“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”
~ Deuteronomy 29:29
“My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”
~ Psalm 63:8
A transplanted Arkansas boy who now lives in the often-frigid Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania, I like my apple cider to be steaming and my house to be about 78 degrees. An anthracite coal-burning stove does the job, but there is one problem with coal heat, and it occurs about three o’clock every morning: the fire dies down to the point where the house is dangerously cold.
Is 21st century evangelicalism growing cold? I think not.
Old Testament Levitical priests had a duty to tend the fire in the tent of meeting, to keep it roaring and bright. The fire on the altar, the eternal flame on which sacrifices were offered to God, was not to go out. Other tasks could be deferred, but the fire on the altar was never to go out (Lev. 6:8–13).
Through the centuries believers have served well as fire tenders. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deut. 29:29). This is a gathered inheritance kept alive by men and women of faith. In our own Christian homeschool history, for instance, the honor belongs to Hulsey, Harris, Ferris, and countless others.
Truth is restated; more than that, the reader will observe that saints throughout the ages have built on the faith of those who preceded them. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: that is true, and truth is the same forever. Revelation of truth, though, is forever becoming better understood, we hope. The previous generation of believers passes the torch to us, and we pass it to the next, and so on. Each generation builds on the illumination of the previous generation. We trust that the world is better for it.
On my farm grows an oak tree that began its life 30 years ago, full of potential, and it was beautiful in its own right. Today it is so much more beautiful than it was 30 years ago. It is the same tree, but oh, how much larger and fuller are its branches and fruits! Diurnally I remove acorns and leaves deposited on my truck. It is the same tree, still full of potential, but producing more fruit than ever. A vicious blight or uncaring gypsy moth may kill it someday, but I already see a new oak seedling growing in its redolent shadow.
I look at this new generation of Christian young people and I know that we are not going to run out of fuel. The Holy Spirit is still here to encourage, to inspire every generation. There is, I have no doubt, a new C.S. Lewis or Oswald Chambers alive today. Fear is dissipated by promises; evil is overcome by good. A gathered inheritance. We again recognize that the secret things belong “to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever” (Deut. 29:29). A gathered inheritance!
Theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “The lightning illuminates all and then leaves it again in darkness. So faith in God grasps humanity, and we respond in ecstasy. And the darkness is never again the same . . . but it is still the darkness.”1
All of God’s saints — past, present, and future — are flashes of lightning in the sky. And the darkness is never the same again, because the light reveals what life can be in Jesus Christ. “Memory allows possibility,” theologian Walter Brueggemann writes.2 A gathered inheritance. We bring memory. You young people bring possibility.
Spelling
Spelling is critical on the ACT writing essay. It will make the difference between a 4 or a 5. If you can’t be sure that you know how to spell a word, choose another one! These are some of the most common misspelled words.
accede
descend
pressure
accident
fascinate
misspelled
accommodate
mischievous
possession
accordance
miscellaneous
accuracy
muscle
recollection
succeed
susceptible
dispelled
occasional
inflammation
yielding
boundary
recommend
elementary
summary
seize
symmetrical
receive
final
committee
receipt
finally
occur
existence
monosyllable
experience
intellectual
across
sentence
parallel
amount
embellishment
apart
foregoing
wholly
arouse
forehead
woolly
village
already
forty
villain
all right
foreign
till
preceptor
disappearance
immediately
accommodation
fiend
choose
succeed
usually
amateur
formally
perpetual
grandeur
formerly
persuade
perspiration
fulfill
apparatus
willful
police
appetite
policies
approximate
guardian
opportunity
guessing
presence
opposite
precede
disappoint
imminent
on
siege
chosen
grammar
friend
legible
proceed
ledger
The War of the Worlds3
H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds (1898) is a science fiction novel by H.G. Wells. It describes the experiences of a narrator who travels through the suburbs of London as England is invaded by Martians. It is one of the earliest stories that details a conflict between mankind and an alien race. At the same time, in this naturalist novel, as he travels from place to place, escaping the Martians, the protagonist learns much about himself and the world.
