Last weekend, Trae's class experienced the thrill of a lifetime! Room 17 at Maple Creek Elementary was one of three classes selected out of 600 that applied for the Madera Method Wagon Train experience. Beginning last Thursday through Sunday afternoon, the kidos and their chaperones lived the life of the 1840's. They camped out under the stairs. They rode in covered wagons. They showed up the for city of Raymond parade. They worked. They roughed it. And Trae loved it!
Reading her journal and hearing her stories of the experience has been wonderful.
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Trae's new-found appreciation of history and my own renewed appreciation of history -- thanks to our Sunday evening journey through the journal of Nehemiah (see especially Nehemiah 9.5-37) -- reminded of this penetrating paragraph
"Like it or not, we are heirs of a host of diverse and even contradictory witnesses. Some of their actions we may find revolting, and others inspiring. But all of them form part of our history. All of them, those whom we admire as well as those whom we despise, brought us to where we are now. Without understanding that past, we are unable to understand ourselves, for in a sense that past still lives in us and influences who we are and how we understand the Christian message. Every renewal of the church, every great age in its history, has been grounded on a renewed reading of history" (Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, 1999).
