A Prayer for Mercy

I recently read the book, The Harbinger, by Jonathan Cahn.  It is written as a captivating novel, but at the same time making a strong point: AMERICA IS IN TROUBLE.  While I’m not sure I agree with everything in the book, I strongly agree that basic premise.

Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, dedicated to God at the outset. 

[O]n the morning of the day on which our illustrious President [George Washington] will be invested with his office, the bells will ring at nine o’clock, when the people may go up to the house of God and in a solemn manner commit the new government, with its important train of consequences, to the holy protection and blessing of the Most high. An early hour is prudently fixed for this peculiar act of devotion and . . . is designed wholly for prayer.  (The Daily Advertiser, New York, Thursday, April 23, 1789, p. 2) 

Following this time of prayer by the people, Washington was inaugurated, and then he and other founding fathers gathered together to pray and worship in a little church in New York City, which was then the capitol of this fledgling country.  

In the years that followed, as a nation, we sought to honor God and follow His principles.  And He has blessed and protected us.  We have become one of the most affluent nations in history.  We have been a political superpower, seemingly immune to the problems that other countries suffered.  We have enjoyed freedoms unheard of in other parts of the world.  We are a land of promise that others long to come to.  God has blessed us abundantly because we sought to honor Him as a country.  

Until around 1960. 

It seems we suddenly felt we didn’t need God or His commandments anymore.  We took prayer and Bible reading out of public schools.  This led to an inability to teach children right from wrong.  How can you say something is wrong if there is no standard?  So instead they more or less began to be taught that it was perfectly acceptable to do anything your carnal urges led you to do.  And why not?  If there is no God, then there will be no judgment.  This not only led to the acceptance of nearly every kind of sexual sin, but to disrespect of elders, and eventually even to the killing of people who may rub you the wrong way, whether that be a fellow student, a teacher, a parent, or an unborn child that is a by-product of your sin.

In order to pretend there is no God, we must teach our children that the world just “evolved,” that there was never a Creator.  We all just happened by chance and are really no different than animals.  And we must re-write not only our science books, but also our history books, taking out the references to the God that our founding fathers served.  Check the literature books too – there might be a passage or two from the Bible still left in them.  That must be removed as well.  After all, we can’t “offend” anyone who doesn’t believe in Him.

Over time, we have sought to remove the Ten Commandments or any other mention of God from public places. Our courts no longer use God’s commandments as a standard.  Judges now try to force those who do still have a fear of God to forsake it and give approval to those who choose a sinful lifestyle.   Nearly every type of sin is actively promoted by the media.  We worship idols in the form of the Internet, cell phones, beauty, materialism, food and many others.

Somewhere along the way, "political correctness" came in.  We apparently decided we feared offending man more than we feared offending God.  It didn’t matter what HE thought anymore.  We either thought we could protect ourselves, and handle our own money, without any help from Him, or we were so arrogant as to think He would continue to bless us anyway, that we somehow deserved it, regardless of our attitude toward Him. 

We seem to think we can fix our problems with a band-aid, with man’s solutions instead of God’s.  Are people killing each other?  No need to teach them that God says not to kill, let’s just take away their guns.  Is homosexuality becoming rampant?  Rather than teaching people what God says about it, let’s just defend their right to live however they want to, even trying to change God’s definition of marriage to accommodate them.  Are venereal diseases resulting from sexual promiscuity an issue?  Don’t worry that God says sex is only for marriage; let’s just teach our children how to protect themselves when they do have sex . . . with anyone they want to.  That will fix it.  And what about those pesky pregnancies that may result from it all?  We’ll just take care of those with a “simple” procedure.  It doesn’t matter if God calls that murder.

Where was that church where our founding fathers gathered to dedicate this country to God?  It was St. Paul’s Chapel, in New York City.  It’s still there.  Just barely noticeable.  At Ground Zero.

Yes, the place where our country’s Godly roots began is the same place that the first crack occurred in our protection after we turned our backs on Him.  And thus began a chain reaction of events that may well lead to the economic collapse of our country. 

Did we see it is a warning from God and turn to Him in repentance, acknowledging our sin and our need for His protection?  It seemed for a few days after 9/11 that we might, but we quickly went back to our old ways.  Rather than being humbled by our helplessness, we arrogantly sought to restore our country in our own strength.

We sent our military out to defend us.  We tightened up security in airports, essentially taking freedoms away from our own citizens.  And as the money ran out, we took drastic measures to keep the economy going, all the while going deeper and deeper into a hole that we can probably never bring ourselves out of. 

