Hal Young's Blog, page 9
January 12, 2018
Mama, Thank You for Disciplining Me
Several years ago one of our boys suggested that we take a few minutes at our family birthday celebrations and each of us share something we love or respect about the birthday person. We’ve done that ever since and wow. Just wow. It has been incredible to hear every member of the family express out loud those things that most folks never say to the people they love – and end up regretting not saying it. It’s a time that encourages you and humbles you all at once.
It was my turn the other night.
One of our adult sons started off in a curious way, “Mom, what I’ve got to say is probably going to shock you.” Huh? I braced myself.
“When I think about the things I appreciate most about you, it’s how you disciplined me.”
What?
“Mama, you taught me to do right. You taught me to be honest. The things you taught me all those times when I was in trouble have helped me to know what to do as a man. When I was tempted to overstate the hours I’d worked by just a little, I couldn’t. You taught me to always tell the truth. When I was tempted to make excuses for missing a deadline, I remembered that you taught me to take responsibility and I did. Mom, I am so thankful you held me accountable when I did wrong, that you punished me, and taught me, and forgave me. You taught me to follow God’s Word. You made me do right. I know it couldn’t have been easy, but I am who I am because of you.”
Y’all. I wept. You see, this son was a real challenge when he was a preteen. He always took the easy way out. He shirked his responsibilities. He even cheated or lied if he could get away with it. Once, I found out he’d been faking doing his math for…well, I don’t even want to admit how long. Let’s just say 11 years old was a rough age with this guy. I worried about him so much, prayed for him, and disciplined him (what felt like) constantly.
And now. Now, those days are in the distant past. He’s a man. A good man. A godly man.
Mama, if you’re like me, sometimes you feel like there just is no hope. Sometimes you feel like your discipline and your teaching just isn’t getting through to them. You have to deal with them doing the same thing over and over and over. You wonder, “What’s the point? It’s not doing any good anyway.” You wonder if you are losing them.
Maybe you are. It’s easy to break the parent-child relationship during those challenging years when the hormones are flowing and wisdom seems like a pipe dream. They are just SO annoying! It’s easy to get angry, hurt, and frustrated to the point that you’re losing it just like they do. Don’t do it. Don’t let it happen.
Just keep on going. Keep your temper. Don’t let it become personal. Remember they’re struggling, too. Remember this is about them and God, not about you. Be calm. Be judicious. Listen. Point them to Christ. And keep holding them accountable. Because some day you are probably going to have that child that’s driving you batty say the same thing with tears in his eyes, “Mama, thank you for disciplining me.”
Her children rise up and call her blessed… Proverbs 31:28a
God is so good. He can take our pitiful efforts to serve Him in our parenting and turn them into heart-bursting joy. I am not a perfect mother, not by anyone’s standard. I’ve had an awful struggle with my temper and controlling my tongue, too. God changes us, though, in ways we never imagined were possible.
I’ll bet one day your children will rise up and call you blessed, too, Mama, if you don’t give up. If God can use me in my kids’ lives, He can use anybody!
If you’ve got a child in that crazy-making age and you’re thinking, “I’ve got to get some help!” we’re starting a new LIVE session of our Boot Camp 9-12, an online master class for parents of kids from nine to their early teens, next week and I think it’d be a real help to you. It’s interactive, so you can ask us all your questions! It’s really one of the most encouraging things we do. Check it out here.
Your friend,
Melanie
January 5, 2018
Movie Review: Darkest Hour
At the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill said of the courageous British pilots, “This was their finest hour.” This new biographical film portrays a much darker hour, when Europe was collapsing under Nazi domination, England faced the loss of its army with invasion to follow, and King George was forced to hand the reins of government to an aging, impulsive, and widely distrusted Churchill.
Churchill is a fascinating character who offers much to admire and much to criticize. When we look back from the perspective of history, we can see how his iron determination and tenacity molded Britain’s resistance to Hitler’s expansion and kept a pathway open for the Allies to counterattack and free western Europe from the Nazis.
But Darkest Hour reminds us that in May 1940, the future was very, very dim. In short time, Hitler’s armies had swept across the map and overwhelmed everything in their path. The French were crumbling and the British army was facing annihilation, backed up against the English Channel. And the opposition parties in Parliament had completely lost confidence in the Tory prime minister, Neville Chamberlain. His ally Lord Halifax, a diplomatic appeaser like Chamberlain, did not press a claim to succeed him, and the maverick Churchill was nominated to be the next prime minister.
