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Mancala. It’s an African game involving colored rocks and wooden bowls. Don, our good buddy, brought it over this afternoon and played with Elton. 

After some fierce competition on the mancala board, the family jumped into the minivan and met me in Wheaton (where I work) to visit a couple of museums. We started with the Wade Center which has an extensive C.S. Lewis collection. Below, big brother Elton ties Simeon’s shoes.

Elton posing with C.S. Lewis. Supposedly, Lewis wrote many of his classic books on this desk.

For me, the desk is the most exciting artifact in the Lewis collection. However for my boys, since they are enchanted by The Chronicles of Narnia these days, the big attraction was the wardrobe. It was fitting that after listening to four weeks of stories from Luke about Peter and Edmund entering Narnia through the closet, Elton would get to see it firsthand.

Our second destination was the Billy Graham Museum. In the following photo Elton is preaching a sermon in one of Billy Graham’s portable pulpits.

Taking little boys to a museum is like trying to corral cats. You’d a thought that Luke had consumed a triple-shot espresso macchiato. 

If it wasn’t past my bedtime I would preach a sermon about the above photo. Elton in the crucible, on his way to the cross.

After the cross and dark hallway of death, we were raised in the glorious resurrection. If you’ve ever been to the Billy Graham Museum you know that it’s an awesome experience to move from such extreme darkness into the light. Elton was mesmerized.

My boys were also mesmerized, but in a different way.

A barricade. That’s what you’re looking at. At least once a week my boys stand before the front door in protest of me going to work. Don’t let their cute smiles fool you. Cousin Billy, the football coach, taught them a fierce defensive tackle maneuver. Simeon grabs my calves, Philip kneels down behind me, and Luke charges at me with all his might. On a good day, when I’m juggling a cup of espresso, computer bag and attaché, I fall backward over Philip and baptize myself in coffee. It’s like a scene out of Lord of the Flies except with Italian boys instead of British.

My mother-in-law, Sue, came by to visit. In the photo below Elton is teaching her a Zimbabwean form of origami.

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After demonstrating her paper folding acumen, Sue made the boys homemade pasta. In the picture below they are in their linguini zone. You may recall that Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner from Scotland, said, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” At least that’s what he said in Chariots of Fire. I told my boys, God made us to consume pasta, and when we do it we feel his pleasure. I thought I was being inspirational. For some reason they looked at me as though I were weird.

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Speaking of inspiration. The following photo speaks for itself. That’s right, it was Elton’s first Sicilian cannoli. Based on his expression after eating it, I’d say that Elton also felt a certain measure of pleasure. 

It’s now 11:00pm. Angela and Elton are still talking while I finish this post. A lot of our conversation was stimulated by the film we watched together this evening. It was a first-rate documentary on Nicholas and Alexandra. It tells the story and showed footage of the Romanovs’ reign to their execution at the hands of Bolshevik revolutionaries. Special attention is given to their son, Alexei, who had hemophilia. If you’ve ever seen the film, you can understand why it always reduces me to tears. For the entire film Nicholas tries to protect his beloved hemophiliac son from danger, even though he can’t. And at the end, when the two of them are seated before the firing squad, Nicholas puts his hands around his sons head in a vain attempt to shield him from the bullets. In those closing seconds, Alexei kisses his father for the last time before a bullet shoots through Dad’s hand into his son’s head…. What’s the lesson? Try as we may to protect our vulnerable children, in fact we have only limited control. It’s only in God, the sovereign One, in whom true security and refuge may be found.