As I sit down at my desk to write my very first article on my site to share with the world, it seems quite far away, yet very near. For quite some time now, I have wanted to get pen and paper and sit at my desk to write out my thoughts for people to read—thoughts that might be thought-provoking and challenge the modern ideas of our time. Pieces about faith, the arts, history, home, culture, books, and really the world around us. Not because I think every thought I have needs an audience, but because I do believe there are things worth thinking about, talking about, and preserving.
As I look through my window to our garden, I reflect on the meaning of The Lamp & Hearth.
We live in an age that moves incredibly fast. Something that consumes everyone’s attention today will probably be lost and forgotten tomorrow. There is always another headline, another argument, another controversy, and another new story we are told deserves our attention.
Sometimes I think we would do well to slow down.
Traditions, ideas, and many of the things that matter have largely remained the same throughout our history.
God is still God. His Word is still the absolute truth. A husband is still called to his duties to his wife and family. A home is still worth tending and cultivating. A neighbor is still worth knowing. History is still worth remembering. Good books are still worth reading. Beauty is still worth appreciating. And truth doesn’t stop being truth simply because the present age doesn’t particularly care for it or says that old truths are no longer accepted today.
Those are the sorts of things I want to write about here.
The name The Lamp & Hearth came from two things that are very fitting in my life.
First is the lamp.
The Psalmist writes, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
That is where I believe everything must begin.
I am a Christian, and my theology is rooted in the Reformed tradition. I believe Scripture is the Word of God and that Jesus Christ is Lord over all of life. Our faith isn’t something we practice for a couple of hours on Sunday morning and then put away until the following week. It should shape how we understand our families, our work, our homes, our culture, our history, and ultimately how we see the world God has made.
We must learn to abide in Christ and recognize that we cannot do anything by our own strength. Christ is the vine and we are the branches. Apart from Christ, we are helpless and weak creatures.
With the lamp burning, the truth will set you free.
Then there is the hearth.
My wife and I live in a very tiny village that has the atmosphere of an English cottage. We call our home Chateau de Conway. We both feel called to have a home of hospitality for our friends and for pilgrims in the mission field when they are home on furlough. This brings not only our dreams to life, but ultimately what we believe we are called to do by our Lord: to be good stewards of what He has blessed us with.
Our home is not merely a house or the things we fill it with, but home. A place with roots. That is what my wife and I strive to cultivate in our home. A place where friends and neighbors are welcomed. Where books fill the shelves, meals are shared around a table, prayers are offered, stories are told, and memories are made.
Most of this will never make the history books. However, the legacy that we leave to our children and grandchildren is much more important than what can fill a library of books.
And yet I think those ordinary things matter tremendously.
I love history, and I expect there will be plenty of it here. My favorite period to study is the American Revolutionary War. We remember studying history in school and learning about kings, presidents, generals, wars, elections, and the great events that shaped nations. However, the longer I live, the more firmly convinced I am that history is also the story of millions of ordinary men and women whose names we will never know.
As Nikolaus Zinzendorf is often quoted as saying, “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.”
They worked, raised families, worshiped God, buried those they loved, cared for their neighbors, endured hardships, and eventually handed what they had built to another generation. This is the very life that I want to live. To live is Christ and to die is gain! Leaving a gospel legacy to the next generation and instilling Christian virtue wherever we are.
We inherited a world we did not build.
We inherited a faith, history, culture, communities, homes, institutions, and traditions shaped by people who lived long before us. Not everything handed down to us is good simply because it is old. Of course not. Wisdom requires knowing what should be kept and what should be discarded.
But I refuse to believe that simply because we are modern, we are therefore wiser. The calendar has moved forward. That does not mean wisdom has moved forward with it.
There are old truths worth defending, old books worth opening again, and old stories that ought not be forgotten. Not everything handed down to us deserves to survive—but neither should we surrender a good inheritance simply because the age has grown tired of it and much of society considers its ideas or traditions antiquated.
Those are what I mean when I talk about the permanent things. Faith, truth, goodness, beauty, courage, duty, family, home, and our obligations before God and toward one another. The things that will still matter long after today’s outrage and tomorrow’s fashion have both been forgotten.
My first purpose in writing The Lamp & Hearth is to honor my Lord, for He alone is worthy of all glory and majesty. I cannot do this in my own strength. I need the Lord for the very words I put on paper. My second goal is to share topics of conversation and ideas with you, the reader, that might be an encouragement and blessing as we all travel the pilgrimage home to the Celestial City in due course.
Some days I may write about theology. Other days it may be history, Churchill, an old book, something happening in our culture, the stewardship of a home, or simply something I have been thinking about.
And every now and then, I am sure the sea will make its way onto these pages too. I have always loved the ocean. Its history, its ships, its vastness, and the feeling you get standing on the shore looking out toward a horizon that seems to go on forever.
The world will continue to change, and much of it will be beyond our control. But we are not powerless over what happens within our own walls. We can tend our homes. We can know our neighbors. We can remember our history. We can teach what is true, preserve what is good, and refuse to surrender what is worth keeping.
I am a Christian, a husband, a father, an accountant by trade, a lover of history with the sea in my blood, and a man trying to be faithful with what God has placed in front of me to steward and cultivate.
Maybe there are others trying to do the same.
If so, pull up a chair.
There is room by the hearth.
Welcome to The Lamp & Hearth.
~RLN
Good writing and timely content.