Flight Paths

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law: and a man's foes [shall be] they of his own household, Matt 10:34-36.
 
            What Jesus says in the above passage clearly shows the expected atmosphere of the home.  It was not considered normal for a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law to have strife between themselves.  Even in a day of extended family in one compound, and often one house, the relationships were expected to be good ones.  For that to happen in such close quarters, beyond the mere acceptance we discussed last week, there had to be love.
            And such it was with Naomi and her daughters-in-law.  Notice in Ruth 1:4-6, even after their husbands died, these young women stayed with Naomi.  This was now a house of mourning and a house of poverty as well.  We do not understand the plight of the widow in that culture and time.  They had no widows’ pensions, no life insurance policies, no food stamps, and getting a job was pretty well limited to selling oneself as a bondservant.  Yet Naomi had cultivated such a wonderful relationship with these girls that they didn’t leave her, even though they both had families they could have gone home to (1:8).  These girls knew they were loved and that counted far more than food on the table.  Can you imagine what such a relationship must have been like? 
            When Naomi heard the famine had left Israel and she decided to go back home, even then both of them were determined to go back with her.  Not just to go on a trip, but to leave the culture they grew up in, to go where strangers were not particularly appreciated, where they would depend upon those very people to leave enough in the fields for them to survive on.
            And because of her genuine concern for them, Naomi did her best to send them back to their families.  I have heard people criticize her for this, as if she were sending them to Hell herself.  Once again our misunderstanding of culture has made us harsh and judgmental.  Their very survival could depend upon where they settled.  At home they would once again be under their father’s care and he would probably waste little time making a marriage transaction.  Marriage was more about survival than love in those days.  The love usually followed after years of handling the trials of life together.
            And why couldn’t they have continued to worship God, even in Moab?  Pockets of believers still dotted the landscape that far back.  Job for one.  I have heard a pretty good case made for him being an Edomite.  Then there was Jethro, a priest of God who was a Midianite.  And how about Naaman, who when he went back home prayed to God, In this thing Jehovah pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leans on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, Jehovah pardon your servant in this thing, 2 Kings 5:18.  Naaman fully intended to continue serving Jehovah, even though his occupation sometimes had him enter an idol’s temple.  Elisha’s answer was, “Go in peace.”  So why in the world couldn’t these girls serve Jehovah in Moab?  Naomi wanted what was best for them in their lives and evidently she had enough faith in them to know they could stay faithful to God even without her standing over them.
            And so Orpah did go back, crying all the way, (1:14).  But Ruth would not.  I am not sure her level of faith was any higher than Orpah’s, but I am sure her level of love for her mother-in-law was as high as it gets.  You don’t inspire that level of love and devotion without consistency and a large amount of time.  Especially in that culture, I have no doubt they worked together, laughed together, maybe even shared a few secrets as women are prone to do—sisterhood we call it nowadays, but one that also came with respect for an older woman who proved her love was genuine over and over and over.
            What are you inspiring in your daughter-in-law?  You can’t build a good relationship if she thinks you look down on her, if she thinks you resent her, if she thinks nothing she does is good enough.  She will never learn to trust that you have her best interests at heart if you are constantly criticizing, taking offense at her words, finding hidden meanings where there are none.  When you say to her, “I decided I would accept whoever my son brought home as his wife no matter what!” you are being far more transparent than you realize.  There would have probably been a “no matter what” no matter who he brought home.
            Genuine love and friendship, not something forced or pretended, that’s what every daughter-in-law needs from her mother-in-law.  And it will show in everything you do and say.
 
But Ruth said, "Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you." And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more. Ruth 1:16-18.
 
