Bob Stoops: Visiting the Kids At Children’s Hospital

In July 2008, our three year old daughter Abby, adopted from Guatemala, was diagnosed with Leukemia. Since then, we have been simply and utterly amazed at the goodness and tender-hearted care that has come from every direction. Whether at home or in the hospital, there is a never ending stream of people asking how Abby is doing, asking how they can help our family, visiting, cooking, anticipating our needs and offering assistance. We are relative new-comers at a large church in Norman, and yet countless people have brought us meals, provided baby-sitting and continue to dream up ways to help us care for Abby. The nurses at the hospital have been kind, helpful and accommodating. Many of them are Christians, and all of them have been warm and loving to Abby. Even the “mean” one, Nurse Betty, is just a softy down deep and treats Abby like her own. People from all over the world who we’ve never laid eyes on send cards and gifts. There are hundreds of blogs, websites and families praying for Abby. There is rarely a day goes by that we don’t see, or hear about, someone doing something kind for us, praying for us or volunteering to do something to help us care for Abby. It’s seems like there is nothing quite like a sweet little child getting sick that brings out the best in humanity. So it was a pleasant surprise, but not a big surprise one day, to see Coach Bob Stoops walk into the hospital room. It seems that even head coaches of top ten college football teams have soft hearts for suffering children. Coach Stoops frequently visits the children at the OU Children’s hospital yet you wouldn’t know it unless you were one of the families there. When I contacted his office to request the interview, I was told in no uncertain terms that he did ... | read the rest of this story online

Living Faith: John Barnett

John Barnett is an amazing man. Although he is one of the gentlest men you’ll ever meet, tender-hearted and patient, don’t mistake that for a lack of courage, conviction or toughness. He is a man’s man, fiercely loving his wife, caring for his large family with selfless devotion and willing to take risks for his faith that would have most of us shrinking in hesitation. It’s my pleasure to sit down and interview him for our “Living Faith Series” where we discover the lives of men and women whose faith overflows into lives all around them. Serious.Life: John, it’s really great to talk with you. Before I ask you few questions, I know you’re constantly on some adventure, so what have you been up to recently? John: We’ve been over in Scotland for the last couple of weeks, and that’s where I pretty much lost my voice. They don’t heat things over there, and it’s quite an experience to be in those cold stone buildings. So I’ve been fighting a cold and losing my voice since we got back. I was there preaching in the church that Dwight L. Moody started, and they are still faithfully reaching out to the community of Edinburgh. It’s really amazing because what you see there is a church filled with either twenty-somethings or senior citizens. The two or three generations in between have basically been lost to the church in that area which is common all over Europe. So even as I was giving a message to an audience full of young people with tattoos and earrings, they were all very sincere and zealous about their faith. On Saturday they wanted to have a marathon teaching session, and so I taught them for five hours straight with just a few minutes break here and there. There were all sorts of children and young adults eagerly ... | read the rest of this story online

Letter From the Editor

What’s all this business about living a serious life? Is it being somber all time? Is sacrificing all the fun in life now for some reward in the sweet by and by? We chose the title “Serious.Life” to set us apart from all the pop-culture, image-over-substance, feel-good-but-meaningless entertainment/information that saturates media today. A serious life means having the right priorities. An outside observer of our culture would rightly surmise that pleasure, sex, money and Self are the most common priorities. For those pursuing a truly serious life, priorities look more like eternal considerations, family, character and serving others. A serious life is fun, pleasure and recreation tempered by delayed gratification that stems from the maturity of knowing that hard work, self-sacrifice and preference of others is just as important, if not more, than our own enjoyments. A serious life is contentment based on principles and eternal perspective, not on circumstances or self focus. A serious life is the most free, most fun, most happy and most fulfilled life because it is anchored in timeless truth that transcends fickle humanity and opinion. Seriously great!... | read the rest of this story online

Ready For Marriage?

