What Christmas Is

By Carol Crain

Christmas is not
A downhill sleigh ride.
For many,
It’s an uphill climb.

Christmas is not a
A sparkling fire in the fireplace.
For many,
It’s a cold, chilling time.

Christmas is not
A gathering of family and friends.
For many, it’s lonely days
That seem without end.

Christmas is not idyllic scenes
In a picture book.
For many, it’s memories
That cause a painful, inward look.

But we must remember all Christmas is…
Not dwell upon what it is not.
It’s a celebration of Jesus’ birth –
God’s gift to all that cannot be bought.

The Wise Men Worshipped Jesus

I’ve always been enchanted with the mysterious “wise men” who journeyed to see Jesus after he was born.

Many of us have probably sung that Christmas carol “We Three Kings.” John H. Hopkins, Jr. reportedly penned its words and melody in 1857. The verses of that song (but not the chorus) are in a minor key and sound “Jewish” or oriental.

That carol’s six-eight timing sort of plods along. When I hear its slow, rhythmic 1-2-3, 1-2-3 beat, I picture turban-wearing men wrapped in robes and sitting astride tired camels making slow progress across a sea of sand at nighttime. (I guess we assume the wise men traveled a lot at night, because Christmas card illustrations usually picture those fellows camel-jockeying under night skies.)

In 2004, the N.C. carpet manufacturing company I work for sent me to a carpet printing plant in Egypt. During my 11-day stay, our small group took a day off and visited pyramids near Cairo. Nearby vendors offered camel rides. My friends rode, but I’m a big guy, and when I saw the poor old beast picked to carry me, I declined. He was resting and chewing some green forage when his owner made him rise. As he got up, he stretched his bony and, what appeared to be, arthritic legs and let out a groan-bray that sounded like an agonizing cry for mercy. I didn’t have the heart to get on his humpback. (I didn’t want to be the big old “straw that broke the camel’s back.”) Getting up close to that camel made me sympathize with the wise men who followed the “star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright.”

We read about those wise men in Matthew 2:1-2:

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.’

“When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.”

“Christiananswers.net” provides the following information:

The term “wise men” is translated from the Latin word “magus” and the Greek word “magoi.” “Magi” is the plural of “magus.” The only mention of magi in the New Testament is in the story of Jesus Christ’s young life. The magi who searched for Jesus were a priestly caste of scholars. The only known Magian priests east of Palestine (at the time of Christ’s birth), were in ancient Media, Persia, Assyria, and Babylonia. There is no proof of what country these men came from.

The word “magic” is derived from the same root as “magi,” and magi are generally associated with occult studies. These magi seem different. There is no indication that they practiced sorcery or claimed magical powers. Their recorded conduct is sincere and worshipful. They appear to have researched the Old Testament and believed its prophecies about the Messiah. They apparently gained nothing material from their long journey.

The record does not say there were three wise men or that they were kings (and there’s no mention of camels, either); some assume they were three kings because of the number and types of gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh – brought to Jesus. The gifts reflected aspects of Christ's nature: gold to a king; myrrh to one who will die; and incense, as homage to God.

Some scholars say the magi found Jesus just after his birth or within 40 days of it. Others say the wise men found Jesus two or three years after his birth. Experts say Jesus was living in a house in Bethlehem, as a young child, when the magi brought gifts to him. (By the way, many believe Jesus was born in the autumn, during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.)

Though we may not know all we would like to know about the wise men, the Bible clearly records this fact: they found Jesus.

King Herod sent the magi to Bethlehem, and “When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

“When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him…” (Matthew 2:7-11).

A Christmas Letter to Martha Stewart

(Written by the author in 2002)

Dear Martha Stewart:

My wife recently received the December 2002 issue of your magazine, "Martha Stewart Living," and after leafing through its 324 pages of ads, cookie recipes and pictures of how-our-house-could-never-look, I want to express my concern.

The other day, my wife received a letter from a lady who wrote, "I am contemplating how to get through the Christmas holidays without a migraine like I had last year. I think I’ll have a personal Christmas early and pretend it’s not Christmas when it really comes."

Perhaps, Martha, in your well-meaning way, you are contributing to the kind of stress that lady feels. Most folk have enough to do during the Christmas season without wanting to be reminded that they could be busy making soap, creating pomegranate punch or stenciling holly leaf images on linen.

By the way, my wife has too many doodads sitting around already, and with my taste for minimalism, we have a recipe for domestic in-tranquility. (Here’s the recipe: Keep adding doodads to a small living room until someone is stirred to the boiling point.)

