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Barzillai Willey, or The Unknown Impact of Ancestry

“Do you know who Barzillai is?” I asked my Grandfather.

“No.” He replied. “I don’t believe I do.”

I asked my Father the same thing. Neither one of them knew who the biblical character Barzillai was.

Now, that’s not a slight on my Father or Grandfather. These two men are ministers, and they knew their Bibles. It just shows how obscure Barzillai is in the Bible.

It makes it all the more surprising that the story of Barzillai must have captivated Isaac and Deliverance Willey so much that they named one of their sons “Barzillai.”

For the record, Barzillai was an elderly rich man who aided King David when he fled for his life from his son Absalom who had just carried out a successful coup d’état. King David crossed the Jordan River tired and hungry. Barzillai brought him supplies and encouragement.

Barzillai Willey was born in 1734 in Lyme, CT. He died in 1771. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War, and he had a son whom he named–Barzillai!

The second Barzillai was born in 1764. As a very young man, he became a soldier in the Continental Army in the Connecticut Line and served at the Battle of Saratoga. After the Revolution, Barzillai became a Methodist minister. Eventually, he moved his family to Clark County, Indiana.

He had a son whom he named Barzillai, but my own interest is in his son Dennis Willey, who is my 4th Great Grandfather. Dennis Willey was a Methodist minister like his Father.

One of his daughters was named Margaret Minerva Willey, and she married Jairus McMillan. Jairus had left his home in Oneida County, New York, and traveled on foot from farmhouse to farmhouse to southern Indiana. There, he met Margaret, and they were married in 1855.

Apparently, the ministry was very important to Margaret Willey, and she longed to have a son who would be a minister like her father. Her desires were answered in her son, Clyde Holmes McMillan, who became a Methodist minsiter. Incidentally, Clyde married a minister’s daughter named Florence Mae Maupin, daughter of William Maupin.

Margaret Willey was so excited about her son Clyde being a minister that, according to my McMillan cousins, she would take out ads in the paper any time Clyde would come back home to North Vernon, IN to preach.

Clyde and Florence had several children including my Great Grandmother Roberta McMillan. Roberta developed a love for God and His Word in her early years. As she described it: “My Father would read a passage of Scripture and then our family would kneel at our chairs for prayer. It was here a reverence and love sprang up in my heart for God’s Word in those early years.”

This same devotion led my Great Grandmother to God’s Bible School in Cincinnati and then to a desire to go to the mission field. After graduating, both My Great Grandmother and my Great Grandfather were on their way to serve in Africa–separately.

Clarence said goodbye to his friends and family and headed off to Africa first. During that time, his Father, James Mason Keith, had a dream that Clarence had come back to find a wife. Everybody laughed because they knew that Clarence was off to Africa. Unbeknownst to them, the documents for the trip had not been filed properly, and Clarence had to return home. While he was home, he paid Roberta a visit and asked her to marry him. She assented, and they went to Africa together.

There, Clarence and Roberta had eight children. Their three sons were also ministers, one of whom was David Keith, the Grandfather I mentioned in the introduction to this story. Three of the daughters married ministers.

My Grandfather and Grandmother David and Huberta Carver Keith also met at God’s School of the Bible, and they ended up in Africa as missionaries. There, they had four children, the oldest of whom is my Mother.

When my Mother was 19, she met my Father, Sam White, at what was then Marion College and is now Indiana Wesleyan University. Undoubtedly, part of my Mother’s attraction to my Father was that he was planning on being a minister. From a young age, My Mother had had a desire to serve the Lord and was happy to partner with my Father to serve Christ and His church.

Their son, John Wesley White, never wanted to be a minister. I don’t believe it ever even crossed my mind growing up. I even went in a different direction theologically. I moved away from the Wesleyan Church and went into the Presbyterian Church.

You always think that your destiny and decisions are your own. But here I am, an eighth generation minister. I wonder what good old Barzillai Willey would think of that.

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5 Things You Can Do to Help You Start Again

In life, you will have times where you have to start again. You have to leave college and start a job, you go to a new school, you lose a friend, or you move to a new place.

Some new starts are harder than others. Three of the hardest are a loved one’s death, the empty nest, and retirement. When someone close to you dies, especially a spouse, almost everything in your life is different. They were a part of everything you did. This is similar to the empty nest. For women especially, you may have built your life around nurturing your children. That shaped each day. Now, every single day is radically different than it was before. For men, the biggest change is often retirement. You found status and meaning in your work. It structured your whole life. Now, you have to fill large chunks of time that work previously occupied. These are all huge changes!

How do we start again when our life changes so dramatically? How do we move forward when we didn’t want things to change?

