he sees an unknown babe of unknown parents: all of it warms and excites my imagination. Christmas is a celebration of a whole litany of miracles whose timing is so precise, whose imagery is so rich, and whose extravagance is cloaked in such humble terms that it pulls at the heart of even the most stolid of skeptics. If I were not a believer, and I read in earnest the Christmas story, I think that I would surely want it to be true even if I would not be able to admit it. There is no story ever written to compare.

But miracles do not wholesale believers make nor do old miracles hold us to the straight and narrow way. Jesus found greater faith in Samaritans and foreigners than among his own who witnessed his power. Peter, eye-witness to a host of miracles, so quickly denied his Lord when heat was applied. The word to the rich man was that even if one were to rise from the dead, his relatives would not believe.

The Jews sought a sign, a miracle, above all, while the Greeks hungered after rational thinking. In the end, neither are fully adequate to lead us home. Indeed, blessed are they that have not seen and yet believe. Nor can one think his way to God. The All-Wise has confounded the wisdom of the sages using the cursed cross, the instrument of death for the worst of sinners. But yet, I am thankful for the miracles. They may not be the sole means of sustaining faith, the irrefutable evidence of absolute truth, but yet they are like beautiful stars in an otherwise dark sky. They speak of mystery, other distant worlds, things beyond my comprehension; galaxies hung in space, far, far away just to provoke my sense of wonder. When life grows commonplace and anxieties overwhelm, I fly to a clear night sky to assure myself that my world is truly bigger than what I can touch and feel. There are great mysteries afoot, unseen forces orchestrated since the beginning of time, weaving patterns of infinite beauty and majesty. What we see are pinprick glimpses of the eternal speaking truth in flickers of ancient light.

The season of miracles has begun. Soak them up, revel in them, and celebrate their beauty, for all too soon we face the light of day when stars grow dim and work calls us to a world of care.

Manners

Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right. Pro. 20:11

I frequently shudder at the work of my generation. We conducted a devastating assault on the norms of society back in the sixties and were quite successful. Universal truth claims were denied and morality became a matter of private, personal choice. What was left was a radical individualism that is still in the process of running itself to exhaustion. As an example, dress codes of all sorts were destroyed so that casual dress became the norm and downright outlandishness is now the mark of authentic self-expression. While most of us find some comfort in this free and laid back culture we live in, we also must acknowledge that common place manners have been sacrificed and laid aside in the process.

Now that we are free to stake out our own individual moral high ground, we can now decide where and how to defend it caring not how it might affect others. And in an odd twist of affairs, our age now allows self-righteous claims to individual moral visions to trump public conceptions of manners and etiquette. We tell our friends they are fat because we want to be honest. We can scream at people for wearing fur because it hurts animals. We can wrap all sorts of churlish behavior in a smug morality these days. Refusal to send thank you cards is justified if one “hates to write” or is seen as mere “slavish submission to convention.” Failure to attend funerals is okay if you want to “remember a person just the way they were.” And there is always the great, standby excuse for not saying the polite and gracious thing, “You wouldn’t want me to be hypocritical, would you?”

Unfortunately, manners are the oldest and most basic presuppositions of any society and precede the law in restraining lawlessness. The idea that the wishes of others do not matter is exactly what public manners and etiquette are designed to contradict. Even primitive societies many times have elaborate codes of behavior for showing respect and deference. A proper understanding of what constitutes good manners is essential for any classroom to have success. Our public schools are being overwhelmed with children who have not been taught to show respect for authority and one’s elders, to understand what constitutes rudeness, or what comprises salacious speech or dress. How is learning possible in the midst of a chaotic classroom where common courtesies have been successfully vanquished?

Many of you have insisted that your children speak when spoken to, to greet when greeted, to say thank you at every opportunity even if they do not have any sincere feelings attached to the words. I salute you and am growing ever more convinced that you are helping re-build a virtuous society by recognizing the legitimacy of manners. This is the front line in the battle against lawlessness and rabid individualism. I confess that I once wondered if requiring our students to stand when an adult entered a classroom was an antiquated custom of little value. I no longer do. And I now notice a sense of pride on the part of students when they do this spontaneously. I notice also that children made to say “Thank you” and even “I love you” become more thankful and more loving. Excusing a child’s uncivilized conduct in the name of “self-expression,” a “creative spirit,” or mere “personality” undermines the ties that bind not only families together but society itself.

