Listen and Do
MUSIC BLOG
04-25-2024
LISTEN AND DO
Deuteronomy 4:1
4 Israel, listen to these laws and teachings! If you obey them, you will live, and you will go in and take the land that the Lord is giving you.
Like many homes across America in the 1960’s and 70’s our kitchen table had various uses. During canning season, it served as an extension of our kitchen counter. Everyone who was working to get the fruits or vegetables in jars or freezer bags sat around the table peeling, slicing, taking out bad spots, etc. until the job was done. During the Christmas Baking season, it was where we worked together to crack pecans and walnuts and slice fruit for fruitcakes. It was our regular mealtime place, as the dining room table was reserved for guests and more festive occasions. The kitchen table was often a place where our parents would sit us down to have formal discussions. If we had missed the mark with our schooling, or our parents got a report that we had been disrespectful to our teachers or our Boy Scout leaders we would have our turn at the table. It was more difficult to escape the piercing eyes of a disappointed parent when you were looking across the table. If you were in the living room, for example, you had many places to look, but at the table it was one-on-one. There was no escape and there was little wiggle room.
The kitchen table had one more function in our home, it was our study table. Every day after school and after dinner one or more of us children sat at the table to complete our homework. It always made the time go faster if someone worked beside us. There might have been more than a little competition to see who could finish first. I certainly didn’t like to be the last one at the table working while everyone else was watching TV. Andy Griffith, Fred and Barney and The Jetson’s were more fun than homework anyway.
My mother didn’t formally homeschool us, but she did what she could to instill her Christian values in us. One way that comes to mind was her using the kitchen table as our family learning time. We moved to Peculiar in the summer of 1965, prior to me beginning the 3rd grade. We bought the house from a couple of sisters who could no longer take care of the house. For our family, it was a mansion. We had 6 children and 2 adults in our family. We had been living in a little tract home in Raytown MO for several years. It was a little bit over 800 square feet with a full unfinished basement. My dad put up two sets of bunk bed in the corner of the basement for the boys and the girls were in the second bedroom upstairs. We moved into a house that was two stories and a full basement. It had four bedrooms. We couldn’t fathom such luxury. The house had been built in 1925 and everything was original. My dad and uncle spent about a year renovating the kitchen, taking it down to the studs, and we lived in the dust and drama of all that. When the renovations were finally completed it was wonderful! Everything in that old kitchen had been refinished or replaced. Mom had 21 feet of gleaming white Formica countertops. Our Kitchen table held a prominent place in the new kitchen. Almost as soon as we got everything in place a neatly written piece of someone’s Big Chief Tablet paper appeared on the paneling at the head of the kitchen table. It was Mom’s list of scriptures that she wanted us to memorize. The first was Exodus 20: 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. There were others to be sure and they were updated from time to time. I always remember that verse.
It's not enough to know scripture. James put it like this in chapter 1: 22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
James 1:22 was on the wall too! Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only. After all these years, my struggles in life aren’t necessarily based on what I don’t know as much as what I fail to do. God, living in me, provides me the strength to do all things. It seems that I shouldn’t have any struggles at all with all that power in me and yet I struggle, dare I say it, we all struggle. I don’t know who is reading this, but I imagine that every one the Lord sends to read this blog needs one thing. The assurance that they are not alone in their struggle. We may find ourselves in the bondage of a lifetime of poor choices, but God is there with us. You may be living in fear and doubt, but God is there. You may feel overwhelmed and afraid of life’s uncertainty and changes, but God is right there beside you. The word is nigh unto you, yea in your mouth. God makes us know what to do and gives us the strength and will to do it. Trust Him today in your mess. He will lead us home.
Blessings,
Marty