A Teacher in the Great Depression - Lyn Kublick

Mom

May, the month of Mother's Day, is nearly at an end. My passion is walking through history while comparing it to life today. My mom and I both taught school. So much is the same and yet so much differs.

Georgiana Reager grew up in a family of six girls. She lived in small town California and was an excellent student. For that reason she was the one chosen to attend classes at the University of California in Berkeley.

Upon graduation, in 1925, she went to teach in a small town in Northern California where she met my father, Arthur Noble. Georgiana and Arthur began to date and plan for the future, but . . . .

The Great Depression struck in 1929, altering their plans and affecting their lives -- and mine. By that time her sisters were married, and she had 8 small neices and nephews. Her parents had sold their ranch and invested in Bank of Amreica stock. That stock disappeared in the crash leaving her parents with very little savings. Her brothers-in-law struggled to find work, along with many others, and life was grim for the Reager family.

One bright spot was Georgiana's teaching position. She was "well paid" for those times, and her salary was used to cover the greatest needs. Unfortunately, due to the many "family men" looking for jobs in education, married women could not be hired to teach.

If Georgiana and Arthur followed their hearts, her income would cease to exist, and she couldn't see her way clear to abandon her family. They waited through a long engagement and finally married in 1935. This says a lot about my mother's sense of responsibility, and her devotion to her family. It says even more of my father's love and understanding of his future wife.

I was born a number of years later -- an after thought in my generation, and destined to be an only child. My role at family reunions, attended by my first cousins and their little ones, was that of the built in baby sitter. This was in no way a hardship as I loved my little cousins and time spent entertaining them may have led to my own career in education.

Things have changed. We are said to be going through a depression, but it has had little effect on schools and teachers. There are some spending cuts, but no stringent rules about who can be hired to teach, based on marital status.

God's hand was on my mom and dad. He carried them through a difficult time. He continues to be faithful to us when things don't go as we wish. If we remember to turn to Him, we can rest in His perfect plan for each of our lives.

Does God Love the Blind? - Bruce Atchison

Attending church has always been a problem for millions of blind and visually-impaired folks. For us, the hymn books and Bibles are unreadable, the overhead projector is hard to see or invisable, and the bulletins may as well be blank sheets of paper.

In most congregations, this is an unintentional oversight. The Lutheran Blind Mission does produce braille and large print worship materials but the majority of churches are unprepared for blind congregants. Worse yet, some denominations either don't explain why God doesn't perform miracles today or they blame the poor disabled soul for not receiving healing after being prayed for by the elders. I've experienced both forms of cruelty.

In Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), I wrote of the first sort when I was forced to attend an Anglican church. Though I now know the truth, here's how the lack of teaching on verses such as John 9:3 left my blind friends and me to conclude in May of 1968 that God didn't care about us.

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Church began to seem futile and irrelevant to me around that time. I dreaded going and wished we could stay at the dorm on Sunday. All those stories concerning Christ and the Old Testament characters appeared to be as germane as fairy tails. After one service, we were sitting on our beds in the dorm when Peter said, "I wonder why God doesn't heal people anymore." "Yeah, I wonder about that too," Michael added. "I wish God would heal us. We could get out of this horrible place and be free," I added. "God sure doesn't care about us," Peter noted. "If he did, he'd heal us." Our theological discussion left us in deep thought. "I hate God," I concluded after a long pause. "He doesn't want to help us." In the stunned silence which followed my remark, I began to doubt that the Lord was even listening.

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In my next memoir, entitled How I Was Razed, I describe how nobody from the Vacation Bible School taught me the basics of Christianity when I gave my life to Jesus in 1969. As a result, I was lead into a cult congregation and believed their hurtful lies for more than 15 years. After rejecting God for nearly a decade, I realized it wasn't his fault that phony Christians mislead me to think I could be healed by willing my sight to get better.

If all goes well, this book should be in print by the end of the year. Meanwhile, information about my previous titles is at the InScribe Writers Group page.

Focus on Family - Karen Toews

I’m on my flight home from the annual trip to my ‘homeland’, Alberta. In ten days it was impossible to catch up with a lifetime of family and friends (although my efforts to do so were heroic) but even if I’d had more days or had reconfigured my ‘flat-out’ schedule to include a few more get-togethers, my energy reserves for visiting and re-telling my last year are depleted.

It’s been great – delicious (and abundant) food, generous gifts of time shared with those not on vacation like myself, wishes granted to just ‘be’ with my Dad and to see many of my senior aunts and uncles.

A few thanksgivings from my visits with some of those of that generation who have helped shape and continue to influence my life.

- my Dad - for his faith, his contentment and adjustment to the changes in his home: who can still make me feel like his little girl when he slips me a bill for my lunch

- an uncle, less self-absorbed with his aches and pains than most of us many years younger - me included

- an aunt, who celebrated her 89^th birthday, ready to try Greek food specialties for the first time

- a classy aunt with manicured nails and a dignified walk – more intent on embroidering tablecloths than focusing on the aches of arthritis

- an aunt, whose marriage commitment is approaching 60 years and can honestly express that, ‘through sickness and in health’ can be tough

- an uncle whose humour remains as consistent as his conscientious church-custodian duties

There were five of us kids in our family, yet my parents’ hospitality ensured our small farmhouse regularly bulged with extended family – for birthdays, holiday celebrations, football games, skating parties. These get-togethers were sometimes spontaneous, always involved copious amounts of food, and though I don’t remember hearing my parents discuss and analyze these ‘quality’ relationships, I grew up with a sure sense that they were important – these were the people you knew that loved and supported you.

This recent connecting with relatives, senior and otherwise, was especially poignant as I thought of the mobility of today’s population – including my own children. The landscape of their extended relationships looks much different than mine. I accept this for the way it is, however I am very grateful for the memory-gifts of my big family picture and for their personal godly example and encouragement.

Life (and perhaps death) will bring change for all of us between now and my next planned visit. But in this moment, I'm enriched for time spent together..."There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven..." Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV)

http://www.toewsontherun.com

Builder's Blues - Lynda Schultz

The British Empire was impressive during the reign of Queen Victoria. Its remnants are a reminder of how tentative our hold is on what ambition and self-interest accumulates.

Two young people I know are getting married this coming weekend. There are so many things I desire for them but the greatest is a foundation that goes beyond even the strongest bond of love.

The church, despite every effort to make it attractive to a lost world, limps along, often so "relevant" that its adherents are starving to death, apathetic and weak.

We work so hard to build something good: an empire, a marriage, a church, only to discover the truth of Psalm 127:1 (NIV): "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain."

From my balcony, I watched a couple of men working on a roof. It seemed like dangerous business to me. One slip and the next stop might a hospital and a long struggle with Workmen's Compensation. To build well isn't easy. The commitment to excellence requires time, patience, and sacrifice. But most of all it needs the LORD. From empires to families to churches, unless He heads up the building crew, it just "ain't gonna happen."