There are no easy answers to this question. Adjusting mentally to new places and situations takes time, and it is not easy. Each person has to follow their own path. It’s very hard to know the exact pattern that things will follow when you move forward.

That said, I think there are some things that we can do that will help us start again. Here are five.

1. Take time to say good-bye. Our lives are so busy that sometimes we forget the need to mentally say good-bye to a past way of life. Funerals are one way we do this, but often we rush through funerals. Ancient people would take extended time to mourn a loss or mark a transition. When it comes to the human soul, fast is not necessarily efficient.

2. Be patient waiting for the new start. Even after we’ve said good-bye to the old way of life, we don’t immediately embrace the new or even see the new pattern of life. We may have to wait a long time before we get a vision for a new stage of life.

For me, I saw this happen when I turned 40. I realized that the vision for life I had had from my youth was now complete. I had accomplished everything I had envisioned: wife, stable job and finances, education, kids, etc. I started to ask, what now? A year and a half later, I’m just now beginning to get a vision for something bigger for the next stage of my life.

3. Have hope that a new beginning will come. People do adjust to new situations. It takes time, but it happens. For Christians, we have all sorts of resources from the God of hope (Rom. 15:13). If there is a passage of Scripture that particularly awakens hope within you, cling to it and let it seep down deep in your soul. Here are a few that have particularly helped me:

  • I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you (John 15:16).
  • For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).
  • Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go (Joshua 1:9).

4. Ask: what do I really want to do and be? Most of us have rarely asked this question. In addition, it may be too hard ask this question in the midst of the pain of saying good-bye. When our head clears a bit, it’s a good time to ask it. I would also suggest that our transition will be easier if we ask these questions envisioning questions before we get to the transition. Here’s a few other ways to ask it:

  • What would I do at home if I had a completely free week without any obligation to take care of others or do a job?
  • If I could retire today, what would I do with my time?
  • What could my life be in 5 years if I worked at it a little bit every day?

5. Ask: what are my current opportunities? Here we can start very small. Who are the people we can reach out to? Who are friends we haven’t talked to in a little while? Does our garage need cleaning? Can we pick up a guitar and start playing it? As we start working on the small things and connecting with those closest to us, a larger vision eventually will emerge.

Starting new is rarely an easy or quick process. However, if we recognize that it is a process, we can smooth the way a bit. If we can even now begin to envision life in different scenarios, we will be better prepared to meet them when we come. If we can fill our hearts with hope from the God of hope, we will be less afraid, more encouraged, and more courageous when the new opportunity comes.

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Classic Resources for Reducing Frustration and Anger

“Marcus Aurelius had a vision for Rome, and this is NOT IT!” Thus thundered Maximus in the well-known movie Gladiator. It’s also something I kept saying to my wife over several weeks while reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Not because the line itself is profound, but because it kept forcing its way into my mind—and out of my mouth.

Most people know Marcus Aurelius because of Gladiator. Long before that movie, however, he was famous because of his life and because of his book Meditations. In essence, Meditations is a self-help book—one people are still reading 1,800 years after it was written. There is a simple explanation: it helps.

Marcus Aurelius wrote these reflections while defending the borders of the Roman Empire. The book consists of brief, self-contained passages drawn from Stoic philosophy. Each one is meant to retrain perception—to help Aurelius, and the reader, live peacefully with reality as it actually is rather than as one wishes it to be.

The central claim is uncompromising: “If you are pained about any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.” Frustration is something we supply. And—Marcus relentlessly insists—we have the power to judge differently. Meditations is a manual for learning how to do that, so that anger and resentment give way to tranquility.

A few examples show how this works.

When things go badly: “Remember, too, on every occasion that leads you to vexation to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune” (4.49).

When you don’t want to get up early: “In the morning when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present. I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going into the world for things for which I exist and for which I was brought into this world?” (5.1).

When you dislike where you live: “[W]here a man can live, there he can live well” (5.16).

When you can’t get away: “Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and you, too, are wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your power whenever you choose to retire into yourself. . . . tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind” (4.3).

One of the book’s most penetrating insights is that human beings are social animals. “For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth” (2.1). We are made to work together. For that reason, “[t]o act against one another then is contrary to nature and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away” (ibid.). This theme recurs constantly: those who act against others violate their own nature—and in doing so, injure themselves.

From this follows an important implication. When someone wrongs us, they cannot truly harm us, because we remain free to act according to our own nature. That does not mean we never correct others. But when correction is rejected, we must bear with them. This, too, is demanded by our nature.

