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online meanderings - friendship, life, socks and other stuff
Posted: 2012-01-28 15:21:48 UTC+11:00
This week, I was encouraged in my Christian life,
On reading the word of God - Ally gives a wonderful summary of, and link to, a talk on Psalm 119:1-40 about why we should read the Bible. Pure gold!
Putting the "Christian" in Christian friendship - "To make their welfare of higher interest than our own." A description of Christian friendship by Jonathon Parnell from Romans 15:2.
Don't be afraid to pray whatever it takes - Jon Bloom says, "we should plead for the discipline" that helps us to grow.
and helped in my marriage.
Don't take it from me: Reasons you should not marry an unbeliever - Kathy Keller, wife of Tim Keller, gives some helpful suggestions for counselling Christians who are considering marrying unbelievers.
A picture perfect marriage I, II and III - A great mini-series by Challies on marriage. To husbands: "Do you have that picture in your mind, of your bride, your wife, standing there before the Lord, washed clean of every trace of sin? Fix that in your mind because God calls you to help her get there!" (See also Mutual submission, on Ephesians 5:18-21.)
I read some great answers to serious questions about pornography,
Should I marry a man with pornography struggles? - An excellent answer to a difficult question from Russell Moore - and a great description of godly manhood. HT Challies
You just caught your son in [viewing] porn. What do you do? - A very helpful article by Rick Thomas about what to do if you discover, for example, that your teenage son has been sneaking out of bed to view porn. HT Challies.
and was reminded that life is worth fighting for.
Five things we can do for the unborn - John Piper: "If you could see each little handiwork of God and what it looks like when it is being crushed or poisoned or starved, you would say, this can't be happening! Civilized people do not do this! The children will not be saved and God's work will not be reverenced without an act of sustained sympathetic imagination. Otherwise it is out of sight, out of mind — just like Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen, and Auschwitz. It just couldn't be happening. And so we act as if it isn't."
The child fashion model with down syndrome - Amazing - and wonderful. By Joe Carter.
The authentic feminism of Melinda Tankard Rice, Sisterhood beware - silencing ideas silences protest, Why being Christian gets you crucified - Three articles defending anti-porn, pro-life activist Melinda Tankard Rice against the abuse she has suffered for her views. HT Nicole
I was inspired by a moving story,
Bittersweet - Amy's post about her sister's lost fight with breast cancer and about our very good God, who answers prayer.
intrigued by a helpful new series,
How to stay Christian in seminary - A new series about how not to end up at theology college less Christ-centred than when you started.
and amused and comforted about my "failures" in memory and motherhood.
Wordsmithy (book review) - "The fact that you can’t remember things doesn’t mean that you haven’t been shaped by them." Well, that's a relief! A quote from Douglas Wilson's Wordsmithy, a book on writing reviewed by Challies.
I get a kind of guilty pleasure from reading about the so-called "failures" of other mums. Not sure if I should! But I identified with these: Amy's A thirsty person shouldn't drink salt water (I loved the bits about the sock drawer and sleeping in school uniform!) and Jenny's If I was a proper mother (I, too, feel great pressure to shop at Aldi and markets - and, instead, guiltily do a one-stop-shop at Coles).
Finally, I was reminded why the cross was necessary.
God, man and the atonement - "When...we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell–deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before." From John Stott's The Cross of Christ, quoted in Of First Importance
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a better country
Posted: 2012-01-26 09:10:24 UTC+11:00
Readers from Melbourne will probably guess this was written a couple of days ago, at the end of a heat wave. But today seemed a good time to post it: it's Australia Day. For all who feel at home where they live - and for those who don't.
It's been breathlessly hot for days. At night, it's hard to sleep: we have to choose whether to close the window and swelter in the stuffy room, or open it to invite in the occasional puff of air and the mosquitoes.
Last night we opened the window and risked the mosquitoes. As I leaned on the window sill and savoured the cooling air, I heard a munching noise from our persimmon tree. I could see leaves moving, and glimpse a furry face in the gloom. I shone a torch in its direction, and sure enough, there was a fat old possum, munching on a green persimmon. I'm not sure how he can bear it! I've tasted a persimmon far riper than the ones on our tree, and it shrivelled my tongue.
The possum is an old friend. As I sit on the couch and sip my morning coffee, there he is, regular as clockwork, trundling along the fence. He's twice the size of a small cat and twice as heavy as a large one, solid with muscle and fat. I'm not sure how he can move his bulk along the narrow fence. He waddles, balancing himself with a thick, fuzzy tail, and the leaves of the persimmon tremble as he disappears behind them. I don't know where he sleeps during the day, but it can't be far away.
Last night his eyes gleamed red in the torchlight. I said a mental "Goodnight" and retreated to the wrinkled sheets of the bed. When the night's this hot, I don't sleep deeply: I doze, half-waking to the heavy scent of eucalyptus oil hanging in the still air. I breathe it in, and the mosquitoes don't seem to matter.
Like so many generations of Australian children, I grew up on the literature of Britain. The oaks of Narnia and the elms of Middle Earth marched across my imagination, and the grey-green eucalypts of Australia didn't quite measure up. This wasn't helped by the cutesy gumnuts Snugglepot and Cuddlepie or the unlikely antics of Blinky Bill: Australian children's literature hadn't yet come of age. Hopefully, it will be different for my own children, thanks to authors like Alison Lester and John Marsden; but I'm only starting to feel like I belong here.
This morning I sat on our back veranda and listened to the dawn chorus. Which makes it sound far more ethereal than it is! No robins or thrushes here. Not even the Australian equivalent, the unearthly carolling of the magpies or the gurgling of the kookaburras; instead, the gums behind our house explode every morning with a flurry of buttercup-and-white feathers and the screeching of the cockatoos. They prance up and down, display their crests, jostle for position, play king-of-the-branch, and goggle at me with reptilian eyes.
There's a pause in the cacophony, and a quiet breeze rustles the wattle leaves. The cool change is coming. And suddenly, I know it: this is my place. My country. For a little while.
