Sunday, July 23, 2006
Watch Me
Here’s a text for you:
For I have given you an example,
that you should do as I have done to you.
(John 13:15 NKJV)
Guess who said that? Right. It was Jesus Himself. Jesus knew his disciples (including you and me today) would learn and, if they put what they learned into practice, live right before God, if they followed His example.
Here’s another text:
Imitate me,
just as I also imitate Christ.
(1 Corinthians 11:1 NKJV)
That’s the apostle Paul talking to other Christians. He knew about the example of Jesus, he was following that example, and he told his fellow Christians to follow his example.
We learn by watching what others do and our behavior choices are influenced as a result of watching them.
Guess who’s watching us as parents? Right again. It’s our children.
They watch constantly. And the choices they make are strongly influenced by the choices we make. So, draw a line and take the sum: we better watch what we’re doing because someone else sure is.
We better be "Behavior Police" of our own actions. We may have considerable control over our kid’s behavior, but we have total control over our own. Since they will exhibit much of our behavior in their lives, we must pay attention to what we are doing!
These two cases are made up, but I think they are very likely quite true-to-life. Of the two examples below, which kid do you really think will turn out better?
Jack
Jack’s parents fuss with each other regularly in front of him. His dad drinks. His mom smokes. When Dad comes home in the evening he complains loudly about how bad he is treated at work. When Mom comes home she is eager to give the latest installment on who is having an affair with whom at the office. After supper Mom and Dad sit down to watch some steamy sit com or drama on TV that glorifies adultery or homosexuality or violence or maybe all three. The kids are present while all of this is played out on the big screen TV. School work is ignored and the kid’s behavior at school is considered amusing. After all, Mom and Dad got into trouble at school themselves. Maybe their kid’s trouble making will get back at those teachers in some way who had tried to teach them some discipline a few years ago. Of course, church attendance is laughed at, if mentioned at all.
Jill
If Jill’s parents have a disagreement, they discuss it quietly between the two of them when the kids are not present. Neither parent drinks nor smokes. If problems at work are discussed, an effort is made to see the issue from both sides. Both parents are obviously disturbed if someone they know is having trouble with their marriage. These two subjects might be used to introduce a family discussion about God’s help in bearing earthly trials and the sanctity of marriage. Wholesome TV, if that’s not an oxymoron, is watched – perhaps a news channel or a documentary, maybe a family oriented video. Achievement and behavior at school are important. Actually, mostly what is needed here is simple encouragement, since behavior which values learning and morality is constantly modeled before the children. Mom and Dad are both Christians, and take it seriously.
Which kid will turn out the best?
My money’s on Jill.
Which kid is yours?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Children of My Youth
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them (Psalms 127:4-5 NKJV).
And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NKJV).
Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6 NKJV).
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training [nurture, KJV] and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4 NKJV).
At least three conclusions follow from these texts:
1. Children are a blessing.
2. Children are a responsibility.
3. Child rearing carries consequences.
All of God’s blessings carry the responsibility of proper stewardship. Reference the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. The blessing of children carries an immense responsibility. Any help I can get that helps me be a better parent, I really appreciate. I trust you feel the same way. The following thoughts are offered with this principle in mind: I want to be the best parent I can possibly be.
Credentials
The essential credential is that the suggestions that follow be totally based on the Bible. They are, as you will see.
This second credential also carries significant weight to me. I guess a poor carpenter, who built houses that usually collapsed before they were very old, still might have something helpful to say about carpentry, perhaps - how not to do it. If he were to quote from a recognized and accepted text on carpentry, certainly those quotes would be in order. But, the way he applied the principles of a good carpentry text to his houses, would be highly suspect to me, since he had not been successful as a home builder.
You humble author has raised three kids who are now in their twenties. One is less than a year from thirty. This child rearing project has been a joint venture with my fine Christian wife of thirty-three years. It has primarily been a triune effort between the two of us and God, with the leadership of the Heavenly Father being acknowledged. With the Bible as our guide and God as the Senior Partner, three children have been successfully brought from the womb to adulthood. All three are faithful Christians. They are popular and successful. Both sexes are covered, and, if no two kids are alike, well, we had three. I will believe till I die that what worked in our home, will work in any home. I do not propose to be some kind of guru. But, if you do what the Bible says – you’ll get good results.
A final caveat before addressing the meat of this subject further: I never had a great deal of respect for someone whose own kids were ruffians, trying to tell me how to raise mine. Maybe he should have been telling me how not to raise mine. Unless he was directly quoting the Bible, or, perhaps, saying where he had messed up, I didn’t pay much attention. I suggest you do the same. I’m not that guy.
We’ll get down to specifics in future posts.
Read your Bible.
Do what it says.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them (Psalms 127:4-5 NKJV).