Dene Ward

Let’s just start our study with this simple observation:  Naomi accepted her daughters-in-law the way every young woman wants to be accepted by her husband’s family. 
            And Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons. And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelt there about ten years. Ruth 1:3-4.
            If any mother-in-law could have complained about a foreign daughter-in-law, one raised in an idolatrous culture, Naomi could have—and she had not one, but two of them.  Instead she seems to have accepted them with open arms and without judgment.  In fact she seems to have taught them.  How easy would that have been if they had sensed resentment and suspicion?  I am sure her sons taught their wives as well, but those girls stayed with Naomi even after the death of their husbands, even before she decided to go back to Israel, and then they both wanted to go with her, not just Ruth.  Here is a mother-in-law who knew how to cultivate a loving relationship with those of another culture, with the women who came into her boys’ lives and became more important to them than she was.  That is hard for a mother, but her example says it can be done and is important in establishing a lasting and loving relationship with a daughter-in-law.
            Mothers-in-law today have the same obligation.  If your daughter-in-law is a Christian, count your blessings.  That should take care of any reservations you may have about her.  Now treat that new daughter like an especially beloved sister in Christ.  You would be surprised how many times people forget to treat family that way—“that’s church stuff,” I’ve heard.  Yes, and you are a member of the Lord’s church even in your home.  Act like it.
            But if she isn’t a Christian, cultivate that relationship for the thing that matters most—her soul.  You owe her that.  Paul said that as a Christian he was a debtor to everyone else to tell them the good news (Rom 1:14).  So are you.  Be kind, be patient, do not give her any reason to look down on Christianity or the church if you ever hope to gain her soul. 
            No matter what her background, accept her whole-heartedly.  Trust me, she will always be able to tell if you do not like her, no matter how hard you try to hide it.  Do not talk about “my son.”  He is now her husband, a relationship that supersedes the parent-child relationship.  A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, Gen 2:24.  That’s what God said about it. In your mind, their two names should always be attached. 
            If you want a continuing relationship with your son, then do not come between them in any way.  Do not allow him to disparage her to you, and certainly do not revel in it if he does!  Do not ever allow him to say to her in your presence, “That’s not how Mom does it.”  Do not expect him to visit without her.  Do not expect him to drop everything and leave her and his family for anything less than an emergency.  From now on it is not “him,” it is “them.”  They are “one flesh.”  If it is wrong for man to put it asunder, it’s wrong for a mother-in-law to amputate it.
            Welcome your new daughter into the family with open arms.  You are the one with the obligation here, not her.
 
And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Will you go with this man? And she said, I will go…And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife…Genesis 24:58,67
 
Dene Ward

I do not appreciate mother-in-law jokes.  If you tell them and you have a mother-in-law, then you must realize that your mother is also a mother-in-law.  Are you talking about her too?
            As a mother-in-law myself, I try hard to be what I ought to be both for my son and his wife, who is now not just my daughter-in-law, but in my mind, my daughter, especially in the spirit.  I think I might be a bit more sensitive to this than most—you see, my mother-in-law did not like me.  Even after 39 years of trying, I never made the cut.
            To her credit, she was a fine Christian woman.  She stayed faithful to the Lord despite family opposition, her husband’s severe illnesses and injuries, financial woes, and worst of all, losing a child to cancer.  She converted her husband and raised both of her remaining children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  After all, I married one of them, and I know much of what she went through and exactly how she raised him. 
            She had many things going against her but managed to stay faithful, raise godly children, and never lose the joy of her relationship with her Lord.  To have done all that despite her many and severe trials makes our lack of a relationship more than forgivable.  I was certainly less than the least of all those things she did accomplish.
            But I do not want my daughter-in-law to miss out on what should be a wonderful relationship.  So I have decided to begin a new study—the ideal mother-in-law, which is what I want to be for Brooke.  That’s what we will be discussing together this week, Monday through Friday.
            It is not difficult to find mothers-in-law in the Bible.  The difficult thing is finding a detailed relationship between a mother- and daughter-in-law.  Isaac and Rebekah both were “grieved” by the first two women Esau married, but they were Canaanites, Hittites to be specific, Gen 26:34,35.  Although their complaints came before the actual marriage, Samson’s parents had the same problem with their future daughter-in-law, Judges 14:3—she was a Philistine. 
            Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law but that is a situation so complex as to be unusable in our discussion.  I can know that others surely had in-laws, but I do not know how they got along without making suppositions far beyond the realm of authenticity.
            No, the best example we can find is the usual one—Naomi and Ruth, and let’s not forget Orpah, who is often tarred with accusations she does not deserve.  So I plan to study those in depth this week to see how we can all improve our in-law relationships.  I hope you will make a point to join me.
           
