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The dishes, garbage, and dirty laundry would pile up for days when Cat and Harlan Barnard's teenage children refused to do their chores. So the Barnards—of Enterprise, Florida—went on strike, moving out of their house and into a domed tent set up in their front driveway. The parents refused to cook, clean, or drive for their children—Benjamin, 17, and Kit, 12—until they shaped up. "We've tried reverse psychology, upside down psychology, spiral psychology, and nothing has motivated them for any length of time," said Cat Barnard, 45, as she sat in a lawn chair at an umbrella-covered table. The strike took Benjamin and Kit by surprise. They came home from school Monday to find their mother outside with handwritten signs that read "Parents on Strike" and "Seeking Cooperation and Respect!"
Cat Barnard, a stay-at-home mom, and her 56-year-old husband, a government social services worker, decided their children needed to learn about empathy and responsibility. The Barnards slept on air mattresses in the tent and barbecued while their children fended for themselves with frozen TV dinners. The parents only went inside to shower and use the bathroom.

Passers-by from this bedroom community between Orlando and Daytona Beach shouted out words of encouragement. One woman driving past the Barnards' house rolled down her car window Wednesday and shouted, "Good for you! You should put the kids outside!"
Cat Barnard said she and her husband would . . .

Mother? Oh, Mother? How many times have you heard those words? Often times they are reeking with excitement, or perhaps fear or anguish! I can remember rushing to the aid of my children, when I heard those words. Often, it was a hurt toe or finger or other part of the body, and I had to give a kiss to the boo-boo, assuring them it would be okay. Sometimes, it was sibling rivalry! Having had a boy and girl almost three years apart, there were many times I had to be a go-between in the squabbles that only little children can find to be in! Often, it's just the 'I AM' syndrome - I AM going to get my way!

Mothers can only do so much! We can help a child grow up to be an efficient adult. We can get them over their fears to great accomplishments. We can teach them right from wrong. We can teach them to love others. But, the one thing we can't do is give them saving Grace. We can bring them to the threshold of God's Kingdom, and there, we have to leave them in the hands of God. Mothers PRAY, believe, me and we pray much! We pray for protection over our children and our grandchildren. We pray for favor over the homes of our children. But, we can't pray them into the Kingdom of God.

That's where the Holy Spirit comes in to help Mom. We Mothers pray, God convicts and woos, and they react to . . .

What is an "organic molecule?" When scientists announce that they have found one, the impression that a layperson gets is that this molecule can, like magic, suddenly produce life!  It is, after all, "organic" and organic things are living things, right?

A science magazine recently announced, "A speck of dust that drifted into the Earth's atmosphere from the edge of the solar system shows that complex molecules can form even in the chill near-emptiness of interstellar space." (New Scientists March 2004) The article makes a few assumptions based on its evolutionary worldview and then gets backs to real facts again: "Simple organic molecules have been detected in this dust before .  .  .  dust particles could have seeded the young Earth with organic matter." Could they?  Let us consider this leap of false logic.

A chemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, John Bradley, said, "Its another hint that extraterrestrial carbon may be implicated in the origin of life." The dust particle, named Benavente, was very small - it was only one femtogram, which is one millionth of one billionth of a gram, yet from this a mass spectrometer was able to detect molecules of carbon, nitrogen and . . .

How forgetful are you? Have you ever forgotten birthdays, doctors appointments, the keys that smiled at you from the ignition of a locked car. I remember hearing a story about a fellow whose wife called out to him as he was leaving for work, "Honey, don't forget what day this is?" It drove him nuts all day, he knew it wasn't his wedding anniversary but he wasn't sure about birthdays, or their kids birthdays. To be safe he bought flowers and took her out to dinner only to hear her say, "Sweetheart this has been the best Ground Hog Day ever!" It's easy to forget, even to forget the presence of people. When we came back from the South Pacific we went to Colin and Joanne's house to pick up our little dog that they had been taking care of for the past year. There was great celebration at seeing the pet again  and we were really thankful for all they had done. We took the dog home and were no sooner in the door when the phone rang, we'd left one of our daughters at their house. That's one kind of 'forgetting' but there is another kind, the kind of forgetting that fails to put together facts that you've already known in order to take the next step. The first is more like an oversight, the second is more like negligence. Forgetting to avoid temptation and it leads to alcohol consumption that puts everyone at risk as you drive home, that would be an example. Forgetting to follow directions and it leads to a dangerous infection or forgetting the promise of another and experiencing the . . .