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Thank You Notes

Posted by Wilcox on 11/28/2013 to Homeschooling
E-mails, texts, Twitter, Facebook posts, and a multitude of other social media options have all but eliminated an honorable, old-fashioned form of writing: the handwritten thank you note. Or maybe we have just become a nation of ungrateful, lazy people. There is something so satisfying about writing a thank you note—rehearsing the things (whether items or character qualities) for which one is thankful, thinking through the best way to express one’s gratitude, and then hearing the scratch of the pen on the card-stock as those thoughts pour forth. Yet, how easy it is to get distracted by other duties, find other activities to occupy us, and simply neglect this method of giving thanks. Shame on us!

A Monumentally Good Movie

Posted by Wilcox on 11/25/2013 to Homeschooling
Kirk Cameron’s Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure is our movie pick of the month. It is a documentary production, tracing America’s history from the Pilgrims through the Founding Fathers, and onto aspects of America’s decline in the 21st Century. Cameron interviews experts from Scrooby, Leiden, Plymouth, and Boston. He asks these experts why America succeeded as a nation of liberty and prosperity in its formative years, and what has been lost in recent years that has weakened her foundation so dramatically. Mr. Cameron’s style is relaxed and informal, but his awe as he learns from each historian is genuine and contagious. The experts’ proof of revisionism in modern history texts is also very revealing.

Living in the Parenthesis

Posted by Wilcox on 11/19/2013 to Homeschooling
2013 has been a year of uncertainty and unknowns for our family. We have been seeking God’s will regarding full-time ministry, believing God is calling Kris (the dad/husband of our clan) into church work of some nature. For over a year now, we have been waiting for God’s direction to be made plain to us. We sometimes feel like we’re getting indicators of which way He is leading, but moments later we find ourselves back to “Start” without passing “Go” and without collecting two hundred dollars. We feel like God has started our sentence (the written kind, not the prison kind), but He hasn’t placed the period. In fact, He keeps adding lessons and truths for us to learn—parentheses within the sentence, if you will. It’s living in the parenthesis (waiting for the period) that is so humbling and exhausting.

The God of Music

Posted by Administrator on 11/18/2013 to Homeschooling
Our God is a God of music…and music appreciation. He ordained Jubal, one of Cain’s great-great-great-great-grandsons, to be the “father of all those who play the harp and flute” (Gen. 4:21). God gifted Moses, David, Asaph, and others to write psalms and music for His glory and our edification. Zephaniah proclaims our God is a singing God (Zeph. 3:17). And we know Jesus sang with His disciples at the Passover feast before going out to the Mount of Olives (Matt. 26:30). Bible scholar Warren Wiersbie points out that Jesus also sang after His triumphant resurrection from the dead (Ps. 22:22 and Heb. 2:12). Moreover, today the Holy Spirit sings through the hearts and lips of believers who praise God (Eph. 5:18-21).

Was It a Good Movie?

Posted by Wilcox on 11/4/2013 to Critical Thinking
I will confess that there are times that I fall asleep during a movie….Okay, I will confess that most of the time I fall asleep when I’m attempting to watch a movie. Basically, if you let me sit down on a comfortable couch, in a quieted, darkened room for any length of time, my breathing will change to snoring in a matter of moments. So, I find myself awakening as the closing credits are scrolling up the screen and I’ll ask, “Was it a good movie?” Then I’ll politely listen to each child’s position on the film’s merits or failures, and try to form some concept of how the film handled its presentation of life. While it’s admirable that I want to have a discussion with my children about what they just watched, I really need to stay alert through the whole film so that I can interact with them more than just a nodding of my head or a random “Oh?” So, I’ll work on increasing my caffeine levels before family movie nights.  More importantly, however, I need to return to a series of questions that I used when I was in college and was required to read some less-than-stellar works of literature for my English education degree.
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