My boys survived on hand-me-downs, including hand-me-down toys.  An acquaintance gave us one of those molded plastic “rocking horses” that hang suspended by four large springs on a tubular steel frame.  The boys were so young we had to hold them on it at first, but before long they could mount it and ride on their own, the steady, groaning sproing, sproing, sproing reaching my ears as I worked in the kitchen.  As they grew older and gained experience with western heroes, particularly a certain Texas Ranger who wore a mask, I often heard shouts of, “Giddy-up,” “Whoa,” and finally, “Hi-yo Silver, awaaaaaay!”

            In their active little minds they traveled everywhere on that horse, despite the fact that they never left the room.  Sometimes we have the same problem.

            I have seen good, sincere, faithful Christians hamstring themselves by riding a certain hobby nearly to death.  No matter what subject comes up, they can finagle it around to their favorite topic.  After awhile you learn to avoid certain words that function like detonators on a land mine.  We often accuse preachers of this problem, but it can happen to us just as easily, not only about topics, but about people too.

            When you can only focus on the aggravating things about a person, you fail to see the good in them.  When all you can see are the annoyances in the church, you fail to gain the encouragement you need from the assembling together of a spiritual family.  When one pet peeve is all you see in any passage of scripture, you fail to see the things you yourself need in order to grow and improve.  Obsession can rob you of any influence you might otherwise have because everyone will just say, “There s/he goes again,” automatically dismissing anything you say.

            It is even worse when the thing the “equestrian” goes on about is actually a good and right thing.  He simply makes more of it than it deserves because to him it has become a holy grail.  He can make it seem that anyone who does not share his opinion has some sort of deep-seeded problem with a) love; b) authority; c) faithfulness; d) all of the above, choose whatever fits the occasion.  So division often occurs, if not in fact, then in spirit, because in his arrogance he believes that this “thing” is the root of every other problem we might possibly have and important enough to cause a fuss about.

            The rider may think he sees better than others, but all he is seeing is one tiny corner of the Word, while the rest remains hidden behind his self-imposed blinders.  He may think he is enjoying an amazing ride on a marvelous steed, but he is sitting on a swayback nag in the middle of a field, going nowhere.  At least the children eventually get off the horse. 

            It is a whole lot easier to get on the horse than to get off it.  Sometimes we don’t even realize that is what we have done.  Do you need to get off yours and take a new look around?  It might surprise you how far you have not come—but it’s the first necessary step to going farther.
 
Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them in the sight of the Lord, that they strive not about words, to no profit, to the subverting of those who hear.  Give diligence to present yourself approved unto God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth. 2 Tim 2:14,15.
 
Dene Ward

It must be a Southern thing.  We have a tendency to call the people we love after food—honey, honey pie, honey bun, and honey bunch; sweetie, sweet pea, and sweetie pie; muffin, dumplin’ and punkin’, baby cakes and cupcake, sugar and sugar plum.

            Speaking of sugar, that’s my favorite term for hugs and kisses from little ones.  Whenever a child is in my lap, I will kiss the top of his head every 15 seconds or so and not even realize it.   My own children probably have indentations there from several thousand kisses a year, just counting church time.  My grandchildren are learning it now.  And they love it.  I remember kissing Silas’s cheek once when he was two and having him run to his mama to tell her, “Grandma got sugar!” with a big grin on his face.

            Little Judah especially loves the sugar game.  The last time we were together after I had leaned over and gotten some “neck sugar” and “cheek sugar,” he grabbed his buddies and started kissing them.  First Tiger, then Marshall, and finally he even balled up a wad of blankie and gave it a kiss.  “Are you getting sugar?” I asked, and he smiled his contented little bashful smile and nodded his head yes.

            Children revel in the knowledge that they are loved.  It feeds a healthy self-esteem and gives them the feelings of security needed when they are out there trying things out and learning about their world.  Failure doesn’t matter when you are loved.