Neither the King nor many in the Tory party were pleased. Churchill had been in the political wilderness for many years, incessantly warning that Hitler, not the Communists, was the next threat to British freedom. He was acknowledged as a master of the English language but derided for his temperament, his judgement, and highly unpopular positions he had taken over Ireland, India, and the abdication of King Edward.
But as Darkest Hour shows, in a tumultuous few weeks’ time, Britans began to realize they had stumbled on the man for that hour – a pudgy, balding 65-year-old with a lisp.
Critical Acclaim and Criticism, Too
A certain amount of hype is normal for a new movie, but I’ve heard some usually-skeptical critics saying Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Churchill is a sure bet for Academy nomination. I agree. The film is beautifully produced and the pace is dramatic – a remarkable thing for a war movie that occurs almost completely indoors, within the halls of government.
Churchill is a hero to conservatives, with good reason, but heroes sometimes acquire defenders and apologists who won’t admit to their model’s weaknesses. It’s undeniable that Churchill was eccentric, self-indulgent, abrasive, and a supreme egotist. He was sometimes depressed and prone to emotional outbursts. He was not a drunkard but he was constantly drinking; Churchill’s day was a long succession of scotch-and-sodas, champagne, brandy, and port. His cigar habit was so established, the film’s producers budgeted over $24,000 for cigars alone and added a hand-wringing anti-tobacco disclaimer to the end credits.
All of this is displayed in the movie. But the film also shows the drive, the vision, and the eloquence that Churchill brought to the crisis. There is a great deal more to Churchill’s story and character than this two hour film can show, but as a fan of the historical figure, I found the movie compelling.
About That History
Several critics have complained that the movie took liberties with the history. That concerned me, so I went back to William Manchester’s huge biography, The Last Lion, and cross-checked the movie against the reality.
My conclusion – I’d say it’s 85 to 90 percent on target. Overall, Oldman’s characterization is accurate. A great deal of the dialog, even side conversations, is historically documented. The ludicrous suggestion by President Roosevelt that the British take delivery of their American-built aircraft by lugging them over the Canadian border with horses actually happened.
The young secretary who takes dictation is a composite character – Churchill had numerous secretaries at all times, not just the one – but his interaction with her is characteristic, including the weird scene where she sits outside the bathroom while the prime minister splashes and dictates correspondence from the tub.
Much complaint has been made about a pivotal scene where Churchill rides the London Underground and draws inspiration from the spirit of the people he meets. Apparently, that is pure dramatic fiction. However, Manchester says that Churchill did attend a prayer service at Westminster Abbey about that time, and talked about the spirit and attitude of the people he met there – so the idea that he was interacting directly with the public and thinking about their opinion may be accurate in the broader sense.
Possible Themes
Churchill’s tumultuous arrival at the center of British government demonstrates that history is not made by young, handsome men only. Unpopular choices may be the right ones. Character has many facets and different traits maybe useful at different times. Ultimately, the major theme is just the illustration of Churchill’s determination to lead Britain through its greatest crisis – even alone, even at the ultimate price – and never, never, never compromise with evil.
One recurring theme is that sacrifices “for the greater good” may be necessary but at the time, the outcome may be uncertain. When his family raises a toast on his appointment, his wife Clementine notes they have all sacrificed his attention for decades in order for him to reach this apex – an ambiguous thing to offer as a celebratory remark! Churchill orders the garrison at Calais to fight to the last man, in order to divert the German advance on the evacuating British forces at Dunkirk; though he agonizes over their certain defeat, the move does in fact buy time for the surrounded 300,000 at Dunkirk. Churchill tells Parliament and the English people to expect struggle and sacrifice, even to the point of death and destruction; this is an unanswered prospect at the end of the film.
For Further Reading (contains affiliate links …)
Winston Churchill is one of those figures whose life was so long, active, and varied, it’s hard to get a general overview in a short book. The one exception I found is Paul Johnson’s Churchill. Highly recommended!
At the other extreme is William Manchester’s The Last Lion – a 3000-word, three volume monument – still worth reading! The third volume, Defender of the Realm, covers the Second World War through the end of Churchill’s life; it was co-authored by Paul Reid, who finished the book from Manchester’s notes after the historian suffered a stroke.
