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   May, June and July are months set aside in our culture to honor and remember our Mothers, our Graduates, our service Men and Women, our Ancestors, our Fathers, and our Country.  As Christians, we are expected by our Heavenly Father to do all this and more; and yet, we are to remember that even though we live down here and are citizens (in our care) of the United States of America, we are citizens of Heaven first and foremost.

 Paul, in Ephesians 6:1-3, states, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.  Honor your Father and Mother (Which is the first commandment with a promise), that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.”  So even though he says in Galatians 3:27-28, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  Therefore there is neither Jew and Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  He does not mean there are no longer any differences between us, as Feminism and the militant homosexual movement try to assert. 

Ephesians 5:21-33;

I Peter 3:1-12; and

I Corinthians 11:1-16

All make a huge differentiation between us spiritually in our own households, in our internal hard-wiring, as well as to our external, biological differences.  Society has always been in rebellion to God on these and many more subjects, as well: but we, as Christians, have no excuse when we try to be like the world instead of being like Christ.  So feel good about honoring your wives & mothers on Mother’s day for being the mothers they are and were to us. Feel good about honoring your Husbands and your Fathers on Father’s Day for being the fathers they are and were to us.  As Christians we can celebrate the unity of our creation in the image of God, and with just as much vigor, celebrate the dichotomy between the sexes as our Creator and Heavenly Father intended.

 As Christians, we can encourage our young adults ready to enter the work force from college, or ready to enter the university from high school, to “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.”  We can encourage them to press on in their Christian faith as they press on with learning and life down here.  We can warn them of professors like Richard Rorty, who said, “ . . . to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.”  He also thought that students would be blessed to be under the influence “of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.’  Richard Rorty went so far as to say professors “are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”

 So we celebrate our graduates’ accomplishments, but we also see it is just one more step in this thing called life and not an end in itself.  It is not a time to forget everything we learned from our loving and caring Christian community of home and church, but of a time to learn more of how the eternal truths fit into all segments of our lives; educationally, vocationally, in our families, in our neighborhoods and in our country, as well.

 It is true he said that our “citizenship is in heaven,” in Philippians 3:20; but it is just as true he taught us to be good citizens down here, as well, in

Romans 13:1-7;

Matthew 22:21; and

I Peter 2:13-25. 

So we honor our soldiers and we remember their sacrifice, even as we celebrate our independence from England not from God. 

(I hope you can join us on June 29th for our Pork Chop Dinner, games and fireworks . . .an evening and a night of food, fun, fellowship and celebration!)

  We also honor the faith of those in our physical families each Memorial Day, as well as the faith of our spiritual mothers and fathers who proceeded us at WCC since 1854.

 So honor away, remember to the hilt, and celebrate your physical, national and spiritual heritage.  For it is who we are and who He made us to be! 

In the service of the KING,

David N. Camp