Haley Family Stories (Part 1: The Haley Side)

Eric has been working on our family history lately, in a way that will no doubt at least be found interesting to some of our family members and distant cousins. He thought it important to record some of the family stories. I’m going to let him tell them in his words (unless I need to correct a few things about me!), and also add in some of those ancestor pictures we have. This Part 1 will be about his father Leonard Haley and his ancestry – you know, the one our business is named after, and whose picture smiles down upon me in my office.

Leonard Elbert Haley, Founder of Leonard’s Books

It has been 44 years since I began, as a hobby, to delve into the family lineage of my wife and myself. When I started, I was living in Hawaii and basically limited in resources, that included stories from my parents and letters from the closest living relatives. My interest grew as I sought to verify even the scant information given me. I began visiting libraries in Honolulu, and once I was back in Indiana where I was born and raised, made occasional trips to the Purdue University Library, the Tippecanoe County Library, and the Allan County Library.

After moving to Carroll County, Indiana in 1989, I met a wonderful lady by the name of Phyllis Moore, who was the curator and librarian of the Carroll County Museum. She was obsessed with genealogy and was kind enough to teach me basically everything I needed to know: where to find resources, whom to talk to, and most importantly, she led me right to the records that were available for free. This small museum, though owned by the County, was chock-full of books, records, photos, and other documents that satisfied her own interests. 

I remember that when I first shared with her the connection my mother’s family had with that of Governor Thomas Dudley of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, she said, “Oh, that’s the Sutton-Dudley line. We share the same family history. Let me show you what I’ve got.” Within a few short years, she walked me through the microfiche files of the LDS church and all the county records and census records available to her. 

Her caution concerning the LDS files was that they were not always reliable, but then neither were many of the records of the various New England societies from a century earlier. Everyone has an agenda and that can often include a desire to build a heritage larger than life, or even to hide the truth to save the family’s reputation. One of her own ancestors was burned for being a witch in the infamous Salem witch trials. (One of my ancestors was her prosecutor!) That was not easy information to find and verify. 

She soon offered my name to the Carroll County 4-H program, whose extension agent was looking for a project supervisor for the Genealogy project. I retired from that position 21 years later, after the program became a State Fair project and had been transformed into more of a complicated research project and less of a family heirloom project. Many of the youth in the program switched over to scrapbooking, which allowed them the freedom to include information that was important to them.

Research can indeed be fun, but it is not always inspiring. A family's history includes so much more than names and dates. It connects us with history itself and can connect us with one another too, as it did with myself and Mrs. Moore. It inspires us to look deeper into the past, to find bright spots in an otherwise dark history. It helps us to see that each of our ancestors, regardless of their shortcomings, served a common purpose in life. That purpose, in the end, was you and me.

I remember one of the last conversations that I had with my mother just two days before she passed. It was at the grave site of my father, and as I brushed some of the dried cut grass from his stone, I asked her, “Mom, why do all the family members buried in this cemetery have nice headstones, but my Grandfather Charles (my father’s father) only has a slab that is often not even well mounted in the dirt?” 

She explained that my dad and his siblings had little respect for him because he got my grandmother pregnant when he knew he was dying of tuberculosis. But then she paused and said, “But look at all the wonderful people who are alive today because of that one irresponsible act, … so I guess that God knows best doesn’t He?” Yes, He certainly does.

And so, I present to you my family and my wife’s family, not in the form of the dry details of a research project, but as a continuation of a living history.

~~~

To start out, it’s important to understand that everybody has a genealogy. No one, in the words of my step-grandfather, “was hatched from a buzzard’s egg.” We all have great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents. We all have come from a mix of unscrupulous as well as genuinely honest characters. We simply don’t know who they were. 

There are some family lines that cannot be traced back more than a few generations due to a lack of written history or documentation. There are others that can be traced back 30 generations or more. My purpose is to present the most interesting figures and stories of our family, connecting them with the dry stuff only when necessary. 

LEONARD ELBERT HALEY

Leonard was my father, born in November of 1926, just about a month after his father Charles died of tuberculosis. Charles was the father of ten children, two having died when only a few days old. So, my father was raised in a household of eight children by a single mom – well, sort of. She was reduced to a life of severe poverty after her husband’s death and moved to the slums of South End Lafayette, Indiana. It appears that sometime in the early teen years of my father’s life, she began living with a man named Bill Drum. As a child, I always heard him referred to as her common law husband. 

