daily java

Daily Java:

We will not hide these truths from our children;
      we will tell the next generation
   about the glorious deeds of the Lord,
      about his power and his mighty wonders.
 For he issued his laws to Jacob;
      he gave his instructions to Israel.
   He commanded our ancestors
      to teach them to their children,
 so the next generation might know them—
      even the children not yet born—
      and they in turn will teach their own children.
 So each generation should set its hope anew on God,
      not forgetting his glorious miracles
      and obeying his commands.
 Then they will not be like their ancestors—
      stubborn, rebellious, and unfaithful,
      refusing to give their hearts to God. (Psalm 78:4-8)

in the old days, there was one person whose job it was to pass on all of the stories. He or she did it orally. They would just sit and talk and the rest would listen and absorb what they had to say. This was the way they passed down their history, their philosophy, their who way of thought.

Without the story tellers, the next generation would not know anything about where they had come from and would, in essence, be cast adrift.

There is a move afoot in the educational world to release us from our history, to rewrite it in such a way as to make us different from those who came before us. This takes away our background and makes us more like they want us to be rather than like those who came before us would have us to be.

But we need to know what came before us. It puts our own lives into context.

George Santayana (1863–1952) said: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness…. when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it…. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience.”

We need to know what came before. And that is the whole purpose of the Old Testament: to show us what came before, where we came from, why we are here, who this God the Bible speaks of is.

Romans 15:4, in talking about the scriptures which came before, said: Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.

Our children need to know who we are, where we came from, why we are here. And we need to tell them, not only about our personal families, and about our country, but about our God.

Our history as a people of God is too valuable to be forgotten.