And Christians, for the most part, are standing back and letting it all happen.

God is a God of wrath.  He will not let our sin go on forever.  But He is also a God of mercy.  I believe He sent us a warning on 9/11.  He desires for us to repent of our sinful ways and turn back to Him, so He can continue to bless us.  But if we refuse to repent, His next warning will likely be much worse.

Lent begins this Wednesday, and I am planning to fast from sugar (probably my biggest vice) and pray for our country.  Tomorrow I will be posting a list of things I will be praying for.  I invite you to join me in praying urgently for our country during this season of Lent.  I believe that binding together and praying and standing up against all of this is what we are called to do during this critical time.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  II Chronicles 7:14

Bradford, Tennessee

Cooper and I had an interesting day yesterday.  At least it was interesting for me; I'm not so sure what Cooper thought about it, but anyway, he behaved pretty well.

We went with my mom and her sister, my Aunt Gene, to Bradford, Tennessee, to research our family roots.  It's north of Jackson, a little less than 3 hours west of Nashville.

Our first stop was in Skullbone, just a few miles east of Bradford.  This is Skullbone.

We had some family who lived in this town, including a cousin who was the second postmaster there, probably around 1900.

Then it was on to Bradford, for just a brief drive through town on our way to Trenton, to meet my fifth cousin, Tom, who I tracked down while doing some genealogical research.  He is a public defender there.  My mom had contacted him beforehand, and he was able to get off of work and meet us for lunch.  We had a nice 2-hour visit with him and learned more about the family still living in the area.

After that, we went back to Bradford and found my great- and great-great-grandparents' graves at a little cemetery out in the country.  By this time Cooper had been riding in the car and sitting in a restaurant for way too long, so I let him run around in the cemetery.  I know, it is sort of disrespectful, but I turned around at one point and caught him doing this.

In Bradford we found the house my grandmother grew up in and met the lady who lives there now.

We also saw the building where the drugstore once was where my great-grandfather was a pharmacist in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  His dad, my great-great-grandfather, had been a doctor in the area.  He had his office in the front of his house and made his calls on horseback.  After he died, in the 1860's, his wife, my great-great-grandmother, took over his practice.

We got back, exhausted, around 9:00 last night, but it was a really fun day, and I'm glad we got to do it.

Lessons from a Chimney

     I was walking one morning while visiting my brother’s family in the mountains of North Carolina, when I noticed an old stone chimney standing in the midst of the brush beside the road.  It got me thinking.

     It appeared the fireplace side faced the road, just a few feet away from it.  “Why would the fireplace face that way?” I wondered.  “That would have put the house right in the middle of the road.”  Moments later I felt silly as I realized this house had stood long before the paved road on which I now walked ever existed.

     So what happened to the house?  Likely it burned.  Did the fire start in that very fireplace, a result of a wife’s effort to cook the game brought in by her husband, or just to keep the house warm on a cold, winter’s night?

     What happened to the family who lived there?  Did they escape and build another house nearby, perhaps leaving descendants who still live in the area?  It’s possible they all perished in the fire.  After all, there were no fire alarms in the house to awaken them at the first sign of smoke, no phones to call 911, bringing a fire truck racing to the rescue, its siren blaring as it tried to get there as quickly as possible to save some remnant of the home.

     More likely neighbors came running when they smelled smoke or saw it billowing over the treetops, bringing buckets to bail water from the nearby creek to throw on the fire and try to keep it from spreading.  Perhaps heroic men ran inside the burning house, risking their own lives to try to save a sleeping child.

     But it was too late, at least to save the house.  The family, if they survived, would have to start again from scratch, cutting trees down in the woods with an ax or a hand saw and building a new home.  No insurance money would come in the mail to reimburse them for their losses, though perhaps a group of friends or neighbors may have rallied together to help them through this time of hardship.

     This family would have lived by the sweat of their brows, growing their own food and storing it up for the winter in root cellars or canning jars, smoking meat from the animals they hunted down, or perhaps, if they could afford it, a hog butchered in the fall.  They probably sent their children out to pick berries on summer days, dodging snakes, bears, Indians and other dangers, known or unknown.  Did they lose their food supply in the fire too?  What, then, did they eat?  After all, there would be no food stamps from the government.

     Or possibly they had already moved out of their home long before it burned, maybe migrating west in a covered wagon in search of new opportunities. 

