Month: June 2014

I would like to say that mine is a family who pray fervently, but that would be a lie. Like most, we don’t speak with the Lord nearly enough.  What I can say however, is that our family dinner time, (keep in mind that I said “dinner time.”) while often filled with laughter, and an occasional serious discussion, is always begun with giving thanks to Him.  Ever since my kids were little, dinner has unceasingly been not only family time, but prayer time.  Nothing fancy, just a common table prayer, but if one of us sits down and decides that it’s more important to eat first and thank God later, when we can find the time, there is always someone prepared, and more than willing, to correct that misconception.

Leland, my 20 month old grandson has taken to the traditional “dinner” prayer too.  He dutifully interlocks his fingers as we begin to pray, occasionally babbling some incoherent sounds which makes be think that maybe he is speaking in tongues, then as we all finish with a hearty “Amen!” Leland adds his own personal touch by grinning widely and breaking into applause.  We of course follow suit and begin to applaud as well and I can’t help but think that God himself is clapping also.

So it was this past Saturday morning, that our family, minus my daughter who was at work, sat down for a rare family breakfast.  Never really sure how Leland will react to meal time, we decided to prepare something that he’s never been too fussy to pass up, scrambled eggs.   The eggs, along with corn beef hash, toast and juice was placed on the table and everyone began to dig in.  My wife, seated next to Leland and in charge of feeding him this morning, positioned a forkful of scrambled eggs in front of his mouth and waited for him to devour it.  Leland grunted and turned his head away, refusing to eat.  Okay, that happens sometimes, he’s starting to get older and already is attempting to exert his independence.  “He probably wants to feed himself” I said.  My wife placed his fork on his plate as we all watched intently.  Nothing, he wouldn’t even look at it.!  My son had the idea that, “Maybe he’d like to try something else” and attempted to force feed him a heaping helping of Mary Kitchen corned beef hash.  Leland jerked his head away so fast that I half expected to see him spin it completely around and start spewing out pea soup like that scene in the movie the Exorcist.  If that happened I was pretty sure that my breakfast was going to go uneaten.

As we all sat staring at him, (me peaking between my barely parted fingers, still worried about the Exorcist thing happening)  Leland folded his hands and rested them on his high chair tray.  My wife who’s never seen The Exorcist, and didn’t know what she was possibly getting herself into by speaking to him said, “Did you want to pray Leland?”  I closed my fingers a little bit more and started to squeeze my eyes shut when I heard him speak one of his two best words, “YEAH!” he said.  I exhaled loudly and quickly began to pray, “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blessed, and may there be a goodly share, on every table everywhere.  Amen”

Leland started laughing and clapping, then shoved a large forkful of eggs into his mouth, cleaned his plate, and topped breakfast off with about a half container of blueberries.

I have no idea what kind of man my grandson is going to grow up to be, but I think he’s off to a pretty good start.

Proverbs 22:6  Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

 

A few weeks ago my Alma mater, Ridgewood High School, made the news, not for winning the state baseball championship, although that certainly would have been cool had they done it.  They also didn’t make the news for coming in second which would have been almost equally as cool had they done that.  No, what happened was this;  The graduating class at Ridgewood High (ironically with a mascot name of Rebels) threw their caps high into the air at the end of the commencement exercise.  What?  That made the news you say?  Yes it did, let me explain.

The story is really quite simple.  The superintendent of the school made a request to the graduating seniors; Please do not throw your caps in the air as is traditionally done at the end of the graduation ceremony.  If you do he stated, there would be consequences to pay.  A simple request but one that many thought was unreasonable.  So as the ceremony ended I’ll bet you can already guess what happened.  That’s right, a majority of the students in their youthful exuberance, or defiance, depending on how you look at things, tossed there caps high into the air.  The superintendent, obviously unhappy with this rebellious act, (Get it? Rebels) followed through with his threat and true to his word, imposed a punishment.  Before I explain what that punishment was, let me tell you that this story, according to one of my Facebook friends, got so much publicity that it made headlines as far away as the UK.  Now  you’re probably saying to yourself, “Oh my gosh, what did he do to his students for this to generate a news story half way around the globe?  Did he make all of the boys pull their pants up so their underwear wouldn’t show?  Did he force all of the girls to retake their yearbook pictures without makeup on?”  No, nothing quite that drastic,  what he did was this, he withheld all of their diplomas.  That’s right, just flat out refused to give one to anybody.  And what an uproar there has been!  Social media feedback was swift and heated.  My unscientific survey showed a ratio of about 9 to 1 against the superintendents decision.  Comments on Yahoo News and Facebook in response to the story, called out the Superintendent as an “Egomaniac,” and a “Dictator,”  In a conversation I had with a friend, he stated that the superintendent must be on some kind of “power trip” to not allow the students to have a little fun.  I couldn’t pretend to know what was going through the superintendents mind when he made his request to the students, but wondered aloud to my friend if maybe he was worried about someone getting hit in the eye with the corner of one of those caps, resulting in the school being sued.  He looked at me as if I were nuttier than a fruit cake and said, “Really Dale, a lawsuit over getting hit with a graduation cap?  Aren’t you being a little crazy ?”  I suggested he go to the website legalzoom.com, search the site for frivolous lawsuits, and then get back to me with another, and possibly different assessment of my sanity.  I in turn, decided to go to the bible to see if I could figure out what God would have to say about this story, and here’s what I discovered;  It’s not a tale about egos, lawsuits, withheld diplomas, or ruining someones fun.  It’s one of respect and obedience.

When Jesus was asked in the book of Matthew whether or not it was right to pay taxes to Caesar, His response was, “Give to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is God’s.”  What does that mean?  Well, according to the NIV Study Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, the explanation is this; There are obligations to the state that do not infringe on our obligations to God.  In a nut shell, I understand that to mean that God does not want us to obey the authorities only when we agree with them, He wants us to regularly obey them, as long as by doing so, our obedience does not place us in direct conflict with His word.

So here’s my take on the great cap throwing caper;  Was the superintendent at my former high school being an egotistical, power hungry dictator with no good reason for what he did?  Maybe he was, I don’t know, but does it matter?  I don’t think it does.  He was placed in a position of authority and made a request of the students, (for whatever reason) not to throw their caps in the air.  This was a request which the students may not have agreed with, but it did not put them in direct opposition with any of God’s laws.  In other words, in no way did the superintendents request infringe on any obligation the students may have to God.  My opinion, apparently an unpopular one, is that they were asked not to throw their caps and shouldn’t have.

But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that this is a story about disrespectful teens, because it’s not.  It’s a parable about people in general.  It’s who we’ve become.  It’s an attitude we’ve adopted.  “Who are you to tell me what to do?”  “That’s a stupid law!”  “That’s a ridiculous rule!”  “I’m going to do it my way!”   We’ve become like the 6 year old child who says, “You’re not the boss of me!”  News flash!  In some cases yes, that person is the boss of you.

It reminds me of one of my neighbors who consistently rolls through a stop sign at the end of our block, because according to him, “I’m in a hurry, and besides, that’s a dumb place to have a stop sign.  In order to justify doing things his way, those will always be good enough arguments.  Right up until the day he’s in such a hurry that he fails to see that little kid on his bike approaching from the right.

Not the same as throwing a graduation cap in the air?  I’m not so sure.  It kind of sounds like different symptoms, same illness.