The singer Madonna has been labeled "the material girl," but I’m afraid, dear Martha, that she can’t hold a candle—and that would be a handmade candle, of course—to you, when it comes to materialism. And that’s not a good thing.

In your magazine, you included an article entitled "A Letter from Martha."

"Well," I thought, "maybe the handmaiden of handicrafts has written a little story, telling of some happy childhood Christmas experience."

But no.

You wrote: "This year we are launching our beloved, gigantic collection of holiday decorations from Martha Stewart Everyday…Now everyone can have ‘vintage’ ornaments, unusual tree lights, color-coordinated trees, fantastic wreaths and candles, and much more. I urge you to take a peek."

Sorry, Martha, I won’t be peeking. We have plenty of "vintage" Christmas stuff cluttering our closets already.

I suggest that you throw a bit of Thoreau in amongst whatever, besides cookbooks, that you read. Henry David Thoreau once said, "A man is rich in proportion to the things he can do without."

Think on that, Martha, while you are basting a turkey, rooting around for rutabagas or creating collectibles.

Actually, I believe that you have many fine qualities, but you remind me of another Martha.

It seems that Jesus – the one this Christmas holiday honors – was acquainted with two sisters named Mary and Martha.

Martha invited Jesus and his disciples to dinner at her and her sister’s home, and when the men arrived, Martha rushed into action in the kitchen, preparing and serving. But when she noticed that her sister Mary was sitting and listening to Jesus, she said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me."

No doubt Martha was the worrying type. Perhaps she was the older sister and wanted to whip up a Martha Stewart-type dinner with everything just perfect for the Lord. If they had been blessed with TV back in those days, perhaps Sister Martha would have been glued to the Martha Stewart "From the Kitchen" program every time it aired. Maybe Martha had often told Mary, "Busy hands are happy hands." Perhaps Martha equated busyness with godliness.

Anyway, when she confronted Jesus with Mary’s seeming negligence of duty, Martha may have thought Jesus would put a guilt trip on Mary and get her moving.

But Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things…Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."

So, dear Martha Stewart, though you are creative and industrious, lay aside your spatula and mixing bowl for a little quiet time before you get all whipped into a frenzy during this wondrous time of year.

Remembering Thanksgiving Time

“I was just a little fellow,” my Uncle Fred said, as he recently described Thanksgivings he experienced at the home of his paternal grandparents, Ben and Lola Dill Crain.

Fred E. Crain, who lives in Greer, S.C., and was born in 1925, recalled his father and mother, Carl and Lillian, driving their car a short distance to Grandpa Ben’s white frame house on Thanksgiving Days. Fred and his older brother, Jesse Benjamin (J.B.), sat in the backseat. Ben Crain’s 52-acre farm in Greenville County, S.C., lay between Hwy. 253 and Groce Meadow Road, a few acres south of where those roads converge and the late Ralph Fowler’s store once stood.

“Grandma had cooked pies and stacked them on top of one another,” Fred said.

Ben and Lola had these children (listed in birth order and with spouses): Carl (Lillian Parker), Claude (Gertie Paige), Jay (Nell Willis), Jim (Gertrude Pearson), Theron (Veltra Hightower) and Hazel (Ernest Ramey).

Carl usually took his two beagles to the get-togethers. On Thanksgiving Day around 9:00 a.m. in those days, Ben and his five sons took shotguns and traipsed from the barn, which stood near the house and on the northern end of Ben’s property, across gray fields to hunt rabbits. Fred, J.B. and their cousins played and occasionally heard beagles barking and the sound of a shotgun, as the men crossed fields and walked the woods at the far end of Ben’s farm. The ladies prepared food while the men fellowshipped. The children played under pecan and cottonwood trees or near the barn and pasture or on the porch-with-banisters that wrapped around a large portion of two sides of Grandpa Ben’s house.

“There was a bunch of us boys and girls,” Fred said. “There was no electricity in our area at that time. I was about eight or ten when electricity came to our house.”

Fred’s grandmother prepared food ahead of time, but on Thanksgiving Day, she cooked a chicken pie to go with green beans, mashed potatoes, dressing, bread…cake, and pumpkin and potato pies.

“She’d make a big chicken pie laid out in a dishpan,” Fred said. He explained chicken dumplings and chicken pie: “To make dumplings, you roll up little balls of dough and drop them in boiling water with the chicken. For chicken pie, you roll flat pieces of dough and lay that across the chicken. There’d be some dumplings in the chicken pie, but there’s not as much chicken in dumplings as in chicken pie.”