…a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had visited his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah, Ruth 1:1-7.                                                                                                 
 
Dene Ward

I seem to be reacting a lot lately, and here I go again. 
            I understand that the divorce rate in this country is atrocious.  I understand that this insidious practice of hard-hearted men has even infected God’s people, just as it did thousands of years ago.  But I think it is time we fought it in a different way.  Telling our children that Christians are leaving their mates by the score so they need to be careful is not the way to battle this ungodliness, and I will show you how I know.
            Jesus grew up in a time similar to ours.  Even among God’s people scholars argued about the acceptable reasons for divorce.  Among the very conservative, adultery was the only “scriptural cause,” while among the more liberal almost any dissatisfaction was deemed suitable.  Evidently the divorce rate was sky high because when Jesus made his pronouncement, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery,” Matt 19:9, even his own disciples were shocked.  “If this is the case, it is better for a man not to marry!” they exclaimed a verse later.
            Do you see what rampant divorce triggers in the young?  Do you see how hearing the negatives warps their perspective of the way God intended people to live?  They think a happy marriage is impossible.  No wonder the world says, “You can always get out of it if it doesn’t work.”  When you grow up hearing that over 50% of all marriages fail, and that the church is just as bad, what else will you believe when you hit the first little bump in the road but, “I guess this means it’s over.”
            Everyone ought to know by now that statistics can lie.  They may be facts, but they can be skewed any which way the researcher wants to skew them.  What if we count your successful marriage, the successful marriages of two other friends, plus the marriages of Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor.  Between you all that’s 20 marriages, only three of which lasted, a 15% success rate.  Now that’s depressing unless you know who is being counted.
            Yes, over 50% of marriages in our country end in divorce, but that lumps them all in, first marriages, second, third, etc.  Let’s separate them and see if things change a little.  60% of second marriages end in divorce, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.  And first time marriages for both parties? Only 41% end in divorce.  It is still a terrible statistic, but it is quite a bit lower than when you count in all those folks who have either failed once or shown a propensity to fail, and it means well over half of first time marriages survive.
            Some more good news:  you can actually reduce your risk.  If one set of parents is happily married, the couple’s risk decreases 14%.  (I couldn’t find statistics if both sets of parents were still married to the first spouse, but it stands to reason the risk would decrease even more.)  If the couple attended college (they don’t even have to have graduated), their risk decreases 13%.   The older they are, the less the risk until by age 25, the risk decreases 24%.  And let me add another one that just goes to show that God knew what He was talking about:  if a couple lives together before marriage, their risk of divorce increases by a whopping 40%!
            Now to those who want to mourn over the state of marriage in the church, even granting that this malady will touch us, please count how many first marriages are still intact in your congregation.  I doubt the failures are anywhere near the national average.  Simply put, when two people understand that they make a commitment not just to each other, but to God, they stand a far better chance of “making it.”  Let’s share these statistics with our young people.
            Yes, divorce exists among God’s people.  Yes, you can find bad marriages among Christians.  So let’s start nipping them in the bud.  Several times Keith and I have taught a “Preparation for Marriage” class.  We don’t sugar-coat anything.  We tell them what can go wrong and how to fix it, but we also show them how to prevent those things from happening in the first place.  We show them how to have a happy marriage from the beginning.  We impress upon them the need for seeking advice when necessary, and usually before they even think it’s necessary.  Several young couples have thanked us for the class, even after being married several years.  They knew what to look for in a mate and they know how to spot problems before they become impossible to deal with.
            And let’s also start giving our young people a reason for optimism.  You can do this!  You can live as one flesh for decades and have your love grow deeper and more meaningful with every passing year.  You can avoid the common pitfalls and make it through the trials of life.  No, it will not always be easy, but those difficulties are not a sign that your marriage is over.  They simply mean it’s time to work a little harder for awhile.
            I may be a cockeyed optimist, but do not let the pessimists out there ruin your view of marriage.  Don’t let them make you sigh along with the apostles, “It is better not to marry at all!”   God said you can do it, the two of you, living and loving together for a lifetime.  Just who do you believe anyway?
 
Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Ecclesiastes 9:9
 
All statistics come from McKinleyIrvin.com, a family law website.
Dene Ward    

Forget-me-nots are small unassuming plants with tiny blooms.  I read one legend in which God is busy naming the flowers and nearly finished when a small one whispers plaintively, “Forget-me-not.”  God replies, “I won’t, and that shall be your name.”  Of course that is not how it happened, but the plea for God not to “forget me” has sounded out down through the ages.
            How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever? Psalm 13:1. 
            Of course God does not forget His people.  But Zion said…the Lord has forgotten me.  Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb.  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you, Isa 49:14,15.
            Everyone knows God does not forget us, but even a nursing child, when hunger strikes, wonders why his mother is not taking care of him RIGHT THIS MINUTE!  “She must have forgotten me.”
            If we do a little research, we can understand what David meant in the psalm.  The opposite of “forget” is “remember” and both words have connotations we may not realize.
            In Gen 8:1 “God remembered” Noah and the animals, and made the rain stop.
            In Gen 19:29, “God remembered” Abraham, and spared Lot from Sodom.
            In Gen 30:22, “God remembered” Rachel, and gave her a son.
            In Ex 2:24, “God remembered” his covenant with Abraham, and sent Moses to save the people
            In 1 Sam 1:19,20, “God remembered” Hannah, and gave her a son.
            Do you see it?  Every time we are told “God remembered” He acted.  If “remembering” means to act, then “forgetting” means the opposite, no action.  David could see no deliverance.  It was not that he thought God had really removed him from His mind, it was that he could not see God coming to his aid when he needed it.
            In the midst of trials we may not be able to see the hand of God.  He often works behind the scenes.  He usually uses the hands of others to accomplish His will and those hands may be slow in acting.  His timetable may not match ours.  In fact, we may even face times when it seems He “forgot” us.  Rest assured He has not. 
            It is not for us to demand explanations from an Almighty Creator.  It is for us to follow the solution David ultimately comes to in verse five:  I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.  David had not yet seen that salvation, but he trusted so implicitly it was as if it had already happened.  I will sing to the Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me, v 6.
            David began this psalm with fear and depression which fell on him because the trial was long and hard and he saw no relief in sight.  Eventually he sank into despondency.  He felt completely alone. Because he felt alone, he even looked to himself for advice.   How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart?  The worst counselor you can have is yourself.  If all you do is look inward, you will despair.  According to David, you must look outside yourself to find help and consolation.
            When David states his solution, “I will trust in the Lord,” he is making a choice:  “I will.”  That choice to trust God cannot be taken away from you by anyone, whether a physical or spiritual Enemy. 
            When we face trials—especially long, difficult ordeals—we should remember Psalm 13.  What began with a charge of God forgetting ended with a trust in His bounty so complete it is as if it had already been accomplished, even more (“bountifully”) than was necessary.
            God did not forget the tiny flower and He does not forget us either.  It is up to us to choose His help when it is offered and how it is offered, not the way we think is best, but in the manner our Wise Creator knows is best.
 
Behold the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love, Psalm 33:18.
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

I took Judah to the beach.  It was a green flag day (in other words, a safe one, though open water always carries dangers) and we were body surfing along the shore.  I noticed someone further out, but thought nothing of it at first as a lot of people like to go out beyond the breakers and just float, including myself.  Gradually, I noticed that she seemed to be struggling and someone was calling to her from the shore.  "Are you OK?" I yelled.  "I can't touch," she responded.  I turned to Judah and told him to stay by the shore and then swam out to the young woman.  "Can you swim?" I asked.  "No, and my arms are getting tired," she replied.  To her credit though scared, she wasn't panicking.  "It's all right, almost everyone can float.  Just relax and we'll see about getting you back in."  I put my arm around her waist and began side-stroking back to shore. 
 
I glanced at the lifeguard station and saw that they had finally noticed that something was wrong.  One of the two was hopping down from the tower and starting out with a flotation device.  "OK, the lifeguard is on the way.  All we have to do is keep your head above water till they get here."  "OK," she responded.  By the time the lifeguard got to us, I had the woman almost all the way in.  He had her grab the flotation device and asked me, "Are you OK, sir?"  I said yes, and swam back to Judah.  We kept body surfing for another half-hour.  
 
The reason I told that story is not to brag (OK, maybe just a little), but because of the fact that I am not a lifeguard.  I am not a lifeguard, but I saw someone in trouble when the lifeguards were distracted by the hundreds of others in the water, and I went to help her.  It is possible she would have drowned before the official guards saw her.  The church, as a family, is supposed to be looking out for one another.  Yes, we have "lifeguards" in the form of elders and preachers.  Those guards are often busy with all the others "in the water" and might not see the one struggling Christian that you are aware of.  Don't wait for the elders or the preacher to notice.  Do something.  How many passages might we cite? 
 
Gal. 6:1,2  "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. . . Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."  Luke 17:3  "Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him."   Heb. 10:24  "and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works"
 
I'm sure a few minutes with a search engine would bring up a dozen more.  If your brother or sister is struggling, do something.  Maybe the best thing you can do is alert the "lifeguard" rather than swimming out yourself, but do something.  Don't allow your brother to drown while you watch, waiting for someone else to act.  
 
Jude 22-23  "And on some have mercy, who are in doubt; and some save, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh."
 