            And that is why a patently obvious love is absolutely essential to discipline.  If you are the kind of parent you ought to be—setting boundaries and punishing inappropriate behavior from early on—your child needs to know that you love him more than life itself.  He needs to hear those words and feel the warmth in your voice and your arms and your heart.  Then it won’t matter that you punished him yesterday.  He will know you love him and will try even harder to please you.

            It isn’t all hugs and kisses.  The older they get, the less that works.  But you can still show it with words of appreciation, pride, and approval.  Have you ever told your children how much it means to you when they behave in public?  How wonderful it is that you don’t have to worry what they might do in someone else’s home?  What a special gift it is in the middle of a stressful situation to know they are one thing you don’t have to worry about, that you can take them anywhere any time and they won’t act up, that it makes you want them with you even more?  Do you think that saying those things might help them behave a little better?

            If all they hear are complaints, growls, screams, and great heaving sighs of frustration and anger, all of them hurled in their direction, what do you think they will think about your feelings toward them?  Even when they are very young, they can feel the tensions.  Even when they do not understand the words, they will know something isn’t quite right.  And they will always think it’s their fault and that’s why you don’t love them.  Even when it’s your fault for not having disciplined them correctly or soon enough.  Three or four hugs will get them past a deserved and justified spanking.  It will take thirty to undo the hurt of an angry, sarcastic parent.

            The last time Silas was with us I told him how proud I was of him, the way he took his medicine without fuss, the way he sat still in church and behaved in Bible class, the way he always brushed and flossed his teeth without having to be told.  I told him how proud I was of how he took care of his little brother.  He looked up at me the whole time, his attention never wavering, with his eyes shining and a big smile on his face. 

           “I love you, Grandma,” he said.
           
           And of course, I got some sugar too. 
 
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him…and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, Ps 103:13; Titus 2:4.
 
Dene Ward

My boys were typical boys.  They played outside more than in.  They had their own variations of football, baseball, and basketball for two players, or three when their dad was home.  They swam like fish, climbed trees, and traipsed through the woods exploring.  Since they have grown up, my hair has turned grayer and curled tighter listening to some of the things they did that I never knew about. 
 
           Their Dad encouraged them in their daring feats.  He wanted them to grow up to be strong men who would not flinch when a job needed doing, even if it was dirty, difficult, or a little scary. 

            I remember many times when he would hold out his arms and they would jump into them.  As they learned to swim, he stood out in the deeper water and they leapt as far as they could, with him reaching to pull them out before they went under for good.  Gradually he moved back farther and farther, and they were swimming to him before they realized it. 

            Once Lucas climbed a tree with a rotten limb.  He found out when the limb beneath his feet broke under him, leaving him hanging by the limb above, the bottoms of his feet a good twelve feet off the ground.  We were sitting nearby when we heard the crack and the “whump!” of the falling branch. 

            Keith walked over to see what he could do.  Nothing, as it turned out, except stand beneath his son to break the fall.  When he was certain he was in the right place, he told Lucas to let go, and he did, nothing doubting—and nothing broken on either of them when the whole thing was over.

            My sons never doubted their father.  If he told them to jump, they did.  If he told them to let go, they did.  They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would catch them and keep them from harm.  Why can’t we have that same faith in God?  Keith could have made an error in judgment; he could have miscalculated what needed to be done to save his sons, or just missed when they jumped.  God can’t, and He won’t.

            How would you feel if your child told you he did not believe you would help him?  How would you feel if he showed absolutely no trust at all in your promises?  How do you think God feels when we do that to Him?

            It’s called a “leap of faith” because that is what it takes—faith.  When we won’t do it, we don’t have it.  It is as simple as that.  It has nothing to do with wisdom or good stewardship or common sense.  It simply means we don’t trust God enough to take care of us.  Sometimes what He asks of us seems foolish and impractical.  Those words mean nothing to Him, except to describe the people who think their own wits are better than His promises.  How foolish and impractical can you get?
 
