A Life of Faith

Mamaw's daily log of Bible reading and devotional

the kids visiting Mamaw, she still inspires me.

A Wise Daughter

‎"Charm is deceptive and beauty is vain, but a woman who feareth the LORD she shall be praised." What defines a woman? Not marriage, not children, but just having the fear of the Lord :) there is no "better" woman..only the Godly ones, and I aspire to be that woman ♥
words from my dd (20) so proud of you C!

Conclusions - Henry

"We are all wrapped up in a feverish endeavor to solve the problems of livelihood, and have only come up with a solution far more complicated than the problem itself. We labor on desperately to liberate ourselves and only succeed in enslaving ourselves by our new-found liberty.

"Yesterday has been swallowed by the gulping mouth of time, and tomorrow is only an illusion. We must not continue to live this hectic life without some thought about the awful harvest we are reaping."

Henry and the Great Society

More from Henry and the Great Society

"Esther would often read aloud from "Snowbound," if the snow was drifting against the house, or "Kidnapped," "Treasure Island," or the favorite of the boys, "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn."

"There were tea parties by Hilda with her dolls in the sideyard shade in summer with clover and honeysuckle trumpets to suck the sweetness from, or perhaps a few green apples with salt and some wild berries for dessert."

"Then there was her (Esther's) kitchen-her domain-marked in every corner by the special touch of her own tastes, with its own indescribable fragrance that was a mixture of apples and spices, coffee and tea.....There was baking; fresh fruit pies, or pumpkin or spring rhubarb. During supper at the round table there were excited cries as eager noses sniffed her fresh hot rolls...their faces scrubbed with melted butter, shimmering in their lightness like dancing girls on opening night"

"Henry liked to tell Esther that they had everything they needed, and with food and raiment and shelter they had found the true secret of contentment, as the Bible says. Henry, on their long walks through the fields on a Sunday afternoon, would remind Esther how God's word says that godliness with contentment was great gain and that by this standard they had gained a lot."

"And there was talk, or as they say nowadays, communication. Winter was filled with it, for everything had slowed to a walk; and the evenings were long before the fireplace and rich in special talk...open and intimate discussions on the questions of life and death, right and wrong, moral and immoral. There were the frivolous interruptions of the children, when the talk was serious, that betrayed a searching mind and a longing heart. There was light fun-filled talk that invented new riddles, or composed new poems, or solved hard puzzles. Henry would give now-famous stories. Sometimes they were the modified stories of his own life that always had a moral; but as often as not they were the product of a fertile imagination that could invent pirates and Indians, wild animals and heroes with equal ease. The children would sit spellbound and open-mouthed......."
~Henry and the Great Society

"Winter evenings were special treats. With an apple log sizzling happily in the fire place, there were domino and checker games, chess and games on paper. There were tongue twisters, puzzles and brain teasers, as well as Indian wrestling on the floor with Henry ending up taking on all the kids at once in a free-for-all that left Esther wondering if the china cabinet would survive the crash, as Henry at last toppled to the floor like a giant with little people swarming over him like flies."

"When bedtime came, there was often the gathering at the kitchen table for a cold cup of milk; and then around the lighted lamp, a few verses from the Book of Books, more questions and a bedtime prayer. After lingering kisses that reflected a pleasant evening ended too soon, the children followed Esther with her lamp up the open stairs to their beds to settle deep in the straw and feather ticks."

Words that inspire me part 2

From My Country School Diary ~ Julia Weber Gordon

"In the front of the room on the right is our nature corner, which now contains a jar of hibernating ants, a turtle in an aquarium, wild flowers mounted on cotton under cellophane, a booklet of waxed fall leaves, a booklet of leaf spatter prints, a collection of rocks, fungi, birds' nests, and a winter dish garden of mosses, lichens, pipsissewa, and partridge berries."

"An exhibit of Indian relics including about twenty-five arrowheads, an ax, a mortar and pestle, slickstones, and pieces of pottery......."

"It snowed last night, our first really big snow! How happy the children were. They made snowmen, built a fort, and had soft snowball fights. ...we took time to compare the shapes of snow crystals with the shapes of quartz and salt crystals. I like to watch the children's eyes open wide with wonder."

"Children learn more when they can see things and think of them in relation to themselves rather than abstractly."

"This afternoon we began to work on our rock garden. We have a stone row that was well covered with soil when the road was widened. It is in a shady spot at the edge of the road. There were leaves to be cleaned out and bushes to remove. It was a beautiful day to work outdoors and the children were very happy."

"In the afternoon we tramped over Dad's farm and found quartz crystals, sandstone, shale, limestone, and flint for our collections. I wish I could do this more often. A teacher and the children can get so close in this way."

"We have some turtle eggs in our museum. Four hatched today while the children watched. It fascinated them."

"The children want to give Robin Hood for their puppet show this year. I began to read it to them yesterday. They gather around me and we have a happy time."

"I read the stories of Bach and Haydn to the children. They like the Mozart story best."

"For three years I have tried to bring back to these children the spontaneous desire for learning which their parents and teachers, including myself, have been busy taking away from them."

~This book, written in the late 1930s, takes the reader through four years in the teacher's career. Although this is a public school teacher's diary, I was really inspired! This is a great book for any teacher.

~from a review
The author is a woman who, having few of today's teaching aids to work with, used her ingenuity and resourcefulness to create a richer and more varied learning experience, one that would awaken interest and enthusiasm in children and that would give them a "sense that school was part of the real world, not just a place where you did meaningless things today so that later you might go out and do some other meaningless things somewhere else."

There is so much more in this book, these are just some highlights.

Words that inspire me

"But Susan Wright only laughed. In the summer she'd pack a picnic lunch and she, the two boys, and little Kate would go and spend a day in the woods. Mrs. Wright knew the name of every bird and she could tell a bird by his song. Wilbur and Orville learned to tell birds too."

"That was another thing about Susan Wright. Most other mothers would have thought that this was foolish talk. Most other mothers would have said, "Oh don't be silly, who ever heard of such nonsense!" But not Susan Wright. She knew that even an eleven-year-old boy can have ideas of his own..."

"Their father encouraged them; he felt that there was something special about these two sons of his. So did Mrs. Wright. When other mothers asked her, "What are the boys doing? We never see them around with our sons," she'd smile a sort of secret smile and say, "Oh, they're puttering around in the barn."

~The Wright Brothers