Flight Paths

In November, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson declared that November 11 should be designated "Armistice Day" to commemorate the end of World War I on the same date the year before..  In 1954, veterans' organizations lobbied their congressmen to change the name to Veterans Day to honor the veterans who served after that event, particularly World War II and the Korean War.  In 1968, the Federal Government passed legislation to observe all legal holidays on Mondays, so as to create three-day weekends and encourage travel and recreation to boost the economy.  Veterans Day completely lost its historical significance as it was moved annually to the second Monday of November.
In 1978 President Gerald Ford moved Veterans' Day back to its original date, deeming history and patriotism more important than dollars and cents.  So on November 11, 1978, Veterans Day was once again, and ever since, observed on the eleventh day of November to honor all who have served their country in the military, and at that time we had even more wars to add, most notably the Vietnam War.

              The way those particular veterans were greeted when they came home from that horror is a shame to our country.  They did not start that war; they were just pawns on a larger political chessboard.  The ones who spat on them and called them names were, by and large, a younger group who had never fought in a war, never experienced any sort of economic deprivation, but rather, had their lives handed to them on a silver platter. 

              I live in Florida, where a great many retirees, many of whom are veterans, finish their lives.  They are regularly the brunt of jokes and disrespect from a generation that may never know the trials that group went through, solely because those people went through those trials.  Funny how time can wreak such havoc with attitudes isn’t it?

              Unfortunately, I have seen the same thing happen in the Lord’s body.  A younger generation sneers at an older one because it is older, because it doesn’t understand that society is a bit different, and what was once expedient no longer is.  Yet that older generation is the one who saw the problems in the work force during the 40s, a war machine grinding out supplies at a pace unheard of before.  They were the ones who saw the need for a Sunday evening service so that those Christians who were working shifts would not be left out of the group activities, so they too could experience the encouragement that comes from praising and thanking God together. 

              You know what?  When they came up with that idea, it was new, it was different--it broke all the traditions.  Don’t sit there on your high horse and accuse them of not being able to change with the times.

              That is why those things are so hard for them to give up.  Yes, for some there may be an attitude problem, perhaps a willfulness or stubbornness that should be dealt with, but I would suggest that is not the case for most.  Just because someone has a difficult time seeing the need for an expedient change, does not mean he is a Pharisee, which seems to be the accusation du jour.  Too many times we act towards them with a disrespectful scorn and impatience, while at the same time being happy to stand on those same tired, hunched shoulders, shoulders that bore the burden of fighting the battles that have kept the church sound and faithful to the Lord.  Where would we be now without them? 

              All younger generations need to be careful.  Trying to withhold respect and honor and cloaking it as righteousness is simply another facet to the same Phariseeism you claim to abhor (Mark 7:8-13).  Our Lord would not like it now any more than he did two thousand years ago.

              So please, be a little more careful how you speak to and about the old warriors.  Be understanding of the feelings they must have, seeing their world change perhaps more than any other generation before.  Be grateful to them for what they have been through and the battles they have fought.  One of these days, another generation will come along and look at you and the things you don’t want to change.  What kind of example will you have left them?
 
You shall stand before the gray head and honor the face of the old man, and you shall fear your God.   I AM Jehovah, Lev 19:32. 
 
Dene Ward

When you have a blog, a lot of strangers find you.  I am constantly surprised by some of the emails I receive from people who want to use this forum for their own purposes.  I have always felt an obligation to my readers to be careful what I post, and most of the time I turn those requests down.  Few of them are even spiritual in nature anyway, and that is what we are all about here.  Practical, yes, but above all, spiritual.

             However, I recently received a request that made me sit back and think.  And think some more.  While I still did not allow that person to post on my blog, I did see that his own website might be of some use to some of you who are dealing with issues so few of us really know how to help you with.  I have been trying to figure out an easy way to post a recommendation ever since, one that will keep the recommendation before you every time you visit the blog.

              And that made me think, "What else can I recommend that might be of use to the people who read this blog?" 