My dad didn’t tell us the details of his mother’s relationships, but the basics were as much as a young child could handle. I was told that my grandmother was married four times. The first was Charles (whose picture hung on the coal bin in the basement), and then there was Bill Drum, her common law husband (who raised Leonard). Next was Arthur Lane, and the last was Lon Dunbar, whom she divorced because he killed her cat. 

I later discovered that Arthur Lane was also her stepfather, and Lon Dunbar was her son-in-law, the widower of her oldest daughter. These were the skeletons that I found hanging in the Haley closet while searching for the family’s history, but I guess it’s reasonable to say that my grandmother did what she felt necessary to survive and keep food on the table and a roof over the heads of her large family.

Leonard was what could fairly be described as a street urchin. He ran the streets of Lafayette, harassing the Chinese butcher, stealing coal off of freight trains so he could earn a dime to watch a movie, and generally getting into trouble. By his early teen years, he was hopping freight trains for short trips to Battleground, Indiana, and back again. Once he was told that a certain train would take him to Indianapolis where he could watch the Indy 500. He hopped that train and eventually found himself in Houston, Texas. The police in Houston were able to contact his mother, who had no means to get her son back home again to Indiana, so the officers took up a collection and bought Leonard a bus ticket home.

Leonard performed poorly in school. His seventh grade report card does not show that, with mostly A’s and B’s recorded, but a closer look reveals that his age was 15, and by the age of 16, he had dropped out of school and gotten his first job loading feed sacks. A year later, he was working in Evansville at The Sunbeam Electric Plant, apparently making cartridge casings, where he met Rejonnah Patmore. He was still only seventeen years old but convinced her that he was twenty-one. He traveled to Birdseye, Indiana, to ask her mother’s permission to marry her, and it wasn’t until they signed the marriage license that he confessed his true age.

Leonard received his draft notice and was quickly sent off to the Army boot camp, while his wife Rejonnah continued to work in the same factory complex, which was renovated for wartime production of the Republic P47 Thunderbolt. Leonard was part of the 8th Army Division which was preparing for the mainland invasion of Japan toward the end of WWII. He was, however, spared that potentially deadly assault when the first atomic bombs were dropped, and was instead part of the Occupation Forces in Japan after the surrender.

Tech Corporal Leonard E. Haley

What was probably puzzling to many who knew Leonard, was that he came back from the war a changed man. He had a focus to buy a home and a car, raise a family, work hard, and live a respectable life. He had two brothers who also survived the war, and the Haley family fared well, in spite of the odds against them.

Leonard soon learned the carpenter’s trade, built many houses including his own, and later started his own business selling antiques and used furniture. He made a good living, was impeccably honest, was a good father and faithful husband, and received the Lord Jesus as his Savior on his death bed at age 61, with a smile bigger than I had ever seen before.

Somewhere, something in him changed. The desire to do wrong was replaced with a desire to do right, and the desire to do right eventually led him to the Savior.

 

CHARLES ELBERT HALEY, ROBERT HALEY, JOHN WESLEY HALEY

Charles was born in 1889, and was the father of Leonard. I know little about him since he died of tuberculosis about a month before my father was born. 

Charles Elbert Haley with wife Myrtle Mae (Ledman) Pruitt

It appears that he worked as a lineman. He married my Grandmother Myrtle Mae (Ledman) Pruitt in 1909 and lived all of his life (37 years) in Lafayette, Indiana. While I never knew Charles, I remember my grandmother when she lived in a makeshift house in Lafayette, which was a combination of a small military Quonset hut and a tarpaper shack. She would show us pictures of her brothers, but never mentioned her deceased husband Charles, that I can recall. Charles is buried at Springvale Cemetery in Lafayette in a poorly kept section with a gravestone that is somewhat elusive. 

Robert Haley, Leonard’s grandfather, was born in or near Lafayette in 1861. In 1887, he married Martha Jane Edwards, the daughter of James Edwards and Jemima Canaday. Sometime after Martha’s death in 1905 (at age 38), Robert married Ollie Kenworthy. 

Ollie was from a Quaker family. My Aunt Eva spoke of Robert as “not having a religious bone in his body,” yet it appears that before he died, he became a Quaker and is buried at Grand View Cemetery in West Lafayette, Indiana. His death is recorded as occurring in 1933 at Lafayette’s Home Hospital, which was where I and my siblings were born, as well as my second daughter Emily and my oldest son Chris. The hospital no longer exists. Martha Jane is buried at Hebron Cemetery in West Lafayette. Her stone was apparently reset by the WPA during the Great Depression.