Dear Brent, I am in a relationship with someone I truly love but do not trust because of his previous cheating. How can I, with God’s help make this work? Should I even try? T.L. - Indiana No, you should not try. You are not even married, and he has already shown a propensity to be unfaithful to your relationship so much so that you already state you do not trust him. You should go ahead and move on with your life. However, for me this begs bigger issues. I cannot tell you the heart ache that I routinely see in people who follow this pattern of what appears to be “pretend marriage” via dating. This almost always involves sexual activity and an equal number of “yeah but you don’t understand, we are in love, we’re going to get married”. Then get married and quit pretending that you are. People want all the benefits (that’s code for sex) but not the commitment or responsibility. There seems to be this unwritten but acceptable excuse even within the Christian community that yes, fornication is wrong, BUT if you are REALLY in love, and you REALLY plan to get married, God kind of winks at your sexual immorality. What a deception. It’s pretend marriage without the commitment. I know that I will get laughed right off the farm but I’m still a big advocate of courting and encourage young people all the time to have their parents who love them and will not be blinded by emotions, help them evaluate and choose a worthy spouse. Courting allows people the time and opportunity in a safe environment to get to know each other before their hearts and minds are clouded by stirred up sexual desire. Involved parents help a young person during a time when they can be easily confused by ... | read the rest of this story online

The New America: Fast or Slow, Change is Here... Are you Ready?

I was thinking about how life in America is changing. Regardless of who is elected this week, change is certain... it’s just a matter of how fast. And none of it is good. Whether big government Republicans or Socialist Democrats, we’re going in ONE direction... the speed is the only variable. Consider the following things Abe Lincoln said and think about how far we’ve come from his words: You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. Our entire political system is built on this tactic. Democrats deny it while openly praticing it. Big government Republicans claim conservatism while quietly going about doing just the opposite. Why? Power. Control. Personal political ambition. Socialism, spreading the wealth, “fairness”... all terms for taking from producers to give to non-producers who will vote you into office. Sadly for America, the non-producers are the majority now. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. We live in a lowest common denominator mindset where the achiever is chopped off at the knees in a misguided policy of affirmation and equality. You strengthen the weak by having the strong as their example and goal, as well as their teacher, not by destroying the strong. You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift. Out of control materialism and predatory lenders have created multiple generations who impulsively buy lifestyle on credit and believe it be their right. The overall amount of debt in our country is BEYOND comprehension. The borrower is slave to the lender. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You would think this is common sense and yet the business owner is the most taxed, most attacked and most maligned ... | read the rest of this story online

Marriage & Money

Here’s a question: My girlfriend and I are Christians, and truly seek to have a relationship, and a marriage that is pleasing to God. She is graduating college in a year with a large amount of debt. I am already working, I have no debt, and I am saving diligently. It’s looking like I might enter into marriage with a net worth of $20k, while she’d have about $20k in student loans with little to no assets. I’m all about sharing and giving all of myself for my wife- but not an ex-wife (I’m trying to cover all bases, and prepare for the worst). I have no reason to believe that our marriage wouldn’t work, but from a stewardship point of view, I want to protect myself. Although it’s frowned upon by Christians, would a prenuptual agreement be a good idea here? If one of you are still in college, and considering some other indicators from the rest of your question, I would say you need to wait a couple of years to consider marriage. Wait for some of the stress to be relieved, and you have some time to mature about what marriage really means, as well as develop a correct attitude about money. If you both do not have the same convictions about debt, saving and finances in general, you are in for big trouble. Just because she has debt (college loans?) doesn’t necessarily mean she has loose attitudes about finances, but apparently you doubt her financial discipline since you are not 100% sure your money and savings are “safe” given an impending marriage. If you are entering marriage, then “you” don’t have a net worth ALONE. Your net worth is the unconditional combination of “you” and “you” (both of you). If marrying this young lady is not worth investing your “diligent” savings in order to start ... | read the rest of this story online

