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As grandparents, a lot of the children’s things wind up at our house and we have to figure out what to do with them—including toys. Most of our granddaughters have grown past the simple toy stage of life, but instead of throwing their old toys away we have stored many of them. Sometimes ago we placed a box of their things in our storage shed and I pretty much forgot that they were there. I noticed them a while back and saw some interesting things that brought back memories. As best as we can recollect, a few of them belonged to Mallory who will be nineteen next month, so I doubt if she wants to play with a fake cash register that makes all kinds of sounds; I am sure she is more interested in something that contains real money at this stage of her life. But all our little girls had lots of fun with the talking telephone, steering wheel that makes animal sounds, and all sorts of other annoying gadgets. Not only is Mallory in young adulthood now, Jaleah is seventeen, Madeline is about to be fourteen, and Addy is coming up on twelve. But there is one more who is at the prime of enjoying such things—four year old Raegan. And I made the mistake of telling her that there were toys out in the shed!

Raegan kept after me until I gave in and went and got the long neglected jewels for her to sift through. I do not think I gained any points with my wife when I took the next step of putting fresh batteries in several of them; it did not take long for Gale to express her displeasure with how much noise the play telephone was making as Raegan was deeply involved with her “new” set of toys. Admittedly, it became quite annoying very quickly but it was worth the annoyance to see her having such a good time. And I have to admit that even though I am almost as old as all of the girls put together, I found some of those old toys prettying interesting myself. As Si Robertson said, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can bring an old dog new toys!”

We live in a world that often despises the old ways and that seems to be especially true regarding our nation and the principles that it was founded on. Even though there are efforts to discount it, I will never be convinced that Biblical truths were not at the core of the establishment of The United States of America. That does not mean that our national history is flawless—it has some ugly scars that we should not be proud of—yet I am persuaded that at its beginnings our forefathers desired to establish a nation that loved and honored God and believed and followed His Word. Now with so much neglect of those foundational truths, we find much erosion and weakening of our nation under the pretense of establishing something new. Indeed, something new is being established but it appears to be far from being something better. In order to see positive return to what God has called us to be as a nation, we must give a serious response to the statement that the Lord gave through the prophet Haggai long ago: “Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways” (Haggai 1:5, New International Version).

Maybe it’s time for us to get out some of those “old toys”, for they might serve us better than we realize. Abiding by the old ways of God and His Word does not mean that we neglect to move forward, but it enables us to move forward on a solid foundation that has held us up as a nation for more than two hundred years. The words of Jeremiah in Lamentations 5 must become our prayer: “Restore us to Yourself, O Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old unless You have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure” (verses 21-22).