Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
with Dr. Rex M. Rogers

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 09 December 2010

The town where I spent my boyhood is situated along a creek in a county named for the Isle of Guernsey (in the English Channel), which is named for a breed of cattle. Our home on the edge of town was about five minutes from Grandpa Rogers’s farm in the nearby rolling hills, a property that’d been in the family more than 100 years by the time I ran the hills and hollows. A place that still looms large in my memory and make-up.

Four Rogers brothers emigrated from England to Maryland in 1683. Nearly two centuries later our line of the Rogers clan traveled cross-country looking for farmland, finding it in the not-so-old state of Ohio. My Great Great Grandpa John Rogers was one of them. He stayed for a time in another community nearby, than purchased “The Farm” in 1853. Before the Civil War, his obituary says, he assisted runaway slaves along the underground railroad.

Lilburn, John’s son and my Great Grandpa, later worked The Farm along with his family until a heart attack took his life at the dinner table on Christmas Eve, 1917. Suddenly without a father to work The Farm my Grandpa Tom Rogers, then in the Eighth Grade, dropped out of school and began driving wagons for a living—and working The Farm. His two older brothers had by then moved away to pursue professional careers and never returned to farming. Grandpa stayed, bought their shares, worked The Farm, and at 33 years married Grandma. Dad was born and raised on The Farm.

When Dad and Mom got married he headed with her to the big city, her hometown, which is to say Small Town. But The Farm was never very far away, geographically or emotionally, especially while Grandpa and Grandma continued to live there.

So when I came along I all but grew up on The Farm. My first dollar came from putting up hay. Hot days of walking alongside slow-moving wagons picking up bales and tossing them on. When I got into high school and stronger we tossed the bales five rows high.

I’ve forked many a stall clean in the spring. Like most farm labor actually, it was satisfying work. I forked the straw-laden manure into a wheelbarrow, rolled the full load past the stanchions into the barnyard and up a precariously positioned plank. Over she went. The offload was fun, but it was more fun to come back into the stall, dig for my pocketknife, and carve a small notch into an old sideboard. I was a gunslinger keeping a morbid tally. The number of notches increased as a public testament to my prowess that speaks to this day.

The source of all this fertilizer was Grandpa’s Herefords, or what he called “White Faces.” Hereford’s get their name from Herefordshire, England, are reddish of body and feature white hair on their heads, neck fronts, and underbelly. Sometimes they have a white sock or two. Grandpa’s White Faces weren’t purebred, but they were polled, meaning their horns had been genetically bred from them. Some people prefer polled cattle because horns get in the way, damage farm stalls or fences, and can be dangerous even if accidentally. Grandpa’s herds were not huge, maybe 25, 30, 40 at the largest, but they were always there, required management and winter care, and provided a source of meat for the family. Best of all, they created timeless pictures of pastoral tranquility on long summer evenings. For a farmer, there’s nothing more relaxing than watching a herd of quietly grazing cattle.

Grandpa kept one breeding bull named “John.” Come to think of it, all the bulls year after year were named John and all were registered Hereford sires. To protect the genetic strength of the herd calves Grandpa would sell the older bull and buy a younger one every three or four years. I remember one John who was mean and had to wear a huge specially built metal mask on his face, which had eye covers that prevented him from seeing straight ahead unless he tilted his nose to the sky. Most of the bulls, though, and certainly the cows were quite docile, but then again we didn’t mess with the bull.

The Farm featured a continually changing menagerie of animal life. There were chickens, pigs, at times a pony or two, dogs, cats, and once in awhile sheep, goats, and maybe a horse.

I’ve never been a farmer, but in some sense I grew up one and I’m glad for it. Some of my fondest memories come from down on The Farm. It’s part of me warp and woof, imbedding in my DNA and worked into my cultural worldview. To this day driving through farm country, at home or abroad, remains a limitless source of simple pleasure.

I’ve always believed my farm roots helped me teach or preach, because the imagery of Scripture is built upon agricultural economies.

In my book, I had the best of both worlds, The Farm and Small Town.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 09 December 2010

John Edwards, former North Carolina Senator and erstwhile presidential candidate, husband of Elizabeth, and man who conducted an affair with a campaign aide is, in my book, the definition of a cad.