There are any number of shorter, more focused books on aspects of Churchill’s career. I just read and enjoyed Simon Read’s Winston Churchill Reporting, about the young Winston’s controversial beginnings as a journalist while still serving in the Army. Another interesting book is Martin Gilbert’s Churchill and America. Churchill’s mother was American, and he always had a deep admiration for the English-speaking people across the Atlantic. Gilbert’s book discusses Churchill’s crucial friendship with President Roosevelt and its impact on the war.
Summary
Darkest Hour is a packed two-hour illustration of a critical month in human history and a portrait of one of history’s most influential men in the middle of that crisis. Lavishly produced, well-written and acted, showcasing the courage of an unlikely hero in the face of total disaster. Good Art, Good Message! Highly recommended!
.
Movie Review: Murder on the Orient Express
The Simplon-Orient Express is one of the grand trains of Europe, running from Istanbul to Paris in sumptuous luxury. Remarkably, detective Hercule Poirot finds himself on this fabulous train on a return from a case in the Middle East. More remarkably, when the train is stranded by an avalanche in the Yugoslav mountains, an American gangster is brutally murdered in the compartment next to Poirot’s.
Snowbound for days, with a murderer on board, the little group of passengers look to Poirot to solve the crime – but whether they watch in hope or in fear is anybody’s guess.
Agatha Christie’s novels have sold over 2 billion copies, and Murder on the Orient Express may be the most popular. It has been adapted several times for movies, television, and radio. This most recent effort is simply stunning – whether the goal was to capture the exotic chaos of a street in 1930’s Jerusalem, to evoke the sounds and feelings of a time when rail travel was the standard and coal-burning steam engines ruled the rails, or to open up the cramped space of a railway carriage to allow a camera to sweep the cast.
But as Christie’s novels do, there are some unsettling conclusions – or lack of conclusion – for the reader or viewer to deal with.
The victims in Christie’s books tend to be wretched specimens, but the cast of suspects are often unlikeable as well. In this story, there is even a question whether a crime was committed or a justifiable act of retribution? Or was it, instead, simply an act of personal revenge? (Vengeance is mine, says the Lord) And what is the next step, the responsibility of the private detective who is neither an officer of the law nor a witness to the crime?
Kenneth Branagh’s characterization of Poirot is excellent – every bit as eccentric, but more formidable on screen than I had pictured from the books. Poirot delivers some excellent lines on the subject of morality and justice. At the very start, he tells an official, “There is right, and there is wrong. There is nothing in between.” When offered a princely sum to be a bodyguard for a shady art dealer, he replies, “I decline. I detect criminals; I do not protect them.”
At yet, at the end, the detective identifies the hands which killed the victim, and then washes his own hands of the matter. The train leaves Poirot at an intermediate station and proceeds with no one arrested. A murder has been committed, and a trainload of passengers knows who did it … but no one is held to account.
I saw this with several young adults from our family and one other, and we had a long discussion on the hour’s drive home. The best construction we could place on the affair was that Poirot was no more than a private citizen – he was not an official nor did he have a jurisdiction. When he explains the crime, he is offering his deductions of the crime, but that may not have be conclusive proof for legal purposes. At the same time, it’s an unsatisfying end.
Conclusion … The production is outstanding and the story, after all, is one of Christie’s most respected. However, the ending leaves justice in the lurch, suggesting that sometimes you can get away with murder – even with the world-known detective literally in the next room. Does good ultimately triumph? Yes, God gives us that assurance – but it may have to wait past the arrival of this train in Paris.
Good Art, Mixed Message – recommended with viewer discretion …
Movie Review: The Greatest Showman
Guest Post by John Calvin Young
“Ladies and Gents, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for,” opens The Greatest Showman, a period musical piece about P.T. Barnum and the origins of his eponymous circus. Take a good breath, because this fast-paced musical spectacular won’t slow down for the next two hours, dancing and singing its way through a fictionalized retelling of P.T. Barnum’s career and revisiting the glitz and glamour that gave rise to the ‘three-ring circus’ and the Greatest Show On Earth.