              A lot of social media is pointless, useless, negative, even divisive.  I have yet to see an argument won regardless the evidence given.  So why not, instead of being just another negative post, offer something helpful?  That is what I will try to do.

              On the left sidebar, look for the new page "Recommended Sites."  You will find a list, with thumbnail sketches and links, of sites you might find helpful in your life or the life of someone you know and love.  Please feel free to use them, and I would appreciate any feedback as well.  If you know other sites I should consider for that page, please click on "Contact Dene" and send them on.

              Please take a minute now to check them out.
 
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1Thess 5:11
 
Dene Ward
 

One of the most challenging aspects of studio teaching is switching horses midstream.  Every forty-five minutes I not only had to rev up the excitement when greeting a new student, I had to change my perspective.

              I had one voice student who could scarcely carry a tune.   We spent a good deal of the lesson practicing matching pitches.  The next student was singing Italian art song and learning to trill.  One I applauded for simply getting through the song in key, the other I reprimanded for breathing in the middle of a word.  A five year old piano student would walk in with her eight bar tune, followed by a senior in high school working on a concerto.  One I praised for playing the right rhythm while only missing two notes.  The other I castigated for poor phrase shaping and improper execution of an appoggiatura.  It would have been unfair to expect a five year old to understand an appoggiatura when he didn’t even know key signatures yet.  It would have been cruel to try to teach a voice student with a challenged ear to trill.

              So I should not have been surprised at what I found in this study of faith that has consumed the past year of my life, but I was.  I wonder if it will surprise you too.  Every time Jesus said, “O ye of little faith,” he was talking to his disciples.  Sometimes other people heard it too, but if you check every account, he was addressing those who followed him daily—“ye of little faith.”  Yet the only times I could find people praised for their “great faith” they were Gentiles!

              That tells me a lot.  First, faith isn’t just a one-time first principle.  If even those who had enough faith to “leave all and follow” could be told their faith was “little,” then faith is something alive and growing.  Jesus expected it to carry them through their lives and become an asset to them, not a burden that might be “lost.” 

              Perhaps the most important thing we learn is something Jesus said in another context:  To whom much is given, of him much shall be required, Luke 12:48.  Those men had been with Jesus 24/7 for a year or more and he expected them to have matured.  I know a lot of people who like to claim they have “strong faith.”  Be careful when you do that.  God may just test your claim: “and from whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” 

              So examine your faith.  Is it growing?  Can you handle more adversity today than you did a decade ago?  God expects quick growth.  The people in the first century committed their lives to Him, knowing they might be thrown to the lions the next week.  I worry that too many of us commit our lives to Him expecting all of our problems to disappear in a week.  It’s supposed to be an instant fix to all earthly woes, instead of what He promised--an instant fix to our sins. 

              What exactly are you expecting of your relationship with God?  Some of us try to hold God hostage with our expectations.  “I have faith that God will…” and then we sit back confidently waiting for him to do our will, instead of waiting on His will. 

              Which would the Lord say to you:  “O ye of little faith,” or “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel?”
 
But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:11-12.                                                 
 
Dene Ward
 

Have you found yourself doing it lately?  Especially in the past ten years or so?  When people start vilifying the Bible with accusations about irrelevance, hate-mongering, misogyny, and homophobia, have you tried to make excuses for God?  Especially when it comes from people who claim to believe that Bible but come right out and say it's wrong, do you feel the need to apologize for God?

              I think I may have done that.  I think I may have said things that sounded like I was embarrassed by what I believed.  Finally, it hit me like a brick.  If someone were embarrassed to admit they knew me, I would just leave.  Wouldn't you?  So how do you suppose our Father feels? 

               Just what are we claiming to be, people?  Disciples of Christ or not?  Servants of God or not?

              If you love me, you will keep my commandments, Jesus said in John 14:15.  Well, do you love him?

                By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. (1John 5:2)  The world will try to tell you just the opposite—that keeping God's commands means you do not love people.  Who do you believe?

              For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. (1John 5:3)  Or do you disagree with John?  Are God's commands too embarrassing to profess, too difficult in our culture's anti-morality, and too polarizing for our own comfortable lifestyles?