     Life was much harder then.  Harder, but simpler.  There were no cell phones ringing.  No soccer practice or piano lessons to rush to after school.  No Facebook to catch up on each day.  They simply didn’t have time for such frivolity.  A house didn’t need to be big and beautiful with a lush lawn and fancy cars parked in the garage; it only needed to serve as a shelter for the family who lived there. 

     Was it better, or worse, than the lives we live now?  I could argue either way.  There was much more dependence on one’s family, church and community.  People probably found more satisfaction in their work.  There was joy in simple things.  Divorce was nearly unheard of, as it was almost impossible for either a man or a woman to raise a family on their own.  A person who became widowed usually quickly remarried anyone who was available and willing, without regard for whether they were “in love,” or whether that person would make them happy for the rest of their life.  They just needed a companion to help them survive and care for their family.

     They had to be strong.  They had to work hard, day in and day out.   Medical care and sanitation weren’t nearly as advanced, so most people were much more familiar with the sting of death than we are today.  But as a people, they survived.  Survived to carry on the human race, to move forward and leave behind a heritage that we now enjoy.

     I’m sure this old chimney has quite a story to tell, a story I will probably never hear because it is lost to history.  But it represents the lives of generations past, people who helped make us who we are today.  A past that we, too, will someday be a part of.   

     Our forerunners left behind a legacy of hard work and perseverance, of depending on God and on each other.  Which leaves me to wonder, what is the legacy that we are leaving behind for generations to come?

Oklahoma City Memorial

I took sort of an unexpected trip this week, to a place I had never been before.  I only wish it had been for a better reason.  My mom's sister died, and my brother and I, along with Cooper and my niece, accompanied my mom to Oklahoma City for her funeral.
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While we were there we visited the memorial site for the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, bombed by terrorist Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995.  It was a very moving experience. 
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This is the group of my family members who went with me.

There were two gates, one at each end of the site, with a reflective pool between them, where the building once stood.  The gate at one end is labeled 9:01, representing the minute just before the bombing and the innocence that America still had at that time.  The other gate is labeled 9:03, the minute after the bombing, when America's healing began.

There are chairs representing each of the 168 victims who was killed, arranged in rows by the floors of the building they were on, plus a few others for people who were killed outside of the building.  The smaller chairs represent children. 

A few represented both -- women who were pregnant at the time they were killed.

A piece of the old building that still stands holds plaques with the names of those in the building who survived the bombing.

Besides the victims and the survivors, a third group of people was also affected by the tragedy: all of us.  The reflective pool represents that group, as we can stand over it and look in and see ourselves.

Here is my niece Abbie standing in front of the Survivor's tree, which was in the parking lot of the building.  It caught fire at the time of the bombing, but lived, and now shades a section of the memorial.

An outer wall of a museum across the street (which we didn't go in) displays a saying written by one of the rescue workers just after the bombing.

Many children around the country were deeply affected by the tragedy.  These tiles in the children's area were painted by some of them. 

There are also some chalkboards for visiting children to write messages, as Abbie is doing here.

This fence is part of the original fence constructed around the building after the bombing.  People began placing tokens on it as soon as it was put up and continue to do so.  They are periodically removed and preserved in archives.

This is a beautiful memorial representing a tragedy which probably affected all of us who are old enough to remember it.  If you ever have a chance, I would encourage you to visit it.
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This blog is dedicated to the memory of my Aunt Gloria, 1931-2012.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I didn’t “discover” the Little House books until I was in college. Of course, I was aware of them before that, but I didn’t have an interest in history when I was a child, so I wrote them off as boring.

I think those books were where my love of history began. For the first time I saw actual people living lives that in some way set the stage for my own life, rather than a series of boring events to be memorized.

My interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder goes beyond her Little House books. I have done research into her life and have even been to the home she lived in as an adult in Mansfield, Missouri and visited her grave. William Anderson has written a number of books that tell us the details of Laura’s life that she didn’t include in her books. Here are some interesting facts I have learned:

Laura’s “Pa,” Charles Ingalls, was married to “Ma,” Caroline Quiner in 1860, but did you know that 2 of Charles' siblings also married Caroline’s siblings?

The Ingalls had a son, Charles Frederick, between Carrie and Grace in age. He lived for 9 months.

