One generation shall praise Your works to another,
and shall declare Your mighty acts.”
— Psalm 145:4
My Dearest Daughters,
As we approach the close of this year and the beginning of a new one, I’ve been reflecting on some of the things I sensed the Lord speaking into my heart over these past months. One theme returned again and again: what it truly means to be a pioneer.
Scripture tells us, “One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts” (Ps. 145:4). That verse has stayed with me this year, reminding me that what we inherit is never meant to end with us; it’s meant to be carried forward.
My great-great-grandfather came over from Norway and lived for years in a dugout he carved into the South Dakota earth before he had the time or resources to build a proper house. They lived under the biting wind of the high prairie. Once, a Native American man arrived with his wife on a pony. He entered their barn, and later the woman emerged with a newborn baby tied into her shawl. It was a different kind of people who lived in that era.
And yet, we don’t look back at my grandfather and ask, Why did you live in a hole in the mud? Didn’t you know what wood was for? Couldn’t you have lived in a normal house? Have you seen my house? No one would say that. We admire him, because he was a pioneer.
So many areas of life have required pioneers to move the world forward. Without them, I think the world would have simply dissipated long ago. And so I’ve been reflecting on the stories of a few of these people, one of which I want to share with you today.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was a Zionist who believed with conviction that the Jewish people must have a homeland—and that if they were to have a nation, they must also have their own language. He became determined to resurrect Hebrew, to unbury it from centuries of neglect and dilution, and to restore it to living use.
Eliezer was radical. When his son was born, he resolved that the child would hear no language but Hebrew. He and his wife would not speak in front of him unless they knew the Hebrew words. They would not invite guests unless those guests agreed to speak only Hebrew in his son’s presence. They took him nowhere. For a time, the boy was nearly housebound so that the development of the language could be preserved.
Because this man was so determined, Hebrew lived again. And because Hebrew lived, the Jewish state survived.
In the kingdom of God, there are also pioneers like Eliezer—men and women seeking to restore the language of the kingdom: love, unity, sacrifice, and the gifts of God’s Spirit that marked the first church. We’re all on a pilgrimage toward that restoration.
We must not look back at our forefathers and despise them for what they lacked, nor can we afford to discard their work and start over. We must keep running in the path the pioneers cut before us.
Your grandparents—my own parents—were pioneers in this way. They chose to reexamine everything: their lives, their relationships, their work, their homes. They asked again, “How did God design this? When God called Abraham out of Ur, how did He teach him to love his wife? To raise his children? To walk with God in daily life?”
They did not simply follow along with the crowd. They picked up the torch and said, “We will take responsibility for our children, for our elderly, for our food, for our work, for our relationships.” They sought to rediscover the beauty of the earth God gave us and the relationships He intended to flourish upon it.
They didn’t do everything perfectly, just as you and I have not done everything perfectly. But thank God they were willing to say, in essence, “This is our language, and we will speak it only.”
And just as Eliezer’s son no longer needed to live under the same strict constraints once Hebrew was restored to his people, there are things that perhaps we ourselves do not now hold with the same radicalism as our predecessors, but only because we are the inheritors. We are no longer sojourning in the wilderness, living on only manna just to reach the Promised Land. We now live in houses we did not build and harvest from vineyards we did not plant.
So my prayer for you, is that God would give you the heart and spirit of a pioneer for the territories He has entrusted to you. That you would honor those who went before you—not despising their work, but advancing it further down the road they began.
And when the path ahead feels uncertain, remember this: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he would later receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8). Faith has always looked like this—stepping forward with trust, guided not by certainty, but by obedience.
May you walk boldly into what God has prepared for you in the coming year, carrying with honor and gratitude all that you have inherited, and with courage what you are called to build.
With all my love,
Mom