Bond Part 2

I had the wonderful opportunity again to attend RAD camp which is all about helping families that are struggling with attachment begin to heal. It was a very moving experience for me as I felt I was literally watching the hand of the Lord work in these families lives. The parents are wonderfully loving and dedicated to doing anything they can to help their suffering kids.

I reflected again on the aha moment I'd had while watching Rabbi Daniel Lapin discuss the worship of ba'al. I discussed it with several other staff members at the camp and we came to the conclusion that while certainly mental/emotional aspects play a significant role in attachment issues, it actually comes down to a spiritual battle.

So, many of the kids I'm blessed to work with have had great evil perpetrated upon them at a very young age, including in utero. Is it any wonder that they struggle with the idea of trusting when that trust has been so horrifically broken in the past. As I point out in my earlier "Bond" post the conditions of these kids is remarkably similar to the conditions of the societies worshipping ba'al.

Here's a brief re-cap of some of those conditions.

-Defecation
-Smearing of Excrement
-Vulgarity
-Violence
-Loss of honor and self-respect
-Demeaning and Destructive towards women
-Warring against faith
-Sexual Depravity/Deviancy
-Animalistic
-Filth
-Hopelessness

I list those, because I see all of them in my work. These kids are suffering. I know they go into these conditions because of dark experiences and dark feelings they have. I also know that life can get better as the learn to trust their true family, the ones who love and really take care of their needs and do all they can to help these children grow up to be amazing adults.

As I was pondering the spiritual I thought of a couple of Scriptures that refer to family. First off I think it is interesting to look at the 10 commandments given to Moses and to note that one of them has a promised blessing associated with keeping it,

Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Well how about that? It seems that having an appropriate parent/child relationship will make life healthier, living longer. Of course thats not a guarentee that we all live to be 100, but I do think it makes life more fulfilling happy and yes healthier. I also believe there are eternal connotations as well, inheriting the earth and all that.

There are sometimes if we are listening that we receive spiritual instruction and the next Scripture came into my mind more like instruction then anything I could have come up with on my own.

Malachi 4:5-6 Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Elijah. This is the last verses on the Old Testament. The Old Testament is about covenant relationship between God and His people. I thought of the Scripture and I asked myself, why Elijah? and what is this turning all about?

So, I jogged my memory with a quick search about the prophet and the answer was an even bigger aha then the one I had for my first "Bond" post. Elijah is the most famous prophet to go up against the priests of ba'al. The story if found in 1 Kings 18. Elijah challenges the priest of ba'al to call down fire, all 400 of them try to do so but fail. He then has buckets and buckets of water poured over an alter and calls upon the Lord to light a fire, which He does. This proved to the people where the real power lies and the people responded.

I find it fascinating that this champion against ba'al would then be in charge of turning our hearts to each other in families. There it is, the best way to win the spiritual battle is as a family hearken to the Lord, keep His commandments, trust in His blessings, be good parents and be good kids.

This country needs God, the Founders knew it, and so many Americans know it today. We also need to make sure we are focusing our attention on the most fundemental unit of our society, the family. We cannot abdicate our roles as family members to government or teachers or whoever else. The kids are work with are extreme examples but I believe we are seeing the distrust and lack of attachment prevelant in our society as a whole. We must turn to each other and to God.

The spirit of Elijah is alive and well, we can keep it growing.