John Wesley Haley, Leonard’s great grandfather, sometimes referred to in records as simply Wesley or Westly, was born in 1828 in Virginia, the son of Benjamin Haley and Mahala Sumate. He married Margaret Lynch, who was born in 1834. They share a gravestone at Grand View Cemetery in West Lafayette. Wesley served in the Company D 150th Indiana Infantry during the Civil War, but served only from February-August 1865, at the end of the war.

BENJAMIN HALEY AND MAHALA (SHUMATE) HALEY

Benjamin Haley was the first of the Haley Family to live in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, arriving in 1850. He was born in Virginia in 1809, married Mahala before moving to Tennessee, and is listed in the 1860 census as a farmer in Tippecanoe County. While I have no other records related to his Virginia family at this time, the records of the Shumate family extend another 10 generations to Daniel de la Chaumette, born circa 1450 in the region of Limousin, France. So, while the Haley’s were probably English, the Shumates were undoubtedly French. Benjamin was my father’s great great grandfather. 

Note: There is a wealth of information in the footnotes concerning Daniel de la Chaumete (bn 1619) on Geni.com.

 

PRUITT, LEDMAN, MILLS, HORNADAY

These branches of the Haley family are the ancestors of my great great grandparents, Abner Mills Pruitt and Evelyn Ledman. 

Both sides of this family were Quaker, with the Ledman’s apparently moving over to the Brethren Church during its early years. It has been part of the family lore that Abner Pruitt (1860-1931) was a devout Quaker and preferred plain speech, especially when he was angry. Abner, by his request, is buried in an unmarked grave at Springvale Cemetery in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. After Abner died, Evelyn Ledman (1869-1949) married Arthur Lane, her stepfather, who was eight years younger than Evelyn and died three years after her, but not before marrying Evelyn’s daughter Myrtle Mae. Her gravestone at West Point Cemetery in Tippecanoe County, Indiana reads “Evelyn Ledman Lane.” Arthur is also buried there (somewhere).

Abner Mills Pruitt’s mother was Hannah Mills, the daughter of Daniel Mills and Esther Furnas. Esther’s father was Robert Furnas (1772-1863). We have a copy of a picture of him and of his wife, Hannah Wilson, taken in their senior years.

Robert and Hannah (Wilson) Furnas

Evelyn Ledman (1869-1949) was the daughter of Benjamin Franklin Ledman (1838-1917). Benjamin served with the 12th Indiana Battery during the Civil War. We have a copy of a photo of him in his senior years, with his children. 

L to R: Benjamin Franklin Ledman with Harvey, Evelyn (Pruitt), and Will, his children

Benjamin Franklin Ledman is buried at the Piermont Cemetery in Piermont, Carroll County, Indiana, alongside his wife, Martha J. Hornaday, and her parents, John and Isabel Hornaday. The Hornadays originally settled in Cass County, Indiana along the Eel River, and later moved to Carroll County, where John was an early commissioner.

John Hornaday’s mother was Ruth Piggott (born 1777 in Cane Creek, North Carolina). Ruth’s mother was Mary Piggott Hadley, daughter of Joshua Hadley and Patience Brown. Patience was the daughter of Jeremiah Brown and Mary Royal (or Royale) Brown. There are intriguing stories about the life of Mary Royal, who was kidnapped from Scotland, and Jeremiah Brown, an early Quaker whose father was an even earlier Quaker. (See James Browne born in 1656). 

Also interesting are the marital affairs of Joshua Hadley and others. Inter-family marriages were quite common, and the records are confusing in the tightly knit Quaker community of colonial America, especially in light of the way marriages were recognized or not recognized by the early Quaker church. One can’t help but wonder if this cultural oddity was still there in later generations of the Ledman Family. The Browns were one of the few families of Quakers in America before William Penn.

THE LEDMAN / CHIDESTER FAMILY

Benjamin Franklin Ledman’s father was Valentine Ledman, born 1803, the son of Henry Ledman (born 1767) and Charolotte (Lottie) Chidester (born 1784). The Chidester ancestry includes James Chidester (born 1629), who arrived in the Colony of New York around 1650 and continues back to Sir John Chichester who served King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The line continues back still further to Richard de Cicester (born about 1175) who was granted lands by King John in Sussex in the early 13th Century.