Around noon, the men returned from hunting (Grandpa Ben often returned earlier, Fred said), and they’d usually have some rabbits, which they saved for later meals.
For the Thanksgiving dinner, the men gathered around a large table. Ben and Lola were Christians and members of Double Springs Baptist. (Ben’s daddy, John, had been a Baptist preacher.) Ben or one of the sons asked a blessing. The men and perhaps a few ladies ate first, but most of the women and children waited for “second shift.”

“Us kids would look through the dining room window,” Fred said. “It seemed like it took them a long time to eat. Children had to wait, back then. You might not get as much chicken pie as you wanted.”

Fred said about his early perception of Thanksgiving: “I knew it was a day of family getting together for a big dinner, a time of giving thanks to the Lord for all he’d done for you and for all the bounty.”

The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, to honor the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter, sources say. Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving, and colonists invited local Wampanoag Indians. All 13 colonies didn’t observe Thanksgiving at the same time until October 1777. President George Washington declared the holiday in 1789. By the mid–1800s, many states observed a Thanksgiving holiday. The poet and editor Sarah J. Hale lobbied for a national Thanksgiving holiday and discussed the subject with President Abraham Lincoln. In 1863, in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a day of thanksgiving. In 1939, 1940, and 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wanting a longer Christmas shopping season, set Thanksgiving as the third Thursday in November. Controversy followed, and Congress passed a resolution in 1941, decreeing that
Thanksgiving fall on the fourth Thursday of November.

I thank God for America’s Thanksgiving Day holiday. May we all remember Psalm 136:1: “O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

When the 'Good' Are Not Godly

“‘Good’ people can often be ungodly,” a radio preacher said recently over the airwaves as I prepared to head to work.

I thought about those words as I drove to the carpet manufacturing mill where I earn a living. Psalm 1 describes godly and ungodly people:

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

“But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

"And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

“The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

“Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

“For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

Some of us may think ungodly folk are only those people who exhibit evident sinful lifestyles. There are, however, plenty of “good” ungodly people. They don’t beat wives, “run around on” husbands, abuse children, steal, lie and curse. Some “good” ungodly people may hold to higher personal standards than many Christians maintain. But “good” people are ungodly if they have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. Christ makes a person righteous (the righteous have “right standing” with God) when that person believes in Christ as Savior, repents for his sins and commits to follow Christ. One cannot earn his way to heaven by being “good”; therefore, a “good” person is ungodly if he places his faith in his personal goodness rather than in the grace of Christ. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

“Some people are better by nature than others are by grace,” someone said. A person born with a gentle nature might appear to be a Christian but may not have given his life to Christ. Perhaps such a person learned to “go along to get along.” Maybe he quietly participates in the predominant ethic of the culture he lives in so he can more easily live his own “self life.”

I feel sad to hear someone say about a family, “Well, they’re not Christians, but they are good people.” The person commenting may mean this: “Good people don’t bother anybody. We need to visit jails to convert bad people and go to the streets to find drug addicts. Those people need to be saved. They hurt our society. They break into our houses and steal jewelry, gun collections and TV sets! Good people don’t bother me.” The statement “They’re not Christians, but they are good people” hints that the one making that declaration may be buying into the lie that doing good deeds will earn someone a place in heaven. Christ died for the down-and-out and the up-out-out. We all need a Savior. Who is “good,” anyway? Jesus said, “None is good, save one, that is, God” (Luke 18:19).

I am glad that Christians visit jails and help drug addicts, but good people who don’t know Christ are just as lost as murderers, addicts, pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers who don’t know Christ. Good people who accept Christ may not have to deal with breaking the same kinds of habits that bad people do when they convert, but non-Christian “good” people are often in bondage to self-reliance, self-indulgence and unbelief in the same ways “bad” people are.

Remember the story Jesus told about a rich man? That wealthy man boasted, “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:19-21).

In Jesus’ story, the rich man was probably a “good” but ungodly person. Though he “succeeded” in this world, he neglected to prepare for eternity.

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:17-18).
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2009 11 07: a response to the above article by Father Tom Parsons, an Anglican priest in North Carolina:

The trick here is to define "good." Remember, Jesus told the man, who called Jesus good, that only God the Father is good. The Bible, in most cases, is speaking of righteousness when the word "good" is used. Righteousness, according to St. Paul, is an imputed quality based upon faith. "Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness." Faith and righteousness are connected for Christians. "Good" is a worldly concept which should be recognized but not confused with "righteousness" before God. A person may be "good" and his goodness be of value to society and still not be righteous before God. As in most cases, faith is the key.  --Fr. Tom

Celebrating Church Homecomings

Though October is “Apple Month,” “National Popcorn Poppin’ Month,” “Positive Attitude Month” and “Squirrel Awareness Month,” it is also “Pastor Appreciation Month” and the time that many churches celebrate “homecoming.”