For you are my lamp, O Jehovah; And Jehovah will lighten my darkness. For by you I run upon a troop; By my God do I leap over a wall. As for God, his way is perfect: The word of Jehovah is tried; He is a shield unto all them that take refuge in him. For who is God, save Jehovah? And who is a rock, save our God? 2 Sam 22:29-32.
 
Dene Ward

My grandsons have “buddies,” their favorite stuffed animals/characters/items to sleep with.  For Silas it is a soft fabric Spiderman, a similarly made Mario (as in the video game), and his “blankie,” a receiving blanket that has been with him since he was an infant.  For Judah it’s Tiger (stuffed of course), Marshall (a stuffed Dalmatian he named after the Paw Patrol character), and his blankie, several times bigger than his brother’s.  They go with them everywhere.  On any sort of trip, you will see those buddies in the back seat.  Sometimes they are not in the arms of those little guys, but just their presence somewhere nearby has a calming effect.

Can they do without them?  Yes, they can.  They never take them into the meetinghouse, or into a restaurant, and especially not to school.  Their primary function is as bedtime buddies.  However, should they become frightened or upset, guess who they look for?  Guess what they ask for?  When the tears start, guess what Mommy and Daddy start scouring the house for?  Once they are found, the relief is instant.  No more crying.  No more fear.  No more worries about what lies ahead.  They have their buddies, and they are just fine.  They will even tolerate being left with a babysitter or taken two plus hours north to Grandma’s house for several days without Mom and Dad as long as those buddies are with them.

At the risk of sounding irreverent, isn’t that how God and our Lord should be to us?  Shouldn’t we recognize their presence every day, in fact, plead for their presence in our lives and be grateful for it?  When things go awry, as they will sooner or later in everyone’s life, shouldn’t they be the ones we look for?  And once we are assured of their presence, shouldn’t the relief be instant?  Isn’t that what faith is all about?

Hannah could not have children, it seemed, the great longing of every Hebrew woman.  In addition her rival wife “provoked her” constantly.  She was “in great bitterness” and “wept sorely” (1 Sam 1:10).  What did she do?  She went to God and prayed her heart out.  “I poured out my soul before Jehovah,” she told Samuel (v 15).  And what happened afterward?  “Her countenance was no longer sad (v 18).

What do you do when a crisis rears its ugly head?  What do you rely on?  Who do you count on?  What calms your fears and dispels your worries?  Hannah knew who her real Buddy was, and He calmed her as no one else could.  If your “buddies” are anyone or anything besides your Father and Older Brother and your Comforting Helper, you will be sorely disappointed in the results.  

Those little boys will go anywhere as long as they have their buddies.  We sing a song, “If Jesus goes with me, I’ll go—anywhere.”  Can you?
 
I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and will execute justice for the needy. Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name; the upright shall dwell in your presence, Ps 140:12-13.

Dene Ward

When I was a child we did not have a lot.  We always had enough, and our home was comfortable and above all happy, but we learned early on that happiness was not a product of wealth.  We did not eat out except on very special occasions, maybe the whole family once every other year and my parents only on their anniversary.  We never had a kitchen cabinet full of junk food snacks.  We drank water between meals and simply waited for the dinner hour if we wanted more.  But none of us even came close to starving.
 
           So Christmas morning was not a feeding frenzy of ripping open package after package.  Instead, we did this.  We took turns opening gifts.  And if it was a gift from you, you would have been the one to hand it to the recipient.  Then we all waited as the gift was opened and properly admired and thank-yous offered.  Then it was someone else’s turn.  Once again we all waited and watched.  Then again.  And again.  Until the gifts were all opened.

            So what did that do?  For one thing it made the whole process last much longer.  By the time we finished, our neighbors were outside playing with the customary, “Is that all?” expressions on their faces, as something they had looked forward to so long had ended far too quickly.  Usually they had more than we did, but it took us twice as long to get our little bit unwrapped, so Christmas lasted much longer for us than for them.