 
Lucas Ward

It’s a classic kids’ comment, one Keith and I make to one another for laughs, but we never really had to deal with it when the boys were little.  Frankly, parents are their own worst enemies about things like this—your children know exactly what they can and cannot get away with long before they can even tell you in words.  If you don’t want to hear that particular whine, then do something about it.
            Yet still I thought of that question when I was working on Psalm 13.  “How long?” David asks, not once, but four times in the first two verses.  It was just as common then as it is now.  Habakkuk’s psalm begins, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear?” Hab 1:2. The martyrs pictured around the throne of God cry out, “O Sovereign Lord...how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Rev. 6:9,10.  “How long” is indeed a common complaint in the scriptures—I found it listed 52 times!
            And the point is this, these people are undergoing not just trials, but long, drawn out trials.  “Time flies when you’re having fun,” we often say, and that means it crawls when you aren’t.
            “It is not under the sharpest, but the longest trials that we are most in danger of fainting,” Andrew Fuller says in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David.  It is so true.  Just last week I nearly lost it over something small and inconsequential. 
            Being married to a deaf man can be extremely frustrating.  Three times in one hour Keith and I had a misunderstanding based totally on the fact that he could not hear what I was saying.  If he could have heard just three words, none of it would have even mattered, but because he couldn’t, it made the situation more and more complex, and more and more exasperating as it went on.  And the reason I couldn’t handle it that morning?  Not because it was three times in one hour, but because we have been dealing with it for fifty-one years now.
            But who am I to complain?  The woman in Luke 8 had her issue of blood for 12 years.  The woman who had the spirit of infirmity in Luke 13 had been suffering for 18 years.  The man who lay at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) had done so for 38 years.  The blind beggar in John 9 had been that way from birth.  Sarah had waited for a child for decades.  The people of God waited for a Messiah for several thousand years!  These people had far more reason than I to ask God, “How long?”
            All of us are prone to ask, “Are we there yet?”  and sometimes the answer does not come in this lifetime.  That may be the most difficult thing to deal with.  Some are born into suffering and never get out of it.  Some, due to random accident or maybe even their own bad choices, suffer for the remaining years of their lives and never see a reason.  God has His plans and we are not always privy to them.    
            But one day we will receive the answer we want to hear: “How long? Now! We are there!”  The waiting will be over, no more suffering of any sort, even the petty little annoyances that no one else can understand, that drive you up a wall on a bad day, that fill you with guilt when your mind clears and you finally recognize just how blessed you truly are. 
            Some day we will arrive, and we won’t be going on any more long difficult journeys ever again.
 
It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Deuteronomy 31:8.                                
 
Dene Ward
 

This is why you should invest in a numberless Bible.

Segmenting [the Bible into chapters and verses] may have been a boon for checking references, but it was otherwise a disaster.  It encouraged proof-texting, obscured the integrity of narratives, and dismembered cohesive discourses under the control of inspired authors into fragments manipulated by uninspired readers. 

Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

It was almost amusing when it happened. 
            Many years ago at one of the congregations where Keith preached, one of the older men made it a point to say to him, “I know you are a hard worker.  But you still have small children at home.  You need to make sure you spend time with them.” 
            We appreciated that.  Keith was a hard worker, spending at least 30 hours a week with the Word, just as Paul told Timothy and Titus they needed to be doing as young evangelists, plus the four hours preaching and teaching in the assembly every week, and then holding Bible studies, usually in the evenings, with interested people, or looking for more interested folks as he passed out flyers and meeting announcements, sent out and graded correspondence courses, and wrote articles in the local paper.  I often met him at the local pond loaded down with old towels and blankets, especially in the winter, for a baptism.  He seldom worked less than 60 hours a week.
            Yet not long afterward, the same man’s wife came up to him and scolded him because he had missed putting an article in the paper the week we moved from one house to another.  Everything else was done, but something had to give that week, and he preferred that one article not be written rather than his boys not have time with their father.
            I fear too many churches are more like the wife of that couple than the husband.  Especially if a man is supported mainly by other churches, the pressure is felt, even if it isn’t applied.  Then there are the men who do not even need that pressure to avoid their obligations at home, using the same excuse.  Here is what Jesus had to say about that. 
            And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' But you say, 'If a man tells his father or his mother, "Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban"' (that is, given to God)-- then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do."  Mark 7:9-13.
            Those people got out of their financial obligations to their elderly parents by claiming their money was “given to God,” whether or not it ever actually made it to the Temple coffers! 
            “And many such things you do,” Jesus tacked on the end of that. .”  As long as you can say you are using it for God, whatever “it” is, you don’t have to give it to anyone else.  Tell me that saying your time is given to God (Corban) so it’s all right if you don’t spend enough of it with your children to teach them basic skills of life, to discuss the Word of God “when you walk and talk,” to just listen to their childish concerns and give them the fatherly wisdom they crave, or enough time to nurture your relationship with the wife whom you have come to take for granted, aren’t “such things."
            I have seen old pioneer preachers lauded for sacrificing their family lives to go off for months at a time to preach the gospel.  I am not sure the Lord would have been among their admirers.  If they were single, fine, but choosing to have a family places other obligations on you.  Isn’t that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7?  I would rather you be like me (single) so you do not have the obligations that having a family puts on you, duties which God does expect you to fulfill.  Paul certainly didn’t say those obligations were negated by spiritual things.
            Churches need to look at their preachers’ schedules for this reason:  see if he is raising his children; see if he is spending time with his wife.  The Lord made a family with both a mother and a father present in the home.  He made the woman to be a help not a substitute father.  Jesus said, “Don’t blame what you do for God as the reason you neglect your family obligations.”  He says you make void the Word of God when you do that.  Churches, do you want to be a party, or perhaps the main cause, for a man to make void the Word of God?
            And we can also say this applies to anyone who hides behind “spiritual things” to avoid his family responsibilities—he is calling his family, “Corban.”
            We call the argument about “quality time” between working mothers and their children a “myth.”  Quality time can only happen when a quantity of time is being spent.  What applies to mothers, certainly applies to fathers too.  Jesus seems to agree.
  
