Historically Speaking
Using Biblical examples as well as secular historians we can read how throughout history people have always been at the mercy of droughts and famines. A few years ago in my children's Bible class I was telling about the famine of Joseph's time and how the people couldn't just walk into a grocery store to buy food. One of the amazing things to many people who come to this country is the amount of food available in our grocery stores and the ability to walk into grocery stores pick out our food and go pay for it.
Perhaps that is why I've always loved this time of the year and I've always loved this poem by James Whitcomb Riley The Frost is on the Pumpkin. I've been a country farmer at heart as long as I can remember and this poem expresses the heartfelt feelings of thankfulness.
Through the ups and downs of life all through history one of the important ideals in this country is the importance of self-sufficiency. As a believer in Christ we acknowledge that our blessings are providentially provided, but we also know that we are expected to work as well. So, we do what we can and thank God for His providence. From the early years in this country God took a people who were not farmers yet they were willing to work and learn and he turned them into something they never dreamed they could be.
As my Adorable Cousin phrased it, "my ancestors could walk across this continent...". And many did. They picked up their plows, axes, and families and in some cases walked or put them in their Conestoga wagons pulled by oxen and walked or drove west and made homesteads.
As a homeschool teacher we learned all of this and before people with agendas took over our public schools we learned this in that institution as well. The early driving force was religious freedom then there was the yearning for freedom and self-determination.
I know as a people, as a nation we need to get back to God. I see an increased interest in Christianity. People coming together in many cities, being baptized and calling on the name of the Lord. This is encouraging with the caveat that it must not stop with a surface interest but be carried further through true study and true conversion. Satan is very subtle with only half truths. Half truth will only half save.
We Christians are the modern day Church. We are the called out. Yet, we may be the only Bible some people will ever read and we need to live those scriptural truths in our lives and mirror God's teachings. Remember, the church is God's house today.
Haggai 1:
3) Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, 4) Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? 5) Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. 6) Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. 7) Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.