I Am Falling and I Fear I Can’t Get Up

You are not alone. In today’s pending economic crisis this is the feeling of many Americans. Many came into what they felt was the acquisition of the “American Dream” which meant home ownership, a car, and a white picket fence (or whatever your preference). Inflated appraisals on homes, sub-prime loans and variable loans that inflated faster than the homeowner could have foreseen caused thousands of foreclosures. According to the Washington Post, between July and September of this year, 2,700 homes went into foreclosure a day. That is up over 1000 homes a day from a year ago. More than 4 million homeowners with a mortgage were at least one month behind on their payments at the end of June. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, a record 500,000 homeowners had entered the foreclosure process. This is a crisis. People feel like they have fallen and can’t get up. This has especially impacted homeowners and investors in what was considered “hot markets” like Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona. According to an active realtor in South Carolina, appraisals in these hot markets were inflated up to 20% a year. She said what has helped the market in South Carolina stay pretty steady is the real estate market kept at a 5 percent increase a year despite the excitement in other states. The bottom line is high appraisals caused people to carry a strong spirit that a home was an investment, future money in the bank, rather than a place to live and call home. Most people do not stay in their home for 30 years and many thought they would sell and make a profit before the variable rate would even change. Many Americans were caught off guard. Now they are experiencing a loss due to the drop in value. They have fallen and feel they can’t get ... | read the rest of this story online

Adoption: It Changed My Life

By Erin Henderson It sounds very cliché to say that an experience was “life changing”, but the day that I walked into AHOPE, an orphanage in Ethiopia for HIV+ children, I truly left a changed person. My husband, Josh, and I were in Ethiopia adopting our ninth child in February of 2006. I was 29 years old and Josh was 31. We had kids at home ranging in age from two years to 10 years, and including our new son, Benjamin, six of the nine kids had joined our family through the miracle of adoption. Someone who knew that we were traveling to Ethiopia to get Ben asked if we would be willing to gather and deliver some donations to an orphanage for HIV+ children. I was more than happy to help gather the donations, and the youth in our church jumped in and did a fabulous job loading us up with gifts for the kids. But I told Josh that there was just no way I could go to the orphanage, and that he would have to take the donations there himself. I had a hard enough time emotionally visiting Ben’s orphanage, where the kids were all healthy and were all matched with families or would soon be. I was just sure I couldn’t handle going to an orphanage where the kids all had a life threatening illness and had no hope of being adopted. I pictured kids who were sickly, lonely, sad and hopeless. I cried just thinking about it. But my Heavenly Father knew better than I (of course), and when the time came to bring the donations to AHOPE, I just knew that I was supposed to go with Josh and see the children. And so I did. I think back to that day as I was getting out of the cab at AHOPE. I had no idea how much my life was about to change, in more ways than one. First, we met some of the incredible staff. We could tell that they were motivated ... | read the rest of this story online

Adoption: God’s Painted Picture

By Carol Bauman In March of 2005, our lives were changed, our hearts were filled, and a love for two little boys grew more than we could have imagined. My husband and I were introduced to our sons, Parker Tereso and Mason Fernando. Our adoption journey was quick and smooth. Just six months after starting the process, we were able to bring our little boys home and start the family every adoptive parent dreams of. Parker was 2 ½ years old and had the face of an angel. Mason was five months old and fulfilled my dream of having a baby. While Parker was lacking nutrition, Mason was terribly ill. He was suffering from a very rare male genetic disorder called Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome. His immune system was greatly compromised, as washis platelet production. Mason’s only hope was a bone marrow transplant. Faced with a long and painful road ahead, we became very strong through Mason. He pulled through every illness, overcame every set back, and survived a stroke and a transplant. After spending 18 months in the hospital and receiving more than 200 blood transfusions, one would never know he was ever so sick. Today, Mason is a courageous and energetic four year old. Just after bringing Mason home from his transplant, we also brought home the boys’ biological older sister, Lauren Esperanza. Lauren was a 9-year-old girl who was eager to be united with her brothers and have parents that loved her as their own. We had three siblings and a family that was more than we ever dreamed of. The story doesn’t stop there. Just when we thought our family was big enough and complete in every way, I became pregnant with twins. After suffering several miscarriages and fertility problems, yet another dream came true, and the kids were just ... | read the rest of this story online

Atlas Shrugs: Global Network Initiative - a loss of religious freedom?

