The result of taking Jesus out of our lives

In the news recently I have noticed an increase in the number of crimes involving children. From the 18 year old who is charged with rape in Gaffney, to the 18 year old who died two weekends ago from alcohol overdose, to children being abused and abducted the list goes on.
Why are the youth of America committing heinous crimes? Why are we committing heinous crimes against the youngest and weakest of our race?
These are two of the many questions that stick out in my mind as Christmas approaches this year. At a time when children are supposed to be carefree and happy, they have to constantly be on alert for someone wanting to hurt them. And at the young age of 18, many children are facing jail time for violent crimes they committed.
There are many headlines this week along this subject line but I am going to comment on two(well okay more than two, I just can't help it). First, the man in Columbia, SC who is dressing as Santa Clause and posing in pictures with children and then giving them rides on his motor bike. How twisted do you have to be to take advantage of this season of year to hurt innocent children.
No one has found to be physically harmed by this man, but he is not acting in good faith, by taking a child without their parent’s permission and giving them a ride. I can't imagine the parent's distress to find their child missing.
The second story is the Gaffney Sexual Assault cases. An 18-year-old. I can’t get that number out of my head. Where does an 18-year-old learn this type of behavior? Then I see the case of the mom in St. Louis, Missouri. A mom sold her 9-year-old daughter to a man for $20 a trick for him to molest the little girl.
Not only did the mom sale her daughter, she held the little girl while the molestation was taking place. How could a mom do this?
This editorial is asking more questions than it is answering because I do not have the ultimate answer.
What are we teaching our children to make them go out and do this? What addictions do we have that would make a mother betray her daughter and allow these assaults to take place?
I don’t think all the pscho-blahblah would answer these questions. I do have one answer though. We are a country without Christ. We have taken Him out of our schools, government, but most importantly we have taken Him out of our homes.
We have placed Christ in a little box of conformity that we like to call “church” and we visit Him every Sunday, and maybe Wednesday.
Jesus has no place in our everyday life. We can not live with the constant guilt we feel by having Him there so we place Him in the box and visit Him when we want to.
That is what is wrong with this country, state, county and town. Blacksburg is no different. We have our image of the 5’11” brown hair, blue eyed, white Jesus who looks perfect at all times.
Jesus was a Jew. He had brown eyes most likely and was probably not at all attractive. He was bloodied on the cross, He was bruised, cut and not clean. He hung out with the sinners and the outcasts of society. He ministered to them yet did not become like them. He was Jesus, the Lion of Judah and also the Lamb of God.
We need to stop picturing Jesus like us and start picturing ourselves like Jesus. We need to invite Him back into our homes, and into our lives. We need to call out the sins and love the sinners. We need to embrace the unlovable and care for those in need. That is what Jesus did.
This is my inadequate answer to how we can turn our country around. Our children need to see us “On Fire” for Jesus. Not just a quick burn fire, but an everlasting one.

Fifteen Minutes Can Change Your Child’s Life

What can you do in fifteen minutes? Check your email, clean the kitchen(not in my house), take a shower and fill your gas tank. All these things may be done in fifteen minutes but what impact do they have on your child’s future. Not much.
Reading to your child for just fifteen minutes a day has been proven to increase a child’s literacy skills and help them develop an active imagination.
Children who are read to during the formative years of birth-five years old are shown to have more interest in reading through out their life.
What does reading give a child? Reading helps develop a child’s vocabulary, helps a child learn to spell, gives them the ability to follow plot-lines and increases their studying skills later in their education.
The ability to read and process a story starts at a young age. Some experts even suggest reading to your child as early as 6 weeks from birth. I have seen this personally. I am not going to brag on myself I am far from the perfect parent, but reading has always been an important part of my life and my husband’s life. Just as our parents before us loved to read, we do too, and we are now instilling that into our two sons. Neither can read yet, but they love to look at books and have books read to them.
I remember when my now four year old was 15 months old. He would sit on our couch in our apartment and look through his VeggieTales books. It was so cute and we took tons of pictures.
Why did he do that? He was mimicking his parent’s behavior. Books have always been a balm for me. They help me to travel through time and around the world. Books teach me about different cultures and ideologies. Literature can allow you to be anything you want to be. That is the present I want to give my children. The ability to expand their minds and explore the world.
You too can give your child this precious gift. All you have to do is spend 15 minutes a day reading to your child or having your child read to you.