History Hound Travels

The first chapter speaks of Creation. It begins with startling simplicity by stating that there was once no time. Each day of Creation is examined, and Beechick draws wonderful word pictures with her words. This book is based in the Bible, and while you can certainly recognize where she gets her inspiration, the added detail is breathtaking. One can almost see God’s smile as He beholds what He has done. The colors in the mind as one “sees” the picture she is painting are richer, deeper, sharper, truer, unfiltered by dust, vivid. The chapter concludes with God declaring the seventh day holy and resting as Adam and Eve begin their honeymoon.

~Are you baffled by the theory of Creation or comforted by it?

Beechick’s book begins with a preface that embraces what is typically called the “young earth” viewpoint, and this is the view point with which I agree as well. Many authors have researched and written about both viewpoints, and even laying issues of faith aside, the young earth explanation just makes sense to me. When I do take matters of faith into account, it makes even more sense. God is a God of order, not disorder. Even the most basic experiments indicate that things tend to fall apart rather than coalesce into greater and more complex things, and so the whole idea of evolution is laughable to me.

Given that this is my viewpoint, it should now be clearer why I chose to begin with Adam and His Kin. It only makes sense to begin at the beginning, does it not?

~What are your views on the actual age of the earth?
~Why do you think as you do?

History is by definition those things we know happened in the past. We know it happened, because people wrote it or told it. Pre implies before. So what happened before the things that happened in the past? Well……..more history, right? I confess I’ve never understood this term “pre-history”. When books use it they always say something like this: In pre-historic times, early man… but if we know what happened it can’t be prehistory, now can it?

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be exploring this earliest history, in the form of a short course. I’ll be reading and sharing with you from Ruth Beechick’s marvelous Adam and his Kin. If this goes well, I may continue to use this site as a sort of history course. I’d love it if you would read along with me!

On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born. If you have never read a biography of this president, you should run to your local library, and spend the rest of the day curled up on the couch getting to know this man. Mr. Lincoln was president from 1861 until his death in 1865. He was a self-educated man, and it is worth noting that he was a Republican. It’s also worth noting that although his Gettysburg Address said that the United States was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”, his Emancipation Proclamation only declared slavery unlawful in the rebelling southern states.

Recommended for further reading:

People often complain about history, saying it has no bearing on them because it happened “so long ago”. I want to challenge that theory. Lets use WWII as an example. Ending in the 40s, it was a thing of the past when my mother was born. Yet her father, my grandfather, fought in that war. Chances are one of your family members did too. So, even though it’s been 60 years, it’s still not that far removed from you personally.

Let’s go even further back, and consider the Civil War. Goodness, that was 140 years ago! Practically forever, right? Well, my grandmother was born in 1911, and personally knew people who had been slaves before the war. So how far removed is it really? Just two lifetimes! In the grand scheme of time, the Civil War is a recent event.

Instead of counting years, or even decades, thinking of historical events in the context of lifetimes can make it easier to connect events.