To live in one place and long for another is good training: you learn to long for heaven. To live in a place and love it is a different kind of training: it gives you a foretaste of what is to come. Because however at home I feel here, this isn't my homeland. I belong to a better country. In Jesus, I have finally found the way home.All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-15 NIV)
This post first appeared at The Briefing.
image is by jjreade from flickr
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from link to link to link to...
Posted: 2012-01-24 14:02:57 UTC+11:00
From my friend Honoria's Facebook page:read Jean Williams' blog, which tags Justin Taylor's post, which quotes David Powlison, commenting on B. B. Warfield's sermon, saying it's...
Now I know why I had so much trouble with that link.
The Most Riveting Description of the Goal of Christian Living I’ve Ever Read thegospelcoalition.org
Classic!
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what I'm reading: how prayer is like marriage from JI Packer's Praying
Posted: 2012-01-23 11:09:28 UTC+11:00
Oh, for goodness sake! I keep forgetting to post my Monday quote! Hopefully it will get easier once the kids are back at school...
Here's the quote I meant to post earlier this morning. It's by JI Packer, and it's on prayer: a bit of a theme in my reading at the moment. Which is a bit ironic, since I just realised I haven't prayed yet today: I got distracted by making the boys' breakfasts.Our praying should be a regular routine...similar to the way that wise couples who live busy lives plan the time of day when they are going to talk about how the day has gone and just enjoy being together... It is like scheduling an afternoon where husband and wife will go for a walk together; where nobody will interfere, since there is a lot of stuff that they need to go over together and much they have to do for refreshing their relationship to each other. There is endless benefit to be gained from a regularly scheduled appointment for your time alone with your Lord and from planning ahead some of the ground that you will cover when you and he are alone together.
From JI Packer and Carolyn Nystrom Praying: Finding our way through duty to delight pages 14-15.
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online meanderings - resolutions, praying with kids, unexciting sermons, and other stuff
Posted: 2012-01-23 11:08:58 UTC+11:00
I don't do a lot of online reading. Usually, I stick to a few favourite blogs. But this year, I'd like to try reading a bit more widely, and share the fruits of my labour with you (with apologies to Nicole, who already does a great job of this!).
Here are some of the most encouraging posts I've read this last week (although some have been on the internet for longer than that!). There are a few extra this week because I'm catching up.
Praying for your children - Ever wondered what to pray with your children? I love this prayer for boys - a great summary of godly manhood! - from Darrin Patrick.
How to get more Scripture - Jess gives some helpful suggestions for mums who struggle to find time to read the Bible.
Resolved by the grace of God - Burk Parsons explains how to make your New Year's resolutions sensible, dependent, humble and Christ-centred. HT Sandy.
Read the Bible in a year - Rachael talks about the thematic Bible reading plan she's using - the same one my mum is using on her iPhone YouVersion app! It looks so good I want to try it myself.
On doing ordinary things - Challies explains why not every sermon can be exciting; read this next time you feel like whining (listeners) or giving up (preachers).
10 years on - Jenny talks about why 10 years of being a minister's wife makes you less judgemental.
Into the light- Carolyn McCulley shares a sobering story about why we shouldn't hide our sin from one another.
Healthy sexuality - Challies' very useful list of good books on sexuality.
Grace-motivated dieting - Mike Cosper talks about dieting, and how to know when it is - or isn't -gospel-centred.
Mercy Teams - Ali explains why short term missions are worth it. HT Challies
Finally, three great quotes shared by Justin Taylor. Here are some teasers (click on the link for the rest):
How to Influence a Younger Christian - Don Carson: “Do you ever say to a young Christian, ‘Do you want to know what Christianity is like? Watch me!’ If you never do, you are unbiblical".
Packer: Why we should meditate on the four gospels more than any other book - JI Packer: "Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really this attitude is a very bad sign."
The most riveting description of the goal of Christian living I've ever read - BB Warfield:" We cannot be self-consciously self-forgetful, selfishly unselfish." Why holiness is about love, not self-improvement.
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A statement of purpose for the new year
Posted: 2012-01-18 10:08:41 UTC+11:00
I'm no great fan of New Year's resolutions: quite the reverse. For a perfectionist like me, resolutions often come unstuck, resulting in legalism, guilt and (once I fail to live up to them) a spectacular throwing-off of the reins. Change becomes about meeting my standards rather than responding to the God who forgives and transforms me.1
Once I realised this, I stopped making resolutions. But this year, I tentatively stuck my foot in the waters of the New Year's resolution once again. My resolutions aren't vows. They're not promises. In fact, they're not really resolutions (I don't have enough confidence in myself for that!). They're prayerful commitments, shaped by the Bible: a description of the life I want to live as a woman who's received God's grace (Titus 2:3-5, 11-14; 1 Tim 5:10).
Here are my eight resolutions - my statements of purpose for the new year.- To keep Jesus at the centre. To seek his glory instead of my own, to receive his grace instead of wallowing in my guilt, to trust in his greatness instead of being overcome by anxiety, and to rejoice in his goodness instead of giving in to self-pity.2 To keep my eyes fixed on Jesus so I don't grow weary in doing good (Hebrews 12:1-3 NIV).
- To invest time in keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus. To give the first part of my day to God's word and prayer, even when I really need to get something else done. To read more faith-encouraging books than faith-destroying books. To have a go at memorizing a book of the Bible.3
- To put my primary responsibilities first. To love, help and care for my husband. To love, teach and train my children, especially my daughter, showing her what it means to be a woman of God. To be faithful and purposeful in caring for our parents. To care for our home, not giving in to laziness or neglect.
- To serve my brothers and sisters in Christ. To love and encourage younger women without worrying about what they think of me. To think less about whether our church serves my needs and more about how I can serve others and help them grow. To give time to the Christian friends and prayer partners that God has given me.
- To do good in our community. To chat about Jesus every chance I get, with gentleness, honesty and courage, trusting God to work in people's hearts. To love, not counting the cost. To engage in people's lives, not retreat. To keep an open home.