By Randall Rathbun If 57 nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have their way in the United Nations, and the “Defamation of Religions resolution” is approved, it may be a crime, soon, to publish material on the internet deemed to advocate “religious hatred”. This document states that it is wrong to associate Islam with human rights violations and terrorism, and that it is deplorable to use the internet to incite xenophobia, or related intolerance and discrimination towards Islam (and any other religion) and that defamation of Islam and Muslims must be effectively combatted. One is forced to ask what motive is guiding terrorists, if not a religious one, which they have said in their very own words? So how does this affect the internet? Simple, on October 28, 2008 the Global Network Initiative was publically announced, in their own words “a consortium of companies, civil society organizations, investors and academics” with a “comprehensive collaborative approach to regulate the Information & Communications Infrastructures worldwide for the express purpose of protecting and advancing freedom of expression.” This organization has quietly met for 2 years hammering out an agreement binding upon their members. These members include Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and other major IT players on the world stage. While proclaming that protection of privacy is their foremost concern and that the GNI advances fundamental human rights, one must read the fine print buried in their “Principles”. What is not apparent is that if the GNI intends to abide by the United Nations “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] and article 20 item 2 of the ICCPR which states ... | read the rest of this story online

At Shore’s End: Writer...Interrupted

By EarthMommy One popular mantra among writers is the idea that “you can’t fix a blank page”, meaning that lousy writing is better than no writing at all. Often times though, when I have the opportunity to write, I am unable to conquer the blank page. I often find myself seated, pen in hand or keyboard under my fingertips, feeling as blank as the page before me. When I sleep soundly I dream vividly, and upon awakening I have much to write about. But life demands my immediate attention, and my dream-inspired places, scenes and characters fade quickly into oblivion. Many a story with enormous potential has been miscarried in this manner. Even the inspirations that come from my own life experiences are no match for my mountainous writer’s block. Many a tale from my real life has failed to make it to any form of print, so what hope does fiction even have? It if weren’t for blogging I would never write at all. I have my addiction to public journaling to thank for the fact that my writer’s brain gets any exercise at all. When I do write, is is my habit to write out of sequence. I tend to write what I feel, rather than planning out a scene from start to finish and writing it that way. In fact, most of my pieces have never progressed past a file folder or CD full of random, unconnected scenes. I’m not good at the bridge work that it requires to pull them all together into a completed work. There have been many times in my life when my writing has been much-needed therapy. Be it journaling, poetry or fiction, much of my work today has filled some need in me that was not otherwise to be met. When I was a young teen struggling with isolation and lonliness, the characters I created were much needed friends. Later, ... | read the rest of this story online

Forever-n-Always: I Chose You

By Jill Yesterday turned into many blessings through pain. Abigail came to me before lunch complaining her right side her next to her belly button. She had complained once before about this a month ago. This time I could tell she was truly in pain. Abigail is not one of our children who brings you every boo boo. She ate a small lunch and laid down for nap. I hoped that when she woke up maybe her tummy would feel better. Five of our children woke with colds and she was one of them...so I thought maybe this was just part of her cold. When she woke up the pain was still there. I spoke with our pediatrician who instructed me to give it one more hour and if not better to go to hospital to eliminate the chance it might be her appendix. An hour passed and she was still in pain. Scott came home and I left with her and Lexi for the ER. That was 6:15pm. I prayed as I drove with a dear friend and continued praying all night long. The kids and Scott were praying for her at home too - they asked Daddy to pray several times each before going to bed. How precious! We arrived, got checked in and within 10 minutes were taken back to begin what would turn out to be a very long night for all of us - filled with many blessings along the way! Abigail was a trooper and very brave. She cried quietly when they placed the IV in and took her blood vs the last experience I had with her when she came home where it took 3 very large nurses to hold her down to take two small vials. It might have helped just a wee little bit that Mommy was a dancing fool for her this time and I was NOT the person holding her down. She got to giggle and cry at the same time. Next up urine samples and what an experience that was for both of us. I’ll leave out the details ... | read the rest of this story online

Red Letters: Ethiopian Reflections - Blind Beggar

By Jamie The single most amazing part of our recent trip to Ethiopia was the people. In this series of posts I attempt to profile them and the impact they had on me. Worship at St. George’s Cathedral couldn’t have been any more different than where I usually worship on a Sunday. Other than Jesus, it seemed everything was different at this Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Addis Ababa. First, there was the leper who was begging outside the gate. I flashed in my mind to the story in Acts 3 of Peter and John healing the beggar outside the temple gates. Unlike the apostles, I didn’t tell him to stand up and walk. Instead, I began to think of how ancient this place was. We walked into the courtyard and began to worship. Now, realize the whole service was liturgy in Amharic, so we couldn’t understand a word they were saying. But it was beautiful, I thought on how long these people must have been worshiping like this, back to when the Gospel first came to the Ethiopian people in Acts 8. As we stood, we all noticed a blind woman who was making her way around the courtyard. She would take a shuffle forward, poke around with her stick, then reach down with her hands to make sure she wasn’t about to fall down a step. It was painful to watch — I can’t imagine how her back felt after a day, much less a lifetime of this. As she made her way around, worshipers would walk up to her and give her some change. To give you an idea of her usual donation, the most valuable Ethiopian coin is worth 1/2 half a birr — about a US nickel. One member of our team stepped forward to meet her needs as well. He quietly slipped her a 100 birr bill — the equivalent $10 USD. As she pulled out her money purse from around her neck, a ... | read the rest of this story online