The same logic applies to doing good. Loving others and acting for the common good is natural—and therefore its own reward. As Marcus Aurelius puts it: “Have I done something for the general interest? Well, then, I have had my reward. Let this always be present to your mind and never stop doing such good” (11.4). If we lived this way, we would be far less anxious about recognition or gratitude.

One place I struggle to put this into practice is driving. As a result, I’ve resolved to let others drive as they wish and refuse to let it govern my emotions.

Recently, I was waiting for a gas pump. I couldn’t pull directly behind the car already there, so I waited slightly to the side. When that car pulled away, another driver quickly darted in and took the spot.

My immediate reaction was clear: “What a jerk!”

Then I remembered Marcus Aurelius. The driver either didn’t know I was waiting, or he did. If he didn’t know, it was an honest mistake and not worth anger. If he did know, then he harmed only himself by acting contrary to his social nature. Waiting a few extra seconds injured me not at all. And who knows what urgency, pressure, or trouble that driver carried with him that day?

Moments later, I pulled up to another pump, filled my tank, and left the gas station . . . with a calm and genuine tranquility.

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I Have a Dream

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! I hope that you will commemorate this day and the life and legacy of Dr. King. I thought about writing something, but I think I will just share his words which are worth listening to again and again.

I would also recommend putting it in context by reading Dr. King’s Autobiography. You can purchase it here.

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The Good of Waiting


Homer Simpson once told his children, “Now we play the waiting game. . . . Ahh, the waiting game sucks. Let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos!” And that’s pretty much how our society views waiting (as the commercial above illustrates).

To some degree, our society is right in this. As American humorist Evan Esar put it: “All things come to him who waits, but they are mostly leftovers from those who didn’t wait.”

We should be active not passive. We should not wait for life to happen. We should make things happen.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described this powerfully in his poem, “A Psalm of Life”:

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

This is a poem about doing, acting now and not waiting. The poem, however, ends in a tantalizing way:

Let us, then, be up and doing,
with a heart for any fate;
still achieving, still pursuing,
learn to labor and to wait.

Learning to wait. It’s as if Longfellow understood that as much as we want to act, waiting is a part of life.

In fact, we wait all the time. We have to wait to get our driver’s license, to get married, to have children, to find out what job(s) we will have, to see how our children will turn out. When things change or collapse around us, a new start eventually arrives, but it often takes time.

In the Bible, waiting is not only part of life, God makes us wait. The whole Bible, in a sense, is about waiting. In the Old Testament, people are waiting for the Messiah to come. In the New Testament, people are waiting for the Messiah to return.

When Jesus went into heaven, he told His followers to wait for the Holy Spirit. Why didn’t the Holy Spirit come right away? They had to wait 10 days before the Holy Spirit came? That’s not that long, but why not right away?

These biblical facts indicate that waiting is not a necessary evil. It is good. But what good could there be? Consider:

1. Waiting builds anticipation.

When my wife leaves and goes to the store, I’m happy to see her return. However, when she goes away for a week, the anticipation of her return builds throughout the week. By the time she returns, I have a new appreciation for her and greatly anticipate her return, making our reunion all the sweeter. The waiting built the anticipation.

2. Waiting enhances enjoyment.

One thing I have done this past year is try to do fasting, purely for health not religious reasons (though I do believe in fasting for religious reasons). I tried to do at least one 24 hour fast (lunch to lunch) each week. By the time I got to the lunch that ended the fast, I was more excited than normal to sit down and enjoy the food. I felt like I was feasting because I had been fasting. Waiting enhances enjoyment.

3. Waiting builds strength.

Waiting is saying “no” to present good in order to experience something good later. When we say “no” to present good, we become stronger. We learn to live without. Pleasures have less control of us, and we become more self-controlled. When we trust that God will give us good things in the future that we don’t see now, we build more dependence on God and less dependence on things. That’s how waiting builds strength.

4. Waiting engenders gratitude.

When you move to a new place, you have to build new relationships. This takes time. As you wait, you feel lonely. During this time, you can take stock of who is currently in your life, who has been in your life, and who could be in your life. As you feel lonely, you realize how good it is to experience the blessing of love and friendship. You become grateful for what you actually have, and so waiting engenders gratitude.

5. Waiting awakens desire.

I talked to a gentleman recently who had lost his parents at a young age. This was a terrible event for him and extremely difficult. However, what it did do was make him realize what a good thing he had in his parents. This awakened his desire for community and made him more ready to embrace it wherever he could find it. The lack made him desire something all the more.

Waiting is rarely easy and sometimes extremely hard. However, it does promote virtues that enable us to grow as individuals in a way that few other things can. If we can see that waiting has good in it, then the next time we have to wait, we will be better equipped to embrace it and let it have its work. As the prophet Isaiah put it, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (40:31).

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