              Until someone else comes along who will empty himself of Deity to become a man, suffer through the undignified life of humanity and die an ignominious death for me, who am I to say I don't agree with God's morality, with commands that affect what I can and cannot do in service to him, and how much I must put up with in other people?  I will do as I am told because no one else loved me that much and no one else created me; no one else has the power to blink us all out of existence with a thought.  Just what in the world are you thinking when you go around apologizing for God and his Word as if it were something embarrassing we have to put up with?  If you hate having to live by God's rules, you may as well quit pretending. 

              This is what God told Jeremiah when he faced a group of arrogant, hard-headed, disobedient, unfaithful people, people who would ridicule and persecute him, and it would serve us well to remember it as we face that same group several thousand years later:

              Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. ​Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the LORD.” (Jer 1:6-8)
 
Dene Ward

I was reading the Q and A column in a cooking magazine based in Boston.  “You’re kidding,” I spoke aloud when a reader asked how to dispose of bacon grease without clogging her sink.  Dispose of bacon grease?  Keith was equally appalled, but on a whim he asked a friend, who is originally from New England, what he did with his bacon grease.

              “Why?’ he asked with a suspicious look on his face.  “What’s it good for?”

              What’s it good for?  I guess this is one of those cultural things.  Bacon grease to a Northerner must mean “garbage.”  Bacon grease to a Southerner means “gold.”

              My mother kept a coffee can of it in her refrigerator.  I do the same.  My grandmothers both kept a tin of it on their stoves.  They used it every day, just as their mothers had.  In the South bacon grease is the fat of choice.  In the old days only better-off farmers had cows and butter.  The poorer families had a pig, and they used every square inch of that animal.  Even the bones were put into a pot of beans and many times the few flecks of meat that fell off of them into the pot were all the meat they had for a week.  In a time when people needed fat in their diets (imagine that!), the lard was used as shortening in everything from biscuits to pie crust.  And the grease?  A big spoonful for seasoning every pot of peas, beans, and greens, more to fry okra, potatoes, and squash in, a few spoonfuls stirred into a pan of cornbread batter, and sometimes it was spread on bread in place of butter.

              I use it to shorten cornbread, flavor vegetables, and even to pop popcorn.  Forget that microwave stuff.  If you have never popped real popcorn in bacon grease, you haven’t lived.  I am more health-conscious than my predecessors—in fact, we don’t even eat that much bacon any more.  But when we do, I save the drippings, scraping every drop from the pan, and while most of the time I use a mere teaspoon of olive oil to sauté my squash from the summer garden, once a year we get it with dollop of bacon grease.  Any artery can stand once a year, right?

              As I said, it’s a cultural thing.  Things that are precious to Southerners may not be so to Northerners, and vice versa.  Don’t you think the same should be true with Christians?  What’s garbage to the world should be gold to Christians.

              One thing that comes to mind is the Word of God.  In a day when it is labeled a book of myths, when it is belittled and its integrity challenged, that Word should be precious to God’s people.  David wrote a psalm in which at least seven times he speaks of loving God’s word, Psalm 119.

              We often speak of “loving God” or “loving Jesus,” but you cannot do either without a love of the Word, a love shown in obedience.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the words that you hear are not mine, but the Father’s who sent me, John 14:24.  Jesus even defined family, the people you love more than anyone or anything else, as “those who hear my word and do it,” Luke 8:21.  Surely the ultimate love was shown by the martyrs depicted in Rev 6:9 who were slain “for the Word of God.”

              Do we love God’s Word that much?  Then why isn’t it in our hands several times a day?  Why aren’t we reading more than a quota chapter a day?  Why can’t we cite more than one or two proof-texts, memorized only to show our neighbors they are wrong? 

              Bacon grease may be gold to a Southern cook, but it is hardly in the same category.  Yet I think I may have heard Christians arguing more about when to use bacon grease than when to read the Bible.  Maybe we are showing the effects of a culture other than a Christian’s.
 
