Civilization
Yesterday while I was writing about our Thanksgiving traditions for this blog, I looked up George Washington's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in preparation for suggesting you share it with your family. As I read it, I felt increasingly sad. George Washington thanked God "for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed." I thought…
We just love Thanksgiving! What a wonderful holiday! Leading up to the day, we teach our children great hymns of Thanksgiving, such as "We Gather Together," "Come Ye Thankful People, Come," "Count Your Blessings," and "Now Thank We All Our God." We particularly love "We Gather Together," because it was a Dutch song of the proper…
The problem of books and boys has been in the news lately. It's a known fact that boys generally read less than girls and seem to enjoy it less when they do read. Teachers and librarians have worried about it for years, and some of their suggestions border on desperation. Should we embrace comic books and…
Ah, the weekend's finally here. Looking forward to the weekend is such an institution, even officially-atheist nations like China shut down for Sunday. Here in America, Saturday's time to catch up on some yardwork, maybe wash the car, but then it's time to play. Sometimes it seems like the weekend is our goal line for all the…
The earliest chapters of Scripture, God states "It is not good for man to be alone." There are many ways this works out in everyday life, but an interesting article in The Deseret News says that marriage even plays a key factor in recruiting -- or suppressing -- suicide bombers in the Islamic world. The…
Wow. A dramatic story from Haiti - a father of two, trapped and seriously injured in a collapsed building, kept calm, treated his own wounds, improvised solutions to immediate problems, then wrote bloodstained letters of Christian counsel to his sons. He was pulled from the wreckage after 65 hours. Writing the notes to his wife and children wasn’t…
In Charlotte this week, a long-time member of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang turned evidence against his former friends in federal court, saying he knew he risked being killed but did it because of his mother and brothers. According to the story in the Charlotte Observer, the 21-year-old said he had joined the gang as a young teen and took part…
This morning in family devotions we were talking about the love of God for His people. Explaining it to our five year old, I said, "Do you know how much your Daddy loves you?" "Oh yes!" she replied. "Does your Daddy take care of you and keep you safe?" She heartily agreed. "Well, God loves…
The husband of an aid worker in Haiti drove a hundred miles in answer to his wife's call for help, then dug her out from underneath a foot of concrete rubble. The Associated Press story is here. One does wonder where the men in the neighborhood were. A hundred mile drive in Haiti isn't like I-95…
Since the annual "Year in Review" and "Top Ten" articles are appearing in the media this week, I thought I'd take a quick look at ten stories that illustrate what it means to be a real man - or what can happen when you abandon that ideal. These may not be the biggest and greatest…