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"Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't cut it with family. When faith is mainly theory and belief, and not lived out, it leads to disaster. Consider the opposite - a godly father, and the memory his oldest boy holds dear.
Recent Entries
God? Who Needs Him?May 31, 2013
Self-sufficient humanism. Paul saw it coming – “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
Imago Dei
September 12, 2012
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Why Can't I Pray?
August 18, 2012
The bible gives us several reasons, but according to Jeremy Taylor, a deceitful heart is at the root of prayerlessness.
It's Not Rocket Science
July 23, 2012
To keep in step with the Spirit should be our daily quest. And if we are successful at that, all of life falls into place.
Theological Steak
April 10, 2012
These words by P. T. Forsythe on the magnificence of Christ's work are to theology what Ruth's Chris is to a good steak.
Describing the Indescribable
February 11, 2012
What we have in Christ will take all eternity to describe. But for one segment of one sermon, a great preacher made a mighty attempt.
Making Sense Of It All
January 30, 2012
Where are things headed? Is there rhyme and reason to the endless cycle of summer, fall, winter and spring? Is there a plan in place, or is randomness the explanation?
Dad's, Your Kids Are Watching!
January 14, 2009
If you want to read a page-turner of a missionary autobiography beautifully recounted, you must read John Paton recalling his days in the New Hebrides. This group of islands in the South Pacific now forms the nation of Vanuatu.
Born and raised in Scotland, Paton has fond memories of the home he was raised in as the oldest of eleven children. The tribute he pays his father is touching in itself, but it also emphasizes how much of our faith is caught, and not just learned head knowledge. The time he describes is 1840ish...
Our home consisted of...a mid-room, or chamber, called the "closet." The one end was my mother's domain, and served all the purposes of kitchen and dining room and parlor, besides containing two large wooden erections, called by our Scotch peasantry "box beds"; not holes in the wall, as in cities, but grand, big, airy beds, adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house.
The other end was my father's workshop, filled with five or six "stocking frames," whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries.
The "closet" was a very small apartment between the other two, having room only for a bed, a little table and a chair, with a diminutive window shedding diminutive light on the scene.
This was the Sanctuary of that cottage home. So daily, and several times a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and "shut to the door"; and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place.
We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy.
The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light as of a new-born smile that always was dawning on my father's face: it was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which he lived.
Never, in temple or cathedral, on mountain or in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and oaken wattles.
Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory, or blotted from my understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes, and shut itself up once again in that Sanctuary Closet, and, hearing still the echoes of those cries to God, would hurl back all doubt with the victorious appeal, "He walked with God, why may not I?" (page 4-5)
Born and raised in Scotland, Paton has fond memories of the home he was raised in as the oldest of eleven children. The tribute he pays his father is touching in itself, but it also emphasizes how much of our faith is caught, and not just learned head knowledge. The time he describes is 1840ish...
Our home consisted of...a mid-room, or chamber, called the "closet." The one end was my mother's domain, and served all the purposes of kitchen and dining room and parlor, besides containing two large wooden erections, called by our Scotch peasantry "box beds"; not holes in the wall, as in cities, but grand, big, airy beds, adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house.
The other end was my father's workshop, filled with five or six "stocking frames," whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries.
The "closet" was a very small apartment between the other two, having room only for a bed, a little table and a chair, with a diminutive window shedding diminutive light on the scene.
This was the Sanctuary of that cottage home. So daily, and several times a day, generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and "shut to the door"; and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct (for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the veil in the Most Holy Place.
We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of a trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy.
The outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light as of a new-born smile that always was dawning on my father's face: it was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which he lived.
Never, in temple or cathedral, on mountain or in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and oaken wattles.
Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory, or blotted from my understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes, and shut itself up once again in that Sanctuary Closet, and, hearing still the echoes of those cries to God, would hurl back all doubt with the victorious appeal, "He walked with God, why may not I?" (page 4-5)