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." John 14:21
 
Dene Ward

Thirty-three years ago we moved onto this "back forty," across a grassy stretch between two fences, over a low rise deep into the live oaks, around the moss-laden corner and down the hill to what had last been a watermelon field.  We mowed it little by little, landscaped it with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, and began planting—a garden first, then roses, azaleas, blueberries, grape vines, crepe myrtles, daylilies, amaryllises, jasmine, jessamine, and finally, a few annuals.  Then came the trees—a few oaks, including a huge acorn we brought back from a camping trip in north Georgia, a sycamore, a maple, a couple of apples, a peach, and then two pecan trees, right in the middle of the west field.  Finally we had our dream property, but nature refused to cooperate on a few things.
 
             First the apple trees died, then the peaches.  "Too close to oak trees," the county agent said.  Now the blueberries have stopped bearing, and yes, they are right next to what used to be a small oak—but that was three decades ago.  It now towers over them.  And the pecans?  They might be six feet tall after all these years, and we haven't had the first pecan.  "Too close to the pine trees," we were told, pines that at the time were hardly more than fat sticks in the ground, but are now well over forty feet tall.  "They have ruined the soil for pecans."

              So what can we glean from this?  What are we surrounding ourselves with?  What has "ruined our soil?"  What has made us completely unfit for the kingdom?

              The first thing that comes to mind is, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, you make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves. (Matt 23:15).  If we aren't careful, we can stunt the growth of new Christians.  Barnes says they Jews did this by converting for the sole purpose of inflating their numbers and then not teaching the former pagans how to live by God's law.  Add to that, when a hypocrite converts someone, just exactly what does he probably teach them to be?  Another hypocrite just like he was.  So in either case, we have left them as weak pecan trees in the midst of stronger pines who ruin the soil in which they have been planted.

              But let's not forget the obvious application.  Be not deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals. (1Cor 15:33)

               This is not about whether or not you should go out into the world to make contacts and teach.  Of course you should.  But soil is where a tree gains its nutrients and its life-giving water.  When I talk to my neighbors, when I work with my colleagues, where do I go for sustenance?  Do I stay with them and imbibe their values, or do I return to my core group, to my support system, to regain my strength?  Am I careful to monitor myself for signs that I may be taking in the wrong kind of nutrition and passing it off as "seeking the lost?" 

               The area in which we plant ourselves should have access to light, not be dwarfed by taller, stronger trees who smother us in their own values.  WE need to be the oaks, not the pecans, the ones who influence the weak, not the other way around.  Just who is influencing whom in your case?

               Stop and check yourself today.  It did not take us thirty years to know we had a problem with these trees.  When a five foot tall tree has not grown an inch in a year, something is amiss.  Have you grown?  Have I?  Are we better than we were five years ago?  Or do we still fight the same battles in the same way with the same meager results—or even fail? 

               So ask yourself, who had you rather spend time with?  Who do you go to for advice?  Who influences your behavior more than anyone else?  If the answer is NOT "godly brothers and sisters," maybe you are nothing more than a stunted pecan tree.  If you think those towering pines and oaks who are affecting your growth have any real respect for you, you are sadly mistaken.  They see you for what you are—a weak, scrawny pecan tree.  So does God.
 
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. (1Cor 3:18)
 
Dene Ward

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, Eph 5:25

Our culture gets in the way of our Bible study far too often.  It is a lesson taught to me by a younger woman about twenty years ago.  During that class we were discussing the wives of David and the problems that might have caused—all of them being wives of the same man.  Naturally the idea of jealousy and resentment came up first, and we discussed that for several minutes. 
Finally this young woman spoke up and said, "I don't think we have any idea how those women felt.  They grew up with the idea of polygamy.  It was all around them, especially in the neighboring countries, and even among the richer Israelites.  They knew from the beginning that they might find themselves in this situation.  Their own mothers might have been in that situation.  How can we who are used to monogamy even imagine what they were feeling?"

              I knew immediately that she was correct.  We carry our cultural baggage into our Bible study when we need to be dropping it off at the study door.  The only way to know how these women might have felt is to talk to a woman who has experienced it.