Hope4Peyton: Would You Let This Woman Watch Your Kids?

By Anissa Mayhew Take this as a warning that you may not want to let your kids spend the night over at my house. Not because anything bad happened, but OH, it could have! The kind of stuff that when shared in the wrong setting makes people pick up their phones and call other people. People with badges and notebooks and big flashy things on their cars. See, our house is really a very casually naked house. The kids run around in the nude, they take great glee at catching me unaware with a big shiny mooning. They flop around in the buff after the shower and enjoy a sweet breeze on their gibblety-bits. No big deal. We aren’t starting a commune but we don’t run from nature’s most natural state. The danger is ME getting out of the shower and making the walk from the bathroom into the bedroom where all my clothes are. I’m just not concerned with my kids seeing me nekkid, traumatic, but no big deal. The bad thing that happened was about two steps out of the bathroom, when I was perfectly in view from the door of my bedroom (akkk OPEN!) and I heard little boy voices in my hallway and remembered that it wasn’t just my own children psyches about to be damaged by the site of my unclothed body….but the children of my friend who had given them to me to watch over…which presumably meant returning them to her unharmed and in no NEW need of therapy. I stood there damply shivering, completely frozen from my inner freak-out. He was going to see me! He was going to tell him mom that he saw me! He was probably going to tell his friends about the beastly sight that forever changed the landscape of his childhood. He would more than likely have nightmares. He might need medicating. I might need medicating. I would be labeled ... | read the rest of this story online

Science: Ice Age Civilizations

(The following is the introduction to Nienhuis’s book, “Ice Age Civilizations”. Serious.Life Magazine encourages you to purchase this book. It is a fascinating look at how the ancients navigated and mapped the entire earth.) The precise measurements and religious observances of the apparent movements of the sun and constellations of stars, in their orderly and predictable courses in the sky, was a great passion for the ancients, and such is reflected in their legends, megalithic buildings, and navigation maps, which reveal the ancients’ awareness of the solar equinoxes and solstices, and also, which reveal that they actually measured the precession of the earth’s axis, the slow gyroscope-like wobble of the earth’s axis in space, that would cycle once in 25,920 years. Those ancients could measure the earth with this knowledge because it allowed them to accurately calculate the radius and, so then, the circumference of the earth, and thereby, they were prepared to execute measurements for the accurate mapping and navigation of much of the globe within a few centuries during the Ice Age. Their star-mapping techniques allowed them to locate geographical points on the earth by measurements of the apparent movement of the locations of constellations from year to year, relative to the circle of the horizon, this apparent movement of the constellations is the visible manifestation of the earth’s slow wobble, like a gyroscope in space. The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is an embodiment of their ancient earth-measuring capabilities, and its astronomicallyderived dimensions reveal the ancients’ precession-measuring, and thereby, their earth-measuring capabilities. The Great Pyramid is on the ancient Prime Meridian (Greenwich England is on today’s Prime ... | read the rest of this story online

