Refreshing Our Spirits With Scripture

11.11-Today is my wife's birthday.  She has made a big difference in my life and I am blessed to her in my life now for over 50 years. Then at about age 16 I started making some of my own decisions.  Some were good and some were bad.  From the bad ones I learned and received discipline and mercy from my family and from others.  I survived and learned. Then at about age 18 made a big decision to go to college instead of go to the work world.  I attended ETSU, East Texas State University, a teaching college which had broadened its mission.  (Now A and M, Commerce)  I associated with some fun people from my own town and county who were going there.  All were trying to find our own way to make a life.  After one year there I was not really doing that well there because of my rebellious, searching mind put with some professors who did not believe in this core principle I had grown up with. Birth, life, death and heaven with God for ...

11.10- Life for a farm boy from North Texas This set up a context for my life for the first 18 years of my life. We listened to the radio from KFYN AM, 1490 in Bonham Texas.  They carried the local news at 5am and told us who all was in the hospital and who had died.  They reported on the local sports teams and played country and western music.  We also had KGVL in Greenville Texas which seemed a bit more focused on religion and politics, but also had country music in those days.  Texas radio, KRLD and WBAP were 50,000 watt broadcast giants in those days.  KRLD had a conservative radio program sponsored by H.L. Hunt company.  Through education, church and media we heard a message of how to live well and how to die well.  In 1958 we got television for the first time.  Walter Cronkite was the national news voice I remember.  We had Dave Garroway and Barbara Walters on the Today Show early in the morning.  On channel five i...

11.09 C.S. Lewis said, “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.” Our mainstream culture in America, it seems to me, is dominated by humanism and secularism. One result is that people believe that there is no consequence of killing many people and then killing one's self. With a belief in God and judgement after death of the good and the evil there is a motivation to reflect upon eternal consequences of our choices of behavior. God will deal justice consequences to those who hurt the innocent. Matthew 25. 31  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34  “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed...

11.9- Life can be filled with many days of joy and love.  I went to Ladonia Elementary school.  In high school we consolidated with Pecan Gap and became Fannnindel High School.  Total enrollment was probably 300 students.  The teachers were totally serious about educating us in the history of Texas and America and math and English.  Readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic, taught to the sound of a hickory stick. The town of Ladonia had about 700 people.  The teachers and coaches were mostly men and women of Christian faith.  They were not perfect people, but in general seemed to have a belief in Birth, life, death and heaven with God for His children.  William Tyndale Preface to The Practice of Prelates (1531). I defie the Pope and all his lawes. If God spare my life, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than he doust. The Pilgrims and Puritans wanted all children to...