Dear Fellow Children of God,
Last night, Friday night, I took a journey through the
past. After my uncle and aunt died last
year my cousins took responsibility for selling his home and disposing of and
distributing my uncle and aunt’s possessions.
My sister, Martha, traveled to Massachusetts recently to get the family
records and remembrances. Uncle Sonny
was the last remaining Rockey in Massachusetts, so there were memories from parts
of 3 centuries!
So, last night, while on vacation, I started going through the pictures and documents and treasures from
the past. I examined my grandfather’s
baptismal certificate, and for the first time I can remember I saw pictures
from his wedding to my grandmother. I
saw the bill for my great grandfather’s funeral in 1918 for $175.00 from the
same funeral home where my uncle was buried in 2012. I also examined many receipts from the
mortgage payments on the family home by my great grandmother. (Interest was
$3.37! I spent many hours in that
home.) I saw pictures of my uncle and my dad as
children, and examined my uncle’s discharge papers from the army after
WWII. And, contained in the boxes of
memories there were certificates, lots of certificates, mainly baptismal
certificates for many in my family.
I’m not sure what one does with all these aging
memories. Do you keep them and then pass
them on to your children? Already I
don’t know many of the people in the pictures I saw. My children may know only two or three family
members in the pictures. But, it would
feel funny, even disrespectful, to throw away these memories from my family.
As I look at the boxes of material, a very small portion
of the mountains of possessions left by my uncle and aunt, one thing I do see
is that the values of my ancestors have been handed down to me and my
family. It is pretty easy to see from
the family records that faith, family, and country were valued and lived in the
Rockey family of the past 4 generations.
I hope those same values have been taught to my children, and now to my
children’s children.
The practical
application of this lesson is that the home is the best place to teach what is
important. It is God’s plan in the Old
and New Testaments that the home is the chief place where faith and values are
taught. In Deuteronomy 11:18-21 God
tells the people of Israel, “18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on
your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children,
talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when
you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your
houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children
may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many
as the days that the heavens are above the earth.”
In Ephesians
6:4, God speaks through Paul to the Christians in Ephesus, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the
training and instruction of the Lord.”
It seems to me that in today’s culture we often pass off
responsibility for teaching values. We
expect the schools to teach values, or the government to do it, or even the
church. Perhaps that is because values
are not always taught in the home. All
of these institutions have been established by God their place, but God’s plan
is that faith and values are first taught in the home.
So, what do you do with all these records and
memories? If nothing else they remind me
that my job is not done. I need to
continue teaching my children and now my grandchildren about the love of God,
the bonds of family, and our responsibility to our county.
A Child of God, Blessed
by the faith and values of my ancestors,
Pastor Jonathan
****
P.S. I am on
vacation with family in Florida, in a time between the Youth Gathering and the
Convention of our church. Today is my
mom’s birthday. She died, January 17,
2011. Here is a picture of the last time
my mom and dad and all their kids and some of the grandkids were together on
mom’s birthday, July 13, 2010. https://plus.google.com/photos/114993745799525883148/albums/5494326049523439297/5494327108295685618?banner=pwa&pid=5494327108295685618&oid=114993745799525883148
P.P.S. Here is a
picture of our family in Alaska (minus new born Annabelle) this past Christmas. https://plus.google.com/photos/114993745799525883148/albums/5828765800444931457/5829793849510128962?banner=pwa&pid=5829793849510128962&oid=114993745799525883148
P.P.P.S. Here is a
picture of the funeral bill. https://plus.google.com/photos/114993745799525883148/albums/5900124889107276225?banner=pwa
****
ABOUT ‘THOUGHTS FROM THE PASTOR’ - I am
sending these e-mail messages, hopefully weekly, to all St. John members and
friends whose e-mails I have. (I am always adding new names of friends
and members – in case you are just receiving this e-mail for the first
time.) However, if you don’t want to receive this e-mail, please let me
know, and I’ll gladly leave your name off my list for this message. . . Or, if
you know someone who would like to receive one of these e-mails, please send me
their e-mail address.
****
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