Educators At Home

Simply Home Discipleship

Author: Anne

God’s Politics

Anne

I always enjoy and look forward to reading the thoughts of Retired Navy Captain Jim Kinny.  You can learn more about him at his website Inspire and Ignite and also have his words sent directly to your email box.  I thought this subject was particularly interesting a  good topic to discuss around the dinner table.  ~Anne

Have you ever asked yourself about God’s politics? Is God a Democrat, Republican or Independent? In those terms God is certainly an Independent. Given those choices He is most certainly an Independent…but if you asked the question differently…Is God liberal conservative, the answer may surprise you.

Given the written record of God’s character as revealed in Scripture, God is most assuredly a conservative. Consider the evidence:  Read more...

  1. In the very beginning God expected man to work
  2.  From the very beginning God established individual accountability and personal responsibility.
  3.  In the Garden, God declared that marriage is between one man and one woman.
  4. God established the nuclear family as the basic building block of society
  5. God endorsed personal property rights, including the right to own land and to keep the fruit of one’s labor.
  6. God is pro-life.
  7.  The Ten Commandments confirm God’s commitment to an absolute standard of   right and wrong
  8. God established the death penalty
  9. God expects us to honor the preeminence of Spiritual principal over government regulation.
  10. God endorses personal generosity to support the poor and never once suggests the establishment of government welfare programs.

Mama’s Bank Account

Anne

Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes is an easy and enjoyable read from beginning to end…especially if read with a Norwegian accent. 🙂  This story about a Norwegian American family living in San Francisco in 1910, is heart-warming and filled with important life lessons.  The story told by the oldest daughter (Katrin), is focused upon everyday family life, brothers, sisters, Papa….but mostly Mama.  Marta Hanson (Mama) has wisdom, mercy, understanding and plain old common sense brought with her from the old country.   She is proud of her Norwegian heritage but not living in the past, embraces all that America has to offer and eventually is more American than Norwegian.   So much of what Mama believes and values, reflects the American ideals that have made our country great.  Hard work, frugality,  family,  ingenuity, tenacity and sacrifice were some of the values that Mama tried to instill in her family.  She is also just stubborn enough to find a way when there was no way.  Her character is an inspiration to me because she really is the ultimate “keeper-at-home,” devoted to her family and husband (Lars).  This story also became a play and television series in the late 40’s.  If you want a relaxing escape from our modern rat-race make a nice cup of coffee (not tea) and read Mama’s bank account….don’t forget to read all of Mama’s words in a Norwegian accent…’is  good that way.” ~Anne

 

Stay-at-home-Moms don’t really work

Anne

This story is in honor of Democratic strategist, Hilary Rosen, who said that Ann Romney who raised five sons while battling MS and Cancer, has not worked a day in her life.

One afternoon a man came home from work to find total mayhem in his house. His three children were outside, still in their P.J.’s, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers thrown all about the front yard. The door to his wife’s car was open, as was the front door to the house. Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess.

A lamp had been knocked over, and a throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the front room the TV was blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, Breakfast food was spilled on the counter, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand lay piled up by the back door.

He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and other piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried that she might be ill, or worse!!

He found her lounging into the bedroom, still in her pajamas, reading a novel.

She smiled, looked up at him and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, “What happened here today?”  Read more...

Humanism…The Religion Taught in School

Anne

“Humanism is anti-biblical through and through. It permeates today’s schools, media, and political debates. Almost daily you can read or hear something that provides an opportunity to point out to your children how it differs from the Bible. This may be difficult at first if you have not practiced it yet. Humanists are skilled at communication. They make their views sound so good that Christians can be lured into agreeing. Watch for the tricky use of words like dogmatic or intolerance. Watch for political or societal issues that your children can understand well enough to compare with the Bible. After the news or other opportune occasions, point out something unbiblical and have a brief conversation about it…

The roots of humanism go back at least to the beginning of anti-God religion – to the people who believed the serpent’s promise that they could become wise like God. That religion spread everywhere. The Greeks embraced it in their thinking. Plato, Socrates, and other famous philosophers though they could find truth by their own reasoning. They asked important questions like what is mind, what is soul, and is there life after death. What is the origin of man? What is evil? Greek philosophers tried to solve those big questions by human reason alone. This sharpening of the human intellect was a major aim of Greek education, and modern humanism descends from those Greek roots.  Read more...

