This month we celebrate a national holiday that is uniquely American in its origins. Our Thanksgiving Day is traditionally founded on the Pilgrims' 3-day feast in 1621 at Plymouth to celebrate a bountiful harvest and give thanks to God for His protection and provision. Our nation truly does have a blessed heritage.

Let’s deal with a dangerous misconception about marriage and divorce. We often hear something like this: “Half of marriages end in divorce.” That’s an inaccurate and very unhelpful statement to make about marriage and divorce.

Poverty. It seems every politician wants to address it and has ideas for how to alleviate it. Often those ideas involve giving people more money through government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded programs.

In Joshua 4:1-9 we read that after Israel had crossed the Jordan river, a member from each tribe was to take a stone and erect a memorial of their crossing. The stone memorial was to be a generational reminder of God’s miraculous parting of the river so that the people might cross over. The expectation was that children would ask their fathers about the memorial and that fathers would explain what God had done for them as a people.

It is right and good for us to remember the sacrifice of so many that made our country possible and that has preserved us as a nation. It is even better to remember with eternal gratitude the sacrifice that made our redemption possible.

It comes around once each year, and moms and kids start scrambling for gift ideas for dear old Dad. Dads can be notoriously challenging when it comes to giving them gifts. But we suspect that the majority of dads are most grateful not for the gift but for the gift-givers, those wives and children who make their lives complete and bring joy and purpose to their days.

Are you the perfect mother? Did you have a mom who was the perfect mother? Actually, these really aren’t fair questions because in a fallen world there is no such thing as a perfect mother. The good news is, no woman is expected to be the perfect mom. For those who are moms or who expect or hope one day to be a mom, the good news is you can be a good mom—even an outstanding mom—without being perfect.

In 2021, Katy Faust and Stacy Manning published Them Before Us, a book with a catchy title. “Them” is children and “us” is adults. The perspective of Them Before Us, and the organization by that name (see thembeforeus.com) is that the rights and needs of children should take priority over adult desires.

March is National Problem Gambling Awareness Month. In 1996 less than 1% of Wisconsin citizens, or about 32,425 residents were problem gamblers. The social costs related to those problem gamblers was over $300 million, or $9,469 per problem gambler. Those numbers clearly should have told us something. But sadly we failed to learn from our history.

National Marriage week is celebrated February 7-14. This is a week in which the benefits of marriage for society and for the individuals in a marriage are highlighted.

Friday, June 24, 2022. This day willlbe for many of us one of the memorable days of our lives. On this date the US Supreme Court ended a 50-year reign of terror on unborn children.

“Jesus Christ came on purpose and with a purpose.” Just nine words, yet words we ought to regularly share with others and express in our prayers as an expression of truth and gratitude.

Have you ever considered that as Americans we have an eloquent heritage of thanksgiving? If not, then consider these eloquent quotations from some of our notable leaders and founding documents over the centuries.

Our hope is in the Lord and not in any particular government, political party, or elected
official. Nevertheless, by God’s grace, let us as His people, commit ourselves to making a
difference for the good of our families, neighbors, and ministries and for God’s glory, by
being good stewards of our privileges, as we “render to Caesar.

Children are a gift from God, the heritage of the Lord. They are not trophies, toys, inconveniences, or burdens. They are humans who bear God’s image and who depend on parents
for love, care, instruction, and protection. Parents, grandparents and other adults must be
actively engaged because the war on children is real. If we don’t do battle for their hearts,
minds, and bodies, who will?

Friday, June 24, 2022, will long be remembered as the historic day when the US Supreme Court ended a 50-year reign of terror on unborn children.

Nationally and in our state, we are turning a page on the abortion issue. All you have to do is read the last few lines on the first page of the two-hundred-plus page opinion to know the essence of what the court decided: “Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”1

Those are twenty-eight powerful, long-awaited words—and we praise God for His goodness and grace to us in giving us this decision. But let’s be clear. God didn’t owe us this right opinion. It’s not as if nation- ally we’ve experienced a revival and are at a point where we can say that righteousness is exalting us. We should acknowledge the goodness of God in this moment—and we also need to be good stewards of what we have been given.

Liberty and freedom are words that even adults often have difficulty defining. Any definition is likely going to be yet another abstraction of these abstract words. Thus, we look to concrete symbols to help us explain these important words. It is fitting during this month when we celebrate our nation’s 246th birthday that we reflect on a few of these symbols.

Fatherhood—It’s a concept about which we rarely hear anything positive in our current cultural moment. And yet it is a paramount theme in Scripture: God the Father, God’s instructions for fathers, admonitions for children to obey their fathers, the joys and pains of fatherhood, the relationship between the Father and the Son.

Being a mother is much more than delivering a child. Motherhood is about devotion, selflessness and lifelong commitment. It’s about giving and not getting. It’s about true love—which is always doing what is in the best interest of the one who is loved. It’s about sacrifice—over and over and over. Sometimes it’s even about giving up dreams and aspirations in order to be sure that the needs of children are met.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and
religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government
of any other,”

The headline last year was horrific: “University may be subject of investigation after it’s caught using body parts of babies born alive.”

We recognize two important issues in January:

religious freedom and life.

While these two issues are commemorated separately, they certainly aren’t in conflict. Rather, they are related.