The story opens with a musical romp through the center ring of the circus—with P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) resplendent in red jacket & top hat, with wild animals, dancing girls, and an artist on the flying trapeze! It dissolves away into the wild imaginations of a small, grubby boy, growing up on the bleeding edge of working-class survival in the 1820s. Young P.T. doesn’t have many skills, but he can make people laugh, like his friend, Charity, the daughter of a business magnate. “Every night I lie in bed / the brightest colors fill my head / a million dreams are keeping me awake,” they sing together. Over years, their unlikely friendship turns into budding romance, and Charity (Michelle Williams) leaves her life of privilege to wed P.T. despite the young man’s inability to offer much beyond a tenement in New York.
The young couple are barely supporting themselves and their two beloved daughters when an employer’s bankruptcy throws them back on monetizing P.T.’s fertile imagination. He obtains a loan and purchases a museum of curiosities, but when tickets fail to sell, he turns to other attractions. He hires little person Charles Stratton (Sam Humphrey) to perform at his museum, making it clear that while people will come to see him, he’ll help the young man find respect and a theatrical role rather than be exhibited purely for prurient curiosity. Other outcasts and performers soon flock to join the show, and P.T.’s showmanship builds a spectacular stage show around their skills. Their ‘oddities’ may sometimes be exaggerated, and their performances carefully stage-managed, but the glib Barnum declares that his intent (aside from paying the bills) is simply to bring smiles and delight to people’s faces. The long-imagined crowds flock in, and finally P.T. Barnum’s dreams seem like they’re all coming true, with a role in the spotlight tailor-made for him, and money flooding in to provide for his long-suffering wife and daughters.
P.T.’s quest for respect doesn’t end with paying his family’s bills, however. New York society judges P.T.’s sometimes-counterfeit attractions and their consistent disapproval provides a counterpoint to the glitz and success of the center ring. The performers find a modicum of self-respect in their roles in the show, but struggle to find tolerance for their very existence in a hostile world outside of the Museum. P.T. recruits the young playwright Philip Carlyle (Zac Efron), an upper-society heir who understands showmanship instinctively but who is bound into his society’s mores and expectations. For him, joining the circus offers a path to independence and self-respect of his own, though it may lose him the respect of his family and his inheritance in the process. Barnum’s own ambition and flair for showmanship will lead him far afield, into situations that bring him world-spanning fame but may yet lose him everything he holds dear.
Aesthetics
The Greatest Showman is very typical for a modern Broadway-style musical, in that despite the period milieu, the music and dance numbers owe more to modern pop music and theater sensibilities than the culture of the chosen time period. The pace is frenetic, as we move from spectacle to song number to dance montage throughout almost without pause. Soaring love songs and lyrical meditations like ‘Rewrite The Stars’ or ‘Tightrope’ alternate with flashy set pieces to lift the spirits, even if few of the songs stick in the mind after the visual feast of the show. The soundtrack, however, makes up for its sometimes less-than-brilliant lyricism with memorable rhythms and melodies that I’ve been humming for days.
Negative Content
As is perhaps unsurprising in a film that celebrates the archetypes (and stereotypes) of the quintessential circus, costumes tend to range from mildly to extremely revealing, and modern theater choreography definitely adds sensual spice to many of the dance scenes. Despite this, the film does not depict or suggest immorality, and shows an unusual degree of moral backbone, presenting a married man fleeing a compromising situation he suddenly finds himself in, and also still suffering some un-earned consequences for his lack of caution. The Greatest Showman is rated at PG, not unusually for a family musical, if perhaps a bit surprising for a film about circus life. Alcohol consumption is ever-present in the film and several critical scenes take place in a bar near the Museum, even though Barnum himself became a crusading teetotaler by middle age. He also has a decidedly flexible attitude towards the truth, playing fast and loose with the facts and dipping into fraud. In his role as showman, he finds himself embellishing underwhelming curiosities and promoting hoaxes—a historical detail that is presented without comment or consequence in the film.
There is no noticeable language in The Greatest Showman, aside from some epithets and an archaic racial slur hurled at the circus performers by angry thugs. The story touches on but does not always directly address complex topics of birth defects, identity, class tensions, and racism. Carlyle falls for the circus’s trapeze artist Anne Wheeler (Zendaya), but faces severe backlash from his family and others for crossing racial and class lines for the relationship. Other hatreds are depicted: a sign held up by a protestor states “Freaks Are God’s Mistakes.” Siamese twins, a bearded woman, a little person, a hirsute “dog boy” and others are exhibited as part of Barnum’s spectacle and occasionally slighted by a careless Barnum, but they find self-respect in the roles and performances and their equality at the circus. The troupe makes the circus their home they lack elsewhere, and show more loyalty to Barnum, in the end, than he has perhaps earned.