The Chidester (Chichester) family is also connected through the Rowe and Barnhouse families to the Pomeroy family and is directly descended from Henry de la Pomeroy II (born abt 1194), the son of Rohese Fitzroy, the supposed illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England.

There are several other notable lines of this family worth exploring. 

I once assumed that the Haley Family ancestry was part English, part German. That was assumed because many of them arrived in North Central Indiana when many German Americans were arriving from Pennsylvania. But here is what I have since discovered.

• Haley – English/French

• Edwards – English/Irish

• Pruitt – English

• Ledman – English/Dutch/Irish/Scottish

Eric and I have been working the last few months on finding out about these people, using pictures and information from online sources, plus letters and interviews of older cousins from when Lisa was doing the Genealogy project twenty-some years ago. I mentioned to Eric the other day how I remembered that he had found out we were something like 17th cousins – that our ancestral lines crossed somewhere. 

“True,” he said, “but everyone’s family lines cross, and then they criss-cross back and forth. The truth is, we are all related. We all share common ancestors.”

“Besides that,” I said, “aren’t all those designations like “English, French, and all just geopolitical anyway? Boundaries change!”

He agreed, noting that even Queen Victoria of Great Britain married a German (her cousin Prince Albert), ushering in the new tradition of the Christmas Tree in England. The only difference might be language, really, which one could overcome simply by learning a new language.

Or one could consider the case of George the First of England. He was German. He became King of England because the current line ended and he was the nearest Protestant second cousin. He apparently never even learned to speak English… 

“So in the end, why do people try to divide us up into 'distinct races’? There is no distinction -- we are all one race: Adam’s race, the race of Man. And all of us who now live on the Earth have Noah as our ancestor, whether our skin is black, white, orange, green, red, or brown.” 

That puts us all in the same family!

The problem with this arrangement is that Adam sinned and his entire line is corrupted. All of his descendants are born with a nature that is sinful, just as he himself was sinful. 

The solution for this sorry state is to be “born again,” into a new family -- the family of God Himself. And when we accept this arrangement, believing in and trusting in Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, this new family is set free from that corrupted ancestry.

Here is the mystery. God has no grandchildren -- only sons and daughters. There are no winding criss-crossing family trees -- only direct descent by adoption.

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

 ~John 1:12-13

May everyone who reads this blog trust in Jesus! We have no time to lose.

What Would Jesus Do?

As believers in Jesus, we are looking forward to His Second Coming. We see events unfolding like a rosebud in a bouquet – or actually in my case, seeing those events reminds me more of a large field of giant ragweed. The world has been catapulted into chaos, plunged into peril, and ushered into uncertainty.

We have become increasingly aware that the Church Age is drawing to a close, and we know that our long-awaited Bridegroom is dressed and ready to receive His Bride – which consists of both men and women who love Him and trust in Him. 

With that in mind, what should we be doing at this time in history? If Jesus were here, standing in my place, what would He do? WWJD?

We’ve all heard this little abbreviation used – at one time it was a craze. It was a great merchandise generator. I have a black scarf riddled with gold “WWJD’s” on its surface. Many of us wore the bracelets.

It is a question people have asked themselves since Charles M Sheldon's book “In His Steps” came out. There are even a couple of movies about it.

Basically, the idea is to view people and current situations through the lens of your idea of Jesus, the Christ, and how you think He would respond. This will be always problematic since it is so hard to get inside Jesus’ head. He’s the one who said, “My ways are not your ways.” So the key to doing that well is to really understand the character of Christ, and study how He handled situations Himself, during the time He lived here. 

For example, if your idea of Christ is only “Baby Jesus Meek and Mild,” then you may decide that people should never mention the word “sin” nor bring up a controversial subject, because Jesus was always loving and wouldn’t want you to hurt anyone’s feelings. Although the Baby in the Manger is definitely Jesus’ backstory, this incomplete theology would lead you in the wrong direction and possibly cost someone the chance to know the Truth that can set them free.

So if we’re going to use WWJD, we have to know Him better than that. 

What Did Jesus Do?

Imagine Jesus, only a few days from his pre-planned death on the cross. With this in mind, did He:

• Have sweaty palms from panic attacks?

• Take a sabbatical and disappear for several months to write His memoirs?

• Butter up His enemies so they would like him better?

