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 Children
Hiya, Folks! This is the best day of your life! Sure it is. Yesterday’s gone, and tomorrow isn’t here yet. Fact is, if you were any better, you’d be dangerous! Hohohohoho…….
Now wouldn’t you rather start the day like that instead of some old cranky, wheezy, whiny, “I jus’ don’t know if I oughta get outta bed t’day or not! My bones are jus’ so tarred! Reckon, I gots to, though. Won’t get nuthin done in bed…..groan….”
See. Get your spirits livened up. Get your mind alert. Grab a good cup of that Starbucks’ Yukon Blend, or somethin’ like that! Wake up, sleepy!
Children! Those two-legged rug rats that run around and get under feet. Those darling little girls in pigtails. Those terrible twos. Those blast-your-eardrums teen-age guys that think there’s only one setting on the stereo: LOUDEST! Those teenage girls who love their slumber parties. The ones that try to fool Mom and Dad by skipping out after dark to run down the street to a friend’s house while you think they’re still in their room.
Yup. They come in all shapes and sizes. They come in sad, glad, mad and tickle-your-funny-bone. They’re a pain in the neck, and a joy to behold.
We got us a quiver of them. Eight all told. Six that came normal-like, and two adopted. Then there’s the grandchildren: all twenty-one of them. And the great-grandchildren: two of them. And more in the hopper.
I’d be willing to wager anyone that if there’s an experience to be had with kids, we’ve had it! Every single one of them are unique in their own way.
Debbie turns 40 this year. She’s the oldest of the tribe. But I can think back to the day when she was three or four like it was yesterday. Somewhere, I think, I’ve got a picture of her sitting in a swing the first time she ever had a lemon. We were visiting Marjorie Lemke in Santa Rosa, California. Marjorie was an incredible singer and recording artist back in the 40’s and 50’s. Injured in an accident, she became wheel-chair bound in her 40’s, but it sure never affected her singing voice. Debbie took to her like she was her best nanny. She was sitting in a swing in Marjorie’s back yard when she saw a lemon in Marge’s hand. She jumped out of the swing, grabbed that lemon out her hand, and proceeded back to the swing where she plopped herself and took a great big bite of the lemon.
I never knew the human face could go through such contortions! Debbie’s face went every which way as she tried to adjust her mouth to the taste of the lemon. Wouldn’t quit, neither! I don’t know what it was about her taste buds, but they just HAD to have more lemon. I laughed so hard my sides hurt just watching her.
Then there was Chris. He’s going to turn 36 this year. He and Chelsi have four kids – and all four are just like them! When he was two…well….more ‘n that, actually….my electronics workshop was in the house. Chris watched me working on equipment and decided if Dad could do it, so could he. One day, while I was gone from the house, he decided he was going to play “fix-it.” He’d seen me twist the locks on the back of our TV set to get inside and make adjustments. Wouldn’t you know it, he trotted himself behind the TV, twisted the locks – all six of them – just like he’d seen Dad do. He pulled the back off the TV and proceeded to remove some tubes out of their sockets.
Good thing the power got disconnected when he pulled the back off or he might have had one of those out-of-this-world experiences like I did when I was working on a transmitter one day and forgot to shut the power off before I reached inside to grab a component. I woke up 15 minutes later on the opposite side of the transmitter room after making contact with 6,000 volts. Chris was always getting into equipment. Must run in the family or something!
He’s still into equipment: tractors, road-graders, cranes big enough to pick up ships – that kind of stuff.
Melodie – daughter number two – lived (lives) up to her name. First time I ever got her a tape deck (that was before there was such a thing as a Walkman) she walked around the house with that thing up to her ear, singing up a storm. It was funny! She was gone – in another world! She had a gifted voice – still does, for that matter.
Actually, most of the kids can sing up a storm. There was a time when we sang together as a family. Dunno what happened to those days. We all kind of scattered to the four winds.
Anyway, Melodie was always so intense. One time when we went to Disneyland, she and Chris sat next to me on a roller-coaster ride. Chris was all over the place, waving his arms and having a good old time. Melodie gripped the bar in front of her and hung on for dear life until the car came to a stop at the end of the ride. I laughed at her and said, “Relax, Sweetheart! Enjoy yourself. Have a good time.” She looked at me ever so soberly and with a perfectly straight face said, “I had a good time, Daddy. Let’s do it again.”
Then of course, there was Shelley – the family preacher. You should have seen her at six, seven, eight years of age. When CBN-Alaska was in operation, and we had the House of Praise fellowship, she thought nothing of standing up on the chairs and prophesying. This kid was bold! One day, she was riding with her Mom when they went to do some shopping at Safeway. They pulled into a parking spot when Shelley saw some fellow standing there with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. She promptly rolled down the window and hollered at the guy, “You’re going to hell!”