- To be prayerful, loving and brave in my writing and speaking, using them to glorify Jesus and encourage others. To make sure that online life - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, emails - don't steal time that belongs to face-to-face relationships. To treat these things as a useful servant, not a master.
- To care for my body and health so I can serve Jesus more energetically. To trust God in times when my health, or my family's health, gives way.
- To look to God's grace, because I know that all of these things are beyond me.
1. For a helpful perspective, see David Powlison on New Year's Resolutions.
2. See chapter 5 of Tim Chester's You Can Change.
3. Colossians, if you're curious! A great book for keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus.
This post first appeared at The Briefing.
image is by danielmoyle from flickr
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what I'm reading: come messy (Paul Miller on prayer)
Posted: 2012-01-16 09:29:51 UTC+11:00
So often I feel like I have to fix myself before I pray. I have to stop worrying. I have to calm down. I have to concentrate. I have to make sure I have enough uninterrupted time. I have to psyche myself up, get into the proper mental state.We're trying to become spiritual, to get it right. We know we don't need to clean up our act to become a Christian, but when it comes to praying, we forget that...Private, personal prayer is one of the last bastions of legalism.
Prayer becomes performance - something I'm ill-equipped for - instead of a pouring out of my need. I've forgotten the gospel. I've forgotten grace. I've forgotten that prayer is a little child coming to her Father. I've forgotten to come messy:Jesus does not say ‘Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.’ No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says ‘Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’ (Matthew 11:28) The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.
Paul Miller A praying life pages 30-32
image is by ushtey at flickr
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have you room for Christ? - Charles Spurgeon
Posted: 2011-12-25 10:12:13 UTC+11:00
When all persons of the house of David were driven to Bethlehem, the scanty accommodation of the little town would soon be exhausted. The stall of the ass was the only place where the child could be born. Here, in the stable, was the King of Glory born and in the manner was he laid.
Have you room for Christ?
"Well," says one, "I have room for him, but I am not worthy that he should come to me." Ah! I did not ask about worthiness; have you room for him? "Oh! but I feel it is a place not at all fit for Christ!" Nor was the manger a place fit for him, and yet there was he laid. "Oh! but I have been such a sinner; I feel as if my heart had been a den of beasts and devils!" Well, the manger had been a place where beasts had fed. Have you room for him? Never mind what the past has been; he can forget and forgive. It matters not what even the present state may be if you mourn it. If you have but room for Christ he will come and be thy guest.
'Tis all I ask. Your emptiness, your nothingness, your want of feeling, your want of goodness, your want of grace — all these will be but room for him. Have you room for him? Oh! Spirit of God, lead many to say, "Yes, my heart is ready." Ah! then he will come and dwell with you.
From Charles Spurgeon's No room for Christ in the inn (some language modernised) HT Nancie Guthrie Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus.
image is by at flickr
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the arithmetic of love
Posted: 2011-12-22 07:31:30 UTC+11:00
Andy, our youngest, graduated from pre-school this week. He also spent a couple of hours with his class and teacher for next year. On the way home, I asked him how it went.
"Miss M is weeeally nice. I love her. She is the best teacher ever in the whole world."
"That's great, honey!"
"I wish she was my mummy."
Stunned silence. "Really?"
"Yes. Because I love you best of everybody in the whole world. And I like her a bit at school, and that would count too."
Ah, the arithmetic of love.
At this point I'm curious - and giggling - so I have to test this theory. "Who would you rather be your mummy, me or Miss M?"
"Miss M!"
"Who would you rather be your teacher, Miss M or me?"
"You!"
Oh. I guess that's okay then.
Now he's reassuring me, with the kind of bear-hug-to-the-leg that makes you fall over your own feet: "Mummy, I have to hug you all the time because I love you too much!"
I love that he loves his new teacher, and I love even more that he loves me.
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reading the whole Bible to our children (4) guest post
Posted: 2011-12-21 10:05:09 UTC+11:00
Today Fiona gives some fantastic suggestions for practical ways to read the Bible with your kids. This is the final post in a four-part series: see the others here, here and here.
This might all still sound rather daunting! Let me tell you some of the strategies we’ve used to read the Bible to our own children at home on a daily basis. - Use different formats at different times and at different ages. Alternate reading through a children’s Bible, and then a book of the full Bible.
- Illustrate the Bible reading yourself. For a few years, I drew rough figures in a scrapbook each evening. You don’t have to be a very good artist – stick figures will do! (Older children may like to do this themselves.)
- Get your kids to act out the Bible reading (this was great in books of the Bible where there was lots of fighting!!).
- Let children read aloud at times.
- Ask one of more of your children to ask one question about the passage, and to answer a question too.
- Give each child a sheet of paper and encourage them to draw an illustration to go with the passage.
- Make a simple worksheet to accompany the reading.
- Above all, persevere, even when there are evenings when you seem to be doing more yelling than Bible reading (“Quentin, stop touching Hamish! Rufus, would you sit down! Anna, don’t hum now ... Hamish, we’ll find your excursion form later … Rufus, would you SIT DOWN and KEEP STILL!”).
So just do it! Read the whole Bible to your children, and I hope you will feel often the delight and excitement that I feel when my children ask questions or make comments that show a growing understanding of God’s word.
image is by johnb2008 from flickr
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reading through the Bible in a year (or two)
Posted: 2011-12-19 09:33:19 UTC+11:00
I'm doing something I haven't attempted since I was at university, many years ago. I'm reading through the Bible in a year. Make that two years: after twelve months, I'm half way through my Bible reading plan.
There's something exciting about reading the Bible in big gulps. I feel well-fed, like I've been at the richest of banquets all year long. I've discovered long-forgotten treasures, and I've seen familiar verses shine with unexpected colours in their setting. I've been reminded how, verse after verse, chapter after chapter, the Bible tells the same story. I can't wait to turn the pages and watch the history of salvation unfold.