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4.  Read that without the parenthetical statement—just the underlined words.
 
Dene Ward

One afternoon many years ago we stopped at an Olive Garden restaurant for a late lunch.  It was about 2:30, and it would be our only meal of the day. The place was nearly empty, so we were seated at a nice table and an eager young waitress, her order pad and pen held at the ready, came to serve us.
            “We’ll start with bruschetta,” I said. 
            “Huh?  Oh!  You mean brush-etta.”
            No, I thought.  I meant what I said, “Brrroo-skeht-ta.”
            Now, you must understand that I had been teaching Italian aria and art song for a couple dozen years at that time.  My students regularly stood before judges who marked them down on mispronounced Italian, so I had studied everything I could, constantly referencing an Italian pronunciation guide, and checking with other teachers who had sung opera.  I knew exactly how to pronounce “bruschetta.”
            I had learned some lessons the hard way.  I remember one especially embarrassing and painful occasion at state contest.  I don’t recall the exact word, but somewhere in it was the letter sequence “g-i-a.”  I had the student pronounce that as two syllables:  “jee-ah.” 
            “That’s not quite right,” the judge said, as nicely as she could.  The i turns the g into a j.  After that, it has done its work, and is not pronounced.  The syllable is simply “jah,” not “jee-ah.”
            Since we’re into Italian food at this point, let me illustrate it this way:  parmagiana reggiano cheese is pronounced “par-ma-jah-nah reh-jah-no,” NOT “par-ma-jee-ah-nah reh-jee-ah-no,” and that chef named “Giada” is “Jah-da,”  NOT “Jee-ah-dah.”  Pay attention sometime when she says her name herself. 
            Now here is my point:  who should I listen to about how to pronounce Italian—a college student moonlighting at a chain restaurant or the voice judge, a woman who has sung on the operatic stage many years longer than that waitress has been alive, singing Italian for hours at a time, and who can even translate it?
            How do you choose whom to listen to?  Who gets your vote for the one to take advice from?  Is it someone your own age who has as little experience as you do?  Is it perhaps someone older, but whose only qualification in your mind is that s/he is “fun” and “cool,” and a whole lot more so than the other old fuddy-duddies?  Is it someone who gives you the answers you want, who makes everything easy, even things that are not and should not be easy? Is it someone who makes you laugh?  Is it someone who speaks in “bumper sticker?”  Or is it someone who has experienced the ups and downs of life and come through it sane and faithful, someone who may not be able to keep an audience’s attention but can tell you from a heart of concern exactly what you need to hear—whether or not it’s what you want to hear?  Most important of all—is it someone who knows the Word of God inside out and has stuck with it even when it made his own life difficult, who tells you what God says, not what he thinks or feels?
            Mispronouncing Italian is no big deal in most of our lives, but mispronouncing the Word of God can cost you your soul.
 
Listen to advice and accept instruction that you may be wise in your latter end, Prov 19:20.
 
Dene Ward