The summer has passed us by quickly this year. It felt like just yesterday the school year had ended and we were making plans for what our family would do in the first week of July. In just the blink of an eye, we are now into the first week of a new school year. 

This summer my family traveled between BC and Alberta. During that time, spent a week at Camp Kuriakos on Sylvan Lake, Alberta just outside of Red Deer. There, Pastor Courtenay and I served as resource people along with a good friend and seminary classmate. 

I took on the role of facilitating the Adult Study portion of the week, using material from my recent research paper on Martin Luther and photos from my trip to Germany in May. I named my study sessions, “Death, Life and Community: Martin Luther’s Thoughts That Changed His World.” 

As I advertised the topic on the first night of camp, a few folks commented on not knowing too much about that “history stuff” or jokingly wondered if we were going back to school. Certainly, not everyone is of the mindset to be a historian, but I also think that these comments revealed a common mindset that these “academic” topics are beyond most folks. A sentiment with which I strongly disagree with. 

While our family drove across Western Canada these past weeks, we also listened to podcasts, about history, scams, and the science of reading (literacy education). Amazingly, our kids were just as interested in these podcasts as they were in Disney movies on their iPads. The Science of Reading podcast ( Sold a Story) is one they have asked to listen to again, as it is about how reading is taught in the early grades. One of the points in the podcast is that children love learning history or science. Greeking Out, a podcast about Greek mythology is a hit in our house right now. It is usually teachers or adults] who believe that certain topics are uninteresting… yet children often love learning science or history which allows them to feel like experts on a particular topic.

Similarly, the stories about Martin Luther and his ideas are easily understood by anyone, even those who haven’t learned anything about him previously. All that is required is a little imagination about what 16th-century Europe might have been like.

We live in a world that is often oblivious to history or even afraid to think about it.  Some claim history is “too boring.” They may actually be hiding a feeling of inadequacy or of not knowing enough. Often when we discover we don’t know something about a certain topic, it can easily feel as though we unintelligent or somehow inadequate. We can fell as though we could never learn more either. 

Of course, the opposite is true. The stories of our past can be easily understood and learning them anew at any age only helps us to understand the world better. Knowing our history also helps us to understand our circumstances of the present. Our stories of the past provide insight into our present story. Learning the stories of our faith from the past, and understanding where we have been only serves to deepen our faith today. 

Photo: Wartburg Castle Mosaic of St. Elisabeth of Thuringia who lived in the 13th century,