I know you may not be in a season of life where you can read or listen to the Bible in a year - or even two.1 If your circumstances make it difficult, but you're still reading a small amount regularly, then I thank God! But perhaps you can manage more. With the new year approaching, you might like to consider using one of these plans:
Here are six of the best, trialled by me or people I respect.2 (Whichever you choose, you'll find it more meaningful if you read or listen to an introduction to each book as you come to it, especially with tricky books like the prophets.3)- My friend Melanie likes the ESV Chronological Bible Reading Plan, where you read a few chapters in one place a day. The chronological order means you can see, for example, how the different psalms fit into Bible history. I'm looking forward to trying this one!
- Meredith enjoys the ESV Daily Reading Bible plan, where you read in three places a day - Old Testament, New Testament and a Psalm (she talks about her experience in my Bible reading plan, mid-year review and this interview-with-self).
- Justin Taylor recommends the ESV Study Bible Plan, where you read in four places a day: Psalms and Wisdom, Pentateuch and History, Chronicles and Prophets, Gospels and Epistles (you can even print out four snazzy little bookmarks to mark the places in your Bible!).
- John Stott faithfully used the M'Cheyne One Year Bible Reading Plan, where you also read in four places a day, chosen to give the big picture of salvation history. He said, "Nothing has helped me more to gain an overview of the Bible, and so of God’s redemptive plan". Don Carson's For the Love of God gives you daily readings to use with this plan.
- I'm using the NAV Book-at-a-Time Bible Reading Plan, with two readings a day: a short reading from the wisdom books or Isaiah, and a longer reading which swaps between testaments and spreads the gospels through the year. I like the variety and the focus on one book at a time, and it's very forgiving, with twenty-five readings a month; similarly forgiving is the four-places-a-day NAV Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan.
- A great method to get young Christians started (it got me started) reading through the Bible is the three-year Bible reading plan from Tim LaHaye's How to study the Bible for youself, which is designed to introduce newcomers to regular Bible reading (first year gospels and epistles, second year wisdom and epistles, third year the lot).
Happy reading!
1. When I had babies and toddlers, a shorter passage was all I could handle; I enjoyed using The Daily Reading Bible.
2. If you want to know more about the different plans available, I recommend Justin Taylor's Bible reading plans.
3. Try Mark Dever's book-at-a-time overview sermons, one for every book of the Bible: you can download the audio versions at Capitol Hill Baptist (search: the message) or read the print versions in The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made and The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept. Another option is to read the introductions to each book in a study Bible or William Dumbrell's The Faith of Israel. Graeme Goldsworthy's Trilogy and According to Plan will help you see how the different bits of the Bible hang together in Jesus.
This post first appeared at The Briefing.
image is by jjreade from flickr
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reading the whole Bible to our children (3) guest post
Posted: 2011-12-13 08:08:19 UTC+11:00
What attitudes should we bring to the difficult parts of the Bible when we read them with our kids? Fiona answers that question today. You'll find the first part of this series here and the second part here.So how do we deal with the particularly “difficult” books or passages in practice?
Firstly, don’t be afraid of them. Bear in mind that just because we (adults) find a passage difficult doesn’t mean that our children will find it difficult. They may be untroubled by the ethical issues that crowd our consciousness and the assumptions and prejudices that colour our understanding.
Don’t be afraid of letting your children know that you find some parts of the Bible difficult. God is so much bigger than we are that we should not be surprised when we sometimes find him hard to understand. Encourage our children to ask questions that we may not be able to answer straight away. Being a Christian doesn’t mean knowing all the answers, but it means clinging fast to the answers we do know.
Secondly, don’t be ashamed of the difficult passages. They are still God’s word to us, to teach us, rebuke us, challenge us, and help us grow. Are you worried about frightening children with gruesome stories, or exposing them to sordid sexual sin when they are too young, and thus shattering their innocence? While we need to be sensitive to our children, I am inclined to think that children can cope with more than we give them credit for, and I wonder what is the greater danger: disturbing our children with confronting Bible stories, or giving them an edited, saccharine, weak view of God?
Next, we need to work at understanding God’s word for ourselves, so that we can then communicate it better to our children. Read the Bible for yourself. Dip into some commentaries; read books that teach biblical theology. Even with daily Bible reading at home, you may need to think beforehand about the part of the Bible you will be reading to your children, and how to simplify and explain it.
Teaching God’s word to your children is a great way to learn more about God’s Word yourself! I have often had new insights into the Bible through reading it to my children, both because I have to explain it to them, and also through their comments and questions.
Next week: some practical suggestions for reading the hard bits of the Bible with kids.
image is by johnb2008 from flickr
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what I'm reading: the Spirit, Jesus' limelight
Posted: 2011-12-12 09:12:16 UTC+11:00
If I had to sum up what I believe about the Holy Spirit (apart from the fact that he's a member of the Trinity, and works in our hearts to bring us to Jesus) it would go like this:- the Spirit works in our lives through the Bible, the word of God - when we hear it, when he brings it to mind, when we speak it to others
- the Spirit's role is to point away from himself and to point to Jesus, to bring glory to the Father and the Son
It's the second point that Piper explores in this quote, which I came across while reading Nancy Guthrie's Come Thou Long Expected Jesus in the lead-up to Christmas:When Jesus promised the Spirit (in John 16:14) he said, "He will glorify me"...The Spirit is shy; he is self-effacing. When we look toward him, he steps back and pushes forward Jesus Christ...
If we look away from Jesus and seek the Spirit and his power directly, we will end up in the mire of our own subjective emotions...Many of use know what it is to crouch on the floor and cry out to the Holy Spirit for joy and power, and experience nothing; but the next day devote ourselves to earnest meditation on the glory of Jesus Christ and be filled with the Spirit...
Christian spiritual experience is not a vague religious emotion. It is an emotion with objective content, and the content is Jesus Christ. The shy member of the Trinity does mighty work, but he never puts himself in the limelight. You might say he is the limelight that puts the attributes of God the Father and the person of Christ into sharp relief.
From John Piper "Conceived by the Holy Spirit" in Nancy Guthrie's Come Thou Long Expected Jesus pages 29-30.
image is by at flickr
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finding a "quiet time" in a mother's life that's far from quiet
Posted: 2011-12-08 08:12:26 UTC+11:00
Back in the old days, when I had two children, it was pretty easy for me to find time to read the Bible and pray. This seemed a little unfair. Other mums said, "It's so hard to pray and read the Bible! Every time I try, my kids climb all over me! My baby cries! My son wants me! They won't keep quiet long enough for me to pray!" But quiet times were still "quiet" for me.