Proverbs talks about a generation that curses their father and does not bless their mother and yet are pure in their own eyes. Could this be a picture of a world without manners? Lord, save us from that, I pray.

For more, see “The World’s Oldest Virtue,” Judith Martin, First Things, May 1993

Thanksgiving

The Lord will accomplish what concerns me. – Ps. 138:8

Or will He? Upon the verse above hangs so much of the emotional momentum of the human heart. David imbeds this line in a Psalm filled with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. And as we enter the Thanksgiving season, we will be challenged to bend our knee to our God and, through the eyes of faith, say, “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me.” It is the essence of thanksgiving to be content with the grace meted out to each of us.

It is of great concern to the teachers of our day who see angry children in their classroom. Some have good cause to be when their parents drag them through divisive and horrible relationships, when they are victims of indifference forced to raise themselves in loveless homes, or worse yet, when they become innocent subjects of predatory adults. Such anger may be understandable but is, nevertheless, quite deadly to all concerned, especially the bearer. Anger is the antithesis of thankfulness and ulcerates a steady poison of bitterness to the soul. It is an emotion that we were never built to bear.

Most of the people I meet and the children we teach have little real reason to be angry. That is no matter, however, because the human heart is capable of magnifying even the most simple of offenses into mounds of resentment. You can do it, and so can I. For children, it is even easier. One child may wrestle with the sudden loss of a parent while another can be tempted into great bitterness because a living parent denies them their own TV. From there, it is a simple step to blame God for the curse of hateful or impoverished parents. I was tempted to anger against God for my appearance as a young man. After all, He made me.

Do we have some angry children at CFC? No doubt, for the same reason you and I struggle with resentment at the misfortunes we encounter in our lives. All children go through times and seasons of anger ranging from a brief pout to raging shouting matches. Not a pretty sight. What is of significant concern is the slow, simmering anger that resides just below the surface over substantial periods of time.

What can be done? First of all, we need to look within. We cannot expect spirits of gratefulness from our children if we still cling to our own resentments. Forgiveness for others and a quiet acceptance of our own place in God’s economy is essential in removing the speck in the eye of our child. Second, we need patient and loving relationships that will enable us to unlock the hearts of our children. It is inherently embarrassing for us all to admit the things we hold against God. Third, I would hope that we could model a heart that is composed and quieted like a weaned child resting against his mother (Ps. 131:2). How powerful are the stories of repentance and rest which we have experienced in giving over our own episodes of anger unto the Lord. Fourth, I would advocate a continual besieging of that stronghold until it is broken; not with threats or punishments, but with a quiet declaration that we know that the issues of the heart are of the utmost priority.

I think the most common parental error is that of inaction out of fear. Do we dare open that box of our child’s fears and resentments? What will we find? When our children turned “of age”, we made it a practice of asking them if there were moments, actions, or practices in our household and parenting which they remembered with particular clarity colored by feelings of injustice. We were genuinely fearful of what we would discover. To our relief, no one recounted any even though we, as parents, could have suggested a few. Perhaps it is time we all ask ourselves if we have undeclared grievances against God and if we truly believe that the Lord will accomplish what concerns us. Freedom to praise depends on it.

Suffering

To every thing there is a season, ...A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; Ecc. 3:1-4

It is part of my job to keep in touch with the families in our Co-op. As such, I partake in your joys and sorrows. Right now, the tide is washing up a good deal of sorrow on our shores. Though it would be folly to hope to treat the subject of suffering fully in one page or less, nevertheless, your experiences of the present and past month have occasioned more than a little reflection on the issue on my part. That, coupled with a reading of some of the work of Mother Theresa among the miserable warrens of Calcutta, makes me ponder the whole problem of pain and suffering in God’s creation.

Ultimately, suffering is the price we pay for dwelling outside the Garden where we must live by our wits and the sweat of our brow, all at the mercy of the elements. It was a choice we made, and in so doing, we took all creation with us. The dark of the night brings with it a thousand fears of what can happen, a place where beast devours beast and man does his worst. But suffering is endemic to all creation even apart from the evil deeds of men. Cancers devour, defects cripple, and accidents maim the innocent and guilty alike. Rational creatures that we are, we would love to see some rhyme or reason to it all. C.S. Lewis wrote that pain was “God’s megaphone.” Yet, this seems heartless in watching the young and the innocent die who don’t even have language of the heart to hear or understand. The poet William Blake offers another view:

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine;

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

And when this we rightly know,

Through the world we safely go.

