President Warren G. Harding was dead.  He died at 7:35 p.m. on August 2, 1923.  He was in San Francisco, California, having just completed a visit to the territory of Alaska, the first visit by a president.  The cause of death was probably congestive heart failure, which was aggravated by pneumonia (due to Mrs. Harding’s wishes, no autopsy was performed).

Vice President Calvin Coolidge was in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, visiting his boyhood home.  His father, Calvin Coolidge, Sr., served as a local Justice of the Peace there.  Coolidge was sworn in at 2:45 a.m. on August 3, 1923 as President of the United States of America.  His own father swore him in by the light of a kerosene lamp.

Calvin Coolidge, Jr., President Coolidge’s son, was fifteen years old at the time.  He was working a summer job on a western Massachusetts tobacco farm.  “The farmer told him that his father had been inaugurated in the dead of the night.  The boy took the report without comment, then asked, “Which shed do you want me to work today?’  Amazed, the farmer said that if his father had been named President of the United States, he surely wouldn’t be working twelve-hour days in a tobacco field.  ‘You would if your father were my father!’ responded young Calvin” (William J. Bennett, America: The Last Best Hope, vol. 2, p. 69).

Parents, your expectations mean a lot.  What do you expect from your children?

1.  Do you expect them to know the Bible?  I am talking about really knowing it, being able to teach others, being able to defend truth.

2.  Do you expect them to exhibit a Christian character?  Do you demand such?  Would you fellowship them if they ceased such and refused to repent?

3.  Do you expect them to do their best in whatever they do?  This includes: school, work, sports, church responsibilities such as teaching, being prepared for Bible study, etc?

4.  Do you expect them to be faithful in attendance?  Do you let them miss for work, school, friends, etc?  How is your example?

5.  Do you expect them to truly worship?  Merely sitting in the pew, and playing with the babies is not worship.

6.  Do you expect them to work and become taxpayers and not tax-takers?

“Train up a child in the way he should go…” (Prov. 22:6)