You're Kidding, Right?

Okay, am I the only one who sees how really crazy this world can be? I read a headline that says a magazine paid six million dollars for the rights to publish the first photos of the twin babies born to Jennifer Lopez. It’s one thing to be stunned by such an unbelievable sale, but it’s even more amazing to consider that this purchase will probably end up making a huge profit for that particular magazine.

Sometimes when I eat my lunch at my desk I like to put up a slide show from the website Flickr of some far away place. I love seeing pictures of ordinary people living out their lives in their own surroundings and community. One day I was watching some wonderful photos of people in South Africa out in some of the rural areas. One caught my attention. Inside a dwelling with a dirt floor, a little girl in tribal dress was pulling a tiny cart that held a Barbie doll kit. Stuff like this just goes all over me. Here they are in a place that appears to be very primitive but the ‘ever smiling’ blonde Barbie is right there with them!

I know when you get older you see things differently. Often I can hear my boys response, “Okay, I hear what you are saying Pop, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal”. I recently told our middle son that while it might appear innocent enough for our nine year old twin girls to clamor to go to a movie that’s nothing more than a taped Hannah Montana concert, but from my point of view, it’s like sending them to a rock concert with training wheels. He said he had not thought about it that way but since the tickets were so hard to get and they were all hyped up about going, he thought it best for them to go with their friends.

I will readily admit that I am getting old and curmudgeonly but I actually remember whenever you could sit the kids down in front of the Disney Channel and not worry about what they were watching. Not anymore! When they come to our house and they put it on that channel, what I often see is more like prep school for a wild and crazy teen life that will be a 'coming soon' attraction. No wonder Roy, brother of Walt Disney, did what he could to try and change the direction of what his brother left behind. But, he failed because after all of his efforts, when it was all said and done, it was only about the money, first, last, and always, and it certainly is not about what’s best for our children!

Okay, that’s probably enough of the ‘sky is falling’ stuff for a Monday morning but these are the things that a granddad thinks about as he tries to help bring up a child in the way he or she should go, desiring to see the outcome of that biblical proverb, so that when they are old they will not depart from that way. Yeah, you can bet that Disney, Barbie and the Bratz, as well as their other colleagues are not concerned with what you and I should be concerned about. Hey, that’s why I named my blog: ‘The View From Here’, because that’s the way I see it.

For those who are keeping score: my knee may be a little better, my mom is getting ready to get ready to have her heart procedure, our Lexie came through her surgery which turned out to be much more serious than I had understood it to be, but she did wonderfully, our daughter-in-law is still not 100%, Amanda, one of our twins is back up and going, but our little Alex is still ailing. We do thank God for the progress made and continue to seek His grace and help in all of our needs. Have a great week and may God bless you and yours. ….More later.