• Keep His teachings low-key so as to not offend important people?

• Teach His disciples Tae Quon Do so they could defend Him when push came to shove?

Anyone with a passing acquaintance with the Scriptures would know that Jesus didn’t hold back. In fact, He said and did things that were as likely to draw hostile attention to Himself as operating a weed-eater directly over a nest of yellow jackets.

He spoke of the appropriateness of cement overshoes for those who offended little children who believed in Him. He actually called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs and children of Satan. He taught that it was a sin to look at a woman with lust, so it might be preferable to remove your eyeballs. Shocking stuff! These examples would generate headlines today and the videos would go viral. 

But what was He doing during the very last week, just before His death? 

“And He was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him, and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him.

“Now it happened on one of those days, as He taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, … “

~Luke 19:47, 20:1

Jesus, who knew very well that He would be killed at the hands of the Romans by the end of the week, rode into town on a donkey, cleaned up the temple, and then taught the people from there. 

He taught them from The Word.

And He preached. He preached The Gospel.

What would have constituted The Gospel? What is it? By definition, it is “good news.” 

And “preaching” – what’s that? Dictionary.com says that’s a middle school level word. It’s about proclaiming, as in “good news” or “the gospel,” and it’s pretty much about delivering a sermon. In today’s culture, it also has a subtle negative meaning: “to do this in an obtrusive or tedious way.” This is clearly the opposite of what it originally meant – good news is not something that could ever be tedious. 

There are 142 references to preaching in a word search of the New King James Version of the Bible. Solomon called himself “The Preacher,” though he was the King of Israel. There are some references to preaching in some books of the prophets, and then, there are references to preaching in nearly every New Testament book, with a lot of them in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. 

Jesus was a preacher, and in this role, He fulfilled prophecy. In fact, that’s how He announced that He was the Messiah in His hometown synagogue – He read from the Isaiah scroll about how the Messiah would preach the gospel to the poor, and looking up, he informed everybody that “That was about me!”

What Did Jesus Preach? 

Did He use the Romans Road method? The Four Spiritual Laws? Steps to Peace with God? No to all of the above. These weren’t written till the 20th Century, and the Book of Romans hadn’t even been written yet. Its author hadn’t even met Jesus.

And He couldn’t speak about His death, burial, and resurrection. He hadn’t even died yet. 

The good news Jesus preached was about repenting because the Kingdom of God had come to them. He explained sin, never holding back about what it meant or its direct consequences. He warned of hell. But Jesus was able to look into the eyes of a paralytic and tell him his sins were forgiven him. He said He didn’t come to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, could be saved.

Jesus offered Himself as the remedy to sin, and the way to eternity. Jesus' name, Y’shua, means “Salvation.”

To Martha, the sister of Lazarus, who had just died, He gave the best “good news” ever! 

“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 

“Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’

   ~John 11:23-26

This is what Jesus would be doing now. In these frightening times, Jesus would find a platform and preach the Gospel, whether it be to a large crowd resembling a Trump rally, or to the man in the seat next to Him on the flight there. 

He would tell them openly that He is the Messiah. He would make sure they understood that they could be free from the heavy weight of their sins by trusting in Him for salvation. He would tell them that He came to give them Life. 

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO in 2021?

So this is the question we must ask ourselves about our own situation. And here is the answer: teach and preach the Word!  Never forget the Great Commission that Jesus gave to all His disciples: it has not been rescinded.

“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ "

~Matthew 28:19-20

“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

“But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

~The Apostle Paul to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:1-5

Doesn’t that sound like right now? The main thing is for We, the Church, to bring as many people with us to Heaven as we can. Like Jesus, we mustn’t change our focus when the time is short. We should double down on our efforts and never pull back. And He has promised that He will be with us always, till the end of the age.

There are those who are being martyred for their faith all around the world in 2021. We thought that was a Medieval thing to do, and that the world was a lot more civil now than it used to be. But there are more beheadings, torture, and even crucifixions of our brothers and sisters in Christ in the 21st Century than ever before. There were hundreds of missionaries in Afghanistan before the Taliban took it over last week. Some have likely been rescued, … but probably not all. 

What should we do if it happens here? 

“Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

~Jesus to the Church in Smyrna, Revelation 2:10

What Will Jesus Find?

What will Jesus find when He comes back for His Bride? Will He find a faithful Church? 