Suggested Vocabulary Words
- The growing crowd, he said, was becoming a serious impediment to their excavations, especially the boys. They wanted a light railing put up, and help to keep the people back. He told me that a faint stirring was occasionally still audible within the case, but that the workmen had failed to unscrew the top, as it afforded no grip to them. The case appeared to be enormously thick, and it was possible that the faint sounds we heard represented a noisy tumult in the interior.
- I was very glad to do as he asked, and so become one of the privileged spectators within the contemplated enclosure. I failed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected from London by the six o’clock train from Waterloo; and as it was then about a quarter past five, I went home, had some tea, and walked up to the station to waylay him.
- Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.
- Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth.
Test-Taking
Writing Section Tips
• Choose a position and defend it. Don’t be a wimp! The ACT test inevitably offers a prompt that will require you to take a position and to defend it well. Do not equivocate; do not elaborate; do not flip flop. Take a position and defend it with multiple evidence types. Repeat, at least three times, your main position or thesis.
• Stay focused. In every paragraph, restate the thesis in some form or another. “As the reader sees, so and so is true.” Or “Clearly the above evidence proves . . .” Or “Thus the reader understands. . . .”
• Organize! Organize! Organize! Make sure that the graders sense that you have a beginning point and a closing point — and that you are taking them somewhere!
• Use appropriate (i.e., formal) diction (grammar) and syntax (style). Do not write the way you speak. Write more formally. Do not become your readers’ friend — graders do not want to be your friend. They want you to change their lives with an inspired insight on a topic.
• Remember: longer is always better. I don’t care what you hear, what you read, that is always the case.
Tone and Mood
The end of the cylinder was being screwed out from within. Nearly two feet of shining screw projected. Somebody blundered against me, and I narrowly missed being pitched onto the top of the screw. I turned, and as I did so the screw must have come out, for the lid of the cylinder fell upon the gravel with a ringing concussion. I stuck my elbow into the person behind me, and turned my head towards the Thing again. For a moment that circular cavity seemed perfectly black. I had the sunset in my eyes.
I think everyone expected to see a man emerge — possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I did. But, looking, I presently saw something stirring within the shadow: greyish billowy movements, one above another, and then two luminous disks — like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me — and then another.
A sudden chill came over me. There was a loud shriek from a woman behind. I half turned, keeping my eyes fixed upon the cylinder still, from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. I stood petrified and staring.
A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.
Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth — above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes — were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled, and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.
Suddenly the monster vanished. It had toppled over the brim of the cylinder and fallen into the pit, with a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather. I heard it give a peculiar thick cry, and forthwith another of these creatures appeared darkly in the deep shadow of the aperture.
I turned and, running madly, made for the first group of trees, perhaps a hundred yards away; but I ran slantingly and stumbling, for I could not avert my face from these things.
What is the tone or mood of this passage and how does the author create this tone?
Parallel and Perpendicular Lines
Which of the following could represent an equation of a line perpendicular to the graph of line Z?
- y = x + 1
- y = 2x + 4
- y = 5
- y = -x + 2
- y = -10x + 2
Goddard proves that mentally challenged individuals whose intelligence has reached its full development continue to test at exactly the same mental age by the Binet scale, year after year. In their case, familiarity with the tests does not in the least improve the responses. At each retesting the responses given at previous examinations are repeated with only the most trivial variations. Of 352 mentally challenged children tested at Vineland, three years in succession, 109 gave absolutely no variation, 232 showed a variation of not more than two fifths of a year, while 22 gained as much as one year in the three tests. The latter, presumably, were younger children whose intelligence was still developing.4
Which diagram best represents the above conclusions?
Grammar
Correct the following sentences:5
- 1. They crowned him long ago;/But who they got to put it on/Nobody seems to know.
- I experienced little difficulty in distinguishing among the pedestrians they who had business with St. Bartholomew.
- The great difference lies between the laborer who moves to Yorkshire and he who moves to Canada.
- It can’t be worth much to they that hasn’t larning.
- To send me away for a whole year — I who had never crept from under the parental wing — was a startling idea.
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”6
— James Baldwin
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint (Isa. 40:28–31).
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