A church homecoming service may honor founders, charter members and those who contributed to the church’s wellbeing. Such a service can help draw a body of believers closer to God and one another.

Writing about church homecomings, the Rev. Steve Watters posted the following on his blog. (A “blog” is a contraction of the term “weblog,” which is a “log” on the “web.” Some refer to the Internet as “the web.”)

“Homecoming Sunday? It’s something of an odd concept within our contemporary culture,” Watters wrote. “I've never entirely understood the term, even though I attended quite a few growing up in Eastern North Carolina. They were usually in the fall and featured ‘dinner on the grounds’ and special music, but I was never sure what they meant by the name. A co-worker who moved from Alabama said the term implied welcoming back both those who have moved away as well as those the church ran off.”

Watters wrote about his plans to speak at a homecoming service held at the church he attended during his youth: “It’s still unusual for me to head home these days. Dad has died, and our old home has been sold…Just this year, I passed the mark of living away from home longer than I lived in my hometown. A lot happens in that time and it gets harder for me to know what to expect when I return. At a minimum, I know that I was blessed with a Godly heritage rooted in deep soil – and that gives me much to celebrate in my homecoming.”

Watters asked his blog readers, “What does the idea of homecoming mean to you?”

Here are some of their replies:

One man wrote, “Maybe it is a North Carolina thing... I don’t remember hearing of them (church homecomings) anywhere else I lived as a child, and not where I live now, either.”

Another man wrote, “It’s definitely a Southern ‘Bible belt’ sort of thing…Homecoming is basically when people who moved away to another area come back to their old church for a reunion celebration once a year…Where I live, homecoming is an extremely commonplace occurrence, and in many churches, if you don’t make the effort to at least RSVP for your old church’s homecoming celebration, you'll have a lot of elderly church ladies calling you to make sure you’re still alive.”

A lady wrote, “I think it's good to connect with old friends/places again. Reminds me of the journey God has brought me on so far in my life and the things he has used to shape me. A couple of years ago, I moved back to my hometown…I don't attend my church from childhood (it was very strict and I don't really want to raise my kids in that environment), but I enjoy going to weddings or baby showers there. While there is sometimes pain associated with the legalism that I encountered there, it is good to see old friends, Sunday school teachers, etc., realizing they are part of my journey, too.”

I recently told my wife that I would be happy to return for a homecoming service held at any of the churches I’ve been part of over the years. Some of those churches have experienced difficulties and splits, but I fondly recall the good times I enjoyed and wonderful friends I knew in those fellowships. I believe we are blessed when we choose to “remember the best, and forgive the rest.” St. Paul said, “Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace…” (Romans 14:19).

Church homecomings seem symbolic of the final homecoming planned for Christians. Dr. John Fawcett, who pas­tored a small church at Wains­gate, England, in the 1770s, wrote the hymn “Blest Be the Tie.” Here is the first verse of that song: “Blest be the tie that binds / Our hearts in Christian love / The fellowship of kindred minds / Is like to that above.” Fawcett ended that song with this verse: “From sorrow, toil and pain / And sin, we shall be free / And perfect love and friendship reign / Through all eternity.”

Christians aren’t home, yet, but earthly homecoming services can serve to draw us closer to God and to one another as we journey toward our heavenly destination.

REMEMBERING A DEAR TEACHER: MISS NELL THOMPSON ADAMS MONTGOMERY

Mrs. Nell Thompson Adams Montgomery and her husband, the Rev. Bill Montgomery, are pictured. They married after the below article was written.

 

My first-grade teacher introduced me to reading, writing, and arithmetic and impressed me with her Christian character.

We stayed in contact after she labored to illumine my then-young mind. Her daughters, Hope Barbare and Charlotte McClimon (their father and Ms. Nell’s husband was the late Richard Adams), recently asked me to write a “Happy Eightieth Birthday” note to their mother. Here is a copy of that letter:

Congratulations, Ms. Nell Thompson Adams, on your eightieth birthday (2009)!

I first remember you as Miss Nell Thompson, my first-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary School in upper Greenville County, S.C.