Historical Context
The credits close with an unusually broad disclaimer, stating that supporting roles and situations are fictionalized for the drama and are not intended to resemble real people, living or dead. Despite the legal language, most period pieces still follow history closely. This film compresses events from over forty years of Barnum’s career into possibly five, and rearranges or rewrites the details to suit the demands of the plot. His museum was always a major part of his enterprises but he didn’t actually start his traveling circus or acquire the legendary elephants until late in life. He was not always known for tolerance—by the 1860s, he did believe ardently in the essential equality of humanity across races and cultures, but one of his early successes thirty years earlier was fraudulently exhibiting an enslaved and crippled African-American woman as George Washington’s nurse. Nevertheless, history has been largely kind to P.T. Barnum, and this film largely takes that rosy-colored view.
Spoilers ahead, skip the next paragraph if you care
Much of the later events of the film are rewritten wholesale for dramatic effect. Although his involvement with the Jenny Lind tour did end early, it was not due to her unreciprocated love, and it left him rich, rather than beggaring him. His desire to find legitimacy and respect for his attractions led him from the Lind tour to a number of other experiments and innovations in the show business, and it wasn’t until the late 1860s over fifteen years after the Lind tour that his Museum burned, and in 1870 the eponymous traveling circus was born.
Thematic Content
The Greatest Showman explicitly encourages dreamers and visionaries to pursue their wild fantasies, and refuse to let society’s disapproval or the difficulty of their circumstances hold them back. That can be good advice, sometimes, but if that was all the film offered it’d wear very thin. Its feel-good optimism, however, is tempered with a hefty dose of setbacks and challenges to balance P.T. Barnum’s dreams. Not every decision P.T. makes turns up roses, and even he eventually has to learn some lessons of contentment the hard way. Family and marital fidelity are depicted winsomely, and ultimately Barnum’s ambition is shown in its proper context and balance.The individual arcs of each character explore how the respect of others and self-respect are not the same thing, and learn the valuable lesson that to gain the one often entails losing the other. The tough topics of racism, prejudice, and (lack of) discretion raised by the film are not always addressed satisfyingly in context, but provide largely thoughtful jumping-off places for discussion.
As a love letter to the golden age of the circus, The Greatest Showman definitely succeeds, and leaves a better taste in one’s mouth than last year’s Hollywood musical celebration of self, La La Land. It’s a fun two hours full of dance and romance, and the set pieces are spectacular. But it’s not all popcorn and pizazz. The film’s best moments are its toughest, when the spotlights fade, and the characters’ love for each other shines through. “A man learns who is there for him / when the glitter fades and the walls won’t hold […] from now on / these eyes will not be blinded by the lights.” Is it really “the greatest show”? I don’t know, but I know I’m looking forward to seeing The Greatest Showman again.
December 24, 2017
The Shepherd’s Carol
Methinks I see an heav’nly host
Of angels on the wing
Methinks I hear their cheerful notes
So merrily they sing – so merrily they sing:
Let all your fears be banish’d hence,
Glad tidings I proclaim,
For there’s a Saviour born today,
And Jesus is his name.
Lay down your crooks and quit your flocks,
To Bethlehem repair;
And let your wand’ring steps be squar’d
By yonder shining star–by yonder shining star.
Seek not in courts or palaces,
Nor royal curtains draw;
But search the stable, see your God
Extended on the straw.
Then learn from hence, ye rural Swains,
The Meekness of your God,
Who left the boundless Realms of Joy
To Ransom you with blood–to Ransom you with blood.
The Master of the Inn refus’d
A more commodious Place;
Ungenerous Soul of Savage Mould,
And destitute of Grace.
Exult ye oxen, low for joy,
Ye tenants of the stall,
Pay your obeisance, on your knees
Unanimously fall–unanimously fall.
The royal guest you entertain
Is not of common birth,
But second to the great I Am;
The God of heav’n and earth.
Then suddenly a heav’nly host
Around the shepherds throng,
Exulting in the threefold God
And thus address their song–and thus address their song:
To God the Father, Christ the Son,
And Holy Ghost ador’d;
The First and Last, the Last and First,
Eternal praise afford.