And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NKJV).
Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6 NKJV).
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training [nurture, KJV] and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4 NKJV).
At least three conclusions follow from these texts:
1. Children are a blessing.
2. Children are a responsibility.
3. Child rearing carries consequences.
All of God’s blessings carry the responsibility of proper stewardship. Reference the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. The blessing of children carries an immense responsibility. Any help I can get that helps me be a better parent, I really appreciate. I trust you feel the same way. The following thoughts are offered with this principle in mind: I want to be the best parent I can possibly be.
Credentials
The essential credential is that the suggestions that follow be totally based on the Bible. They are, as you will see.
This second credential also carries significant weight to me. I guess a poor carpenter, who built houses that usually collapsed before they were very old, still might have something helpful to say about carpentry, perhaps - how not to do it. If he were to quote from a recognized and accepted text on carpentry, certainly those quotes would be in order. But, the way he applied the principles of a good carpentry text to his houses, would be highly suspect to me, since he had not been successful as a home builder.
You humble author has raised three kids who are now in their twenties. One is less than a year from thirty. This child rearing project has been a joint venture with my fine Christian wife of thirty-three years. It has primarily been a triune effort between the two of us and God, with the leadership of the Heavenly Father being acknowledged. With the Bible as our guide and God as the Senior Partner, three children have been successfully brought from the womb to adulthood. All three are faithful Christians. They are popular and successful. Both sexes are covered, and, if no two kids are alike, well, we had three. I will believe till I die that what worked in our home, will work in any home. I do not propose to be some kind of guru. But, if you do what the Bible says – you’ll get good results.
A final caveat before addressing the meat of this subject further: I never had a great deal of respect for someone whose own kids were ruffians, trying to tell me how to raise mine. Maybe he should have been telling me how not to raise mine. Unless he was directly quoting the Bible, or, perhaps, saying where he had messed up, I didn’t pay much attention. I suggest you do the same. I’m not that guy.
We’ll get down to specifics in future posts.
Read your Bible.
Do what it says.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Here’s a little story I wrote a few weeks ago and have “doctored up” from time to time. I have had an interest in the Civil War for years and would like to write a full length novel some day, Lord willing. We’ll see…
Since I grew up and live now in North Alabama, the Western Theater has been my primary interest. It’s less than a two-hour drive to Franklin, Tennessee. I’ve been there. I walked through the confederate cemetery, containing nearly fifteen hundred fallen southern soldiers, near dusk on the eve of the battle anniversary in 2005. I went inside Carnton Mansion, the Confederate hospital during and after the battle, and saw the bloodstains on the floor from November 30, 1864. I walked up the same stairway that General Nathan Bedford Forrest strode up and saw the upper balcony from which he surveyed the field just before the battle began.
This fictional story takes the form of a letter that a Confederate Calvary Officer from North Alabama wrote to his wife the evening of the day after the Battle of Franklin.
The Army of Tennessee (the Southern army in the West, the Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E. Lee was the Southern Army in the East) was basically destroyed as a viable fighting force at the Battle of Franklin. The South was going downhill before Franklin, now, it was falling from a cliff. The battle began about 4:00 P.M. and continued for five hours, till after dark. A good friend of mine had an ancestor who fought there as a Confederate general. He fell at Franklin.
Though I was never a soldier, I have attempted to portray the horror of war. It is blunt at times. There is a reason for that. I don’t want the lesson below to be missed.
The spiritual application of my story is this – things like this are what happens when we ignore the teaching of Jesus about peacemaking.
Morning After
December 1, 1864
Franklin, Tennessee
Dear Deborah,
This morning dawned sunny and crisply cold. While my men were preparing the morning campfire, the light from the just risen morning sun glinting off the limestone outcrops reminded me of the pastures on our own farm and made me wish I was back on Blue Water Creek.
Events moved so rapidly yesterday afternoon and into the night that I hardly had time to think, much less reflect on what was happening. I’ll tell you a little about it. I don’t think I can ever tell the whole story. I just don’t have the stomach for it.
Yesterday was terrible. No, it was worse than terrible. When the blood and gore of the battle finally ended, there wasn’t much left of the old Army of Tennessee. The Yankees actually left the field when it was over. I reckon they’ll be laughing all the way up to Nashville about what fools we made of ourselves. Most generals would think twice about attacking a strongly fortified position while advancing upgrade over a large open area allowing the enemy a clear field of fire. By the way, did I mention our artillery hadn’t caught up with us, so we had to commit mass suicide without even the consolation of having artillery support while we did it? I’m sure the hundreds of southern widowed wives and bereaved mothers will want to thank the gallant General Hood for that.
