Teaching the One Good Story

“We want our children to know and believe the one good story. Every other story is a copy or shadow of this one. Some copies of it are quite good and shout the Truth. Others see only the faintest whisper of it, or, in its absence remind us of the Truth. We want our kids to know the one good story so well that when they see Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Frodo, Anne of Green Gables, Arielle, or Sleeping Beauty, they can recognize the strands of Truth and deception in them. Saturating our children in the one good story will enable them to discern Truth and error as it comes to them from the world.” 
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

The power of story. This quote resonated with me.

Some of my favorite times as a father have been reading my boys a bedtime story -or in Sean's case, making one up each night about the world travels of "Charles the Pig." I used to be able to recite most all of the Dr. Seuss tales, the Patchwork Fish, and several others.

Later it was my boys that pestered me until I gave in and listened to the audio version of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which I think was on about 3,000 audio cassettes.

The one story I pray that we shared that we not only remember but share, is the story of Jesus.

Because in the end, it's the only one that matters.

What would Robert E. Lee Do?

When you get a Family Tree DNA kit for Father's Day from your family, you could probably guess that history matters to us. Not just history, but our family's history. We don't know a great deal about the Wilson side. Poverty will do that - fewer traces left. But we know a pretty good deal about my Mother's side.

Both sides were proud of what they came from, and proud of what that meant. Mostly that meant that we were Americans - they showed that by going off to war on a pretty regular basis for this country. But for a few years in the 1860's, being a Georgian mattered more.

I can't say exactly what they fought for. I'd sure love to be able to pin it on state's rights, or just simply protecting their land and the land of their neighbors. Maybe that was it. But I also know that at least on one side of my family, they owned slaves. Don't think Tara when you try to picture it, because the same folks stuffed newspaper inside their jackets in the winter because they were too poor to buy winter coats. But still, they owned slaves and as slave owners, they were wrong. They may well have gone to war to protect their right to own another human being.

As a boy I was taught Southern History. I was a voracious reader of everything Civil War, and a great admirer of the great Confederate Generals -men like John Gordon of Georgia,and of course Stonewall Jackson and Robert E.Lee. General Lee in many ways was held out to me as a model of a Christian man. What would that Christian man do with the problems we face today?

At the end of the war, Lee refused any attempt to have him occupy any position of leadership and even thought that Confederate monuments should not be erected believing that they would only serve to inflame passions at a time when the nation needed to concentrate on healing the wounds of war.

In Charles Bracelen Flood’s book Lee: The Last Years, he tells of a time after the Civil War when Robert E. Lee visited a woman who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her home. There she cried bitterly that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Union artillery fire. She waited for Lee to condemn the North or at least sympathize with her loss. Lee paused, and then said, “Cut it down, my dear madam, and then forget it.”

It's time to take Lee's advice. Bring the flags down. Focus on the one who brings us together, just as the 9 of our Christian brothers and sisters were doing last Wednesday night when their lives were taken.

Focus on Jesus.

Father's Day

It's been hard these last few years since my Daddy passed away. It's no problem to fix the date that he left this world for the next, but it's hard for me to know when he really left us. We realized it only after the funeral. After I preached a eulogy for my father from the point of view of a sharecropper's son.

It was clear two days later when the certified copy of your Last Will and Testament showed up. The one that never mentioned me, my brother, or those grandsons you seemed to love so much. Before that, we were coping with the loss of a man we had known all our lives as Daddy.

One thing I've realized over the past few days as I thought about this, is that apparently some people, and I guess I'm one of them,  tend to gloss over our parent's shortcomings and exalt those things that make us feel better about them.

There were moments I remember about him that I used to put on the good side that after further thought realize that they actually weren't. They were examples of times when he put his preferences over his family. He'd withdraw if he didn't get his way. Even the fact I had lauded - he worked over 20 years on the swing shift at the base, supposedly to get the extra money - was his way of avoiding having to be home with his wife and his boys everyday.

It was my Mother who played catch with us on long summer evenings - my Mother who showed up at Little League games. I can't remember one time my father did, even on Saturdays. He was always busy working on the land, fixing a tractor, or felling trees. It was a shock to look back and realize that.