— William Billings (1746-1800), American
Sung by His Majestie’s Clerkes, Paul Hillier, conducting
Merry Christmas to you all!
In Christ
Hal and Melanie
November 30, 2017
Because We Appreciate You…
There was such an overwhelming response to our Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale that we’ve decided to continue it so our friends who couldn’t take advantage of it then can still get the freebies we were offering. We had to order more, but now they are on the way! We’re changing it up a little and you’ll LOVE it!
As long as supplies last…
FREE Highlander wooden dirk with a $20 order! Add The Highlander to your cart and use the coupon code dirkgift to get it free!
FREE BOOK with a $50 order! Add the amazing creation science novel The Missing Link to your cart and use the coupon code linkgift to get it free and encourage your kids to believe in creation!
FREE Men of Iron Poster with a $100 order! Add the Men of Iron Poster to your order and use the coupon code postergift to get it free!
You can get all three freebies with your order!
You can get another FREEBIE when you Check out our Gift Guide for Boys!
And, we’ll continue the Flat Rate Priority Mail Shipping for only $10!*
Be sure to check out, too, our Craft Kits for Teens, including Chain Mail, Wood-burning, Calligraphy, Sketch Artist, Leather-working, Chain Mail Expansion, and our AMAZING new Chef Kit!
Our classic children’s literature audiobooks are a treat for the whole family. The Pollyanna series is hilarious – and teaches our kids to be more grateful. Captains Courageous and Men of Iron are classic stories about becoming a man that both strongly influenced our boys. The Five Little Peppers series teaches that people are more important than things in a fun way. Hero Tales by Theodore Roosevelt teaches character through American history and has sound effects, too, because history is way better with cannonfire!
Our teens LOVE our training swords! They’re the weight and balance of real swords, but they’re made of super-tough polypropylene so our teens can really go to it, with no risk of splitting each other’s heads open!
We’ve got tons of great gifts! The Come Away Weekend marriage retreat, books for parents and kids both, shirts that allow you to wear your faith. Tons of things you can feel GREAT about giving — and support our ministry, too! Just click “Shop” at the top of the page!
Thank you for reading our blog, listening to our podcast, following us on social media, and subscribing to our email newsletter. We appreciate you!
Your friends,
Hal & Melanie
*$10 Flat Rate Shipping excludes Alaska, Hawaii, and international orders.
November 28, 2017
November 21, 2017
Our Cyber Monday Sale!
Welcome friends!
Do you know what we’re thankful for this year? You! We’re grateful you read our blog, listen to our podcast, follow us on social media. We’re grateful the Lord has used us in some of your lives. We are so thankful that you shop on our site. Your purchases keep this ministry going!
We want to bless you in return, so we’re putting practically everything on sale, PLUS…
Flat Rate Priority Mail Shipping for only $10!*
FREE BOOK with a $20 order! Add the creation science novel The Missing Link to your cart and use the coupon code freelink to get it free!
FREE Highlander wooden dirk with a $50 order! Add The Highlander to your cart and use the coupon code freedirk to get it free!
FREE Men of Iron Poster with a $100 order! Add the Men of Iron Poster to your order and use the coupon code freeposter to get it free!
You can get all three freebies with your order!
You can get another FREEBIE when you Check out our Gift Guide for Boys!
Be sure to check out, too, our Craft Kits for Teens, including Chain Mail, Wood-burning, Calligraphy, Sketch Artist, Leather-working, Chain Mail Expansion, and our AMAZING new Chef Kit!
Our classic children’s literature audiobooks are a treat for the whole family. The Pollyanna series is hilarious – and teaches our kids to be more grateful. Captains Courageous and Men of Iron are classic stories about becoming a man that both strongly influenced our boys. The Five Little Peppers series teaches that people are more important than things in a fun way. Hero Tales by Theodore Roosevelt teaches character through American history and has sound effects, too, because history is way better with cannonfire!
Our teens LOVE our training swords! They’re the weight and balance of real swords, but they’re made of super-tough polypropylene so our teens can really go to it, with no risk of splitting each other’s heads open!
We’ve got tons of great gifts! The Come Away Weekend marriage retreat, books for parents and kids both, shirts that allow you to wear your faith. Tons of things you can feel GREAT about giving — and support our ministry, too! Just click “Shop” at the top of the page!