I imagine I’ll hear shortly that we’ll be marching on up the road toward Nashville so Hood can complete the task of destroying his army, or what’s left of it. General Forrest thought we could get a sizable force around to their rear and let them have it from there. NBF has certainly done that maneuver many times before. But not the all-wise and all-courageous Hood. Show them what we’re made of, show them we’re men, march straight into the Yankee muskets while the ground becomes piled higher and higher with fallen sons, and brothers, and husbands around you. Well, Hood showed them. Guess he really feels like a general now. Much more of yesterday, and he won’t have anything left to general with.
I thought the worst was over till I went onto the field today to assist in recovering our dead. No bullets are flying past my head now. That worst is over. But this worst is different. I’m not sure which is the most severe.
I found a small spring of water in a sparse grove of trees a couple hundred yards from what had been the Federal line. I counted thirty-eight men all dead in one place near that spring. One young private, maybe he had had his sixteenth birthday, was lying dead on his back. There was a single splotch of blood, about the size of a silver dollar, in the center of his chest. Bits of frost had formed on his eyebrows and his brown hair. He had obviously been dead awhile.
His right eye was closed. But, he had died with his left eye still open. It stared straight up. As I stopped briefly and stood over him, he seemed to be staring straight at me with that one left eye. I imagined he wanted to ask me something. Maybe to tell his girlfriend that he loved her. Maybe to tell his ma where he fell and how he died.
But I think what he really wanted was to ask me was “Why?” Why was he on this battlefield? Why did he have to die before he was twenty, before he could plant his own seed and see his name carried on? His family had no slaves. They farmed their small place by the sweat of their own brow. It was the rich planters down around Montgomery who owned most of the slaves. It was their war. Why did he have to be in it? He didn’t care what flag flew over the capitol. He just cared about his family, his girlfriend, his bluetick hound dog, and his next meal. Now all that was lost, and what was the point of it? Maybe that’s what he wanted to say. Maybe that’s what all the dead soldiers wanted to say.
I’m writing this letter by the campfire after supper, like I usually do, but I can still see that innocent, questioning stare from that kid’s open left eye. I think it’ll stick with me till I have a not-so-innocent, questioning stare of my own.
The scene at that spring this morning reminded me of the time Paw’s hogs got the cholera. I remember there were about ten of them who had tried to get to that spring under the big oak tree where the hills drop off into the creek bottom. They had drug themselves there to drink from that spring, not understanding that they were dying. The first one died near the water. Then another one crawled up and died, then another and another. Before long the hogs that came last were crawling over the already dead hogs, trying to get to the spring, and were dying on top of them. When we discovered them, they were in a neat little pile, all dead by the spring.
That’s how it was this morning. The dead Confederates, dressed in their ragged butternut clothes, like they were just going out to the field to plow the mules - piled two and three high, all dead by the spring, just like so many dead animals. Tell their mothers, wives, and sweethearts that they died so the rich planters can keep their slaves. I’m sure they’ll find a lot of consolation in that.
I hate this war, Deb. I hate it because of the senseless killing, and I hate it because it makes me want to be a senseless killer. I see no glory and I see no honor. All I see is arrogance and greed. And the death and misery produced by them. Both sides are so blinded by their own depravity that they don’t comprehend the results of their actions. I just want to go home, if there’s any home left.
I better turn in now. There may be some more killing tomorrow. I guess it’s either kill or get killed. Sure something to look forward too, isn’t it?
I think about you all the time. I hope I’ll see you again.
I love you.
Isaiah Hall
Major, CSA Calvary
Since I grew up and live now in North Alabama, the Western Theater has been my primary interest. It’s less than a two-hour drive to Franklin, Tennessee. I’ve been there. I walked through the confederate cemetery, containing nearly fifteen hundred fallen southern soldiers, near dusk on the eve of the battle anniversary in 2005. I went inside Carnton Mansion, the Confederate hospital during and after the battle, and saw the bloodstains on the floor from November 30, 1864. I walked up the same stairway that General Nathan Bedford Forrest strode up and saw the upper balcony from which he surveyed the field just before the battle began.
This fictional story takes the form of a letter that a Confederate Calvary Officer from North Alabama wrote to his wife the evening of the day after the Battle of Franklin.
The Army of Tennessee (the Southern army in the West, the Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E. Lee was the Southern Army in the East) was basically destroyed as a viable fighting force at the Battle of Franklin. The South was going downhill before Franklin, now, it was falling from a cliff. The battle began about 4:00 P.M. and continued for five hours, till after dark. A good friend of mine had an ancestor who fought there as a Confederate general. He fell at Franklin.
Though I was never a soldier, I have attempted to portray the horror of war. It is blunt at times. There is a reason for that. I don’t want the lesson below to be missed.
