Earthquakes of Consciousness

If all you have ever known is the sky above you and the earth beneathe, you begin to take it for granted. It has always been there. It always will be.  When something shakes you, some earthquake of consciousness, you begin to realize all that you have that is sometimes held by the tiniest of threads. And you realize how much that landscape of your life, that you have come to expect, and perhaps not notice, is something precious....and something that could be lost.

When I listened to the truant officer in Illinois during the hearing on Bill 136 who supported the bill requiring homeschoolers to register with the state ed department, I felt a small earthquake. This officer, who has the power to have our children seized from us, said that he welcomed the proposed Bill. It would give him the power, he claimed , to "help" the homeschoolers. He could then not just confront potential truants loitering on the streets day after day, but he could go to the homes of whomever he wished, and snoop around to see if they were properly educating their children.
His analysis of how to determine guilt- if they let him in their home. If they didn't welcome him, then they must be hiding something.

I pulled out the constitution, my little pocket book copy that sits by the computer. I called Asherel over and we read the preamble and then the first four amendments of the constitution that guides our government and limits its powers such that we are a nation of freedom. Then we watched the video of the truant officer claiming he should have the right, even obligation, to enter a law abiding citizen's home, guilty of no wrong doing and with no evidence of any wrong doing. His presumption of guilt? That would be determined by whether the homeowner willingly let him in to trample her 4th amendment rights. My 13 year old could see this was unconstitutional. Nonetheless, she didn't find the study as enthralling as I did.... and I realized freedom is all she has ever known. A state that respects the enumerated limits of its own power is what she has grown to expect, like waking to the sky above her and the ground beneath her. It is all I have ever known as well, but I am only a generation removed from the ancestors Hitler disposed of. I feel their cries of anguish in my soul.

I understand this bill is just tabled for now. It is not dead. A compromise is being sought. What I really want to know is did anyone grab that truant officer after the hearing. Did someone from the Public Education system pick up a constitution and open it to the 4th amendment and tell him he needed to memorize that section and pass a test on it before he returned to work? Were those committee members as appalled as I was by the ignorance of the constitutional rights that he,they, supposedly were entrusted to uphold? Did they not see where this bill was leading? Surely they were not so blind, or so ignorant. I can only assume they know what they are doing.

The enemies of freedom would never succeed if they came revealing the full extent of their plan. We are frogs being slowly boiled to death because the first warm drops don't seem to matter, creating just a hint of lethargy.

In the history of God's people as they entered and conquered foreign lands, they were told not to intermarry lest they be entrapped by the false gods of the foreign nations. Yet time after time, the people would slowly adopt the pagan practices little by little despite God's commands, and they would stumble into idolatry. God, in His merciful wrath, would create 'earthquakes of consciousness' to shake them out of their complacency and they would veer back, at least for a while, to His path.

I would write more, but I hear a knock on the door. It is a truant officer and he is pointing a finger at me, demanding proof that I taught my algebra lesson yesterday, and he wants to interview my child privately to be sure I didn't withhold Twinkies and milk. Since I did nothing wrong.... I don't have to worry.....right?

2 Kings 17:15-17

¹⁵ They rejected his decrees and the covenant he had made with their ancestors and the statutes he had warned them to keep. They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. They imitated the nations around them although the LORD had ordered them, “Do not do as they do.”
 ¹⁶ They forsook all the commands of the LORD their God and made for themselves two idols cast in the shape of calves, and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the starry hosts, and they worshiped Baal. ¹⁷ They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sought omens and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, arousing his anger.