“I have just returned from Perm’s Hill where I have been sitting to hear the amazing roar of canon and from whence I could see every shell which was thrown. The sound, I think, is one of the grandest in nature and is of the true species of the sublime. Tis now an incessant roar, but oh, the fatal ideas which are connected with the sound. How many of our dear countrymen must fall.” ~Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband John Adams on March 4, 1775The Six Arrows were not in evidence on the farm the last two weeks. We believe vacation is absolutely a necessity for those who work, so we took one. Long before taxes became a burden on the modern American family, God instituted the vacation tax, that is, a family was to set aside for themselves a tithe of their income for a vacation and rest. The Lenz family also believes fervently that man is made for work. We believe work, rather than being a burden or curse on men, is actually a gift and blessing.
It was the mixture of these two convictions that inspired many great family vacations throughout my childhood entirely devoid of laying on the beach. We have no inherent dislike for the said activity, we simply didn’t know how to do it...or how to do nothing rather. As you may imagine, when there is literally a crowd of us, we don’t tend to do things by halves. Stuffing clothing, sandwiches and pillows everywhere but between our toes in the family “bus” to gobble up thousands of miles of highway has consequently become a habit for our household.Our first real vacation was a road-trip to Maine. We tent-camped the whole way, staying in a hotel only once because of a heavy thunderstorm, and made memories of the grandest and best kind. In retrospect, that vacation inspires admiration and respect in me for my dear parents, since they ventured courageously out on the enterprise with five children under seven (Sam was still on the way).
Such an auspicious beginning, fraught with high-adventure and higher education, could not fail to institute a tradition that is anything but “traditional.” Our avid love for history was birthed, not out of textbooks (because our parents never bought a history curriculum) but out of a vivid knowledge of real stories from books, and even eyewitnesses, brought to life in many cases through our vacations to the places where real life happened. Standing before the ancient and not-so-ancient landmarks of our forefathers endures as an indelible mark on my mind that far outlives the even the valuable dates and facts I often imbibed at the same time.
My favorite part of vacation was always the site marked with “living history.” I loved walking onto a replica Mayflower and being questioned concerning my sewing capabilities by a young lady in Pilgrim garb, or meeting “General Longstreet” on Little Round Top at Gettysburg and hearing him talk about the battle ground spread out before us in the early evening light, and dissemble on the existence of an airplane that flew overhead. I could only dream as a little girl that I might one day be able to do the same thing for someone else. 
As I write, we are barreling down the highway a few short hours from Wilson Creek Missouri, the site of a battle on the Western Theatre of the War Between the States. This is our currently evolved version of “Family Vacation;” fairly unrecognizable compared to its classic modern-American counterpart. We will pitch our tent in an encampment with a few thousand fellow re-enactors to commemorate and pay tribute to our forebears, many of whom paid the ultimate price for the cause of justice and freedom. In camp, we laugh among ourselves over the irony of our position. Twenty-first century Americans don the layers and fashions of a past age and almost exclusively eschew the comforts of air-conditioning and running water to bury ourselves in the 1860s. For the better part of four days we par-boil in the heat of summer, “climb for our water and dig for our wood,” and wear the distinctive acrid scent of the campfire. The men and boys drill and march and stand in ranks under an un-blinking sun, and the ladies cook along with the food over the fire. We laugh at the “misery” because we keep coming back anyway. Transient reasons like “It’s fun,” mask the reality that we don’t carry the burden of a meaningless heritage.
Some say we are “wiser” in the present age; that a “brave new world” is open before us and the advancements of science and technology have forever dismissed ignorance and primitive lifestyles to oblivion. “Somewhere in the past,” we are told, lie the ghosts of another way of life. For most, there is only a transient desire to temporarily call them up to remembrance for “interest” and entertainment. Culture has forgotten that past has given birth to present, and that those “antiquated traditions” and “backward prejudices” were the seeds of our present condition.
We pitch our tents in the encampment of the past to blast the trumpet of awakening to our generation. The battles fought yesterday are more pertinent than ever today. Modern advancements of technology cannot spirit away the war that rages in the heart of man. We are still more dogmatic in our ignorance, more convinced of our “rights” and more consumed by our greed. Today, many of my peers are not educated in how to think rightly. They are often schooled in how not to think at all; to quote Charles Dickens “How not to get it done.” The gift of understanding of the times, however weakly borne by men, rests squarely in the hand of God and is given through no merit of the receiver. 
Some say that we reenact to glorify war and gore. To this I answer as follows: “...For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.” Luke 12:48I quoted Abigail Adams at the beginning of this post reflecting on the nature of war in her time. I personally aspire to be her daughter and the daughter of the women who went before her and those who followed. It is not allowable for me to avert my eyes from the truth, to cover my ears to the blast of the murderous cannon mouths, or close my mind to the horrors evoked by the grim toll of death exacted and the fears arising from looming personal danger and sacrifice. The stakes are high and growing ever-higher. I trust my words do not smack of sensationalism or the conspiracy alarmist when I say so. I believe I am not far wrong in asserting that, as it has always been, so it is now; that we face an even greater conflict with more deadly implications than have yet confronted the human race. It may not become a bloody deluge with lead and canons (we aren’t making canon-balls in the basement in any case) but a battle, if not physical, then of principle and jurisdiction, that rages and threatens. I am firmly convinced that the following lines of exhortation from Abigail Adams to her twelve-year-old son may fittingly be taken as pertinent in principle to our own time.
“These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by seeds that engage the heart, then these qualities which would otherwise lie dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman. War, tyranny and desolation are the scourges of the Almighty, and ought no doubt to be deprecated. Yet it is your lot, my son, to be an eyewitness of these calamities in your own native land; and at the same time to owe your existence among a people who have made glorious defense of their invaded liberties; and who, aided by a generous and powerful Ally, with the blessing of Heaven, will transmit this inheritance to ages yet unborn.”
“Blessed be the Lord my Rock, Who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle- my lovingkindness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer, my shield and the One in whom I take refuge, Who subdues my people under me. Lord, what is man that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that You are mindful of him? Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. Bow down Your heavens, O Lord, and come down. Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. Flash forth lightning and scatter them; shoot out Your arrows and destroy them. Stretch out Your hand from above; rescue me and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of foreigners, whose mouth speaks vain words, and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood. I will sing a new song to You, O God; on a harp of ten strings I will sing praises to You, the One who gives salvation to kings, Who delivers David His servant from the deadly sword. Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, whose mouth speaks vain words, and whose right hand is a hand of falsehood- That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as pillars, sculptured after the similitude of a palace; that our barns may be full, supplying all kinds of produce; that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields; that our oxen may be well-laden; that there be no breaking in or going out; that there be no outcry in our streets. Happy are the people who are in such a state; happy are the people whose God is the Lord!”
Psalm 144