I don’t write many pieces like this, but Elizabeth died this week after six years battling breast cancer. She described herself as the “anti-Barbie” for her more realistic figure, stood tall in the face of her husband’s moral and political decline, and gave the nation a new definition of strong female grace.

In 2004, John Edwards was on top of the world. A former and highly successful trial attorney, he’d served a term in the United States Senate, and was picked as John Kerry’s vice presidential running mate in what proved to be an unsuccessful run to the White House. Edwards followed this by becoming a leading Democratic candidate in the 2008 presidential race. Meanwhile, the day following Election Day 2004, Elizabeth discovered she had cancer.

Sometime in the midst of all this John Edwards got involved in an affair with political staff member Richelle Hunter. When this news broke during his candidacy in 2008, he followed a now all-too-familiar pattern: denial, denial, denial, which is to say, lie, lie, lie, then tearful admission that “mistakes were made.” He even later vigorously denied fathering Hunter’s child, only to have it later confirmed. All this took place as Elizabeth fought to survive.

Elizabeth went on to write Saving Graces, a best-selling memoir. But she ultimately lost her fight with the disease.

Elizabeth and John deserved a lot more than they got. She deserved respect and better treatment from a cad of a husband. He, while seeing his political future crash and burn, deserved more recriminations than he received.

We don’t know what words were exchanged between Elizabeth and John privately, so we really don’t know what he may have said to her. We do know that his public apologies have all been forced and shallow.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, pulled no punches in a few interviews, yet never really responded publicly with fiery ire. She’ll be remembered for her courage and her grace. Unless he makes a serious readjustment, how do you suppose John will be remembered?

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 07 December 2010

When I was a little eeper I was sent to visit my Grandma who lived across a big field from our house on the edge of Small Town. After a time I wandered downstairs to watch her work with what was even then an old-fashioned wringer washer. It’s the kind with actual rollers twisting and smashing the clothes out of and back into the wash or rinse water.

I was just over 4 years old, probably old enough to know better than to put my fingers on the clothes near the rollers. But of course I did so and, you guessed it, I didn’t let go in time. In a manner of seconds my arm was drawn into the rollers along with the clothes.

I guess I started yelling or crying or both because Grandma ran (make that flew) down the stairs to the rescue yelling or screaming or both louder than me. By then my arm was into the wringer almost up to my elbow. I remember her flipping a lever on the right side of the washer, which released the rollers and freed my arm.

This is one of my earliest vivid memories. I can see the washer, my bare arm, the wet clothes, and Grandma wearing white. I can see the basement steps, clothes hanging on a nearby line, and the old furnace. I can hear the washer and remember Grandma’s excitement. But I can’t remember being all that shaken myself, or in pain, just something between befuddled, scared, and Oh Yeah Man, That Was Cool.

I don’t remember either, but Mom does, that this happened when she was in the hospital with a newborn sister scheduled to come home the next day. She did and I’m told Grandma was still so worried my arm would be permanently damaged she didn’t have it in her to help care for a newborn. So another relative came to help and gave my sister her first bath. Meanwhile, I returned to boy-land, roaming wild and free and oblivious to the fact that a New Sheriff had arrived in my home.

You’d think this would be the end of the story, but it’s not. Years later in college I met this girl who’d grown up in the next state, West Virginia, two and one-half hours from me. We sort of got along well. Actually, we got along really well and still are after thirty-six plus years of marriage.

The amazing thing: when she was about 7 years old she also got her arm caught in a neighbor’s wringer washer. Unlike me, who bears no physical remembrance, she wears a small scar on her right hand pointer finger. This, we speculate, is because she rescued herself, pulling her arm back out of the rollers. Whoa, I doubt if I would’ve had the smarts or the moxie to do that. Good thing Grandma was upstairs.

So what are the odds that two kids who ran their arms through wringer washers would get together?

But who cares? We got together.

Years hence, like most people, we’ve been “run through the wringer” more than once by the vagaries and vicissitudes of life.

But who cares? We’re still together.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 06 December 2010

There’s so much about Christmas that’s worth enjoying and remembering that no one will ever run out of stories, songs, or sonnets.

Christmas is special because it’s the time we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the babe in the manger who is Savior of the world.

