Alfred, Calvin, and Tolkien

On a recent journey from our little hamlet in middle Tennessee to the bustling metropolis of Nashville, I was accompanied by my son, Calvin.  The journey takes about an hour, which gives ample time to listen to a lecture en route.  Dr. George Grant willingly rode in the mp3 player on the dashboard, while Calvin was happy to have the whole backseat to himself.  I asked Dr. Grant if he would tell me about Alfred the Great again, and he obliged.


Dr. Grant began with a lengthy quote from G.K. Chesterton’s, Ballad of the White Horse King. He then proceeded to tell us the story of this great king of Wessex; the king who united a band of tribal chiefs to defend his home and his people from the onslaught of the Viking hordes; the king who sang and prayed with his troops before battle; the king that redesigned a navy in order to quell the pagan plunderers before they reached his island.  As Dr. Grant spoke I recalled what I’d learned about King Alfred from Ben Merkle’s book, The White Horse King. So I paused our inimitable orator to tell my son about shield walls and bezerkers, about Guthrum and the Danes, about bravery and cunning, about a king that learned humility through hardship.  Calvin commented how much the Middle Ages sounded like Middle Earth, and I agreed.  Externally I agreed.  Internally I rejoiced that my son was avidly listening to my stories and listening well enough to have made a connection between Alfred and Tolkien.

I love King Alfred.  I want to be like King Alfred, and I want my sons to be more like King Alfred than I will ever be.  Long ago, I realized that you can’t force your children to love your heroes, but during that conversation with Calvin, I realized that you don’t have to.  Your love for your heroes will be infectious.  Your children will simply catch it. I love King Alfred because King Alfred loved King Jesus and that love saved a nation from utter destruction.  I love King Jesus and I want Calvin to love King Jesus more than I ever will, so that he and I can sing with Alfred and his troops, with Tolkien and his hobbits, and with our beloved Dr. Grant,

When the enemy comes in a’roarin’ like a flood,
Coveting the kingdom and hungering for blood,
The Lord will raise a standard up and lead His people on,
The Lord of Hosts will go before defeating every foe;
Defeating every foe.
For the Lord is our defense, Jesus defend us,
For the Lord is our defense, Jesu defend.

Dads: Education is Just Like Land Surveying, Only Different

A land surveyor from the perspective of an eight-year-old

How do we evaluate progress in our children? Whether we are measuring academic progress, spiritual progress, progress in their chores, progress in their sibling/social interaction, how do we surmise that they have gone from a position of relative immaturity in an area to a place of more maturity? I am not a trained educational expert, nor am I a child psychologist, nor am I a pastor or certified counselor, but I am a land surveyor. I am a professional measurer. People pay me to measure their real estate to a very high degree of precision, culminated by a rubber stamp on a plat by which I stake my livelihood on the fact that I’m right.

I am also a father—have been for 15 years. I never finished college, but I’m working very hard on my PhDad. By God’s grace we’ll graduate these six young people into godly adulthood.

Rosie's Rainbow

My children regularly remind me that we are those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:2), which is good, because I often forget.

For example, a few weeks ago after a rain, my daughter, Rose, and I were strolling down our driveway on the way to Grandma's house. (She lives next door.) As we traveled east, the light from the sun setting behind us was broken down into a glorious arc of the visible spectrum, cast onto the sky before us. We were walking straight into an ever-increasingly visible rainbow. Instead of being suspended, it stood on the hills: two feet firmly planted on the horizon--a complete arc in between.

When Are You Ever Going to Grow Up?

“When I became a man, I put away childish things…”

For decades, American culture has been pushing the threshold between childhood and adulthood further and further from birth. This is being done in the name of science, which supposedly is just analyzing the data and then reporting the facts. A myriad of professions, from psychiatrists to psychologists to neurologists to anthropologists, are making the claim that the period of “adolescence” continues to lengthen. As many of these professions are built on evolutionary assumptions, the data is often treated as though this is simply the way things are. Perhaps it is simply the next stage of human evolution; the next stage of progress being a state in which the human being no longer wants to progress.

Adopted & Adopting

Before adopting the triplets, we only had one daughter. Our solitary little girl, being surrounded by adults twenty-four hours a day, often acted more like an adult in a little body than a four-year-old. She wasn’t perfect, but she was an easy child to be around. Then, we adopted. Three 7-week-old babies entered our world in one day; our peaceful world of a single-child was gone; and things have been rocking ever since. Also, contributing to this was the fact that three years after adopting the triplets, my wife conceived and bore twins. In a period of three years, my household increased by 5 munchkins. So, there are eight of us: one dad, one mom, three boys, and three girls.

A couple of the things I have learned about myself as a father through the years since the adoption: 1.) I am a man, for good or for ill, and 2.) I am only one man, never more, never less.

Calvin Didn't Flinch

During my childhood years, my family lived in a 12’ x 55’ single-wide mobile home. When we bought it in 1980 it was already about 20 years old. The plan was to live in that home while my dad built a house on our property. Given the economic recession of the early 1980′s, we never built that house. As my brother, my sister, and I got older, and consequently larger, my dad closed in a front porch to create another bedroom. He completely remodeled the inside of the home over the 15 years that we lived there: drywall, trim, carpets–the whole nine yards. The exterior would occasionally get painted, the roof tarred, and the underpinning, which had rotted from ground contact, replaced. It was a lovely home, and I do not remember being particularly envious of my friends who had nicer homes than we did. However, that doesn’t mean that I was unaware that they had nicer homes than we did.

I can remember being 9 or 10 years old when I went to spend the night at a friend’s house from school. He lived with his family in a small brick ranch home. It couldn’t have been over 1000-1100 square feet, i.e., relatively small, but I remember being enamored by the fact that the house went all the way to the ground. This wonderful home had no underpinning; it had bricks. Its roof was not flat; it had a gable-ended roof with shingles on it. It seemed so sturdy. So strong. Once again, I was not beset by the fact that our home sat upon concrete blocks 2 feet above the ground with the resulting void between floor and earth being hidden by plywood, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t plan on living in a site-built home when I grew up.

I've Stopped Yelling. Can I Stop Scowling?

by Marc Hays

Over a year ago, I stopped yelling at my children. The urge to vent my displeasure became increasing distasteful until I could hear myself snap at them just before I did it. Whatever the child had done, whatever infraction had occurred, ceased to kindle my ire like the thought of hearing myself lash out at them.

Accompanying this conviction, my sin decreased. Go figure. It is encouraging to no end for a man to see that the deeds of his flesh can be mortified as Scripture says they must and for a man, alive in Christ, to experience the Holy Spirit at work, bearing good fruit on formerly dead limbs.

As my desire to shout the fear of God into my children waned, I found an increasing zeal to see my children flourish. Replacing the idle threats about their doom, should they fail to mend their ways, was an increase in instruction concerning righteousness and sin; wisdom and foolishness; repentance and forgiveness. I yell less, if at all, which is good, and instruct more, which is better still, but as with most virtues, too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.