The Old Family Bible

Just one of my treasures in an old earthen vessel...   

     When I wrote about my Grandma's quilt in July, I promised another blog about the other treasure I was given by my aunt.  If you haven't read that blog you may want to go back and read it just for continuity.  The title of it is "The Ways of God and the Real War On Women".

The old worn cover...

     So making good on my promise, here is the story of the old family Bible. When my aunt took me into her storage room to choose a "treasure" from my grandparents worldly goods, I saw the old bible and was immediately drawn to it.  I really didn't know about the spiritual heritage of the Stanley family and I thought the bible might hold some clues to it.  It did, and my aunt filled in some gaps for me.  
     Besides the beauty of the thing, and it is beautiful, in spite of the crispy, crumbly pages, it contains family history.  My grandparent's marriage is recorded there... July 15, 1918.  That was probably the only record of their marriage that ever existed and being recorded in the family bible made it a legal document.  So we know that the book is at least 96 years old.  Also recorded there are the births of their children, their marriages and their deaths.  Someone faithfully kept the record up to date.
    As I carefully turned the old pages, my mind filled with questions, Did they read the bible?, Who are these people that I never heard of?  What did this book mean to them?  Why has no one else in the family valued this treasure?  How can I make my children understand the value of it?  Well my aunt must have read my mind because she started talking about it.

 The first page

     "It was the most important thing in our house.  Mama said, "If we ever have a fire, grab the bible first."  "All of us kids were forbidden to touch it but Mama would show us the pictures and tell us the stories.  We were in awe of it.  Sometimes I thought I saw a glow coming from it's pages."  (Then she laughed at herself.)  "Years later when I became a Christian, one of my first thoughts was to go back and read that book for myself.  You know, Daddy was an unbeliever for most of his life, until Bobbie died.  Then I think he just couldn't bear the thought that he'd never see her again, so he had to take care of that... never saw such a radical change in a person, as when my daddy got saved.  He went from a cursing, angry man to a quiet believer.  He never missed church after that.  He stopped cursing immediately, even though I'd never heard him complete a sentence without a curse word before that.  He never took a drink of liquor again.  He treated Mama better and talked to us kids like we were real people!"  She stopped and shook her hear in disbelief.
     "Did he read this bible?" I asked.

My grandparent's marriage license

     "No, Daddy couldn't read but Mama probably read it to him.  Their marriage license and all of us kids are in here."

Marriages and births...

     She spoke of it as if they had their own "chapter and verse".  I smiled and continued to turn the pages.  Later I reflected on how the times have changed.  We have probably ten different translations of the bible in our house.  We listen to it on our computers, our "notebooks" and our cell phones.  We hear it read form our pulpits on Sunday mornings, but most of the time we ignore it.  Have we become like a river that has widened so much and become so shallow that we no longer hold the "life" that's in it?  That bible to my grandparents and their family was valuable and deep.  It contained not only the life of their family, but the "words of life" and they were aware of it.

Deaths of loved ones

     I brought it home in my suitcase along with my grandmother's quilt.  This morning I took it out of it's plastic storage, so I could take pictures of it for my blog.  Now I've promised myself to find a place to store it so it will be protected and I can display it prominently in my house, like my grandmother did.  And I will instruct my children, "If we ever have a fire, grab the Bible first!"