At six o'clock I woke up, made myself a cup of coffee and a bowl of muesli, and sat on the couch with my Bible.1 The kids were often asleep. If they weren't, they'd watch a DVD for half an hour or (I admit it) an hour.
In winter, it was dark when I woke. I watched the sun rise, reflected in the windows of the university building we can see from our house, turning the curved wall orange against an indigo sky, until the sky lightened and the pale trunks of the gums glowed silver. Of course, it wasn't always idyllic - there were months of pregnancy nausea and early-waking babies - but I picture it through the soft focus of nostalgia.
***
Fast forward to the present day. My two older children have been joined by a five and eight year old who are, let's say, just a little more demanding than their brother and sister at their age. At six o'clock you'll find me on the couch, legs stretched along its length, Bible in hand and lemon-scented gums in view. My husband is in bed.2 But I'm not alone.
There's a five year old squashed into the tiny space between me and the couch back, begging for warmth and kisses. There's an eight year old seated at my feet playing on his handheld games console. I read the Bible through a barrage of comments - "Look, Mummy, I've beaten the boss!" (don't ask) - and demands for breakfast, for cuddles, for attention.
This, I know, is normality.
I've been feeling squeezed and breathless, as introverts do when they get no time to themselves. I can read the Bible despite the noise (my family call it "ignoring", I call it "concentrating"). But it's hard to pray. Often I give up, go to the computer and check my emails.
***
There are two things you can be sure of with motherhood (or life, really). The first is that God won't change. The second is that everything else will. Just when you think you've found the one, true solution - the cure for sleepless nights, or disorganization, or prayerlessness - circumstances shift sideways.
What works for me won't work for you. What works for me won't work for me. Babies wake all night, then sleep through, then - surprise! - start waking again. The morning routine runs smoothly, then falls apart. One child loves "alone time"; another craves constant attention. Sometimes there are no quiet moments. Sometimes you have to create them out of nothing.
My friend Heather used to sit in the corridor and pray on the phone with a friend during the morning rush; her grown sons still treasure her example. Nicole and Dave took turns to shut the bedroom door and spend time with God.3 Cathy came up with a plan to make the most of the moments between feeding and settling a newborn - even if, like her friend Carolyn, it meant sticking up Bible verses in the shower. Some mums read a few verses a day with their kids; others ask a friend or husband to read to them; still others listen to the Bible while driving or walking. These are just some things that have worked for some women some of the time.4
***
Starve me of prayer, and eventually I get desperate (this takes far longer than it should). The other day, I'd had enough. Kids on the couch and all, I closed my eyes, only to be interrupted: "Mummy, look at this!"; "Mummy, I'm hungry!"; "Mummy, mummy, mummy...". For once, I was determined not to give in: "Sssh, boys, I'm praying. Wait till I've finished, then tell me."
Tucked into my invisible prayer-bubble, I felt a little like Susannah Wesley when she threw an apron over her head and quieted her ten children so she could pray. I could shut my children's voices out (almost). I could concentrate (kind of). My gaze shifted from myself to Jesus, and I was able to pray for others too.
The kids learned some helpful lessons. They were reminded, once again, that they're not the centre of the universe. They realized that I'm not always available: there are things more important, even, than their demands. They learned that prayer is worth setting aside time for.
And me? I've found a way to pray that works for me - for now. When that stops working, I'll find another way. There will be days when I don't manage it, but I'm not giving up. Because I need God's strength, my kids need my example, and others need my prayers.
Maybe I'll even get out an apron.
1. This was no great feat of godliness: I love waking early.
2. As so often happens in marriage, my husband and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I am an early bird, but he is a night owl.
3. This was sometimes accompanied by the sound of tears on the other side of the door; Nicole got the "first glimpse of the kindness in the cruelty" when their young son went to his room, shut the door, and read his Bible too.
4. I'd love to hear what's worked for you!
This post first appeared in The Briefing today.
image is by bluebirdsandteapots at flickr
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reading the whole Bible to our children (2) guest post
Posted: 2011-12-07 09:47:31 UTC+11:00
Here's the second part of Fiona's article about reading the whole Bible with our children. You'll find the first part here.In particular, I am convinced that reading all of the Bible helps our children (and us!) to understand the reality and seriousness and ugliness of sin. We live in a cultural context which has greatly undermined the idea of sin (it’s not our fault, it’s the fault of our genes/parents/educational system/government/mental illness/etc).
(As an aside, I think reading the Bible is a great tool for sex education! When my son asks, “What is a prostitute?”, my answer can lead to great discussion about the right context for sex, about misuse of God’s good gift, and how sex shouldn’t be used to buy acceptance or money or popularity, but to cement a relationship that already exists. The Bible makes it clear that many people do not obey God’s laws about sex. The Bible gives us a beautiful picture of the beauty of sex and the context (marriage) in which it should be enjoyed; but it also shows us the destructiveness and shamefulness of sexual immorality, as well as God’s forgiveness and restoration of sinners.)
Reading the whole Bible also teaches us about the wrath of God (another unpopular concept today). God is holy and righteous, and thus hates sin and evil. Uncomfortably, the Bible teaches that it is God himself who often brings disaster, on his enemies, or even on his own people (think of the Flood, for example; 2 Kings 17, especially verses 18, 20; Amos 3:2 and chapter 4; Revelation). God is not just our Saviour, but our Judge. God is the one who destroys as well as the one who saves. God is not a weak, benevolent God who wants to be our friend, but a passionate, powerful, majestic, terrifying God. Read the whole Bible, and let your children learn that God is to be feared as well as loved! For example, when we read Lamentations to our children recently, and asked what this book taught us about God, they said things like, “Angry. Punishing. Fierce. Merciful. Keeps his promises to punish as well as save”. These are important theological insights!