Funeral Plans

He is 18, just graduated from high school, works in the family business and has a bright future. In the early morning hours of a Saturday, he veers into the oncoming lane of traffic on a road that seldom sees any traffic at that time of day. He dies within minutes of the crash. She will receive her B.A. degree in just a few weeks and has already been accepted into officer candidate school for a career in the U. S. Marine Corps. She is found dead. Alone. The coroner will have to determine the cause of death. The parents will wait to bring closure to her life. They are expecting their first child any day. She goes to the doctor on Thursday morning and everything is fine … the doctor will probably induce labor over the weekend. Saturday morning the baby is delivered. Still born. He is a brilliant, passionate young surgeon. Two small children. Beautiful wife. Well loved in the community and in the church where they worship and serve. She receives a phone call from the county sheriff … her husband has been found on a side road in another county. Self-inflicted bullet wound. He awakens in the early morning hours, goes to the bathroom, returns to bed and falls across the mattress. Dead from a massive heart attack. There were no warning signs. Death is an unavoidable fact of life, but how do we prepare ourselves for the inevitable, and what does the survivor need to know about making final arrangements for a loved one? Most of us spend more time getting ready to go shopping at the mall than we do preparing for that final breath taken in this life. I have sat with hundreds of people while they made funeral arrangements for a loved one. Seldom are they prepared for this emotional roller coaster. I’ve seen funeral ... | read the rest of this story online

Humor

Why parents go gray... The boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, he dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whisper. “Hello ?“ “Is your daddy home?” he asked. “ Yes ,” whispered the small voice. May I talk with him?” The child whispered, “ No .” Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your Mommy there?” “ Yes .” “May I talk with her?” Again the small voice whispered, “ No .” Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, “Is anybody else there?” “ Yes ,” whispered the child, “ a policeman “. Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?” “ No, he’s busy “, whispered the child. “Busy doing what?” “ Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman ,” came the whispered answer. Growing more worried as he heard a loud noise in the background through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, “What is that noise?” “ A helicopter “ answered the whispering voice. “What ! is going on there?” demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive. Again, whispering, the child answered, “ The search team just landed a helicopter .” Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, “What are they searching for?” Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle... “ ME .” ~~~ The mind is a terrible thing to waste... An ... | read the rest of this story online

Reader Recipes

The following recipes were taken from the “Adoption Cookbook”. The pics are from the cookbok. Pull Apart Bacon Bread Ingredients: 12 diced bacon strips or Bacon bits 1 loaf frozen bread dough, thawed 2 tbsp. olive oil, divided 1 c. mozzarella cheese, shredded 1 envelope ranch salad dressing mix Directions: Cook bacon. Drain on paper towels. Roll out bread dough to 1/2 in thickness; brush with 1 tbsp. oil. Cut in 1 in. pieces. Put in large bowl. Add bacon, cheese, dressing mix and rest of oil. Toss to coat.  Make pieces into 9x5 oval on a baking sheet; layering.  Cover and let rise for 30 min.  Bake 350 for 15 min.  Cover with foil, bake 5-10 min. longer. Submitted by Marcia, Grandmother of Aleigha and Mya, Guatemala Creamy Crab Dip Ingredients: 8 oz. imitation crab meat 8 oz. cream cheese 8 oz. sour cream 2 tbsp. minced onion 2 tsp. dill weed Directions: Chop or food process crab meat. Add all the other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Chill overnight Serve with crackers. Submitted by Jessica, mother of Jackson and Aiden, Guatemala Holiday Appetizer Dip Ingredients: 1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened 2 tbsp. milk 1 – 2 ½ oz. jar sliced dried beef, finely snipped (about ¾ cup) 2 tbsp. instant minced onion 2 tbsp. finely chopped green pepper 1/8 tsp. pepper ½ cup sour cream ¼ cup coarsely chopped walnuts Directions: Blend ... | read the rest of this story online

Grandma Hodge

The year was 1978 when my Grandma Hodge came to live at our house. She had long flowing white hair that she wore up in a bun until bedtime, and then it spread across her shoulders and down her back like a heavy snow that had fallen quietly during the dark of night. I used to be amazed by her nightly transformation. By the time Grandma Hodge moved in with us, my four older sisters and two older brothers had already married and moved out, leaving my parents and me to occupy a once chaotic but happy 1300 square feet, three-bedroom, one bath house. That’s right, nine people and only one bathroom. There was never a dull moment growing up in that home. Grandma Hodge was already well into her 80s by the time she moved in with us. I was 14 going on 18 and thought my grandmother was the grandest person in the world. Just like yesterday, I can remember her giving me a couple of dollars and saying, “Now you walk down to the store and buy me a jar of Bruton snuff and a block of chocolate, and you can have the change to buy whatever you want.” I always liked the traditional RC Cola and a Moon Pie. My mother was the fourth of Grandma’s 11 children. Grandma and my Grandpa Asa had raised all their children in a poor coal mining camp in Alabama called Sloss Holler. Grandpa Asa died the year I was born, so I never got to know him except through the stories that Grandma so often told me about him. She remained faithful to Asa Hodge long after he had died. I can still hear her say, “Asa Hodge is the only man I’ll ever love.” He was her favorite thing to talk about, and I loved to listen. Although I never knew him, to this day I feel like I know him well because of the stories she told me about him. By the time Grandma Hodge died, she had close ... | read the rest of this story online