I was six years old when I entered your classroom for my first public school experience in 1953. You must have been then 24 years old. You attended the church my family attended, Gum Springs Pentecostal-Holiness Church. Pastor James H. Thompson, your older brother, ministered there, and I had seen you and some of your family at church meetings. You appeared to me to be a quiet, gentle, smiling, holy lady.

You introduced me to “education” and taught me to read. You taught us the English alphabet and the sounds of syllables. “See Jane run” and “See Spot go” were some of the words we read in first grade. When we finished our first paperback reading books, you gave them to us to take home, and when our bus let me off at my house, I raced to my mother who was hanging laundry in our backyard. I read the whole book to her as she stood at the clothesline. She said, “That’s good.”

You were a very young, pretty teacher and controlled our class with dignity. Most of us were respectful in those days, as I remember. The noise level would rise at times, and you would tell us, “I’m going to have to get firm.” We shaped up when we saw the serious look on your face and heard that line, “I’m going to have to get firm.”

Our classroom was located on the first floor in the center of the schoolhouse, which accommodated 12 grades. Our room stood next to a giant coal bin, which provided fuel for the school heating system (radiator heat). To reach the boys’ restroom, we walked past the coal bin on a sidewalk.

You were patient and wise. We lined up each day at our classroom door to have a blessing before we went to lunch. I recall that a girl one day said, “____ (So-and-So) didn’t have her eyes closed during the prayer.” I thought some kind of judgment – perhaps a paddling – ought to land on the girl who dared open her eyes during our blessing! But you, in your wisdom, said to the tattler, “How did you know?”

Whoa! I saw the light! I felt as if there was probably more to life than I understood. I had condemned a girl and had not seen the guilt of the informer. You demonstrated the “wisdom of Solomon” on that day. I’ve thought many times of that incident.

Steve Babb and I got into a first-grade fight (it started because we were “playing wrestling”) on the school playground. Someone went to get you, and you made us sit in the classroom. I thought you were going to paddle us, but you didn’t.

You have “kept up” with me over the years and have been for me a constant encouragement. Thank you for your Christian life and for every remembrance I have of your influence. You are a rare and precious lady, and I thank God for you and your family.

Happy birthday, Ms. Nell!

With love,

From Steve

I often think about the various public school teachers who instructed me. They usually communicated more than simple subject matter, as students often “picked up on” what those teachers believed about life. I recall one high school history teacher who was tall, thin, dark-haired and fair-skinned. Her husband served as a pastor, but this lady (let’s call her Mrs. “Stern”) appeared to be heavy on law and light on grace. She seemed to tolerate no monkey business. I sat in her classroom one day when a girl asked, “Mrs. Stern, why are you so mean? Isn’t your husband a preacher?” A hush fell over the class, and a serious-faced Mrs. Stern answered, “God called him to preach – not me!”

An unknown author said, “A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.” I believe Mrs. Nell Thompson Adams actually did “preach,” in her own way, as she taught my first-grade class.

“I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths” (Proverbs 4:11).

Grandma's House

Pictured is my late Grandma Fowler's house, which has been demolished.

It didn’t seem right when they tore down my late Grandma Fowler’s house.

Her one-story, white-shingled, “three small bedrooms and one bath” home stood since the early 1950s until 2009 on a corner lot at 2543 Locust Hill Road (Hwy. 290) and McElhaney Road in Taylors, S.C.

My Fowler grandparents had nine children, and I am one of 16 first cousins on “that side.” I loved family gatherings at Grandma’s. Surrounded by a Christmas crowd, Uncle Wyatt would sit in Grandma’s living room and talk politics. Uncle Jim and Uncle Ray often responded in loud voices. The house would be filled with laughter and “good to see you” conversations. The roar would cease while someone asked a blessing on the food, and then the noise would resume.

Grandma was a gentle lady who suffered with rheumatoid arthritis and rarely left her house. She limped and wore a built-up shoe for, as I remember, her right foot. When possible, her three daughters – Louise, Eva (my mother) and Edna – gathered at Grandma’s on Tuesdays. As Grandma grew older and heavier, the three daughters helped her shower during Tuesday visits. I recall seeing Grandma sitting and combing her freshly-washed, long gray-white hair after one of those baths.

My parents both worked during part of my growing up years, and my sister, Shirley, and I spent many summertime hours at Grandma’s “humble abode.” Her home was literally and soulfully a sort of halfway place between Sandy Flat (where I spent childhood years) and Greer (where my family lived while I was a teenager).