My hope is that my own children, those I teach in Sunday School, and those I teach in Scripture classes at school, will understand that God is not someone whom you can take or leave, as it suits you; and that what matters is not so much what you think of God, but what God thinks of you.
Next week Fiona will talk about the practicalities of dealing with the particularly “difficult” books or passages with our children.
image is by johnb2008 from flickr
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an interesting quote: why teenage girls are the perfect readers
Posted: 2011-12-05 14:29:52 UTC+11:00
Here's a brilliant description of why it is that teenage girls are the perfect readers, and why books like Twlight appeal to them:The salient fact of an adolescent girl's existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she's gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.
I observe my 13 year old daughter retreating to her room to read and re-read series like Anne of Green Gables, Harry Potter, and, most recently, the Goose Girl series, and I remember my own teen years, and what Caitlin Flanagan says makes perfect sense to me - especially because it is no longer possible to abandon myself to reading in quite the same way.
From Caitlin Flanagan's article What Girls Want in The Atlantic HT Karen (thanks, Karen!).
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our Jesse Tree
Posted: 2011-12-02 07:29:21 UTC+11:00
Yesterday was the first of December, and I seem to have missed the date when it comes to starting our Jesse Tree. Every year I fill the little drawers above with a Bible reading on a slip of paper, a few small lollies and a nativity figure, and we open one a day leading up to Christmas. This year, disorganisation got the better of me.
I generally use readings that I came up with - an Old Testament story, a promise or prophecy, and a New Testament reading - but I wanted something different this year. So I sat at the computer last night and looked for some resources.
If you, too, are wondering what to read with your kids leading up to Christmas - and if you are also late organising it! - the best printable resources I found were by Wendy:
They look great, don't they? I think I'll use the first one this year, as it's a little different to what we've done in recent years. Thanks, Wendy!
If you want more ideas for creating a Jesse Tree, check out 168 hours.
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reading the whole Bible to our children (1) guest post
Posted: 2011-12-01 09:05:21 UTC+11:00
A couple of weeks ago I posted a question for you about reading the Bible with kids - even the hard bits: should we read the gory or sexual bits of the Bible to children? Well, my friend Fiona McLean has taken pity on me and written a response! (You'll also find an interesting discussion in the comments here.) In the first of four posts, Fiona says,I have some sympathy for this question, because quite a lot of the Bible does seem difficult: boring, irrelevant, confronting, offensive, violent, or sexually explicit. So why am I still convinced that we should not only read all of it ourselves, but also read it to children - our own at home; and other people’s children, in Sunday School, at conferences, and even in Scripture classes at school?
Firstly, if we were to avoid all the “difficult” bits of the Bible, there wouldn’t be much left! This applies to the New Testament as well as the old: think of Jesus, the Warrior King, slaying his enemies (Revelation 19:11-21); or Jesus, at his second coming, “in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God” (2 Thessalonians 1:8); or the servant who is “cast into the outer darkness” where there “will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30).
In fact, someone of our favourite and most comfortable Bible passages may be a lot more “difficult” than we realise, especially if you are only familiar with the sanitised version in children’s Bibles. (Children’s Bibles can be very helpful, but they are not the Bible itself: they are always summaries and paraphrases; they are necessarily selective about what they include; and they are an interpretation.) Noah and the Ark is not just about God saving Noah and his family and lots of cute, cuddly animals, but about the great wickedness of mankind, as a result of which God sent a Flood which drowned every other person and animal (Genesis 6-8). We like the story of the boy Samuel being called by God, but we forget that God called him so that he could pass on the terrible news that Eli’s rebellious sons were under sentence of death from God for their blasphemy and iniquity (1 Samuel 3:11-14). When you tell the story of David and Goliath, do you mention that David cut off Goliath’s head (1 Samuel 17:51)? The story of the Good Samaritan includes a violent attack on a man which nearly killed him, and which left him wounded and half-dead in the street (Luke 10:30). The Prodigal Son squandered his money on prostitutes and reckless living (Luke 15:13). Even the sweet Nativity story, unedited, includes the terrible murder of all the baby boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16). The Bible is full of “difficult bits”!
Secondly, I wonder what we mean by “difficult bits” anyway? Do we mean parts that are boring or seem irrelevant? Ideas that don’t fit in with our worldview – that seem harsh, that present God as cruel and vindictive or arbitrary? If so, perhaps it is our worldview that needs to change, our understanding of God that needs to grow to fit the reality of the God who has revealed himself to us.
Thirdly, even without the Bible there are “difficult bits” in life. There is much that is sordid and violent and nasty in the world around us: tsunamis, pornography, child abuse, cancer, infertility. Where is God in all this? Is he absent? Capricious? Vindictive? Powerless? Our children (and ourselves) are going to be exposed to these disturbing and difficult issues through the media, billboards, DVDs, newspapers, and television. As believers, let’s see what God’s perspective is on these things, and grapple with these difficult questions within the framework of a biblical worldview.
This is why, instead of just reading nice, comforting, somewhat insipid children’s Bibles, my husband and I read the whole Bible to our children. We believe and trust that the Bible is God’s word to us, and to our children (e.g. Deuteronomy 29:29). We want our view of God and of ourselves and of our world to be shaped more by God’s Word than by the culture around us.
Tune in next week for Fiona's next thoughts.
image is by johnb2008 from flickr
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loving people at our school
Posted: 2011-11-29 08:05:01 UTC+11:00
This is the second of three posts about sharing Jesus with people in your local community; it follows on from praying for our school.
Our local primary school is marvellously multicultural. During the years they've been there, our kids have become best friends with Sikhs from the Punjab, Muslims from Pakistan, and Catholics from Serbia, as well as some fair-dinkum Aussie pagans. At last count, the kids at school trace their recent ancestry to more than 50 countries. In a place like this, mission knocks on your door and asks itself in.
It's not always easy to open that door. The school ground can be a daunting place, even for adults. There are tight groups gathered around picnic tables, chattering clusters and quiet loners, and people from backgrounds very different to your own. Around the edge are women from other cultures, wearing a hijab or salwar kameez: no-one, it seems, wants to talk to someone who looks a little different.