Questions????

Anne

I received this letter in my email box recently.  Perhaps I’m not comprehending this correctly, because I am hearing very little outrage…where is the condemnation?  Could it actually be describing what I think it is describing?    Shouldn’t we be alarmed?  Why isn’t this all over the news and on the front page of our newspapers?  Have we already been under a dictatorship that was not implemented during past administrations?  If so, this is news to me.  Please comment on this one….indeed this is something we should be talking about around our kitchen tables…tonight!  Praying for our America.  Read more...

Pine Tree Crosses

Anne

Last Spring on a Sunday afternoon we took one of our “nowhere” drives thru the country. My husband was quietly driving along some back roads. I was occupied in the front passenger seat watching out the window as the scenery went by.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my husband was straining to lookout my window. This startled me, since his eyes should be on the road in front of him. I asked him what he was looking at out the windows, and he quietly replied, “Nothing. ” He could have said he was looking for pine tree crosses for Easter. His eyes went back to the road in front of him.

After a few minutes, I looked over at my husband and noticed a tear running down his cheek. I asked him what was wrong. This time he told me, “I was just thinking about Pop and a story he had once told me.” Of course, because it had to do with his Pop I wanted to know the story, so I asked him to share Pop’s story with me.

He said, “When I was about 8 years old, Pop and I were out fishing and that’s when he told me that the pine trees know when it is Easter.”

I had no idea what he meant by that, so I pressed him for more information.  Read more...

Young George Washington’s Rules of Civility

Anne

Our America was blessed to have an extraordinary man, George Washington, to be our first president. Exactly like each one of us, he was indeed a sinner, yet God had a plan for him and preserved and protected him for the founding of our great country.
General Edward Braddock, Washington’s commander during the French and Indian War, wrote the following appraisal to a friend in 1755:

“Is Mr. Washington among your acquaintances? If not, I recommend you to embrace the first opportunity to form his friendship. He is about twenty-three years of age; with a countenance both mild and pleasant, promising of both wit and judgment. He is of comely and dignified demeanor, at the same time displays much self-reliance and decision. He strikes me as being a young man of extraordinary and exalted character, and is destined to make no inconsiderable figure in our country.”(Kinnaird, George Washington, the pictoral biography)

As a young schoolboy in Virginia,   George compiled and copied this list of rules into his school book ….perhaps this would be a worthwhile copywork assignment.

The Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation

1. Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.

2. When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body not usually discovered.

3. Show nothing to your friend that may affright him.  Read more...

Two Versions of a Classic Tale

Anne
In The Pasture-Julien Dupre’

This  very silly version of a classic tale makes us laugh…but should probably make us cry because it illustrates what is happening in our country. I see our America changing in so many ways and soon, if things don’t change,  it will be unrecognizable to us.  My children giggled while reading the  modern version….I’m afraid I did not giggle as much.

The Ant & The Grasshopper

OLD VERSION

The ant works
hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper
thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm
and well fed.

The grasshopper has
no food or shelter, so he
dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:

Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN
VERSION

The ant works hard
in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant
is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper
calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be
allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving..

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN,
and ABC show up to
provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper
next to a video of the ant
in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.  Read more...

Presidential Prayers

Anne

George Washington

A Prayer for Guidance

O eternal and everlasting God, I presume to present myself this morning before thy Divine majesty, beseeching thee to accept of my humble and hearty thanks, that it hath pleased thy great goodness to keep and preserve me the night past from all the dangers poor mortals are subject to, and has given me sweet and pleasant sleep, whereby I find my body refreshed and comforted for performing the duties of this day, in which I beseech thee to defend me from all perils of body and soul….