The summer after my seventh-grade year, the year I first “took band” at Davenport Junior High, I practiced playing my old trumpet at Grandma’s. She had no air conditioner, so windows were open. Inez Brookshire heard me playing one morning as she worked in her yard across the road. She phoned and asked Grandma if I would play “Amazing Grace” and a couple of other hymns. I was glad to oblige.

The Rev. Ronnie Fleming, a first cousin of mine, and some investors bought Grandma Lilly Nix Fowler’s place after her last surviving child, James A. Fowler, died at age 82 in December 2006. Uncle Jim was the seventh of the nine children born to Lillie and James August “Aug” Fowler. Jim never married, always lived “at home” with his parents and worked in textiles until he retired from Lyman Printing and Finishing mill. After Grandpa died in 1956, Jim looked after Grandma until she died at age 86 in 1978. During his last best years, Jim often parked a used car or two in his front yard and tried to make a sale. If you ever drove by Grandma’s house while he sat on the front porch and watched cars zoom by, you might have seen Jim taking a snooze – head tilted back, mouth open.

Jim stayed at that house until my cousins Raymond and Redmond Fowler (twins) helped him move to an assisted living center about a year before he passed on. He died in his sleep while living at Woodruff Manor.

The investors sold Grandma’s property, and I heard that a dentist office might be built on that site. Earlier this year, I learned from my Uncle Fred Crain that Grandma’s house was no longer “there.”

“Did they move it?” I asked, hoping that it had been located to another property and would serve as a home for someone.

A few of my cousins thought it might have been moved, but my Aunt Frances Crain attended a high school reunion and talked with Palmer Steadman who still lives next door to the property Grandma once owned. Palmer said someone brought a wrecking ball, and Grandma’s house went down. Workers hauled away the rubble.

I visited Greer in July and drove past Grandma’s old property. It had been excavated and prepared for some kind of building. As I moved past the corner lot that once hosted the house where I experienced love and laughter, I thought of the words of Hebrews 13:14: “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.”

Earthly evidences of precious memories may fade or be destroyed, but I thank God for the lasting love of family and friends and for the special eternal love he has expressed to us in Jesus Christ who said, “In my Father's house are many mansions…I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3).

Is America a Christian Nation?

Is America a Christian nation?

All but two of the first 108 universities founded in America were Christian. Of those schools, Harvard was founded first and listed this as Rule Number One in its student handbook: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."

U.S. President Harry Truman wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1947, saying, “This is a Christian nation.”

“He certainly did not mean that the United States has an official or legally-preferred religion or church,” said Carl Pearlston, writing in 2001. Pearlston, an attorney, a former professor of Constitutional Law and a Jewish conservative, says Truman didn’t mean to slight adherents of non-Christian religions, “But he certainly did mean to recognize that this nation, its institutions and laws, was founded on Biblical principles basic to Christianity and to Judaism from which it flowed.”

Truman also said, “The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”

Pearlston offers these quotations:

Woodrow Wilson said, “A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.... America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”

In 1811, New York Chief Justice James Kent said: “...whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government...We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity...Christianity in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is part and parcel of the law of the land....”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said in 1829, “There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.”

Pearlston asked in 2001, “Can America still be called a Christian nation?” He replied, “It is certainly a more religiously pluralistic and diverse society than it was during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. There are increasing numbers of non-Christians immigrating to this country….We live, not under a Christian government, but in a nation where all are free to practice their particular religion, in accommodation with other religions, and in accordance with the basic principles of the nation, which are Christian in origin. It is in that sense that America may properly be referred to as a Christian nation.”

A recent study found a decline in the percentage of Christians in the U.S. Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. In 2008, “Christians” reportedly comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990.

President Barack Obama stated during an April 2009 press conference in Turkey, “One of the great strengths of the United States is – although, as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population – we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish Nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

President Obama was right, in the sense that, as Pearlston states, America has no “official or legally-preferred religion or church.” But, 76 percent of Americans still identify with “Christian culture,” and America was founded on Christian principles. I believe our Founding Fathers envisioned a government that would promote and encourage Christianity. True Christians know that sin and the worship of false gods will destroy a nation, but “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12).

Father's Day - Not Easy for Everyone

Father’s Day is not an easy occasion for everyone, but it’s an important day – a time to honor living fathers and fathers who have passed on.

My wife, Carol, who was born in Oakland, California, remembers seeing her father only twice. Carol’s mother left her marriage and took Carol, who was then one and one-half years old, to her Pennsylvania homeland. Carol was seven or eight and staying one night at her maternal grandparents’ house when a man knocked on their door.