Will you be a part of that?

Think About Your Legacy -- What Will It Be Like If the Lord Tarries?

This week’s news includes the unspeakable tragedy of the downfall of Afghanistan, where many of our military men and women lost their lives in a 20-year war. We didn’t technically lose the war. The Biden administration chose to abandon the Afghan people and we gave everything away to the enemy, no questions asked. As many as ten thousand Americans and people who worked for our government are still trapped there at the airport, needing rescue, and Afghans have died in a panic or have been killed already, trying to escape the brutal regime to come. This is a humiliating national disgrace.

Also, we received an answer from our County Commissioners, concerning what they thought about our request for them to rectify our storm sewer problem. They said that, unlike the roads in small towns such as ours, the storm sewers would only be maintained by the County if the property owners brought them to a functional condition. In other words – you go first: we’re not going to help.

If the Lord tarries ... This is a phrase that is used in the same way as “God willin’ and the Creek don’t rise,” – which is a reference to a possible uprising of the Creek Indians. And whenever either are used, they mean, if nothing unusual happens, we will do thus and such.

The truth of the matter is, nobody knows how long we will be on the Earth. But as for Eric and me, probably we’ll do well to still be around here another twenty years … if the Lord should indeed tarry. What could go wrong?

Already much has gone wrong. I could elaborate on the misfortunes which have befallen our great nation due to the incompetence of the man at the helm and his evil cohorts – those who are making him talk. But I will list only a few. That should be sufficient.

The national debt is burgeoning like Almanzo Wilder’s prize pumpkin, leaving our nation potentially bankrupt in short order. This is not only affecting us personally, most likely in the form of social security insolvency, but it will also affect our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren. The probability is strong that they will inherit this debt plus much more.

Children as young as two years old are having their faces covered so that they cannot learn to recognize even the simple, smiling face of a friendly stranger in a store, or hear properly enunciated words in their native tongues. They are becoming anxious – yes, mentally unstable! – and many have a strong feeling that if they emerge from the mask they will die or kill somebody. They are being deprived of the oxygen they need to think clearly and make decisions.

We have sold much of our nation’s resources to those who wish to conquer us. We have seen the aggression of Communist regimes around the world, especially the Chinese Communist Party, but have chosen to enrich them with our factory orders so we can get cheap goods. We are leaving our birth country in the hands of hostile strangers, and when we are gone, our children will still be here.

Predators have been kidnapping children as if they are harvesting a crop, to sell on the open market as consumer goods, and it’s not just illegal aliens or young Asians – it’s little kids at Wal-Mart whose parents look away for a few minutes. Our own children could be victims.

Many of our older children will be ostracized from higher education, fired from their jobs, denied access to public transportation, or kicked out of restaurants unless they submit to being guinea pigs in a worldwide pharmaceutical experiment. 

And, these are conditions right now! What will things be like in 2022, or 2023? – if the Lord tarries? We read about King Hezekiah, who by God’s mercy was granted fifteen more years of life, only to give away government secrets to a future enemy. When chided by the Prophet Isaiah because he had just put national security in jeopardy, he shrugged. Well might you ask, “What was he thinking!” But the Scriptures tell us exactly what he was thinking:

“Oh well, it won’t happen in my lifetime, so it’s okay, it doesn’t matter.” 

As prophesied, the Babylonians later attacked and conquered the Kingdom of Judah, and it was not a good experience. Hezekiah was safely out of the way, but his children, born during that fifteen-year grace period, suffered for it. What made him think so little of his legacy?

One of the books in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia deals with the search for Prince Rilian, who had been kidnapped by a wicked witch. If you’ve read it, you know this is the son of King Caspian of Narnia, who is dying, not knowing where his son and heir has been taken. Jill and Eustace, two children from our world, have been tasked by the Great Lion Aslan, to find the Prince and bring him back.

On their journey, they encounter a strange marsh creature, kind of like Phil Robertson, but who always has something negative to say. His name – Puddleglum. 

It doesn’t take long before the children ignore ol’ Pud’s advice entirely, or even purposely do the opposite, only because they don’t like to hear so much negativity. So, perfectly good, wise counsel is discarded and the children end up in an ever-worsening situation. 

I won’t tell you all of the details because I really want you to read this book – The Silver Chair. But one scene has always stood out to me. The witch is engaged in enchanting the two children, Puddleglum, and the Prince (again!), with something she has thrown into the fire. Then she begins to tell lies, outrageous lies, about how there is no sun and no moon – until the children begin to parrot her words like CNN fans. “There is no sun. There is no moon.”