This Thanksgiving Season, we are thankful for YOU!
Your friends,
Hal & Melanie
*$10 Flat Rate Shipping excludes Alaska, Hawaii, and international orders.
Our Thanksgiving and Black Friday Sale!
Welcome friends!
Do you know what we’re thankful for this year? You! We’re grateful you read our blog, listen to our podcast, follow us on social media. We’re grateful the Lord has used us in some of your lives. We are so thankful that you shop on our site. Your purchases keep this ministry going!
We want to bless you in return, so we’re putting practically everything on sale starting Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving , PLUS…
Flat Rate Priority Mail Shipping for only $10!*
FREE BOOK with a $20 order! Add the creation science novel The Missing Link to your cart and use the coupon code freelink to get it free!
FREE Highlander wooden dirk with a $50 order! Add The Highlander to your cart and use the coupon code freedirk to get it free!
FREE Men of Iron Poster with a $100 order! Add the Men of Iron Poster to your order and use the coupon code freeposter to get it free!
You can get all three freebies with your order!
You can get another FREEBIE when you Check out our Gift Guide for Boys!
Be sure to check out, too, our Craft Kits for Teens, including Chain Mail, Wood-burning, Calligraphy, Sketch Artist, Leather-working, Chain Mail Expansion, and our AMAZING new Chef Kit!
Our classic children’s literature audiobooks are a treat for the whole family. The Pollyanna series is hilarious – and teaches our kids to be more grateful. Captains Courageous and Men of Iron are classic stories about becoming a man that both strongly influenced our boys. The Five Little Peppers series teaches that people are more important than things in a fun way. Hero Tales by Theodore Roosevelt teaches character through American history and has sound effects, too, because history is way better with cannonfire!
Our teens LOVE our training swords! They’re the weight and balance of real swords, but they’re made of super-tough polypropylene so our teens can really go to it, with no risk of splitting each other’s heads open!
We’ve got tons of great gifts! The Come Away Weekend marriage retreat, books for parents and kids both, shirts that allow you to wear your faith. Tons of things you can feel GREAT about giving — and support our ministry, too! Just click “Shop” at the top of the page!
This Thanksgiving Season, we are thankful for YOU!
Your friends,
Hal & Melanie
*$10 Flat Rate Shipping excludes Alaska, Hawaii, and international orders.
November 11, 2017
Transitioning to Spiritual Adulthood
When you’re young and healthy, you don’t really think about dying. It just seems remote.
But two days ago, our sons lost a friend they’d known for years from church and Christian activities. Wilson Brant was just 26 when a car accident on a rainy morning took his life. Just 26, and suddenly he’s gone.
Wilson was active with a local Christian theater group, Spiritual Twist Productions. Last summer he played the lead role in “Scarlet,” an adaptation of the Robin Hood story. He did a brilliant job, full of joy and pathos. This week he was acting in a version of “The Three Musketeers,” produced as a fundraiser to help his friend Joey Faggion enroll at the Sight and Sound Conservancy to study acting. He was to perform the evening of his fatal accident.
The show went on, but his friends turned those performances into a memorial where everyone talked about how his life had impacted their walk with Christ.
See, when Wilson died, no one doubted that he was with the Lord.
But the suddenness of it all made us think how few of us, really, expect the end will arrive so quickly. We hear of young adults raised in Christian homes, walking away from the church and the faith they were taught as soon as they leave for college or a job. Some don’t walk away, they just kind of fade out – drift off – with the same results.
Maybe they’ll come back to the Lord or get straight with Him later on … but what if they don’t make it to “later”?
Four of our sons have grown up and moved on to college and career. They all noticed that when freshmen arrived at college, the ones who got involved in a church and a campus Christian group in the first two or three weeks, pretty much never wavered in their walk with Christ through the college years. Those who didn’t, nearly always fell away.
When you’re an adult, you’ve got to have an adult’s faith — a faith of your own. You can’t stand on your parents’ faith when hard times come, much less when you stand before God. And you need to make up your mind about pursuing and owning and nurturing that faith for yourself.
Wilson wrote about something like that four years ago …
I was sitting by a campfire one night, watching the fire intently as the flames mesmerized me. I couldn’t take my eyes from the beauty before them. My mind free from any thought or care, I just sat there as the colorful lights danced upward from the pile of sticks and logs in front of me.