Increase my faith in the sweet promises of the gospel; give me repentance from dead works; pardon my wanderings, and direct my thoughts unto thyself, the God of my salvation; teach me how to live in thy fear, labor in thy service, and ever to run in the ways of thy commandments; make me always watchful over my heart, that neither the terrors of conscience, the loathing of holy duties, the love of sin, nor an unwillingness to depart this life, may cast me into a spiritual slumber, but daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time attain the resurrection of the just unto eternal life bless my family, friends, and kindred.

Thomas Jefferson

A Prayer for the Nation  Read more...

Site is slowly coming back online…

Anne

Hello  Everyone!  If you have been trying to visit our site over the last week or so and received a message saying that it was not found here is why:  It’s a long story but I’ll try to make it brief.  About 9 months ago I moved Educators At Home to a new more robust server.  The person I was leasing the server from sold me a years worth of hosting which I paid for in advance.

Well,  last week the server went down and I thought  it had crashed and needed a reboot.  Well turns out that the person did not pay for the server and they shut us down.  I tried desperately to get the service reinstated, but this is where the story gets very convoluted. The person I purchased our hosting from was sub leasing from a company called “Wild West Hosting” who sub leases from a company in Chicago.  After hours and hours of tracing IP’s and hosting companies I was told that “because I wasn’t the original person who set up the account,  I could not get my data back because technically it did not belong to us.”  Unfortunately, all of our system backups were on the server and not local; big mistake.  I’ve been rebuilding the site from an old backup I had locally that was about 9 months old.  This has been a learning experience for me as  I’ve had to custom build MySQL database files to make the old backup compatible with the newest version of Word Press.  Read more...

Do We Really Need School?

Anne

“Do we really need school? I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don’t hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn’t, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever “graduated” from a secondary school.”
From: How public education cripples
our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto

Listen to John Taylor Gatto as he discusses the roots of the public schools. He states that according to the creators of the public schools,  “The family and tradition were the greatest obstacles to making a perfect society…a utopia ”

Honesty The Best Policy

Anne

I received this in an email and thought it was a good one to read to our children. It reminded me of the Lamplighter story “Clean Your Boots Sir.” The young boy in this story was promoted throughout his life because of his honesty. A totally honest executive or employee is worth more than gold to his company these days. Sadly, honesty is not valued in our society anymore…even many of our politicians cannot be trusted.

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.

Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said, “It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you. “The young executives were Shocked, but the boss continued. “I am going to give each one of you a SEED today – one very special SEED.. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you.

I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.”  Read more...

Think Twice Before Signing Up

Anne

If you’ve browsed around this site for a while you already know how I feel about Christian families signing on with the government schools  in order to “help” them educate their children.  Seems there are not enough hours in a day to train up and disciple our children as it is,  and if we are going to jump through all of the hoops  that the charter school program requires,  we will have even less time with our children.  Discipleship requires a great deal of time doesn’t it?

To tell you the truth I’m getting weary of the whole thing and somewhat tired of even talking about it.  I’m ashamed of myself though because the folks at HSLDA have devoted their lives to defending and protecting homeschooling rights.  I should not be  so weary of talking.

It’s quite obvious to me that Christian families should not be yoked with the government when it comes to our children ….I just don’t understand why we would join hands with the very people who are antagonistic and hostile towards our Lord Jesus. Many of my dear homeschooling friends have chosen this route, and I’m not judging their choice….I just don’t  understand how they came to it. I’m dumbfounded.  Read more...

America The Beautiful

Anne

When was the last time you paused to thank God you are an American?

Too often, I am guilty of taking the blessing of being an American for granted. I had no control over my birth place. The Creator granted me this blessing.

What a different world we would face if we were born in Somalia…or India…or Kenya. For all the problems we face…for all the issues raised on this daily broadcast…for all our political differences…living here is a blessing. The personal liberty and the limited government our forefathers developed and passed down to us through 100 generations of brave men and women has made this the best place on earth to live and to raise a family.

It has been passed on to our generation to defend this heritage of liberty and to preserve it for future generations. This shining light of freedom called America is not just for those born here…but a beacon for the entire world.

Pause now and say, “Thank you, Heavenly Father”.

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