Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands. He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.
When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.”
“My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. But grant me this one request,” she said. “Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.”
- Judges 11:29-37
“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
- Matthew 5:33-37
As I mentioned the other day, I have been babysitting in Tennessee. In the photo is the “baby.” He will be nine-years-old and in the third grade in a couple of months, in school already.
He is a strange combination of pretending to behave, and all the adults bask in the glory of quiet, and then doing the exact opposite of whatever he is told.
A fight with his older sister led to a timeout. His sister is this little angel unless you invade her personal space. Then she becomes a venomous snake who attacks first and sorts things out later. She just turned eleven. Our youngest has a favorite bad habit, invading someone’s personal space. After all, he is wonderful. Everyone calls him cute. So, who would not want wonderful, cute in close up.
Otherwise, the fifteen-year-old jigsaw puzzle master could have babysat. On a few occasions, I had to literally sit on the “baby.”
Well, after the fight in question, he was given a timeout. I explained to his mother how “parent” was a verb, and you could not outgrow the job. Timeouts just give miscreants more time to figure out the diabolical ways to cause mischief once they are released. She admitted that he had zero imagination. He spent all his time in front of a huge screen, playing a game that had a character kill things. She insisted that the “rod” that cannot be spared is a rod that guides, not spanks. Thus, I suggested she “guide,” yet another verb.
So, they stopped the timeout and had a long conversation. After explaining that he needed to read and not play violent video games as much, he proposed that he would read a chapter in a book and then he could play a game for thirty minutes.
When his Dad got home, he convinced him that the new rule was like a credit card. He played for an hour and a half. He then went to bed, hoping everyone would forget that he owed them three chapters.
The next morning, he went straight to the game system and turned it on. I asked if he had read a book. But, knowing his tricks, his brother and sister examined him and after “reading” a chapter in a book, he was unable to identify who the main character was, what the main character was doing, what the setting for the book was, what the genre of the book was (fantasy), etc. Yes, he had flipped through the pages with his eyes open, nothing more. The book was a book his sister had read while in the third grade. But his mother thought the book to be too advanced. He then “read” a simpler book with the same result.
When he made his bargain, something he dreamed up himself, he never counted on having to comprehend what he had “read.”
I suggested a Hardy Boys mystery. I had given a boxed set to his older brother, and he refused to read them, in that there was no dragon in the story.
Note: The high school mascot is the dragon, and the children refuse to read anything that has no dragon.
But when I suggested Hardy Boys, his father, a schoolteacher, told me that I could get into trouble having him read a Hardy Boys mystery. They have been removed from the school library. Why? They promote the idea that young children can be free thinkers, have critical thinking, and can problem solve.
Rev. David Robertson has mentioned this in his podcast a couple of times, but now there is proof that the secular world is trying to create mindless children who cannot think and thus are easily manipulated by whoever the powerful people are behind the mass media outlets.
So, we have a child who made an oath that he never intended to keep. We have books that he could easily read, but he is not allowed to read because it gives him ideas of self-dependence, critical thinking and problem solving.
So, the photo above is him finding a means of entertaining himself during timeout, as he refuses to actually read a book. But he can play with the dog. She gets into trouble also, a great team.
Besides trying to guide the children, I can pray. After all, I am just their Opa.
But as I scheduled this, I walked into the living room. My son wanted to take a nap, but he was holding the book, and our youngest was reading out loud. My son then asked him questions, after each paragraph to ensure he was comprehending. You know, doing that parent thing and being someone with good schoolteacher skills.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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