"To Be Or Not to Be...That Is The Question"... Hamlet, Scene 1

     Indeed, that is  the question!  Because the subject of Assisted Suicide has once again reared it's ugly head in our society, I decided to put in my two cents worth. In order to do this I had to do some digging and to this I have to say, "Thank God for the Internet!"
     In my "digging" I have come across some wonderful things. One of these things that I've learned is that the Christian Church from Saint Augustine to Focus on the Family, has consistently been in agreement on the subject.  These church leaders have laid out a principle on the matter, that they gleaned from the scripture, so I don't have to wonder what the Bible teaches.     
     Now it's true, there are some denominations that have departed from this Biblical teaching. This is not new.  As a matter of fact, it began with the Apostle Peter. They base their opinion on the feeling that we must be "compassionate" to the suffering.  Then they proceed to define compassion as the prevention of suffering and pain.  This  definition of compassion, Jesus rebuked in Matthew 16:22, 23  Peter's statement there, "Be it (suffering) far from Thee, Lord."  Jesus replied to him by saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"   He wasn't calling Peter "Satan", but was addressing the "spirit" within Peter that would utter this Satanic temptation.  Jesus knew His purpose in coming into this world and He was saying, "Stop tempting me, Satan, with Peter's notion of compassion, for this suffering and death is the very reason for My incarnation!"  This is a larger subject than I want to address here, but suffice it to say, the Christian Church, down through the ages, warns us to avoid the stumbling block of this squishy compassion and instead chose to believe that suffering is very often God's chosen way.
     The principles which the church leaders came up with are as follows:
             1.Suicide is against nature.
             2.Suicide is destructive to community.
             3.Suicide is a sin against God.
     So with these points in mind, let's look at them one at a time.  1. Suicide is against nature... It is natural to love your own body.  Jesus said it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." in Matt. 19:19, and 22:39, Mark 12: 31, 33, and Luke 10:27 He included this phrase in His presentation of the Greatest Commandment. Then Paul said it in Eph. 5:28, 29.  He even went farther and said, " No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church."  So it is natural to love your own body and that makes suicide "unnatural". (By love, I mean care for your body.)
     The second point on which the principle is based is...2. Suicide is destructive to community. Have you ever noticed how suicide, "runs in families"?  Indeed, in the Jewish community, a good father would never give his permission for a young man to take his daughter in marriage, if there was a history of suicide in the young man's family. (Check out the movie, Yentle.)  The reason for this, I believe, is that when a person commits suicide they are conveying a message to their children, of faithlessness. They are saying, "When life gets too hard the thing to do is "punch out".  That leaves no room for God's intervention or for you to glorify Him through your death.  
     The third point of the principle is...3. Suicide is a sin against God.  Augustine based his position against suicide on Deut. 32:39 which says, "Look now; I myself am He!  There is no other god but me!  I am the One who kills and gives life; I am the One who wounds and heals; no one can be rescued from my powerful hand!"  Augustine went on to say, "Life is God's gift to man.  It belongs to God alone to pronounce life and death."
     But having said that, God gives us a choice. He says in Deut. 30:19 "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live..." God's wish for us is that we live! 
     So, I concluded, it was pretty plain from the scripture that suicide is not the "way of escape" from suffering or anything else.  Then I asked myself the second question. " Well then, how about when I get to that point where I think life is not worth living, it's painful and just too hard,  I'll just ask someone else to do it for me...a Doctor for example."
   But, the scripture also says that I have no right to ask another person to sin, or entice them to sin.  In fact I would be inviting them to murder me and that is a violation of the seventh commandment in Ex. 20: 13... "Thou shalt not kill. ( The Hebrew word for kill here is ratsach or murder.)  So if I ask someone to assist me to commit suicide, I'm asking him/her to "murder" me.  Not only is that against God's law but it is against a Doctor's oath.
    So the answer to Hamlet's question is..."To be"!  If you are a Christian and devoted to God and His word, you will reject the false idea of compassion, just as Peter had to reject it as coming from Satan, and stand against suicide in any form.

"...and so dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.  Let them be a living and holy sacrifice___the kind He will find acceptable.  This is truly the way to worship Him!" Romans 12:1
    

"Duck Dynasty in a Miley Cyrus World!"

     This will be a short blog. It has one message, sent on the wings of a prayer.  The message is... tomorrow is election day, Christians, go out and vote! I don't mean that you should hold your nose and close your eyes and flip the lever and think to yourself, "It really doesn't matter. They're all alike. They're all crooks! etc. etc..." You know the statements. You've heard them repeated over and over.  You may have even said them yourself.
     No, what I'm suggesting is, look at the person running for Senate. Are they pro life? Are they for gay marriage? Ask yourself these questions and others that reflect your values and pick the candidate that more closely agrees with these values. They probably won't be perfect, no one is. But you can vote for the person who most agrees with you, then hold their feet to the fire.  Call or write and remind them of their promises.  Then look at the Judges and do the same thing, and then the State offices that are running.  If you don't have a "voters guide" from Michigan Family Forum or Right to Life then go on line and check them out.  The online address for Michigan Family Forum is michiganfamily.org and I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find Right to Life or Baptist for Life or Lutheran's for Life.  Just google them. (Just got a new web site for you to see a voter guide. It is http://frc.org/voterguide.#ValuesVoter)
     Now a word about the title of this blog, Duck Dynasty in a Miley Cyrus World, I put it in quotations because I "lifted" it from Todd Starnes latest book, God Less America. It so apply describes where we are as a nation.  We are the Robertson family in Duck Dynasty with their values, and we are living in a "Miley Cyrus world".  We, the church, are called to be "salt and light" in this world. That means that we should be holding back the corruption that is so prevalent in our society.  One way we can do this is by voting. It seems like such a small, insignificant thing and we are tempted to think, How can my puny little vote count for anything?  But did you know that if all the Christians in this country would vote we could totally change the direction of it?  Not only that but your act of being a good citizen can and probably will influence others to do the same.  God has given us this duty, this power, this privilege and we dare not spurn it.  Because of the great lack of interest or irresponsibility or maybe just plain ignorance, we have very nearly lost our freedoms and the American church is on the brink of persecution. 

This is the price that was paid  so you can vote!

     I have been so burdened about what is happening to our country and this is my appeal to all of you who read my blogs. As I read my Bible I have come to see that there are two ways God has spread the gospel, one is by giving His people the freedom to preach and teach it and the other is through persecution.  With this in mind go vote!