It is Puddleglum who saves the day, after their half-hearted, half-drugged attempts to argue with the witch have failed. He stomps on the fire with his bare feet, putting it out and leaving the victims blinking back the grogginess. He has scorched his feet, but they are in their right mind. 

Right now, in 2021, our culture is under a spell, and it is satanic in origin. We are being taught, collectively, that America is bad, sin is good and even preferable to virtue, and God is irrelevant or non-existent, or perhaps even malevolent. Our children are parroting the words, believing their teachers and Dr. Ouchie, and ignoring their parents because they are “too negative.” How will we combat this? Are we willing to fight to our own hurt to save the children?

Be brave and true, dear friends! Be like Puddleglum!

I’ve also been accused of being too negative. Would that I didn’t have to! What is going on in our world is disheartening, wicked, wrong-headed. We are not on a slippery slope – we are in a downward plunge, a nosedive. At some point we will crash. 

All of God’s prophets were also accused of being negative. And they were punished by those who were not happy with their negativity – being thrown into a pit or a dungeon, or even beheaded. 

In 1 Kings 22:1-28, we read the story of Micaiah, a Puddleglum-type prophet whom King Ahab said he hated – because he was always so negative. He alone prophesied catastrophe, while 400 others prophesied victory for Ahab in battle. Needless to say, Ahab went to battle – and he was killed.

We must care about our children enough to tell them the Truth, even when it’s hard.

Here are some things we should be doing all the time, whenever we can.

1. Pray for your legacy. Some of us have children who have strayed from the straight path. They have become addicted to drugs, they have committed crimes, … they are breaking our rules and breaking our hearts. But all of our children need prayer, especially in difficult and doubtful times like these, whether they have strayed or whether they seem to be doing just fine. So often we may think they’re doing just fine and then find out later that they aren’t.

2. Talk to your children and your children’s children. Teach them the truth. Make sure they are not ill-informed or only educated by Mr. Google “Do-No-Evil.” Bring them to church / Sunday School. Lead by example and teach them God’s Word. If you are a dedicated follower of Christ, chances are good they will also be a dedicated follower of Christ.

"Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” 

~Deuteronomy 11:19

3. Bless them. If your children are gifted in some way, encourage them in their gift. There is enough going on in today’s world to make them sad and unsure of the future. You can be a beacon of light to them by assuring them that God loves them, you love them, and you are rooting for them.

4. Fight for them. If your children are under a mask mandate, or even some kind of shot mandate, they as minors don’t have the same rights that an adult would have. You must be the one who fights for them. You must stand up to any tyrants or bullies, maybe attend school board meetings and make your voices heard – and you might need to protect them by pulling them out of school, for instance. Keep that as an option.

You will likely meet resistance. It can hurt to engage the enemy. Some people were recently hurt by Antifa simply because they were conservative Christians having a picnic.

This is where you might need to be a hero like Puddleglum. Do not be content to just be sad. Remember, Jesus was hurt when He stood in for us. Can we stand in for our legacy? 

Furthermore, and this is important, will we still stand in for them and fight for them if they are the ones who hurt us, because they, like Prince Rilian, are already under the evil spell of the enemy?

5. Plan ahead, because you won’t be here forever. When I was young, there was a policy in the Girl Scouts that you should always leave an area in better shape than it was when you arrived. “Policing” the area meant picking up trash. If you left gum wrappers all over the ground, you would eventually have to bend over to pick up after yourself, so … it was less effort to throw them away when you first unwrapped the gum!

When we leave, what will the next generation inherit? We cannot clean up all that has been messed up during our lifetime. That would be impossible. But can we police our own area? How can we improve the lives of our future generations, right where we live?

How is God speaking to you? Did you know you don’t have to be an accomplished speaker, a PhD, or a licensed activist to make things better for those who come after us? Do you know that God, through His Holy Spirit, can speak through you if and when the occasion arises – and of course, if the Lord tarries?

Right now, yes, we’re still going to be working on the water heater / storm sewer project. But also, we’re praying hard for our future generations, our legacy. They are growing up in a tough time. But they need to understand that in times like these, we can look up expectantly. For our redemption, our Redeemer Jesus, is standing by.

And He will not tarry forever.