Laura’s parents have no surviving descendants.
- Mary never married.
- Laura married Almonzo Wilder. They had a daughter, Rose and also had a son who died in infancy. Rose married and later divorced. She too lost a son in infancy and had no other children.
- Carrie married David Swanzey, but not until she was nearly 42. They had no children, though Carrie did help raise 2 step-children, David’s son and daughter.
- Grace married Nathaniel Dow. They had no children.

It is believed that Carrie’s husband David named Mount Rushmore, and his son was one of the workers who helped carve the figures there.

Pa died in 1902 at age 64. Ma died in 1924 at age 84. They both lived in DeSmet, South Dakota, until their deaths.

The family attended a Congregationalist church when Laura was growing up, and she and Almonzo later attended a Methodist church in Missouri. She kept a Bible on a table near a favorite rocking chair, and in it was a list she had written out of chapters to read during various times of trouble.

Laura’s daughter Rose was grown and had made a name for herself as an author before Laura began writing the Little House books.

Laura wrote all of her books out in pencil on school-type tablets.

She intended for “These Happy Golden Years” to be the last book in the series. She wrote the manuscript of “The First Four Years” but felt it was too tragic to publish. It was found and published in 1971, after both Laura and Rose had died.

Laura’s books were well-loved from the time they were published. She received many honors during her lifetime, but it is said she was always humble and gracious. She personally wrote back all of her “fans” and attended as many of the ceremonies in her honor as her health would allow. She was the last surviving Ingalls daughter and died in 1957, three days after her 90th birthday.

Nashville Then and Now

I think I've mentioned before that I'm very interested in Nashville's history, so this book, by Katrina McDaniel, is COOL! I just happened to come across it at the library.

It shows old pictures of places all over Nashville (mostly downtown) that were made between the Civil War era and the early 1900's, and then shows a photo of the same spot today, describing the changes that have been made. Some of them look very much the same and some are completely different. The front cover shows the then newly-built state capitol with Union troops camped on the grounds during the Civil War.

Don and I took a nice walk downtown Saturday night after we went to Spaghetti Factory, and it meant a lot more to me than it has before, seeing the old buildings and remembering how long some of them have been there, or what the places used to look like. It was interesting to imagine the now-paved roads as once being dirt roads full of horse-and-buggies or having tracks for street cars (maybe that's why downtown has such bad parking!). We walked over the Shelby Street Bridge, which the book shows a picture of shortly after it was finished in 1909. It looks pretty much exactly the same, but is now a pedestrian bridge because a few years ago they decided it wasn't safe for traffic anymore.

If you are at all interested in the history of Nashville, this book is for you. It is 144 pages with lots of photographs. It would also make a good gift or coffee table book.

What Really Happened on July 4th?

Independence Day. Why do we call it that? Is that the day we became independent?

Not really. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence from Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson had drafted the Declaration of Independence in the preceding days. Congress re-worked it and finally approved it on July 4. Most of the delegates didn’t actually sign it until August 2 of that year. But Great Britain still didn’t agree, and the American Revolution went on until 1781. It wasn’t until September 3, 1783, that the Treaty of Paris was signed, and Britain recognized that the 13 colonies were free and independent.

An interesting tidbit -- there were two signers of the Declaration of Independence who later became president: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They both died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. President James Monroe died exactly five years later, on July 4, 1831.

So what are we celebrating? Our independence from Great Britain, though it didn’t actually happen that day. We celebrate our founding fathers, who had a vision to build a country where people could worship God as they pleased and who were willing to fight for what they believed. They used the Bible as a guideline and sought God’s guidance in writing the Constitution, the law to govern this great land.

May we never forget what our founding fathers fought and died for. May we thank God for the freedom we have and fight for it ourselves, if necessary. May our country’s leaders always seek God’s principles in governing us, and its citizens gladly follow them. I believe these things are what made our country great, and are the reason God has blessed us. I pray that it will always be so.

A Day in the Country

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about Don and me trying to find an old family cemetery in nearby Wilson County, Tennessee, where some of my ancestors are buried and being unsuccessful. Well, in the meantime, I did a little more research and got some more information. Yesterday I went back over there with my brother and his family, and we found it! These are the graves of my great-great grandmother and her parents. Needless to say, we had to traipse through a lot of brush (including thorny bushes) to find them.
Things are so different in the country. We went to the door of the lady whose property the cemetery was on to ask for permission to check it out. She opened to the door without suspicion. We told her what we wanted to do, and she told us to go right ahead, giving us as much information as she could. Then she sent her two preschoolers out to play in the back yard unsupervised while we were there.
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I’ve lived my whole life in the city, and this is just a totally different mindset. Actually, it is more like the way life was when I was growing up. Nashville was a smaller town, but the world was just different then. It made me feel good that maybe it is still that way out in the country.