            Second it took the focus off “me,” not only on that day but all through the year.  We learned to pay attention to the needs and desires of others.  We learned to listen to them instead of just preparing our own replies to what they were saying.  We learned to think creatively.  “Dad can’t hear well enough to hear the words to his favorite CD.  What can I do for him?”  Answer:  find the lyrics online, print them out and wrap them in an appropriate sized box.  You might not think it was a gift, but he did.

Which leads us to the most important benefit, it taught us to appreciate the effect of our giving on others. When the gift was opened, we sat, eagerly waiting, not another toy for ourselves, but for their reaction to our gift.  When we really hit the jackpot, when sometimes a tear or two fell at our thoughtfulness, it was the best feeling in the world.  It took away the “gimme,, gimme,” and taught us what the Lord said so long ago, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

            That is what gift swapping should be about, not the grand free-for-all it has become.  We heard someone describe their annual gift opening frenzy , a five or ten minute process wherein no one ever knew what anyone else had gotten nor others’ reactions to the gifts they had given, ending it with, “But how do you stop them?”

            Well, for one thing, you don’t stand there passing them out one after the other after the other as fast as you can.  For another, you talk with your children from the time they can even begin to understand, about doing for others, about how good it feels to make them smile, to know you have given them something they really want, that really means something, even if it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.  You teach them about “priceless” gifts.  Then you exert the parental control you ought to have and direct the process, reminding them when they are still young what the point is—giving, not getting.        

            Lucas said to me one time, “My favorite part of Christmas is seeing people’s reactions to the gifts I’ve chosen.”  That is what you are aiming at.  If we want to make generous Christians out of our children, it takes a little effort, but God expects us to turn them into servants who serve not spoiled ingrates who demand.  This is just one way to help that process along.
 
​​​​​​​A generous person will be enriched, ​​​​​​and the one who provides water for others will himself be satisfied, Prov 11:25.
Dene Ward

When I was very young we lived in Orlando, but for this story you must remove present day Orlando from your minds.  In 1960 Orlando was a one horse town no one had ever heard of.  “Where is that you’re from?”  people would always ask, and I even had to spell it for them.  There was little crime, certainly no gangs or wholesale violence.  Some people still left their doors unlocked, and I don’t remember ever locking the car.  It was too hot!  You left the windows down just so you could tolerate it when you got back in.  It was still the day when stores and restaurants advertised in a little sign on the door, “Air Conditioned,” with carefully drawn snow caps perched on each letter.
         
So you can more easily understand that when we went “downtown” to see the Christmas parade, because I could not see over the crowd my parents sent me to sit on the curb with several other children.  They could see me from several “rows” back throughout the whole parade, and trusted me to “meet them by the light pole” when it was over.
           
But when it was over and everyone stood and started milling around, the light pole disappeared.  I was four feet tall and all those big people were in the way.  After a couple of panicky moments my good sense kicked in.  We had parked on the north side of Highway 50 three or four blocks from the parade site.  It was a straight shot to the car.  So I set off walking, and in short order found the car and stood by it.

About fifteen minutes later my parents found me.  “I couldn’t see the pole,” I told them, “but I knew where the car was.”  Of course I had no idea how frantic they had been, but they were not angry, just glad I had found my way back to a place where they could find me as well, and managed to hide what must have been overwhelming relief. 

I have many friends who, though they have raised their children well, have since lost them to the world.  I know they beat themselves up regularly, wondering what they did wrong.  Maybe nothing--God did give us free will after all.  I can find many godly parents in the Bible who raised hellions, and many ungodly parents who somehow produced some of God’s most faithful people. 
If you find yourself in that position today, here is something to comfort your tortured soul—if you did your best, then you have given them what they need to find their way back.  They may be in a confusing place right now, a place where all they can see are hip pockets and belt buckles, and the light pole they need to see is hidden from them.  But if you gave them a straight course while they were still with you, then, when they finally give up trying to make sense of a complicated world on their own, they can follow that course back where it started and find their way to God again. 