The spiritual application of my story is this – things like this are what happens when we ignore the teaching of Jesus about peacemaking.
Morning After
December 1, 1864
Franklin, Tennessee
Dear Deborah,
This morning dawned sunny and crisply cold. While my men were preparing the morning campfire, the light from the just risen morning sun glinting off the limestone outcrops reminded me of the pastures on our own farm and made me wish I was back on Blue Water Creek.
Events moved so rapidly yesterday afternoon and into the night that I hardly had time to think, much less reflect on what was happening. I’ll tell you a little about it. I don’t think I can ever tell the whole story. I just don’t have the stomach for it.
Yesterday was terrible. No, it was worse than terrible. When the blood and gore of the battle finally ended, there wasn’t much left of the old Army of Tennessee. The Yankees actually left the field when it was over. I reckon they’ll be laughing all the way up to Nashville about what fools we made of ourselves. Most generals would think twice about attacking a strongly fortified position while advancing upgrade over a large open area allowing the enemy a clear field of fire. By the way, did I mention our artillery hadn’t caught up with us, so we had to commit mass suicide without even the consolation of having artillery support while we did it? I’m sure the hundreds of southern widowed wives and bereaved mothers will want to thank the gallant General Hood for that.
I imagine I’ll hear shortly that we’ll be marching on up the road toward Nashville so Hood can complete the task of destroying his army, or what’s left of it. General Forrest thought we could get a sizable force around to their rear and let them have it from there. NBF has certainly done that maneuver many times before. But not the all-wise and all-courageous Hood. Show them what we’re made of, show them we’re men, march straight into the Yankee muskets while the ground becomes piled higher and higher with fallen sons, and brothers, and husbands around you. Well, Hood showed them. Guess he really feels like a general now. Much more of yesterday, and he won’t have anything left to general with.
I thought the worst was over till I went onto the field today to assist in recovering our dead. No bullets are flying past my head now. That worst is over. But this worst is different. I’m not sure which is the most severe.
I found a small spring of water in a sparse grove of trees a couple hundred yards from what had been the Federal line. I counted thirty-eight men all dead in one place near that spring. One young private, maybe he had had his sixteenth birthday, was lying dead on his back. There was a single splotch of blood, about the size of a silver dollar, in the center of his chest. Bits of frost had formed on his eyebrows and his brown hair. He had obviously been dead awhile.
His right eye was closed. But, he had died with his left eye still open. It stared straight up. As I stopped briefly and stood over him, he seemed to be staring straight at me with that one left eye. I imagined he wanted to ask me something. Maybe to tell his girlfriend that he loved her. Maybe to tell his ma where he fell and how he died.
But I think what he really wanted was to ask me was “Why?” Why was he on this battlefield? Why did he have to die before he was twenty, before he could plant his own seed and see his name carried on? His family had no slaves. They farmed their small place by the sweat of their own brow. It was the rich planters down around Montgomery who owned most of the slaves. It was their war. Why did he have to be in it? He didn’t care what flag flew over the capitol. He just cared about his family, his girlfriend, his bluetick hound dog, and his next meal. Now all that was lost, and what was the point of it? Maybe that’s what he wanted to say. Maybe that’s what all the dead soldiers wanted to say.
I’m writing this letter by the campfire after supper, like I usually do, but I can still see that innocent, questioning stare from that kid’s open left eye. I think it’ll stick with me till I have a not-so-innocent, questioning stare of my own.
The scene at that spring this morning reminded me of the time Paw’s hogs got the cholera. I remember there were about ten of them who had tried to get to that spring under the big oak tree where the hills drop off into the creek bottom. They had drug themselves there to drink from that spring, not understanding that they were dying. The first one died near the water. Then another one crawled up and died, then another and another. Before long the hogs that came last were crawling over the already dead hogs, trying to get to the spring, and were dying on top of them. When we discovered them, they were in a neat little pile, all dead by the spring.
That’s how it was this morning. The dead Confederates, dressed in their ragged butternut clothes, like they were just going out to the field to plow the mules - piled two and three high, all dead by the spring, just like so many dead animals. Tell their mothers, wives, and sweethearts that they died so the rich planters can keep their slaves. I’m sure they’ll find a lot of consolation in that.
I hate this war, Deb. I hate it because of the senseless killing, and I hate it because it makes me want to be a senseless killer. I see no glory and I see no honor. All I see is arrogance and greed. And the death and misery produced by them. Both sides are so blinded by their own depravity that they don’t comprehend the results of their actions. I just want to go home, if there’s any home left.
I better turn in now. There may be some more killing tomorrow. I guess it’s either kill or get killed. Sure something to look forward too, isn’t it?
I think about you all the time. I hope I’ll see you again.
I love you.
Isaiah Hall
Major, CSA Calvary
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