As I sat there unthinking, my eyes turned slightly to see a small stick fall away from the rest, leaving its still-burning end pointed away from the fire and exposed to the cold air. I continued to stare at it as I began to wonder how long it would burn on its own. It seemed to burn more brightly than it had in the middle of the great flame from which it had fallen … for a moment.
It then began to simmer low and it seemed to be slowly dying. Now fully interested in this one little branch, I added a little lighter fluid so that it could continue to burn on its own, and it seemed to help. The now weak little flame began to burn a little brighter in the strength of the flammable liquid. However, it soon began to burn low and seemed to dwindle. As I studied it more carefully I noticed that the cold breeze that blew around me started to weaken the burning flame on the small branch. Then a very light rain began to fall over me and I saw the flame disappear, leaving the stick practically dead but for a few coals that crowned its charred end.
I turned back to the fire and saw that the cold wind and rain had not daunted the great flame in the smallest degree. It continued to burn just as brightly through it all. I then reached out, picked up the pitiful stick and returned it to the fire where it began to burn brighter than it had before.
After these events had taken place, they made me consider my own life. I began to see a parallel between my own life and that of the little branch. I considered my relationship with God and my brothers and sisters in Christ. I saw that when I stood alone in my relationship with God that I began to dwindle spiritually. I would be encouraged by a great sermon or words from a fellow brother and would change my ways, for a short time.
Then the cares of the world and other non-believers around me would weaken me, distract me, tempt me. This happened to me over several years. I then found it hard to see God at work in any area of my life, though in my heart I knew He had never left me, I had just been distancing myself from Him. At the point that I was all but dead spiritually, with the pain and guilt of my sins both past and present weighing heavily upon me, God picked me up and returned me to the fire.
He opened opportunities for me to get involved with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that all had one goal, to grow closer to God and to give him the Glory He deserves with the gifts He has given us. Over those weeks He reached me, and revealed Himself to me in ways I had not seen in many years, through the passion of all of those brothers and sisters gathered there. I saw confession and repentance, changed hearts, miracles of physical healing, answered prayers. I felt the Spirit of God stronger than I had felt since I was a child. This has led, and is still leading me to love and trust God more and more every day!
We were not created to be alone, we were meant to live in community with others, and the community that we believers have in Christ makes our bonds stronger than mere friendship. And we know that even if we feel alone, we know that we are not. We have a friend that sticks closer than a brother, and He loved us so much that He died for us so we could live in communion with Him. I write this as a testimony to the faithfulness of God in my life, as well as to prove that we are not meant to walk alone in this world. We are meant to live and depend on other brothers and sisters in Christ, and be constantly pushing each other forward and upward in our relationship with God.
Wilson is right.
Look, if you really are a believer, you’ll want to be with other believers. You’ll want to know more about God. It’s your faith. Live it. Get into a good church right away when you leave home. Surround yourself with Christian friends. That’ll make it a lot easier to live like a Christian and stay close to the Lord.
If you’re chafing at that, if you are looking forward to the time you don’t have to go to church or hang around with Christians, you need to ask yourself a hard question: Am I a Christian or do I just look like one?
Christianity isn’t about what you do, it’s about who you know. Let’s face it, we’re all sinners. The Word tells us, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and you know it. We’ve all done wrong; we’ve all sinned against God. None of us can earn our way into heaven, “There is none righteous, no, not one.”
But Jesus was righteous on our behalf. He had no sins of His own to die for, but He willingly died anyway to pay the penalty for the sins of His people. That’s how we can be forgiven – God accepted the suffering of a sinless Savior, so unworthy sinners like us could have our guilt cleared away.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9
God did it all. All that is required of us is that we repent, turn away from our sins, and believe. Wilson was only 26. What if your life ends that early? Jesus said, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
We talk a lot about the transition to adulthood, but there is no more important transition than this one. Friends, it’s time for a transition to spiritual adulthood. It’s time to take responsibility for your own faith.
Wilson did.
And now he beholds the face of the Father!
Resource: If you are headed to a college or university, we have two live sessions in the next few weeks about preparing for and surviving college academically and spiritually. You can sign up for the Add-on sessions of Preflight here.
Please pray for Wilson’s family and friends as they grieve. Thank God they do not grieve as those who have no hope!
In memoriam Wilson Brant, man of God.
Your friends,
Hal & Melanie
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