Carol, sitting at a kitchen table when her grandmother opened that door, saw the man in the darkness but didn’t recognize him. Her grandmother stepped outside to talk. When she reentered, she told Carol, “That was your father.”

Carol didn’t see him again until she was a college student in Greenville, S.C. After graduating from high school, she asked her mother to locate her father. Carol mailed one of her graduation pictures to him (he lived in New Jersey), and they arranged to meet in Greenville in the fall. He arrived with his second wife, their five children and a German Shepherd dog. Carol had mixed feelings about their meeting and never communicated again with her father. She keeps a small, framed picture of him sitting on the mantel in our home. The photo – taken before he and Carol’s mother separated – shows her father in his army uniform.

Though our children (two adult daughters) treat me royally on Father’s Day, and Carol enjoys seeing me in good relationship with our offspring, I am aware on each Father’s Day that Carol knows what it’s like “to grow up without a father in the home.”

The Psalmist comforts “the Carols of this world” and all of us with these words: “Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rides upon the heavens by his name JAH (the LORD), and rejoice before him. A father of the fatherless, and a judge (a defender) of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families: he brings out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land” (Psalm 68:4-6).

Psalm 27:10 offers these words: “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.”

The writer of Hebrews 13:5 tells us that God has promised, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (KJV). A modern version translates that verse this way: “I will not give you up or desert you.”

No matter how well or how poorly our parents fill or filled their roles, we should honor (respect) our parents because God asks us to do so. Respecting parents is tied closely with respecting God and people placed in authority over us.

Augustine asked, “If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare?”

The fifth of God’s Ten Commandments contains a promise along with its directive: “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12).

I talked years ago with a teenager whom I’ll call “Dan.” Dan’s parents left him with his maternal grandmother when he was a baby, and she, with small income, was raising him. Dan harbored mixed feelings toward his father, whom he infrequently saw. I pointed out that his father “brought him into the world” and though he might not be a good father, the man Dan knew as his father “was” his father. Dan was an excellent athlete, and I mentioned that he probably inherited his physical coordination from his dad, who participated in sports as a young man. I wanted Dan to find some way – even a small way – to respect his father and avoid self-destructive tendencies spawned from father-child conflict.

Doug, who worked as a personnel director, once told me that his father served as a pastor. One of Doug’s childhood jobs was to polish his dad’s shoes each Saturday night and get them ready for Sunday morning. One week, his dad punished Doug for something Doug had no part in. His dad later realized he’d wrongfully punished Doug, but he said nothing. Saturday night came, and as Doug picked up one of his dad’s shoes, he found an apology note from his dad placed inside that shoe. Doug smiled as he told me that story. I’m sure he would have preferred to hear words from his father’s lips, but the note in the shoe was his father’s “way.”

Father’s Day is not an easy occasion for everyone, but it is an important day.

Fatalism or Free Will?

I believe God gives us “free will,” allowing us to choose many of the paths we take.

For centuries, Christians have debated extreme “predestination” versus “free will.”

A story goes that an older Christian believed all that happened in his life was “predestined” or “meant to be.” He rose from bed one morning, walked to his home’s staircase and fell down a long flight of steps. Hurting, he got up, looked at the staircase and said, “I’m glad that’s over."

Non-Christians also talk about “destiny.” Someone said destiny may be seen either as a fixed sequence of events that is inevitable or that an individual chooses his destiny by selecting various paths throughout his life.

I’ve heard of soldiers who say a man won’t die in battle until a “bullet has his name on it” or “until his number is up.”

Here is an old Arab tale about “destiny”:

A merchant sent his servant to market. The servant returned trembling and said, “Master, just now in the crowded marketplace I was jostled by someone, and I turned and saw it was Death that jostled me. Death looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Please, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Damascus and there Death will not find me.”

The merchant lent him a horse, and the servant rode as fast as the horse could gallop. The merchant then went to the marketplace, saw Death standing in the crowd and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”

“That was not a threatening gesture,” Death said. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him here, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Damascus.”

As a child in 1956, I heard the song “Que Sera, Sera,” meaning (in French and in several “romance languages”) “Whatever Will Be, Will Be.” Singer Doris Day first recorded these lyrics to that song’s first verse:

“When I was just a little girl / I asked my mother what will I be / Will I be pretty, will I be rich / Here’s what she said to me / (chorus): Que sera, sera / Whatever will be, will be / The future’s not ours to see / Que sera, sera / What will be will be.”

The lilting melody of “Que Sera, Sera” seemed comforting to me in 1956. That song’s message seemed to be “Relax; many things – maybe all things – are beyond your control.” While some people may find solace in that song, there is also an inherent fatalism in its message.

