When Presbyterians Rock

I always have a good time visiting different churches and meeting some really neat people as part of our Biblical Imagination conferences. This weekend, we're in Normal, IL, and I got a kick out of my fellow Presbyterians' attempt to rock.

(For those not in on the joke, you usually don't put a digital piano up on an x-rack.)

Advertisement

And Now, Melancholy

Every now and then, my melancholy gets the best of me and things go a little gray here on the blog. Maybe it's the rainy weather we're currently experiencing over all of Spring Break (or just the fact that I haven't really been able to take one), but I'm a little down.

No need to feel sorry for me, though (I'm quite capable of doing that on my own). Some things I've heard myself thinking of late (perhaps you can relate and at least know you're not alone):

• I increasingly find myself chained to my laptop. While I love my Mac product(s), I don't like being inseparable from them. True, all it takes is shutting the lid, but so much of what I do requires time on it that it's beginning to lose its luster.
• The amount of time spent thinking about life outside these United States continues to dwindle as I get older. Part of this is has to do with plenty of other thoughts occupying my head; part of it has to do with the fact that there is just no way to afford such travel anyway, so why bother? I want to care more about the world, but I don't.
• Speaking of money, it's wearying watching people throw money at things that don't matter (and I'm not just talking about our federal and state governments), especially when I have so many better ideas of what they could do with it. My heart is living in Psalm 73 these days.
• Our yard is little more than weeds right now, and after the rain of the past 24 hours, the weeds are all submerged in a big swamp. I want to care about property, but when things happen beyond my control, it becomes more of a challenge.
• I'm thinking about lighting my desk on fire so as to gain a fresh start there (it's amazing to me how far I've fallen in this area of organization, particularly when I think of past posts like this one).
• The idea of ever writing a book again is, at best, as or more fleeting as my cluttered attention span. (Sadly, the same could be said for ever reading one again as well.)
• I continue to see my many failures as a husband and father and wonder how our family is really going to turn out when it's all said and done. Being married and parenting is hard and I wish I were better at both.

So there you have it – a collection of (mostly) first world problems that I'm even embarrassed sharing (yet another contributor to my funk of late). Of course, there are deeper issues beneath these scenarios, so pray I can recognize and offer them to God and regain some hope in my fallen perspective.

That is all.

(Melancholy (1891) painting by Edvard Munch)

Learning Together

Ten months ago, Veritas Classical Academy seemed little more than the name of my (Craig's) new employer. Arriving in June, my family and I made a few acquaintances during the hottest summer on record, but it wasn’t until August – when we began to meet and get to know our families – that I began to understand how God had already been very much at work in the midst of our community.

This, of course, should have come as no surprise, for God has always educated his children:

• Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden with their sons, Cain and Abel – the first family of homeschoolers (and you think you’ve got angst on homedays).

• Then there’s God’s Patriarchal class – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel (and Leah), Joseph and his brothers (how much of a dysfunctional co-op that must have been).

• Consider Moses and the Israelites in the desert and the self-inflicted unschooling experience, with God shepherding his chosen people despite their disobedient choices to finally arrive in the promised land.

• Think of how God educated his children Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the public school hallways of Babylon High (and got all kinds of grief for doing so from the Israelites who remained in Jerusalem).

• Don’t forget God’s instruction of the dispersed and captive nation of Israel by way of the prophets and the first-of-its-kind distance-learning program.

• Finally, consider how God the Father personally tutored God the Son, for Luke 2:52 mind-bogglingly records that, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.”

What is the Master Teacher teaching us at Veritas? It seems the curriculum is similar to the one Paul lays out for the Corinthians: faith, hope, love – faith in Aristotle’s unmoved Mover, hope in Aquinas’ Cause of effect, and love for each other and the One the Reformers insisted first loved us.

Are we learning? I think so, but as any serious student knows, there’s much to learn. By God’s grace and our parents' partnership, I’m glad we – with our children – get to do it together.