Is it true that man was made for sorrow and woe, mixed also with joy? It seems so when we consider that we are able to experience joy because of being made in the very image of God, and equally so with sorrow when we consider the far reaching effects of the fall upon man and all creation. Fallen-ness and the image of God, all wrapped up in one frail creature. What a recipe for ‘angst’, that dark turmoil of the soul.

Many demand that suffering just should not be so and spend much of their lives trying to insulate themselves against it in any form; some with money and others with distance. Others blame and rail against God, turning their hearts to stone. Or there is always the ploy of flight, to run from it whenever it appears. But in fleeing from the pain, we invariably multiply the damage like some wounded bull run amok. Marriages are shattered, children discarded, and promises broken all to renounce the reality of the pain. I rather like what Malcom Muggeridge has said and must quote directly: “One can dimly see and humbly say that suffering is an integral and essential part of our human drama. That it falls upon one and all in differing degrees and forms whose comparison lies beyond our competence. That it belongs to God’s purpose for us here on earth, so that, in the end, all the experience of living has to teach us is to say: Thy will be done.” That is a tall order for any of us. Yet God himself identifies with our suffering through His own Son. At the cross, “God suffered in the person of a man but brought redemption for man in the person of God.” In this, we see “the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy co-existing on Golgotha.”*

I take great comfort knowing that God knows our frame, that we are but dust, and that Jesus was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. I also take comfort in knowing that when one of us suffers, it brings out the best in those who are willing to share in that pain and help bear the burden. This dance of suffering and joy literally defines what it is to be human. May we embrace our humanity with courage and resolve.

*Something Beautiful for God, Malcom Muggeridge, p. 106

Cades Cove

Well, I tried to tempt all or some of you last weekend. No one could manage to break free plus the fact that they still are banning all back country fires in the Smokies turned me from going overnight solo to doing a "book tour" of Cades Cove. Fall is a great hiking time but I don't like the idea of going to bed at 7:30 unless I am really whipped. One needs a fire and some good company.

I enjoyed some great music going to and from the cove, got to bike leisurely through the Cove, stopped along the way and worked myself through a short book I wanted to read, and had a serendipitous moment at the Missionary Baptist Church. I attached a copy of that interlude which I wrote up for this week's Thurs. News. Not a bad day, all in all.

There are some great unexplored areas of the cove which offer sunny hillsides, tranquil pastures, and peaceful reflection. I aim to explore more of it over time as I can.

“I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.” –Ps. 104:33

My instructions to our teachers were explicit: come back to school after home study week with a fresh love for a new book, an old friend, or an eternal truth. To make sure I practiced what I preached, I set off last Sat. morning intending on a book tour of Cades Cove. I packed a lunch, a couple of books, and took off on my bike through the Cove looking for sunny hillsides and quiet nooks.

My first stop was at the off road Primitive Baptist Church. I could not help but notice the sweet sound of singing coming from inside and was instantly drawn in. There I found a dozen or so family members, young and old, singing the old hymns of the faith up in front in rich harmonies. I sat down and joined in. They had come in and discovered the wonderful acoustics of the old church in its delightful simplicity. Wooden floors, wooden walls, and wooden ceiling joined together to breathe a special magic into this little impromptu choir, much the way a well-made violin resonates the sound of the strings and spills it forth in rich fashion. They were rediscovering and reliving the musical heritage of its original occupants who knew full well the delight of acapella singing. Accompanying the thrill of hearing the sound of intermingling voices and old familiar tunes, I delighted in the instant bond of connection with these perfect strangers. They not only knew the old songs of Zion, they loved them. It made my heart sing to hear young people suggesting this song and then that one with the genuine zest that only comes in knowing the truth they proclaim.