Late in life he married again. He was lonely, no doubt of that, and somehow he met a woman who it turned out had been married and widowed several times. She called him honey and sugar, and fed his ego. They went on trips together - something my Mother had begged him to do but he never would. I guess she worked on his weaknesses and exposed him as less than the man I thought I knew.

At first it seemed like she'd be good for him, and in some ways there's no doubt that they both benefited. She was a severe diabetic and he was suffering from ailments too. But over the last years of his life I guess she took advantage of that weakness. Well, I know she did. The day he signed over his savings, he had just finished chemo.

I know he was weak. I know he was tired. I know she was evil. I just don't know how to balance the man I knew who loved his family with the one who turned his back on it at the end. Everything I knew of him - the Father, the Grandfather my boys loved so dearly - was shattered.

Father's Day is different now.

I focus my thoughts on the now and future - my awesome sons, of whom I am so proud, and my grandson, who makes me smile just thinking of him.

There's a wound that only God's grace will heal when it comes to my Father. I love him and have been trying for years to see total forgiveness happen. We'll meet in heaven one day and I guess then I'll understand.

Today

Come, ye disconsolate, where'er you languish,
Come at the shrine of God fervently kneel;
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish—
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.
~Thomas Moore, c.1813, published in Sacred Songs, 1816

It's been thirteen years today.

Countless moments have passed. Our love of Ana has never ceased.

Heaven is healing. Heaven will ultimately heal completely.

And one day, we will meet our granddaughter.

Until then, we will love our family fiercely. We will seek every opportunity to live this all so precious life with them. 

So if you're reading this, Wilson clan, know that you are loved more deeply than words could ever express. ALL of you - sons by birth, daughters by marriage - ALL of you.

Nailing Christmas

Our Christmas tree is up here at the Wilson house. That's giving us all the warm memories from many years as a family. Bunny did a great job this year decorating and we're really enjoying the season.

On our tree, if you examined it, you'd be able to find a time line of our family's history through the ornaments that hang from each branch. Over the years we've accumulated quite a few, and every one carries memories of where we were and what was happening in our family.

On two branches, there are felt ornaments with pictures of two little boys contained within them. Probably cost 25 cents to make, but to us they are priceless. In years past, sometimes the boys would move them to the back. But they always seem to find their way out front again. On several branches hang ornaments that are reminders of the years Bunny spent working as a manager of a Hallmark store in Macon Mall. We've got Snoopy and Woodstock, Frosty the Snowman, and all manner of reindeer - even Santa in a Corvette!

Bunny hangs one  each year that was one of her favorites when she was a little girl. There are others we got on shopping trips, or picked up because of what they said to us, like the one carved from any olive tree near Bethlehem. Then there are the dog bone ornaments for Daisy and Ellie the mini schnauzers and Chloe and Henley the Great Danes, faithful friends absent now but who we still remember in love. And there are some ornaments gathered while we've been here in Valparaiso - like the Flip Flops one that makes me smile. We try to buy one or two when we go on vacation, and you can find a fleur-de-lis and one that looks like St. Louis cathedral in New Orleans that reflect our latest trip.

It's so easy for us as we look at the tree to turn it into a sentimental journey. Christmas is that, but it so so much more, and to lose that in the memories would keep us from the one memory that makes all the difference.

So each year, among the family ornaments, midst the memories, we take care to place another ornament - a nail hung by a scarlet ribbon. It's placed near the inside of the tree, away from the lights and glitter, and you'd have a tough time spotting it unless you knew it was there. But we know it is there, at the center of it all.

It reminds us what we should be looking at every day, not just at Christmas.

Jesus.

15 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. 16 For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels— everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.
Col 1:15-16 (MSG)

I love my family, and appreciate the blessings we've been given and the memories we share. But more than anything else, I want to remember, I want everyone to remember, to base our lives upon what God revealed through Jesus.

For everything, absolutely everything, not just Christmas, got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him.

Whatever you do this Christmas, don't miss that. Don't miss Him.

I hear voices...

1 Children, do what your parents tell you. This is only right. 2 "Honor your father and mother" is the first commandment that has a promise attached to it, namely, 3 "so you will live well and have a long life."
4 Fathers, don't exasperate your children by coming down hard on them. Take them by the hand and lead them in the way of the Master.