No doubt, to some, this sounds like a wealth of opportunities! To me, it felt scary and overwhelming at first; but I've learned to feel at home here, and I'm learning to love the people around me. I know you can't reduce relationships to a set of principles; but here are some things I've learned along the way.- Be friendly to everyone, but focus on a few
It's important to be friendly to everyone, but it also helps to focus on a few. At the moment there are five women I've made a commitment to pray for and get to know better: women with whom I have strong natural connections or a growing friendship.1 Focusing on a few relationships keeps me from growing lazy; it may help you not to spread yourself too thin. - See below the surface
As I talk with people, I start to see past the differences. I meet women looking for work now their kids are all at school, women hiding a little extra weight under loose garments, women rediscovering their 'faith' - whatever that faith might be. The similarities are a bridge between us; the differences, instead of being obstacles, become opportunities to find out what's important to them and to share what's important to me. - Do less to do more
This year has been my most exciting yet when it comes to getting to know people and chatting about Jesus. I think that's because my husband had long-service leave, so I cut lots of other things out of my life - good things like leading a weekly Bible study and teaching Sunday School. I'll do these things again, because they matter! But it's shown me that sometimes you have to say 'no' to good things in the church so you have time for relationships out of it. - Friendship takes time
I think I expect gospel conversations to come quickly; if they don't, I assume I've failed. I'm learning that relationships take time, at least for me! No doubt some are great at having 'meaningful' conversations early on; but while I let people know I'm a Christian from the start, it takes time for me to feel comfortable in relationships. Opportunities to talk about what people believe often come to me later. Which leads to my next point... - Work with your strengths
God has put me in my friends' lives because I'm the one he wants there. I'm not an extrovert who can handle 30 friendships, but I'm good at slowly building relationships; my outgoing friend is great with those who are confident but not so good with those who are quiet. The women we spend time with are very different - and that's a good thing. She's taught me to think about my interests and strengths and to build on them. - Ask people into your home and go into theirs
When someone invites me in for a cuppa, it’s easy to give them the Aussie cold-shoulder: "Sorry, but I'm too busy." I now allow time so that when people ask me in, I can say "Yes!". Having people over for meals (the pot-luck kind); asking people in when they drop their kids off (remembering a little mess can make them feel comfortable); spending time together in a neutral spot like a park or coffee shop: these are all great ways to grow relationships. - Love people and receive their love
Have you ever taken a meal to someone outside your church? You might feel awkward, but I've discovered people appreciate knowing someone is there for them. I'm often clueless about caring for people - my friend and I laugh about how I offered to look after her kids the first time we met - but thankfully, she liked me rather than wondering if I had evil designs on her children! We've become close friends, and we care for each other in many ways: it's easier to receive someone else's love when they receive yours. - Get involved in a local community
It's not hard for me to meet people, with kids in the local school (that's one reason we sent them there); but what if you don't have much contact with people outside the church? Maybe you could join a sports, craft or book club, do some volunteering (my mum helps a slow learner at the local school), ask your neighbours over for a meal, or just hang out in your front yard. There are people all around us; maybe it's time to start loving them, so that one day we can share the greatest love of all. - Love is costly
None of us always finds it easy to involve people in our lives. It's easier to spend time with those who think like we do; to treat our homes as our refuge and our time as our own. But love is costly. We may need to set aside regular times to spend with people, and make deliberate plans to include them in our lives. If we find this hard, we may have to say to ourselves, "It doesn't matter how you feel. Just get on with it and obey." So often, we'll be glad we did.
These are real relationships, and these are real people: people I'm growing to love. But how can I say I love them unless I'm willing to share the best thing I know with them? I have to grow relationships, but also be willing to risk them; to love people, but to accept that they may reject me. This comes at a cost, but it's full of joy, too: the joy of knowing I'm not ashamed of Jesus, of watching women I love come one step closer to knowing the gospel, of seeing God at work in their lives.
1. How do you choose who to focus on? My friend has chosen some women she "clicks" with and some who are lonely. Another friend, experienced in suffering, is drawn to the broken. One woman I know excels in loving people who are socially awkward. I encourage you to pray, then wait and see who God brings your way.
This post first appeared yesterday at The Briefing.
image is by Adam Jones, Ph.D. at flickr - Be friendly to everyone, but focus on a few
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what I'm reading: congee for the grieving from Emily Post and Joan Didion
Posted: 2011-11-28 08:01:38 UTC+11:00
If you're not sure how to help someone who's grieving, Joan Didion directs you to the practical wisdom of an earlier time: the chapter on funerals in Emily Post's 1922 Book of Etiquette (which you can read for free on line here). She writes,The tone, one of unfailing specificity, never flags. The emphasis remains on the practical. The bereaved must be urged to "sit in a sunny room", preferably one with an open fire. Food, but "very little food", may be offered on a tray: tea, coffee, bouillon, a little thin toast, a poached egg. Milk, but only heated milk: "Cold milk is bad for someone who is already overchilled." As for further nourishment, "The cook may suggest something that appeals usually to their taste—but very little should be offered at a time, for although the stomach may be empty, the palate rejects the thought of food, and digestion is never in best order."...
Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking 59-60
A friend should be left in charge of the house during the funeral. The friend should see that the house is aired and displaced furniture put back where it belongs and a fire lit for the homecoming of the family. "It is also well to prepare a little hot tea or broth," Mrs. Post advised, "and it should be brought them upon their return without their being asked if they would care for it. Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it, and something warm to start digestion and stimulate impaired circulation is what they most need."
There is something arresting about the matter-of-fact wisdom here, the instinctive understanding of the physiological disruptions...As I read it, I remember how cold I had been in New York Hospital on the night John died...Mrs. Post would have understood that. She wrote in a world where mourning was still recognized, allowed, not hidden from view...