              And because of our cultural baggage we miss a lot of other examples in the Biblical text.  How about the marriage of Abraham and Sarah?

              Abraham married his half-sister Sarah.  Period.  He was surrounded by polygamy.  His friends and neighbors were likely polygamists. He was wealthy and polygamy was far more common among the rich.  It took money to support several wives and a few dozen children.

              And—Sarah had not given him an heir.  That alone would have been cause for the men of that place and era to find a second, or even third wife.  I can just imagine a neighbor stopping by and saying, "Abraham, my daughter is marriageable now.  She is healthy and could give you the children Sarah has not."  I can even imagine that happening several times. 

              But Abraham did not succumb for decades.  He was 85 when Sarah finally prevailed upon him to take Hagar as a second wife, a concubine since she was a servant.  It took Sarah's great love for her husband and great faith in the plan of God—that there had to be an heir for the promises to come about—before he would even think of doing so.

              Somehow, this man of God had learned the Divine Plan of God for marriage—one man for one woman for one lifetime—and had lived up to it, even among rampant, and culturally acceptable, polygamy.  This man had learned to love his wife "as his own body" thousands of years before Paul put it into words.

              We miss all that because none of us would have ever even dreamed of polygamy to solve the problem.   We miss it because monogamy is second nature to us.  We miss the love this man had for his wife, even after she had grown old and unable to bear him a child, a child God said had to be born for all those promises to come about.  Still he was willing to wait, willing to be satisfied with the woman he had originally chosen, when no one else he knew would have.

              And how many of us become dissatisfied over the trivial, dissatisfied enough to trade one in for a new model, as the old saying goes?  How many of us can match the devotion these two people had for each other through thick or thin, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse?  How many of us jump at the first "worse" there is to get out of it?

              See what you miss when you don't study the culture of the times?  See what you miss when you think we are so much smarter, so much wiser, so much more knowledgeable about God than those ancient people were?  Drop your luggage at the door and see what they have to teach you.
 
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Eph 5:28-31
 
Dene Ward

The car hummed along the highway as we carried our two grandsons to our home while mommy and daddy were away for a few days.  They slept away most of the two plus hour long trip, waking in time to see the unfamiliar countryside sweep past on the last road “over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house.”

              They played the rest of the afternoon away, digging in the sand, chasing bubbles, and swinging on the old oak tree (the same one Daddy fell out of and broke his arm).  Dinner came only after a bath for those two dirty-faced, dirty-footed little fellows, a tub full of bubbles and cups and pitchers to pour over each other.  After their favorite mac and cheese, chicken nuggets and applesauce, it wasn’t long until their eyes were drooping and they were ready for bed.  “The tired-er the better,” we thought, especially for that first night. 

              They fell asleep quickly, twenty-month-old Judah in the “Pack and Play” and four year-old Silas by his own choice next to his little brother on the twin-sized airbed.  We listened through the rest of the evening, but never heard a peep. 

              However, at 4:52 a.m. I sensed something by my bed and woke to a small figure standing there in the starlight filtering through the curtains.  Dark in the country is not like dark in the city.  We have no streetlights—unless you live entirely too close to an uprooted city slicker who thinks he needs one, and we don’t.  We have no concrete to reflect the moonlight either.  When it’s dark, it’s dark, and if you are not used to navigating by God’s natural night lights, you think you woke up in a tomb.

              “Silas,” I whispered, “what’s wrong?”

              “All this dark is keeping me awake,” he said quite seriously, and even though I was sleepily thinking, “All this dark is supposed to keep you asleep!” I knew exactly what he meant.  Even though we had left a nightlight right by his bedroom door, it was far darker than he was used to, and when he woke it troubled him.

              By then Granddad had wakened as well, and he took him back to bed and lay with him until he was once again snoring his soft little boy snores, not much more than five minutes afterward.  He slept another three hours with no problem at all.

              I thought sometime later that week that this little boy had it right.  The dark should be keeping us awake.