After we found the graves, we rode around a little more and spotted some animals. The kids (and adults) loved these baby goats and guineas.

I have been told that my great-great grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor and have been trying to find out more about that. I would love to know more about my spiritual heritage as well as my genetic one. We found this Presbyterian church near the area where he lived, which was built in 1801. I have e-mailed them to see if he was ever a pastor there.
We looked for one more cemetery that has some of our other ancestors buried in it. Apparently my great-great grandfather remarried after his wife died and is buried with his second wife. The information I had on that one was sketchy, and we were unable to find it, but all in all, I’d say it was a really fun day.

The First Thanksgiving

We all know the story of the Pilgrims coming to the "New World" on the Mayflower and celebrating the first Thanksgiving, but do we know the whole story? I did a little research (and got some info from my history-expert husband) to find out what really happened.

It began in England when Henry VIII, who reigned from 1509-1547, named himself the head of the Church of England, independent from the Roman Catholic Church. Many people were unhappy about this, including a group called "Puritans," who sought to reform the Church of England. They believed a church should be under Christ, not any king or queen and also wanted to purify it by adopting simpler modes of worship. One group of Puritans was called Separatists because they believed in separation from the established church.

When King James assumed the throne in 1603, he vowed to make everyone conform to the Church of England or he would drive them out of the land. This was actually the same King James who ordered the Bible translation we now have.

One group of Separatists from the village of Scrooby escaped to Holland after being denied permission to move by King James, so they could worship as they pleased there. Life in Holland as foreigners was difficult, and they worried that their children were assimilating into the culture there. They decided they wanted to go to a place that was relatively uninhabited and try to begin a life there.

About thirty-five of the Scrooby Separatists went on this voyage to the New World, and for financial reasons, they joined forces with some people from England, for a total of around 102 people. Some of those from England wanted to go for religious freedom ("saints") and others for other reasons ("strangers"). The Mayflower Compact was written as an agreed-upon form of government for these groups. The voyage across the ocean on the Mayflower took two months, and they arrived in America in December 1620.

Obviously, this was not the best time of year to begin a life in an uninhabited place, so the first few months were very hard. Nearly half of them died. In the spring of the following year they met up with two English-speaking Indians, Samoset and Squanto, who taught them how to grow corn and catch fish. They also grew barley and pumpkins and killed turkey and deer for food. That fall, they had a great feast to celebrate their survival and give thanks to God.

There were to be more hard times ahead, but these pilgrims persevered and were joined by thousands of others over the next several years. Their governor, William Bradford, documented much of the history that he lived. Among his writings is this quote: "Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by his hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are, and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise."

In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the last Thursday in November (later changed to the fourth Thursday) should be set aside as "a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." While we are eating our turkey and dressing this year, let us remember the courage of those who came here for the sake of their faith and thank God for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us.

Percy Priest Lake

I love learning about history from people who have lived it. I was recently talking to a friend in her 60’s who has lived in Nashville all her life, and she told me something that surprised me: Percy Priest Lake hasn’t always been there. Maybe this is something that everybody else knew, but I didn’t. It is a man-made lake that grew out of the Stone’s River when the Percy Priest Dam was built between 1963 and 1968. I did a little research of my own and found out the lake covers 14,200 acres in Davidson, Wilson and Rutherford Counties.

Many families had to give up their homes and land so it could be created. Roads that used to go from one place to another were completely covered. I had noticed that Old Hickory Blvd. in Hermitage dead-ends right into the lake. (It would be much easier for me to visit my brother or my mom if it wasn’t there.) There was once a town called Old Jefferson that is now completely submerged. There were a number of cemeteries in the area that had to be moved before the lake was made.

So what was the point? Apparently there had been a lot of flooding in the area anyway, so they decided to put it to good use. The dam helps generate electricity used by local residents. The lake also provides for boating, swimming, fishing, beaches and other water activities.

J. Percy Priest, for whom it is named, was a Tennesseean who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1940-1956. He really had nothing to do with the creation of the lake, but the name was chosen in his honor shortly after he died.

Thanks, Ms. Barbara, for your info!

This picture is from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Digital Visual Library.