Another couple wandered in and joined us. His voice was powerful and strong and full of zeal for the task at hand. It stoked our enthusiasm all the more. Someone suggested we gather in a circle to get a better blend. We did, and the songs continued to roll. Visitors piled in and many sat or joined in as well. We rejoiced with each new title that was pulled up from memory in which we again discovered common ground. I take credit for suggesting “It is well with my soul” which proved to be the highpoint as the inspired voices hurled themselves into its swelling words of praise. The place boomed. I couldn’t decide if I would rather be in the midst or be standing out in the parking lot to hear the praise ring from this historic structure against the beautiful backdrop of mountains and sky.

All total, we sang for well over an hour. We couldn’t pull ourselves away. No one wanted to leave. It was one of those serendipitous moments that becomes a treasured memory. Later, I joined these memories with the search I had made of the East Tennessee Rationalists Society website. They are a curiosity of mine and while visiting my children who are fully wireless, I took the time to wander through their comings and goings. They have a photo of Rodin’s “The Thinker” on their standard. Evidently they do not know that “The Thinker” is not engaged in secular, rational thought but is part of a larger frieze inspired by Dante’s “Inferno” where he is pondering his eternal fate between heaven and hell. For a society trying to explore alternatives to supernaturalism, I find it quite amusing. They are in earnest, however, and are steeped in intellectual skepticism of the highest order. Altogether, my week ended in sincere empathy for them. Theirs is a dry and barren faith. Atheism has no music that can stir the soul like a dozen voices in a simple, country church. There simply are no songs for unbelief. How truly sad. On the other hand, it is said that the early Methodists out sang their enemies. May we not neglect the power of song to propel the joy of the Kingdom deep within our souls and to a dry and thirsty generation.

Old Friends

“Take my instruction, and not silver, and knowledge rather than choicest gold.” Pro. 8:10

Way back in the waning years of the 1960’s (B.C. – before children), my wife and I were picked up and drafted into a singing group known as the Keyfolk out in Seattle, Washington. It was the hey-day of folk music, coffee houses, and Jesus people who were, quite simply, Christian flower children. Yes, your humble administrator once toted a guitar and hung out with some pretty interesting people. But through that single but exciting year of “singing gigs” and “witnessing for Jesus,” we became bonded with the leaders of that music group, Mike and Yvonne. We were a strange foursome from totally different backgrounds. They were Pentecostal, Bible college graduates, and we were mainline denomination folk with staid college educations. None of that mattered for the bonds of truth welded us together as we shared the same passions and the same crazy sense of humor. Their sense of fearlessness and zeal took us places we would never have dared to go and developed in us gifts we never would have known we had.

After that year together, life took us to different ends of the United States, but we still kept in touch, at Christmas time if nothing else. We shared a brief visit after the first children were born but then did not see them again until all the kids were in their teens. Again, the chemistry was still there as we took up immediately where we had left off. Two or three chance visits since then have always proved the same vision still true with much laughter and many joys and struggles shared that mirrored similar paths of mission, family, and blessing. It is truly a precious thing to have friendships that can be so enriching, affirming, and enlightening. We have learned so much from them and yet they would, knowing their blind and gracious spirits, say the same about us.

This past week, they came again, flying out for a conference, taking a few extra days to stoke the old fires of friendship, and also to research a family tree that reaches into the hills of East Tennessee. We laughed at old jokes and new jokes, laughed at the aches and pains of growing old, but also rejoiced in the goodness of God over the years. Each family has reared three children with some struggles and pain but return thanks for the Godly paths they now follow. Grandchildren abound, and we shared the gold of the new life stories emerging around us. Each has been privileged to share in ministries that have borne fruit in their season. And each has traveled the world over touching those monuments and places that most folk only read about.

That is where it really hit us. We all came from inauspicious backgrounds, small towns, and less than perfect families, raised poor to middle class, and yet we have traveled those dream trips to explore the old world, walked in the footsteps of the famous and infamous, all at little or no expense. They had spent 6 years building churches in Africa. We had led student tours to the capitals of Europe. Every bit as momentous, we were still married to the same spouse after 40 years. We owned our own homes, were still able to take pride in our children, and were blessed with little ones around our knees. What riches were ours. And who would have thought we average few, we of no degree, we of humble gifts and origins could have done and experienced all that in our lifetimes? But it was not because of any dashing accomplishment of ours but simply the unmerited favor of God. Wisdom, that gallant lady of Pro. 8, promises to those who seek diligently after her “enduring wealth and righteousness.” She has sure kept her word with us, and we are downright amazed at her generosity when we now look back. What a lady!