What is the hardest part of all this?  The waiting.  In fact, you may not live to see their return, but now it’s time for you to have that faith you tried so hard to instill in them.  You showed them the path, and if they have the heart, they will find it.  There will still be a Father looking down the road, waiting to welcome them home, even if you are gone and cannot do it yourself.  Hang onto that hope, and don’t ever let it go.
 
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants." And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate.  Luke 15:18-24.
 
Dene Ward

We just returned from a birthday party—a double birthday party, which meant twice as many guests, twice as many cakes, and twice as many gifts.  It also meant twice as much time unwrapping the gifts. 

That last part did not bother Silas at all, but it seemed to bother Judah a little.  He started playing with one gift and then was handed yet another to unwrap.  So he had to stop playing and unwrap.  Once it was done, he started playing again, sometimes even went back to the first one he had unwrapped, but then he would be handed another.  You could almost see his little brain forming the thought, “There is such a thing as too many gifts.” 

The next morning even Silas had trouble with the number of gifts.  I sat and watched him go from one to the other, back and forth.  I wondered if he wasn’t finally realizing, you can only play with one toy at a time.

Have you ever read Proverbs 31 then slumped your shoulders in defeat and thought, “I can’t possibly be that woman?”  Take heart.  God does not expect you to have every gift this woman has, nor to play with them all at once.  Just think for a minute:  what does he tell those Corinthians in chapter 12?  Some of you have this gift; some of you have that one.  Some of you have yet another.  Don’t try to be what you are not—just use what I give you the best you can (the Ward version).

Cooking I can handle, most of the time.  Bookkeeping I have down pat.  But the only things I can do with a needle and thread are sew on a button, take up a hem, and mend a seam.  I can’t darn, quilt, crochet or knit.  I have made clothes and worn them, but I consigned them to an early death as soon as I had replacements.  I have finally learned to master the pressure canner instead of cringing in fear, but I couldn’t decorate one wall much less a whole house—I have no eye for it.

Do you see the point?  The Proverbs 31 woman is the ideal.  God lists it all, and it gives us some sense of duties in the home.  What it doesn’t do is command us to be some sort of Jill-of-all-Trades Renaissance Woman.  It just says, this is where the center and purpose of your life and everything you accomplish in it must be—your family.  Be the best cook or the best seamstress or the best gardener or the best organizer or the best comforter or the best home businesswoman—or maybe two or three of those--whatever present God has given you to unwrap.  Do that, and you have “done what you could.”
 
For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness, Rom 12:4-8.
 
Dene Ward

God makes it plain in the Old Testament exactly how He feels about human sacrifice, specifically sacrificing one’s children as a part of pagan idol worship.  It is “an abomination;” it “shall not be found among you;” it “defiles you;” it “pollutes the land;” it “did not even enter into [God’s] mind” to command such a thing” (Deut 12:31; 18:10; Ezek 20:31; Psa 106: 37,38; Jer 32:35).
 
           And I suppose most of us think we are past that—we would never participate in something so heinous; we would never be caught up in worshipping an idol to the point that our children no longer mattered to us.  Think again.

            How many people have sacrificed their children to their careers?  And don’t automatically jump to working mothers.  God holds fathers accountable as the spiritual leaders of their families, especially in raising their children (Eph 6:4).  Too many fathers delegate everything to the mother, expecting her to somehow communicate to his children that he loves them, even when he spends practically no time at all with them, when he regularly misses piano recitals, school programs, or ball games; when he has never drunk an imaginary cup of tea at a tea party; when he has never read a bedtime story; when he has never dried a tear or given a hug, changed a diaper or given a bath, helped with a science project or played catch.  Career-minded, status-conscious, money-grubbing parents need to give thought to what they are sacrificing.  When you chose to have children, you chose to sacrifice yourselves, not them.