              Even the Old Testament faithful understood the concept of walking in the light.  O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of Jehovah, Isa 2:5.  It seemed natural, then, for the Son to claim to be the light as well.  I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life, John 8:12.  And so, as children of God, we, too, are lights.  For you are all children of light, children of the day.  We are not of night or of darkness, 1 Thes 5:5.

              Unfortunately, the light has come into the world and the people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil, John 3:19.  As “children of light” we should be opposite the world.  We should not love the darkness; we should hate it. 

              This will come more naturally if we mature to the point that we don’t just walk in the light and not walk in the darkness.  Look at Eph 5:8:  for at one time you were darkness, but now are light in the Lord.  Do you see that?  Light isn’t just something you walk in, it is something you become.  Just as at one time you didn’t just walk in the darkness, you were darkness.  We have completely changed our essence.  No wonder we are supposed to hate the dark.  No wonder the mere presence of it in the world, among our neighbors, our friends and even our family, should be keeping us awake at night.

              All this dark is keeping me awake Lord, should be a lament on every Christian’s tongue.  Not only that, we should be actively trying to rid the world of that very darkness.  Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, Yes, rather, reprove them, Eph 5:11. 

              If the darkness in the world isn’t enough to keep a “child of light” awake, perhaps he has become something else.
 
Arise, shine; for your light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon you. For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah will arise upon you, and his glory shall be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Isa 60:1-3.
 
Dene Ward

Andrew Jackson Dowling was born on October 31, 1815.  Although he had many interests, including horticulture and landscape design, he is also known for his designs in Gothic Revival Architecture, which first introduced American architects to the importance and necessity of a front porch.  Porches had been in existence for millennia in the forms of porticos, verandas, piazzas, and loggias, but they had never been "in demand", especially among the wealthy, and never among Northerners, until the work of Dowling.  He made the "sitting porch" popular, usually an integral part of the architecture on the front of the house, ornately decorated with framer, posts, rails, lattices, brackets and aprons.

               Both of my grandmothers had front porches, but nothing as elaborate as all that.  I remember visiting them when I was a child, sometimes just a day, sometimes a weekend, and once or twice a whole week after we moved a distance away.  It was usually summer and neither of them had air conditioners, and though I know it was as hot as it is nowadays, I don’t remember it.  I sat on their front porches much of the day, the swing making its own breeze as I dangled my bare feet over the cool, smooth, gray-painted plank floor.

            One porch was out in the country next to a grove of oranges and kumquats with horses grazing in the pasture behind it.  The other was in the middle of town, its steps fronting on Main Street, and we would watch people go by as we hid in the cool shade behind a morning glory vine growing up and across the porch posts and over the roof.

             My grandmothers never tired of talking to me, answering every question I asked, telling stories of “the olden days” that fascinated me because they seemed so foreign to my life.  I couldn’t imagine a house with no electricity and no running water.  I couldn’t imagine life with no television set droning on in the background. 

              I enjoyed those times with my parents too, their stories of playing without real toys, Christmases that brought an orange and some nuts and maybe a little hard candy in a stocking, and washing clothes with a wringer washer.  I remember my mother telling about her grandmother, a woman who rose before light to make a breakfast of pork chops, eggs, grits, gravy, and biscuits every morning while the men were out doing the first chores, a meal filling enough to last them through a day of hard farm work in southern Georgia. 

              My own boys liked to ask about our childhoods while we sat shucking corn every summer.  Silking was their job, tedious work that invited a lot of talking and listening just to keep yourself going until it was done.   Their dad grew up on the side of a hill in the Ozarks in an old stone house without running water, only bare light bulbs in each room, and a bucket of drinking water in the kitchen on which his mother would sometimes have to break a layer of ice on a cold winter morning.  He could tell stories about milking cows before school at the age of 6, a small school where two grades sat in each class, about pushing his bed up against the chimney in the unfinished attic to stay warm, and taking baths on the back porch in the summer.