French novelist Alphonse Karr (1808-90) is credited with saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Karr’s quote seems to convey that the more we change things, the more we tend to live out patterns that do not change. There seems to be a bit of “rearranging the chairs on the Titanic” flavor in that quotation.

In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1643), God “freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass.”

Someone asked me, “If God knows who will be saved and who won’t, how do people have ‘free will’ to choose their destinies?”

That’s a hard question, but I believe God’s foreknowledge of how things will turn out does not exclude the free will he gives to each of us. We can only partially understand the “mind of God” – “his ways are higher than our ways” – so we trust the character of God, who is good, loving, just and merciful.

The Lord is longsuffering (patient), “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Christians differ over how much control each person has over his own life. Someone said that if human responsibility is overemphasized, Christianity turns into legalism, without an appreciation for God’s power acting in lives. If God’s responsibility is overemphasized, Christianity turns into fatalism, losing the emphasis on obedience to God and service to others.

I believe God gives us “free will.” Let’s decide to follow Christ, block out worldly, fatalistic thoughts and make daily God-honoring choices.

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15 (NIV).

John Harper's Last Convert

Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died Sunday, May 31, 2009.

She was just over two months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat in the icy North Atlantic, according to AP reporters Meera Selva and Jill Lawless. Dean, 97, died in her sleep “where she had lived – in Southampton, England, the city her family had tried to leave behind when it took the ship’s ill-fated maiden voyage, bound for America.”

The Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, and sank within three hours. Dean was one of 706 people – mostly women and children – who survived. Her 2-year-old brother and her mother also survived. Her father was among the 1,517 who died.

John Harper also died that night, and Mark Dever tells this awesome story about him in a chapter of “The Gospel and Personal Evangelism” (Reference: Moody Adams, “The Titanic’s Last Hero: Story About John Harper,” Columbia, S.C.: Olive Press, 1997, 24-25):

John Harper was born into a Christian home in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1872. At about 14 years of age, he became a Christian and began to tell others about Christ. At 17, he began to preach, going down streets of his village and pouring out his soul in pleading for men to be reconciled to God.

After five or six years of preaching on street corners and working in a mill during the day, Harper was taken in by the Rev. E. A. Carter of Baptist Pioneer Mission in London. This set Harper free to devote his whole time and energy to evangelism.

In September 1896, Harper started his own church with 25 members. It numbered over 500 when he left 13 years later. During this time, he was both married and widowed. Before he lost his wife, he was blessed with a beautiful daughter named Nana.

Harper almost drowned several times. When he was two-and-a-half years old, he fell into a well but was resuscitated by his mother. At the age of 26, he was swept out to sea by a reverse current and barely survived. And at 32, he faced death on a leaking ship in the Mediterranean.

While pastoring his church in London, Harper continued his fervent evangelism. The Moody Church in Chicago asked him to come to America for meetings. Those meetings went well, and a few years later, Moody Church asked him to return. Harper boarded a ship – the “Titanic” – with a second-class ticket at Southampton, England, for the voyage to America.

Harper’s wife had died just a few years before, and he had with him his only child, Nana, age six. What happened after this is known mainly from two sources. One source is Nana, who died in 1986 at the age of 80. She remembered being woken up by her father a few nights into their journey. It was about midnight, and he said their ship had struck an iceberg. Harper told Nana that another ship was almost there to rescue them, but, as a precaution, he was going to put her in a lifeboat with an older cousin, who had accompanied them. As for Harper, he would wait for the other ship. Nana and her cousin were saved.

An unidentified Scotsman is reportedly the only other source of information concerning Harper’s last earthly actions. Here is that account:

In a prayer meeting in Hamilton, Ontario, some months or years after the Titanic sank, a young Scotsman stood up and in tears told this unusual story of how he was converted.

He said he was on the Titanic the night it struck the iceberg. He had clung to a piece of floating debris in the freezing waters.

“Suddenly,” he said, “a wave brought a man near – John Harper. He, too, was holding a piece of wreckage.

“He called out, ‘Man, are you saved?’

“‘No, I am not,’ I replied.

“He shouted back, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’

“The waves bore (Harper) away, but a little later, he was washed back beside me again.

“‘Are you saved now?’ he called out.

“‘No,’ I answered.

“‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,’ Harper said.

“Then losing his hold on the wood, (Harper) sank. And there, alone in the night with two miles of water under me, I trusted Christ as my saviour. I am John Harper’s last convert.”