Eph 6:1-4 (MSG)

While I was searching in a closet at our home the other day, I came across several cassette tapes. One was of the Bethesda Baptist Church choir's Easter presentation of many years ago. My mother (who passed away 15 years ago) sang a solo in that musical. Another tape was of a sermon preached by Brother James Herndon, long-time pastor at Bethesda. He passed away before my mother. The final tape was of my oldest son Adam's 2nd Christmas.

I brought that tape to church to see whether you could still hear it. Surprisingly, the sound quality was okay. On that Christmas morning, apparently the whole family was at our house. So you hear my Mother and Father (who passed away last September), my aunt Louise and Uncle William (many years gone), my brother, and Bunny and me enjoying seeing Adam at 16 months of age, experience his first real Christmas.

Listening intently, I could hear Adam tell Bunny he wanted to go see "granmurner" (He got better at it). And I heard my Mother's voice for the first time in 15 years.

Sigh...

My father's voice was strong and clear - not like the man I talked to in August - so frail.

You know, I'm so glad I decided to record it all that morning, but in some ways their voices won't ever cease. I was drilled on being a certain kind of person. "We don't do that." "Son, when you go to work - work." "Remember, there but by the grace of God, go you."

What they said then affected my doing. I obeyed my parent's will.

But what that did was affect my being.

I am their son.

And I hear their voices.

I know that it's hard for some to follow God's commandment to honor father and mother, because they didn't treat you well. Some people have gone through horrible times in this life, and for you I pray. But consider this - the voice you are to listen to and obey isn't your mother or father who did wrong.

It's your God, Who gave His own Son to make you right.

Can you hear the voices?

28 "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life.

Matt 11:28 (MSG)

By obeying - in the doing, you'll find you are being changed. And those old hurts will be submerged beneath God's mercy and grace.

Grace!

David Wilson
--
Visit with me at my blogs:
http://davethepastor.livejournal.com/
http://davethepastor.vox.com/
Or visit New Hope!
http://www.newhopevalp.org/

Ornaments, Trees, and Memories

Our Christmas tree is up here at the Wilson house. This year there were some changes - different house, different tree. A special treat was having our oldest son Adam here on vacation when it was put up. I can still remember the first Christmas he spent with us and what joy we felt at the amazing blessing of a son. Having him here this time of year was awesome.

On our tree, if you examined it, you'd be able to find a time line of our family's history through the ornaments that hang from each branch. Over the years we've accumulated quite a few, and every one carries memories of where we were and what was happening in our family. In fact, there are some that don't usually make the cut on the tree - cheap hand painted ones done by all of us during some pretty lean years as we began our ministry career.

On two branches, there are felt ornaments with pictures of two little boys contained within them. Probably cost 25cents to make, but to us they are priceless. Sometimes the boys move them to the back. But they always seem to find their way out front again. On several are ornaments that are reminders of the years Bunny spent working as a manager of a Hallmark store in Macon Mall.

Bunny hung one last night that she said was one of her favorites when she was a little girl. There are others we got on shopping trips, or picked up because of what they said to us, like the one carved from any olive tree near Bethlehem. Then there are the dog bone ornaments for Daisy the mini schnauzer and Chloe the Great Dane, faithful friends absent now but who we still remember in love. And there are some ornaments gathered while we've been here in Valparaiso - like the Flip Flops one that makes me smile.

It's so easy for me as I look at the tree to turn it into a sentimental journey.

So each year, among the family ornaments, amidst the memories, we take care to place another ornament - a nail hung by a scarlet ribbon. It's placed near the inside of the tree, away from the lights and glitter, and you'd have a tough time spotting it unless you knew it was there. But we know it is there, at the center of it all.

It reminds us what we should be looking at every day, not just at Christmas.

Jesus.

15 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. 16 For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels— everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.

Col 1:15-16 (MSG)

I love my family, and appreciate the blessings we've been given and the memories we share. But more than anything else, I want to remember, I want everyone to remember to base our lives upon what God revealed through Jesus.

For everything, absolutely everything, not just Christmas, got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him. Whatever you do this Christmas, don't miss that.

Grace!

David


--
Visit with me at my blogs:
http://davethepastor.livejournal.com/
http://davethepastor.vox.com/
Or visit New Hope!
http://www.newhopevalp.org/