              Sharing these things is important.  This is the way one generation connects to the next.  Knowing where we came from answers many of the natural longings we all have, and helps us to find meaning in our lives.  I worry about the children now, who scarcely have any time with their parents at all, much less enough time for stories about their pasts and the questions that should instantly follow.  It also leads to questions and stories about more  important things, and makes them far more willing to listen to you when it
counts.

              God has always expected his people to make time to talk to their children.

              And when in time to come your son asks you, 'What does this mean?' you shall say to him, 'By a strong hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.' It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt." Ex 13:14-16.

              And Joshua said to them, "Pass on before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever." Josh 4:5-7.

              When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?' then you shall say to your son, 'We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Deut 6:20-21.

              What happens when a generation arises that doesn’t know these things? And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, that knew not Jehovah, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel. And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, Judg 2:10,11.

              That’s why this is so important.  Talk to your children today, or your grandchildren, or even your neighbor’s children.  Make a connection to them that will bring them closer to you and through that, closer to God.  If you think you don’t have the time, then give something up.  Providing them a physical inheritance isn’t nearly as important as providing them a spiritual one.

              Find yourself a “front porch” and make use of it before it’s too late.
 
Telling to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, And his strength, and his wondrous works that he has done. That the generation to come might know, even the children that should be born; Who should arise and tell it to their children, That they might set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep his commandments, Psalm 78:4,6,7.
 
Dene Ward

Keith was fiddling with the campfire while I stood behind him shivering.  A pile of twigs lay over two slivers of lighter wood to which he held a match.  Black smoke curled up from the charred wood, which flared briefly then died out—over and over and over.  Suddenly one of the twigs caught and began to burn.  A few minutes later the lighter wood beneath finally began to burn, its thick oily flame blazing brightly.

             “Now that’s something,” he muttered, “when the twigs catch faster than the lighter.”

              Not many are familiar with lighter wood any more.  Also known as pitch pine, this wood contains a high concentration of resin.  The smell is often overpowering, as if you had soaked it in lighter fluid.  When you watch one of those old movies, the torches the mob carries are pieces of lighter wood.  You can’t light a piece of wood with a match—not unless it’s lighter wood, which lights up instantly, like a kerosene-soaked corn cob.

              Except the piece Keith was using that morning.  We had left behind the warmth of an electric-blanket-stuffed double sleeping bag and crawled out into a crisp morning breeze on an open mountaintop, the thermometer next to the tent barely brushing the bottom of thirty degrees.  We needed a fire in a hurry, but what should have been reliable wasn’t, what should have been the first to solve the problem had itself become the problem.

              As I pondered that the rest of the day, my first thought was the Jews’ rejection of Christ.  Sometimes we look at Pentecost and think, “Wow!  Three thousand in one day!  Why can’t we have that kind of success?” 

              Success?  I’ve heard estimates of one to two million Jews in Jerusalem at Pentecost.  Even if it were the lesser number, out of a specially prepared people, 3000 is only three-tenths of one percent—hardly anyone’s definition of “success.”  Here are people who had heard prophecies for centuries, who then had the preaching of John, and ultimately both the teaching and miracles of Jesus, people who should have caught fire and lit the world.  Instead the apostles had to eventually “turn to the Gentiles” who “received them gladly.”

              And today?  Does the church lead the way, or are we so afraid of doing something wrong that we do absolutely nothing?  Have we consigned Christianity to a meetinghouse?  Do our religious friends out-teach us, out-work us (yes, even those who don’t believe in “works-salvation”), and out-love us?  Do we, who should be setting the world on fire, sit and wait for someone else to help the poor, visit the sick and convert the sinners, then pat ourselves on the back because we didn’t do things the wrong way, while ignoring the fact that we didn’t do anything at all?

              And, even closer to home, do we older Christians lead the way in our zeal for knowing God’s word, standing for the truth, yielding our opinions, and serving others, or must we be shamed into it by excited young Christians who, despite our example, understand that being a Christian is more about what we do than what we say?

              It’s disgraceful when the twigs catch fire before the lighter wood.
 
And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, Heb 10:24.
 
Dene Ward