Parenting The Wayward

One of the greatest challenges in life is raising children. After years of combing through every verse of the Bible dozens of times, I still haven’t found the perfect family—a family with a godly dad, a godly mom, and children who are submissive their entire time at home, and grow up to move on into godly marriages and homes. This just isn’t recorded in the Bible. What we do find in God’s Word are some godly parents who have both godly and ungodly children; we also find some ungodly parents who have all ungodly children, while other ungodly parents end up with some godly children. There just doesn’t seem to be a parenting pattern that always works. So what is the answer for us as we parent? When God blesses us with children, He asks us to give them back to Him in dedication. That is what Christ’s parents did way back in Luke 2:22. That is also what godly parents have done through the centuries. But what happens when we dedicate them and they don’t turn out as we had hoped and planned? To answer that very relevant question, look with me again at the entire process of child rearing: Christian parenting and our stewardship of the precious lives of our children. When we as parents present our children in dedication back to the Lord, we are declaring: “These children belong to You, Lord.” Dedication is our public acknowledgement of God’s ownership of them (Psalm 127:3). We can then rest in the joyful reality of being stewards of the promises of God’s Word. The Bible repeatedly records godly men and women with less than godly children. That is because godliness is a choice; it is an obedient response to the Lord. Godly children can not be made; nor can godliness be forced upon them. They grow that way, by God’s grace, with—or sometimes ... | read the rest of this story online

Elections & God

We are staring at an election that is probably the most polarizing in all American history. Rightly so, people are concerned about what is in store for America. Change is coming, and it doesn’t appear much of it is for the good. With that in mind, I offer you a Biblical perspective of elections and politics. Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. (NKJV) Whoever gets elected is exactly who God wants elected. Sometimes, as Christians, we don’t like that and strive to find reasons we “failed” to get someone elected. Now don’t get me wrong... we should vote, campaign and participate in our great country to elect those officials we believe will best represent God’s will for our country. However, we should never fret, fear or be anxious about the results. Paul left no wiggle room: there is NO authority except from God, and whoever gets elected was appointed by God for His reasons. Yeah, but what about when a plainly ungodly man gets elected? There are a number of reasons God allows this (and many I’m not smart enough to think of): God may be allowing judgment to • occur; this is certainly becoming more probable as our country descends into wickedness and drowns in innocent blood from murder, abortion and euthanasia God may use wicked rulers • to refine His Church God may be handing us • over to our own desires, removing His protection; much like when Israel chose wicked Kings God may be allowing us to • “reap what we sow” There are no doubt many other (and probably better) reasons God may “appoint” the wicked to reign over us. The point ... | read the rest of this story online

What We Choose to Believe

Acclaimed postmodern writer David Foster Wallace, the recently deceased author of Infinite Jest, once said, “The only thing that is capital T True is that you get to decide … what you worship.” This particular truth coming from a postmodernist – someone who shuns the ideas of absolute truth or of a God who is the final arbiter of right and wrong – is astonishing. It was part of his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College. In adult life, Wallace said, “there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” Wallace lists money, things, our own body, beauty, intellect and sexual allure – our self-centered default settings – among that which we will unconsciously learn to worship in the absence of a conscious spiritual focus. Wallace eloquently describes how our automatic, hard-wired human self-centeredness traps us and spiritually kills us, i.e., eats us alive: we will fear the loss of money, the loss of beauty, power and allure, the inadequacy of not knowing everything. Wallace is saying that my conscious faith in Christ or your conscious faith in something else pulls our human passions away from, and hence gives us freedom from, our self-centeredness – our utter focus on self, and on self as God – that was Satan’s leverage in the Garden with Adam and Eve. Wallace went on to say, “the really important kind of freedom involves ... | read the rest of this story online