Della was more than a little astonished and tried to shush her. Shelley wasn’t going to be put off, though.
“If you don’t stop smoking, you’re going to destroy your body, and then you’ll go to Hell,” she yelled.
Lordy! Kids!
The fellow obligingly put out the cigarette and walked over to the side of the vehicle. “Think so, honey?” he asked.
“You need to repent and ask Jesus to forgive you,” Shelley continued. “Smoking is a sin.”
“Guess I’m going to Hell, then,” he said. “Gotta have my smokes.”
“No, you don’t!” Shelley pleaded. “Jesus will deliver you.”
The stranger grinned at her, then at Della who was feeling a bit embarrassed over Shelley’s spontaneous boldness, and walked away.
Sometimes you wonder where children come up with the things they say. Especially when what they say has rarely been so much as even a brief discussion in the home.
Joshua is the youngest of our children. He’s the athlete of the bunch. Baseball, hockey, basketball – you name it, he was good at it – I mean REALLY GOOD! For a guy who barely breaks 5’7” in height, he makes up for it in speed and agility. Who’d believe someone like him would be good at basketball? He was so good in baseball, we encouraged him to stay with it. A friend saw him playing little league and told us that if Josh stayed with it, he would help him at least get some tryouts when it came time. He could pitch some of the most lopsided games you’ve ever seen. His throwing arm was something else, and he could run like the wind.
Come high school, we figured he would begin to go places with baseball, but no, he wanted to try out for basketball. We thought that was crazy, but he tried out. Not only did he make the team, he made varsity. His baseball-throwing arm made good long shots at the basket, and he excelled with his three-pointers. A fall on the court snapped a tendon in his leg, and that was the end of his sports for a long time.
Danielle was Miss Priss. The absolute opposite of her sisters who were more into athletic events and cared a lot less about being perfect in every detail of their appearance, Danielle was “socially conscious.” I guess that’s the PC way of saying she was concerned about the last gnat’s hair in the way she looked. Drop-dead gorgeous from the time she was little, Danielle decided she wanted to be a model. When the time came, we sent her to modeling school. Her “coming out” ( is that the way you describe a young woman who makes her first presentation to society?) took place when Della was managing Zales’ largest jewelry store in Alaska, and she put on an invitation-only jewelry show for the well-to-do of Anchorage society. Danielle and some of her modeling school friends served as hostesses, mingling with the business people and so-called upper crust, serving hors d’oeuvres and providing information.
The event was a smashing success. Della’s store did nearly half a million in sales. Danielle was sure she had died and gone to Heaven because of the way she was received. My, my, how the years go by! Now she’s 30 years old, married, and has two sons who are just like her brother Josh used to be about sports. She teaches personal grooming, etiquette and does elegant hairstyles. And she has a wonderful relationship with Jesus Christ.
Ariella is the youngest of the six girls. Another one like Debbie, her facial expressions could have given Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey a run for their money. You never had any problem knowing how she felt, or what she thought. Her face gave her away so graphically we laughed until we cried. Spiritually sensitive at a young age, she saw angels on several occasions; and if you were sick, or had “an owwee,” she could make you feel a thousand percent better when she came over, laid hands on you and told the flu (or whatever it was) to “get out in Jesus’ name.” When she saw a bruise or cut, she was quick to wrinkle up her face (she still does that to this day) in genuine compassion and touch it saying, “In Jesus’ name.”
That brings us to Rebekah. She’s two years older than Ariella, and one year older than Joshua. Funny thing. Rebekah, Ariella and Josh all have their birthdays in December, a week apart.
Rebekah is the daughter I told you about in the piece on Angels who had such stupendous experiences. There has always been a sense of God’s purpose and calling for her life from the time she could barely walk. It’s not so much Rebekah that I want to talk about here, but two of her daughters, Serena and Jessica.
In one of the very first articles I wrote for ANOTHER COFFEE BREAK, I did a piece called, True Grit. In case you haven’t had the opportunity to read it, you can go to
http://www.MorningCoffee.net. Scroll down the main page and you’ll see it.
In True Grit, I talked about Serena’s experiences with angels, her incredible pluck, and the simplicity of her faith and trust in Jesus Christ for her complete and total healing. Serena is five years old. Rendered a paraplegic (almost a quadriplegic) from Transverse Myelitis at age two, the doctors said she would remain pretty much a vegetable for the rest of her life. Serena refused to believe that and continually speaks her faith and trust that “I’m going to walk, and I’m going to dance, because Jesus told me so.”
The absolutely uncomplicated simplicity of her faith is likewise exhibited in her younger sister, Jessica, who is about 2 ½ years old.
