Do you remember studying history in school? It seems like the textbooks were full of dates, names, and places! I remember studying about well-known leaders such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, and Robert E. Lee, however studying about these people or their countries or empires would elude me, as I had a hard time piecing the puzzle together! We often jumped back and forth in time in our studies, only taking small chunks of history chronologically. Even then, those blocks of time floated around in my head, never coexisting, never making a pattern that would make sense to me. After all, time is an abstract concept! For a young mind to grasp this concept is asking quite a lot; it's like asking someone to visualize a puzzle from a few fragments of interlocked sections. You can see bits and pieces, but the overall picture does not take shape or make sense yet. This actually made history boring to me and I had no interest in pursuing it. Isn't it funny how time can turn things around?
When we began home schooling, I was immediately introduced to the concept of using wall timelines in history. Was I ever enlightened! Finally, those bits and chunks I had learned about began to drop into place and create a woven tapestry, often, I discovered, modeling a cause and effect pattern. I could envision how the fall of one empire led to the rise of another, or the leadership of one person created a permanent change in a country's future, or perhaps an entire region. I also saw history by-the-slice; what was happening in several places at one time! For example, while Hannibal was leading his elephants across the Alps during the Punic War, Archimedes was contemplating mathematical equations and China was building its great wall to keep invaders out! And imagine my surprise to learn that the Xerxes I remember studying about as a teenager was the same Persian king, under the Hebrew name "Ahasuerus," to have taken Esther as his wife! (Read the book of Esther in the Old Testament to find out her account!) Now I was excited to learn about our past! I saw Biblical events weave into a history I had grown up learning secularly, and not only did it make perfect sense, it provided a foundation to history that clearly showed God's sovereign plan.
{homeschoolinthewoods blog}