            And maybe this is the place for the blood being shed in the name of my body, my rights, and my choice.  Abortion is nothing more than human sacrifice so I don’t have to bear the responsibility of my actions.  I, me, and mine are the biggest idols we have today, and precious souls are bearing the brunt of that pagan ritual to the idol of self.

            And we also have those who sacrifice their children on the altar of their own feelings and opinions.  The sermon hurt my feelings, the elders told me I had to change my lifestyle, this brother or that sister came and told me I needed to repent of my sins, so I won’t go back to that church ever again.  And guess what?  Your children miss growing up among godly people, attending Bible classes that would have helped you teach them about God, and at least hearing the gospel every Sunday, whether anything you did at home ever cemented it into their minds or not.  You may not have sacrificed them to Molech, the heathen god most often associated with child sacrifice, but you actually did worse—you sacrificed them to the maker of those “abominations”—Satan Himself.  He is the one who will swoop in and claim those young souls, who have now learned from you that God isn’t all that important after all.

            Child sacrifice is alive and well in the world today, and too many of us are guilty, too.
 
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Will you defile yourselves after the manner of your fathers and go whoring after their detestable things? When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you, Ezek 20:30-31.
 
Dene Ward
 

My two grandsons love to go to the park.  They love to swing and slide.  I’m not sure they have discovered the joys of my own childhood favorite—the seesaw.  Back then I was always looking for someone else to sit on the other end, and seldom found the perfect playmate.  She was always either too heavy or too light to balance it out, and one of us always hit the ground with a bang.
 
           Over the years I have come to see that God requires His own kind of balance.  Nearly every major fault of His people has come with that old pendulum swing—from one extreme to the other.  From undisciplined emotionalism to empty ritualism, from faith only to works salvation—we struggle all the time to get the balance just right.  “Obedience from the heart,” Paul calls it in Rom 6:17.  And it has been so for thousands of years.

            In our Psalms class, we came upon another passage recently that emphasized yet again the problem of balance.  Over and over and over you read things like this:

            …you have tested me and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress, 17:4

            I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from God, 18:21.
 
           Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering, 26:1.

            It always bothered me a little when I saw passages like this, especially the ones written by David, as these three are.  Isn’t he being a little arrogant?  Especially him?

            But, as with all the Bible, you have to put things together to find the balance point.  Psalm 130, one of the Psalms of Ascents, certainly shows the opposite feeling:  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? v 3.  After that, another quickly came to mind:  Enter not for judgment with your servant; for in your sight no man living is righteous, 143:2.

            The psalmists all seemed to understand the balance.  No one deserves salvation, but yes, we can be righteous in God’s eyes when we do our best to serve Him, when obedience is offered willingly, when adoration, reverence, and gratitude are the motivations behind every thought and action, when we don’t just do some right things, we become righteous.  The author of Psalms 130 goes on to say, “But there is forgiveness with you…” and “with Jehovah there is lovingkindness and…plenteous redemption.”          

            These men saw that salvation was a matter of a relationship with God, not ritualistic obedience nor self-serving obsequiousness, both of which are more about “me” than the God I claim to worship.  They proclaimed the balance that would fall before the Lord in reverence and service and yet stand before a Father singing praise and thanksgiving. 

            And I love that they did not feel required to offer qualifications to what they said.  “I am righteous,” they said, not bothering to add, “but I know I have sinned in the past, and may sin in the future.”  They never let the false beliefs of others compel them to soften a strong statement of faith in their Lord to do what He says He will—be merciful.  Why are we always dampening the assurance of our hope by pandering to the false teaching of others?  Let’s strive for perfect balance with this long ago anonymous brother:  With Jehovah there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem us!
 
