If homeschooling saves our children from any one thing in the public school classroom, it is that dreaded first paper at the return of every new school year that seeks to answer the question, “What did you do during the summer?”  Since parents are the teachers in homeschooling, they know exactly what their children did all summer so this is a mute point!

ICHE Convention 2013 may be officially over, but I have the greatest confidence that it will continue to produce fruit that remains.

With the long awaited coming of spring comes the annual spring-cleaning at the Smith household.  It starts in the house as my wife and daughters wash windows, clean out closets and dust out nooks and crannies I didn’t even know existed.  The Smith men—helped out by the outdoorsy Smith women—start by power washing out the old barn that has been cluttered by last year’s mud daubers and all the hay that has been thrown down to feed the four-legged menagerie.  It’s a day that is looked forward to with both excitement and with dread.  Excitement,

Sometimes the Bible is not an easy read.  As a matter of fact, it can be downright uncomfortable.  It contains stories that are hard for us to even speak of, yet teaching lessons we dare not forget.  Such is the case of Lot.

My wife always wanted to take a big trip out west in a motor home.  Seven years ago her dream became a reality.  I loaded up our then seven children and all the paraphernalia that goes along with them as well as a seven-months pregnant wife and took off to the Wild West.

I remember when I was growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s; more than one evangelical preacher predicted the apocalyptic day when our Bibles would be taken from us Christians.  Believers were encouraged to memorize scriptures, goaded not by the Spirit of God, but by the intimidating threat that God’s Word would one day be unavailable.  Now, some three decades later, the plethora of Bible translations as well as Bibles on cd’s, dvd’s, downloads and the internet could easily generate a long and hearty laugh at those fearful prophecies of old.&nbsp

"For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.”—Deut. 16:15 (ESV)

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

A recent article in the liberal magazine Parenting covered the concerning statistic that more than one in five American adults now take at least one type of medication to treat a psychological or behavioral disorder, a 22 percent rise since 2001. Similarly, there was a 264% increase of medication for ADHD among women aged 20-44 in the last decade.  The author described a young mother who was diagnosed with “situational depression” by her therapist. What was the horrendous “situation” that she confessed was the trigger for her depression? Her children.

The concept of advertising intrigues me. Think about it with me for a moment. People who live thousands of miles from us, who don’t know us at all, get paid a whole lot of money to get us to buy something we really don’t need. How often have you gone into someone’s home or even a place of business and there on the television set is the Home Shopping Network? It takes me back to my nostalgic high school days of Ronco and K-Tel. (I just dated myself.)