Rebekah is traveling today, by the way, and we are taking care of her three youngest children – Jessica, Serena, and Petey. Petey wasn’t feeling good last night – had a headache or something like that. We were all watching some Disney flick when Petey made some remark about not feeling very good. Jessica got up, walked around to where he was laying down, knelt down, put her hands on Petey’s head and said, “Be healed in Jesus’ name.”
It was totally spontaneous. That was the end of Petey’s complaints about not feeling well.
I can’t tell you how many times Jessica has done this kind of thing. Della and I take care of her three days a week while her mom is in college. (Rebekah is going to STCC to get her degree in nursing.)
We are also taking care of Della’s mother, Opal Hendershot. We brought her to Texas from Washington last fall because of her need for back surgery and the impracticality of Della being in Washington to care for her for the extended recovery period. In the seven months or so she has been with us, she has undergone back surgery, knee-replacement surgery, and suffered from congestive heart failure. She has recovered from everything quickly but the knee-replacement surgery has been a whole lot slower. She has suffered with continuing pain from this operation, and it seems to vary from day to day.
Now, I said all that to say this. Jessica has developed an almost inerrant routine when she gets dropped off by her mom. She comes in the door and heads straight to Great-Grandma’s room to check on her. If Mom is awake or up and sitting in her chair, the first thing Jessica does is to lay her hand on the hurting knee and say, “Be healed in Jesus’ name.” Invariably, Mom feels better instantly.
Her faith – as I said before – is simple and uncomplicated. Jessica is a living, breathing demonstration of something the apostle Paul wrote,
“But I fear, lest by any means…..your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (II Corinthians 11:3)
Human nature is such that the more “wisdom” we acquire as we get older, the stupider we get, and the more we complicate the Gospel with our unbelief. The Gospel is simple! It is uncomplicated! It is straightforward!
In her young years, Jessica has already learned the presence and power of the name and authority of Jesus Christ. There isn’t a shred of doubt in her. When she is outside playing and takes a spill, or cuts herself, she doesn’t run for the medicine cabinet; she comes running into my office and says, “Papa, say in Jesus’ name.” I pick her up, set her in my lap, put my hand on the spot in question and say, “Father, in the name of Jesus, heal this right now.”
That’s all it takes! If the “owwee” has drawn blood, she grabs a Kleenex from my desk, wads it up and sticks it over the blood and holds her hand over it for a couple of minutes.
Then she throws the Kleenex into the trash can, looks at me and says, “I fine. I healed,” and heads back outside to play. Simple. Right?
The other day, Della been up and down during the night, not feeling too swift, and she decided to sleep in a little longer. Jessica was dropped off as usual and came in my office. I said to her, “Jessie, you need to be quiet for a little while. Grandma is still sleeping. She doesn’t feel real good.”
Jessica put her blanket and pillow down on a chair in my office and said, “Grandma not feel good?” I nodded my head. Very matter of fact, she said, “Then I in Jesus’ name her,” and headed straight down the hall to our bedroom. She carefully opened the door, walked into the bedroom where Della was asleep and over to her bedside. She quietly laid her hand on Della’s head and simply said, “in Jesus’ name.”
Della woke up immediately, of course. When she saw Jessica, she grabbed her and pulled her up onto the bed and hugged her. Jessica said, “You OK now, Grandma? You OK now?” Della laughed and said, “Yes, Jessie, I’m fine” and got up.
Seeing the simplicity of this kind of faith is a real illustration of what Jesus said,
“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)
Children don’t complicate the Gospel. They don’t complicate Truth. Things are black and white for them. There are no shades of gray. Once they hear and understand what Jesus did and said, they have no problem applying His word in absolute faith. Remember the events I shared in “True Grit” about the children who spoke the word of healing at Long Beach Christian Center, and saw all those miracles take place?
It’s that kind of simplicity the Lord is looking for in us. We screw up our faith with man’s doctrines. If things don’t fall into place according to our doctrinal understanding, we judge others, we judge events….and we lose the authority that comes in faith with our doubts and unbelief.
Children! God help us to be more like them! Children don’t get offended easily, and even when they do, they are quick to forgive and forget. Children don’t hold grudges. They don’t measure things according to doctrines. Give them the Bible to read, and the Holy Spirit makes Truth come alive in them with a simplicity that defies our modern age.
Teach children to memorize Scripture and it will last them throughout their lifetime. It never departs. My father did that with my brother and I when we were young. We memorized the Sermon on the Mount. We memorized much of the Gospel of John. We memorized many of the Psalms. The years notwithstanding, the truth of God’s Word is still embedded in our subconscious. You can’t escape it even if you try and run from it.
Want to prosper spiritually? Become like a child. It’s that simple.
I’m going to finish my coffee now. Maybe even have another cup or two. Enjoy your weekend, and we’ll gather ‘round the table for another Coffee Break on Monday.
Blessings on you.
--Regner
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
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