Beyond this greatest of all Christmas gifts most of us add family, tradition, faith and worship, love, hope, goodwill, and peace on earth. We add coming home for the holidays and times just as poignant when we can’t come home. We think of lights and decorations, gifts and giving, holiday music, snow, food and feasting, excited children, seeing loved ones long unseen, and so much more.

Christmas is the best time of year and one of the things that make’s it so are the memories of Christmases past. Even Ebenezer Scrooge knew that much.

Recently I recalled a few of our Christmas memories. Few recollections are more fun. I commend it to you.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 05 December 2010

Ten P’s in a Pod: A Million-Mile Journal of the Arnold Pent Family (The Vision Forum, 2004) is a remarkable and heart-warming story of how a family of ten traveled across two nations to share salvation in Christ.

Ten P’s in a Pod was compiled from journals written by Arnold Pent III during his seventeenth to nineteenth years. First self-published in 1965, the book became a word-of-mouth success nationwide among Christian families inspired by this engaging story of dedicated parents, a musically talented family of eight siblings, a vision for evangelism, and God’s blessings.

Arnold Pent III is the third child and second son of Arnold and Persis Pent Jr. His account is therefore personal, funny, poignant, and respectful, and its spiritual depth is a testimony to the parents’ instruction and the Scripture’s impact upon the teenage author.

The story reveals a Father who was a man of astounding faith, innovative spirit, and vision for evangelism, along with a Mother who was a person of equal faith, faithfulness, and servant’s heart. How these two were able to take a family of eight children across both the United States and Canada throughout the 1950s in various old cars is a story worth reading.

The family eventually earns the sobriquet “the world’s most unusual family.” Their incredible facility with long, memorized passages of Scripture, their musical presentations, and their 10 P’s story of making their way without knowing how or when necessary funds would come, all while driving thousands of miles, is, in a word, amazing.

The Pent family home-schooled their children before home-school became a verb. They traveled as a family music program and reached all manner of churches and people with God’s message. Their story demonstrates that it’s possible for siblings to love one another and for a family to stay together as a productive unit during a time when cultural trends began pulling families apart.

Lessons are apparent throughout the book: God is faithful, God provides, exercise and good eating habits really can preserve health, Scripture memorization is good for the soul as well as practice of the Christian life, family matters, the Good News can reach the seemingly most hardened individuals.

Not long ago I happened to become acquainted with Arnold Pent III, so I can attest that his love for the Lord and his desire to reach the lost continue fifty years later. His family’s story is engaging and enjoyable. I recommend it, both as a “good read” and as a source of inspiration.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 05 December 2010

Jim Samra’s The Gift of the Church: How God Designed the Local Church to Meet Our Needs as Christians (Zondervan, 2010) is a pastor’s passionate answer to the question, “What benefit is the church?” In his first book, Samra states his conviction early: “Nowhere is God as present as he is in the midst of his gathered church.”

Samra cares about the universal Church, but his heartbeat is the local church, the one we attend or should be attending on a regular basis. Samra acknowledges the value of other Christian organizations, parachurch ministries, and gatherings of two or more believers, all of which matter to the Christian life. But in Samra’s view only the church is created by God for specific purposes of community, and Jesus proclaimed this uniqueness when he said, “I will build my church,” (Matthew 16:18).

Samra argues the church offers an opportunity for God to speak in a special way. Through the Holy Spirit, Samra believes people hear from God other than simply in the preacher’s actual words. He relates several anecdotes about people who later credited him with spiritually energizing statements he never made, yet some of these people had the statements documented in their notes. Samra believes this is evidence of God’s unique presence in the church.

Church is a place where God brings believers together in concert with him and others, a place where diverse talents are combined in productive unity. Church is the City of God or place of koinonia, God’s design for countering the lonely crowd and alienation so often characteristic of the City of Man. Despite the flaws in the church, the result of sinful human beings gathered together, Samra strongly contends the church is God’s vision, an organization and an organism of great beauty.

The book’s theological analysis is interspersed with stories and illustrations drawn from the author’s church experience both as a parishioner and as a pastor. The stories are especially helpful making the otherwise scholarly text more interesting and understandable.

Overall the book is a love letter to the church. It’s written by a pastor with a clear sense of calling. It’s written with a great appreciation for the spiritual blessings of family, of home church, and of church-as-family. It’s written with both a faith and an empirically based confidence in the profound benefits awaiting all believers who accept the gift of the church.

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