You’ve lived long enough to have heard a bunch of tired cliches and old sayings, I know. One of Andy’s favorites from an old friend is this; “Better hold your holt.”

His meaning? Hold your holt … holding on for dear life to your faith in God. No matter what you are facing. Especially when you’re going through the really bad stuff in life. ‘Cause that faith may be all you have at that point, and it will be the only thing to see you through. In these unsettled and fearful times today, there may not be a more meaningful phrase. Clinging desperately to the knowledge that He is an all-knowing and all-powerful God, who is patiently working His plan.

But here are some other things you need to hold onto, while you’re holding your holt on Him.

Real love. Don’t settle for a physical experience or emotional feeling that you will ultimately find is just a cheap substitute. It may help you for a little while, but it is guaranteed to leave you lonely and hurting in the end.

Do what is right. Stand up, immovable, for what is good and true, and refuse to change. Edmund Burke, a famous British statesman once said, “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Guess we are now seeing living proof.

Keep some close relationships. You need to view your family as crucial to you. Embrace and accept any differences between you. (It would a boring world if everyone was just like you or me.) Let them be who they are, even if you don’t understand what in the world they are thinking. Learn how to repair the broken places, as much as possible. Treasure your spouse, your kids, your dear friends. They are what is truly important to you. Everything else you can replace, or do without. Family and friends are not easily replaced, and when you lose them, it costs you dearly.

Hold your holt needs to be a set-in-concreteway-of-life for anyone who is seeking to be grounded and at peace with himself in this world. Don’t give in, don’t give up and don’t give way on your beliefs of what you know to be true and good.

“Hold your holt” is a lesson we need to learn in the face of today’s tolerance, compromises and problems. Yeah, it’s gonna get difficult at times. We know that. Just ask your parents, or your grandparents or someone from their generation. They had their share of dark years too. And they would probably tell you that the only way they made it through those gray days was to hang tough, keep loving the people in their life, and keep their faith.

I have the feeling that back then there were a lot of people who were smarter than our current tech-age generation - people who learned from experience what was truly important.

Send any responses to andybowman839@gmail.com.