Family: Modern Proverbs

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet, with a few nuts.
- Les Dawson

Family
Modern Proverbs

We get our start in families, graduate to individuals and usually create families of our own. From being teenagers on, alone or together, our personal thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, shape who we are and will become.

Scriptures explains "God sets the lonely in families." Sometimes His choice makes one wonder. For most of us, families provide the most enriching and exasperating times of our lives. They also provide a training and proving ground for some of the most important elements of our faith. They serve as perfect motivation for Bible study and prayer. Sadly, the average Christian, parent or otherwise, remains Biblically illiterate (unable to quote 5-10 verses in a row) and prayerless (stopping to pray less than 10 minutes a day). A sad state of affairs that explains a lot.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

- Ephesians 3:14-15 NIV

Family
Modern Proverbs
by Robert R. Pennington

If we truly care for that which we care we should be more careful to have a care.

Lord, look at this my beautiful daughter; how peaceful her face in sleep, how precious her little hands, legs and feet. Hell's not for them, your Kingdom's of such; in your word I've heard you say, but Lord weren't we all little children just yesterday?

My family often leaves me wanting but what a delight my daughter has been for nearly two decades. Her precious spirit and quiet beauty, her ticklishness and neck messages, her honesty and temperance makes her a sight for her father's eyes, often sore from staring at sin.

My maternal grandfather, whom I little knew, seemed an idiot-savant. Ignorant of spiritual and familial things he was an exceptional genius in mechanical engineering, in business and art. I've often fancied myself a bit of the opposite though eternity may reveal just another idiot-idiot.

How many Christian parents live undisciplined spiritual lives in which the disobedience of the husband to God and/or the of the wife to the husband (the Biblical order) undermine their household and children?

Couples where one or both disobey God face similar straights as Christ, having a disobedient bride in churchianity.

For the vast majority, an hour long massage would be the most non sexually intimate experience of a lifetime. That fact that spouses, family members or even lovers fail to caress one another so is testimony that we are not only alone but isolated.

Supposing Intelligent Design here's a question. Why should only men's faces grow beards? To provide a little warmth... this explanation seems wanting. Perhaps like the lion's mane they accentuate authority in social structure. Interestingly, modern culture began shaving its males prior to today's attacks on traditional family values and the subsequent deconstruction of the nuclear family.

For many years I wore a beard, though because of chaffing I trimmed it smaller and smaller till it disappeared. Might they also have been seen by the ancients (particularly Biblical Patriarchs) as a reminder that authority is also a chaffing burden to be born? So am I a clean shaven lion today? Yes, for when in Rome... And as Paul encourages, to be all things to all men that we might win some.

My 19 year old daughter’s humble yet stubborn refusal to heartily engage in the things of God seems rivaled only by her sweetness.

I thought to raise my daughter from sleeping the morning away, as she's been fond of doing for 20 years since birth. Yet as I approached my heart was smitten once again by her beautiful “bunny feet.” Petite and sweet, delicate and dainty, useful and necessary, fragile and mortal... I'll let her sleep a bit more before nibbling her awake knowing these will soon carry her away from my house to another.

Strangely, because I hate conflict and fear pain, loss, dis-ease and judgment I find myself locked in mortal combat with all Beings not fully engaged with the salvation of all men. That is save one, my daughter, with whom I’ve snuggled for over 20 years.

New Year’s Day 2009 finds me powerless, penniless and purposeless. I’ve managed to become a pastor without a parish or parishioners, a provider with little or no provision and teacher without students. Making matters worse, my precious daughter is in the process of leaving home; taking with her the only satisfying object of affection I have left on earth.

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