In the end Emily Post's 1922 etiquette book turned out to be as acute in its apprehension of this other way of death, and as prescriptive in its treatment of grief, as anything else I read. I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of the friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.
image is by rickyqi at flickr
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another volcano cake that almost worked
Posted: 2011-11-26 07:48:23 UTC+11:00
For some reason, it's been a year for volcano cakes in our house. Here's another volcano cake we made that almost worked - and it would have worked perfectly if I read the recipe more carefully! :) It was very easy, and the yummiest birthday cake we've ever made, by a lo-o-o-ong way. This one was for Ben's 11th birthday, and Lizzy helped me make it.
You start with a round chocolate cake (ours is a double gluten free cake from a packet)
and 4 litres of ice cream softened a little (about 10 minutes) then shoved into a metal mould - this shape is great if you can get it. Put it in the freezer overnight.
Turn the ice cream out on top of the cake (our ice cream is butterscotch mixed with good quality vanilla).
Beat 600 ml cream with 1/4 cup cocoa and 2 tbsn icing sugar until it's thick, and spread it over the cake.
Chop up lots of chocolate bars (the yummiest is Snickers, but include some Cherry Ripe, Crunchies, Toblerone and anything else you like). This is where we went wrong. I misread the recipe and bought about 400g of mixed chocolate bars instead of (believe it or not) 200g chocolate bars and 1 1/2 kg Rocky Road.
Here's our volcano - as you can see, there weren't quite enough chocolate bars to cover it! But it looks good all the same. (You're supposed to pour thick strawberry topping over it, do some complicated thing with sheets of homemade toffee, and put dinosaurs and dessicated coconut mixed with green food colouring around the edge. I got a little lazy here! ;) )
Put it back in the freezer to harden up for a few hours (the cream is YUMMY after you've done this). Get it out, stick some sparklers in, light them,
wait for them to go out,
then watch it disappear.
YUM!
This cake is adapted from the "Volcano Vibes" cake in The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book.
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Puritanism: a piety of joy
Posted: 2011-11-24 19:56:38 UTC+11:00
Today I discovered something exciting - well, exciting to me (and perhaps to no-one else except my mum). The one and only article I wrote about the Puritans is online!1
The Gospel Coalition has published all the old issues of Kategoria, a quarterly journal edited by Kirsten Birkett and put out by Matthias Media from 1996 to 2004.
There, in issue number 10, published wa-a-ay back in 1998, shortly after I finished my PhD and just before my daughter was born, is an article by yours truly:
Puritanism: a piety of joy.
For me, reading it was like visiting an earlier self: a scholarly pre-child self, who had forgotten more about the Puritans than I will ever remember, and who spoke (or wrote, at least) with long footnotes and a knowledgeable tone.
I enjoyed the article. It's not a bad read. You might enjoy it to. You'll find it here, on page 11. Here's a quote to whet your appetite, from the Puritan preacher John Collinges' sermons on the Song of Songs:Is Jesus Christ precious to you? Is his name to your soul like an ointment poured forth? Is your whole heart filled with the sweet smell of Jesus Christ? Are you ravished with his love? Does the very thinking of Christ ravish your heart? Does the naming of him carry your soul almost above itself in an ecstasy of love? Is he like an apple to your taste, that your mouth is filled with the sweetness of his juice? Are you melted with his love?2.
And if that doesn't puncture your pre-conceptions about the sober-minded, black-hatted, joy-squashing Puritans, nothing will.
I might bring you some more quotes in coming weeks.
1. Thanks, Lionel, for letting me know, and Sandy for drawing his attention to it.
2. John Collinges, Five Lessons for a Christian to Learne, 1650, sermon 1, page 49.
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what I'm reading: hiding death and grief from Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking
Posted: 2011-11-21 08:05:00 UTC+11:00
Something that struck me as I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking was how attitudes to dying and grief have changed. Death once happened at home and touched every household, and every adult was expected to know how to deal with it; now it happens in hospitals, away from public view, and grief is something to be hidden. Joan Didion writes,Philippe Aries...noted that beginning about 1930 there had been in most Western countries and particularly in the United States a revolution in accepted attitudes towardes death. "Death," he wrote, "so omnipresent in the past that it was familiar, would be effaced, would disappear. It would become shameful and forbidden."
image is by José Goulão at flickr
The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Goer, in his 1965 Death, Grief and Mourning, had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new “ethical duty to enjoy oneself”, a novel “imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others.” In England and the United States, he observed, the contemporary trend was “to treat mourning as a morbid self-indulgence", and to give social admiration to the bereaved who "hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had happened.”
One way in which grief gets hidden is that death now occurs largely offstage. In the earlier tradition...the act of dying had not yet been professionalized. It did not typically involve hospitals. Women died in childbirth. Children died of fevers. Cancer was untreatable...The average adult was expected to deal competently, and also sensitively, with its aftermath. When someone dies, I was taught growing up, you bake a ham. You drop it at the house. You go to the funeral.
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an easy volcano cake that almost worked...
Posted: 2011-11-20 10:37:06 UTC+11:00
This volcano cake was one of the easiest we've made, and almost one of the most effective...;)
Okay, so it looks kinds of pudding-ish. But Thomas and Andy, whose birthday it was, didn't mind!!
It's super-easy. Here's how we did it:
We baked a butter cake in a pudding basin,
made some chocolate butter icing,
and iced the cake.
We made runny red icing,
runny orange icing,
and runny yellow icing;
then poured them on the cake - first red,
then orange and yellow.
We put some dinosaurs around the sides
and stuck in some sparklers.
Voila! One volcano cake!
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a question about reading the Bible with kids – even the hard bits
Posted: 2011-11-16 14:07:17 UTC+11:00
There was an interesting comment on my post Reading the Bible with kids - even the hard bits.
A mum who’s thinking about how to read the Bible with her family said, “I’d love to see a follow up article about tackling the other types of difficult passages of the Bible – the particularly gory or sexual bits.”
I’ve been giving some thought to this, and I hope to write something in response; but I’m interested to hear your thoughts first, since I think different people will rightly handle this in different ways.
I think there are two important issues:- how do we deal with these passages with our own children?
- how do we deal with these passages with other people’s children, for example, when teaching Sunday School?
What do you think?
You can comment here or at The Briefing.
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