Vaughnshire Farm

You certainly don’t hear much about this in today’s politically correct society. This is quite a refreshing review of the impact Jackson had in just one area of his short lived life.

Jackson’s ‘colored Sunday school’ class

By Richard G. Williams Jr.
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 6, 2006

A small crowd gathered one day in 1906 in front of the Lexington Presbyterian Church. They were watching as a piece of history was about to disappear.

The memory of the church’s most famous deacon, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, still lingered in the minds and hearts of many Lexingtonians. So did the memory of what Jackson had accomplished in the church building that was being torn down. The church was expanding, and the Lecture Room, as it was known, had outlived its usefulness.

The stately old building had seen many civic gatherings, debates and meetings since it was built in 1835. The Rockbridge Bible Society, of which both Jackson and Robert E. Lee were members (Lee once serving as its president), had met on the first Saturday of every month at 11 a.m. in the building being demolished.

But the structure, which sat next to the main church sanctuary and consisted of one large room, was best remembered for being the location of Jackson’s Sunday school for slaves and free blacks…

Continue the story at the Washington Times.

It is a strange notion in our world today to consider the majority of the homes across our land and in our great state of Tennessee starting each day with family prayer time or family devotions. Indeed growing up in a small town church in central Arkansas no one ever mentioned the notion at all. I never read one article on it, never heard one sermon on the topic, and certainly never saw it in practice.

In recent years, as we have begun to implement family devotion time in our house, we have discovered it was not as foreign to previous generations as it has been to this one. As I completed “Carry a Big Stick” earlier in the week, I came across a quote by President Roosevelt that is out of place today in our modern world. Yet at the same time, it served as a source of great encouragement to a father who is trying to train up his children.

Morning prayers were with my father. We use to stand at the bottom of the stairs, and when father came down we called out, “I speak for you and the cubby-hole too!” There were three of us young children, and we use to sit with father on the sofa while he conducted morning prayers. The place between father and the arm of the sofa we called the “cubby-hole”. The child who got that place we regarded as specially favored both in comfort and somehow in rank and title” pg 170

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What happens when you have a moral breakdown in society, when families are systematically torn apart by the culture, and the government imposes costly regulations and requirements on the healthcare industry? You get socialized medicine.

So how is the moral breakdown of our culture and the deteriorating family related to healthcare? First, there are a couple of key premises that will serve as the foundation for this discussion. One key point is the family as defined by God.

In an effort to summarize this premise and use it as a foundation for this discussion, it should be understood that the family is the first and most basic building block for society. This is a based on the biblical notion that there is a God who created man and he placed man in families.

With that as a starting point, it next needs to be reiterated that God places people in families, first. He did not place them in a village, in a city, a state, or a nation, or even in a healthcare plan. He placed them in a family. No matter our station in life, somewhere in our past we have a father and a mother. We may not know them, or they may not have been the kindest people in the world, but they are our parents. Just as a politically incorrect side note, no one on this earth has two of either. We have one mother and one father, not two mothers or two fathers. There is one of each. This is what God defined as a family. Man as a created being is not free to change this definition.

By placing people in families, God laid the foundation for how we are to be raised, cared for, and educated. This is important, because there are certain qualities that one needs to care for others that can not be forced by state law, and can not be purchased with money. That is love, not compassion, but real genuine love is what enables people to truly care for others. Love, in its fullest expression, is being willing to lay down one’s life for the sake of another. In a less drastic expression, it is putting another’s needs above your own. This kind of sacrificial love is incubated in this incredible institution called the family. It is something that takes years to develop and to nurture. It is something that takes place naturally in a properly ordered family.

A sure sign of an improperly ordered family is where these relationships are strained or dysfunctional. We will see as we develop this line of thought further in other articles that this is also the crack in the foundation that leads to a shaky culture.

The discussion around healthcare in Tennessee is centered on what to do with Tenn Care and how can the state “make it work”. Continue Reading »

“When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a [our] government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes; Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a [our] government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws.”

May those who name the name of Christ remember this in our public duty of electing our leaders.

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way,
With resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day,
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You were beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that?
Come up again with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there - that’s the disgrace.
The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of the blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts,
It’s how did your fight- and why?

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