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile, Ps 32:1-2.
These things have I written…that you may know you have eternal life, 1 John 5:13
 
Dene Ward

We are so far out in the country that we only receive two TV channels, and those are snowy on good days.  Many years ago we all agreed that we would give up other gifts to have a 75 foot TV antenna with a booster erected outside the house as our family Christmas gift.  The Gators were playing so in order to have it working as soon as it was up Keith did not wait to drill a hole through the floor and run the wire up that way.  He simply pulled out a corner of the window screen closest to the television, and opened the window a crack.  He would get to it later.  As is the case with most of us, “later” was put off longer and longer.

            Then one morning the inevitable happened.  I looked over and thought, “That wire certainly looks thicker than usual.”  When I got closer I discovered the reason—a black racer had wound itself around it, and was already halfway through the window. 

            I grabbed a broom and smacked at the window, hoping that would scare the snake back outside.  It worked the opposite way.  The snake’s slow slither through the opening turned into a swift swish all the way inside, dropping with a thud on the floor.  Yikes!  Now I had a snake in my house.  I was not going to leave it.  If I lost track of it, I knew I would never sleep again with a snake somewhere inside, especially one that had shown a proclivity for climbing.  I could just imagine it wound around the posts at the head of my iron bed while I slept.

            Luckily the boys were home that day. They ran to get the things I called for while I kept an eye on the unwelcome visitor. Together we did our best to scare that snake out the door with brooms and mops and anything else we could find.  It kept curling into a ball or hiding under a chair.  At one point, the thought crossed my mind to try sucking it up in the vacuum—at least the hose would be a perfect fit! 

            I came to my senses before that thought became a spoken idea, and told them to bring a box.  Lucas found one and put the box on the floor, open side toward the snake, while I swept it with the broom.  Every time it neared the box, it flattened itself and slid underneath it instead of going inside.  We tried several times, but finally my nerves were shot. I was through trying to be nice to this one of God’s creatures. 

            Once more I sent the boys on an errand.  When they returned, I stood on a chair, loaded the proffered .22 pistol with rat shot so I wouldn’t blow a hole in either the floor or the wall (normally I use a shotgun with a much heavier load) and shot that snake where he lay.  I gave him his chance and he blew it.  He was not going to use my house as his own private playground.

            All that for a literal snake, while we had voluntarily let loose an electronic snake in our home.  When we chose to go to the expense of installing that other kind of snake, it was with a purpose—we were seldom able to watch our teams play; this was the only way and the cheapest in the long run.  But our boys knew that it was not there for indiscriminate watching.  More than once we uttered that mean word, “No.”  More than once we turned it off and said, “Never again,” for a particular show.  We even limited their hours of “good” show time.  We did not want to be responsible for creating illiterate, overweight, glassy-eyed couch potatoes.

            The first professional television drama began on September 11, 1928, “The Queen’s Messenger,” and broadcast television has come a long way from those innocent days.  Calling it a snake is an apt metaphor, especially when you remember the first appearance of a snake in the Bible. 

            Not everyone is careful with that snake in their homes.  Not only do they let it sit in the corner unmonitored, but many even let it baby-sit their children.  It feeds their minds and their hearts for hours every day.  It teaches them that sin is acceptable, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is either hateful or crazy.  It inures them to foul language and crude comments.  It teaches children—and adults--to take pleasure watching the sins of others, to admire those sinners and want to emulate them, right down to the clothes they wear.  It tells them that nothing is sacred, except the right to do anything they please without censure.

            Some people do keep snakes as pets, but they learn how to handle them, and know better than to let them loose unattended.  If you are going to keep an electronic snake in your home, remember to keep a close eye on it, and never let it teach your children.  Abdicating your responsibility as parents is aiding and abetting the enemy.

For I have told [Eli] that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons did bring a curse upon themselves, and he restrained them not, 1 Sam 3:13.

Dene Ward