Sabbath, City Thoughts,

I love Sunday, and do you know why?  No, it's not because of church or brunch...it's because Sunday is the one day of the week when my children are allowed to play video games, and they are silent.  It's so silent in my house right now, while we wait for David to finish recording and uploading his sermon.  Then we drive to a nearby church that offers a parking lot service, and we sit in our car and listen.  And afterwards we let the dog run wild in the field.  

Sunday isn't my sabbath day of rest, I'm afraid.  Never has been.  If you work 40+ hours a week and DON'T have a wife at home to do all the home stuff, then you come home and collapse in exhaustion and then the days you do things are Saturday and Sunday.  That's just reality.  It was a bit easier when I was a student, because there were often long gaps in between classes when one could run to the grocery store, or do a load of laundry.  But, of course, now I'm at home with three children and I'm homeschooling them, and going to school myself, and all the other things.  So, no, Sunday isn't restful.  It's a workday - a day when my husband is off to church to work, and a day when I am herding people through reality.  

But that's okay!  While I think the concept of Sabbath is critically important, I also think the idea of everyone sitting silently in a front parlour as a family is incredibly outdated.  The video games give ME a sabbath from listening to people clamour for my attention and services.  Here I am, in silence.  I will take my sabbaths as a dozen little moments of peace throughout the week.

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,

the hope of the nations and their Saviour:

Come and save us, O Lord our God.

O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their desire,

the cornerstone making both one:

Come and save the human race,

which you fashioned from clay.

O Oriens

O Morning Star,

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Clavis David

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;

you open and no one can shut;

you shut and no one can open:

Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,

those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

O Adonai

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,

who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush

and gave him the law on Sinai:

Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

O Sapientia

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

reaching from one end to the other,

mightily and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

The Half-Way Call, Or Why I'm Having An Issue With Francis Chan.

I'm going to complain about Francis Chan for a minute.  Or, rather, I don't know enough about the man to complain about HIM, personally, but I want to complain about his recent choice re: becoming a missionary.

If you haven't heard this news from the evangelical world, here it is in a nutshell.  Francis Chan is a well-known pastor and author in the United States.  He has a very large online presence and streams his sermons, which you can listen to, if that's your jam.  I haven't read his books (I think I may have started CrazyLove at one point, possibly) and I have only listened to portions of his sermons, so I can't speak to his ministry with any authority.  Several of my friends and colleagues whose opinions I trust on these matters seem to be responding to him in a positive way, which I find encouraging.  Several others have been conspicuously silent, which I find telling.

Recently Chan announced that he was going to leave his mega-church lifestyle and become...a missionary in Asia.  He cited a recent trip to Myanmar as a catalyst for this change, which is not surprising to me since if we had to actually SEE and EXPERIENCE what our less fortunate brethren go through daily I imagine many more of us would be moved to help in tangible ways.

Now there is always backlash with these announcements, about why the person doesn't minister to the poor or unfortunate right where they are.  I think this shows a distinct lack of understanding about the nature of God's call on our hearts, but that's another post, and I won't be delving into it here.  Whether he does or doesn't leave his status position and go to to needy here, or abroad, is mostly irrelevant to me.

It's also easy to feel a bit bitter and jaded about the publicity surrounding this decision - the sheer number of interviews and articles and sermons ABOUT his decision (which, sigh.  Have we run out of things to talk about in the Bible and are moving on now?) not to mention his 'I'm leaving' sermon, which I think I would have taken much more seriously if he had made about...God.  But he didn't, and that's his choice.  That's also not my main concern with this whole shenanigan.

I think my first feelings of unease were when I couldn't find out, in my searching, where he was going.  'Asia' is a little vague, and also very colonialist, like all Asian countries are pretty much the same.  It read like a teenager saying they were going to 'visit an orphanage in Africa'.  Africa isn't a country, dear.

But surely, I thought, if he's mentioning Myanmar, he's maybe going to Myanmar?  Or possibly Burma or even Thailand or Vietnam?  Somewhere decidedly under-serviced in multiple ways, where there is a large percentage of the population living on very little.  Not that missionaries are not needed across the globe, of course, but the article read like 'I saw poverty and need and I wanted to address it'.  Hardly seems likely to me that you need to start a ministry to Japanese businessmen or Beijing nouveau riche with that call, ya know?

But no, it turns out that Chan is going to Hong Kong, which is known for many problems (ever see those cage apartments?  Man.) and certainly needs help, although it isn't Myanmar.  In fact, Chan has lived in Hong Kong before, and he's visited it, with his family, as an adult.  This is not, really, a stepping out into the unknown, is it?  It bothers me on some level that someone could go to Myanmar and then say 'God is calling me to ministry in Hong Kong'.  I can't explain why.  I think it makes me think of equivalencies - 'I have spent a week feeding prostitutes in Indianapolis, and now I really feel like God is asking me to go to the Bahamas'.  'I have served in an orphanage in the Ukraine, and the Lord has laid the city of London on my heart.'  I can't quite put my finger on this.

But, you know, here:

"Two months ago, Chan was in Myanmar traveling "from hut to hut with a translator, sharing the Gospel with people who had never heard about Jesus.” The more he did it, the more he realized he wanted to do this for "the remainder of my life."

“When I considered the need and opportunity, I knew I wanted to be based in Asia,” he said. “I also have an opportunity there to work with the ultra poor (living off less than 50 cents a day)—to bring relief, share the gospel, and plant churches among them. When I compare that opportunity to things I currently do in the States, the Kingdom profit seems much greater overseas at this point of my life.”

Chan said he plans to still minister in the United States but will be "based in Asia for this next season of life."

“Our current plan is to move to Hong Kong in February,” he revealed. “A lot can change between now and then, but we are heading this direction unless the Lord redirects us. I have no idea how long I will stay in Hong Kong. I had no idea I was going to live in San Francisco for nine years. We will just try to discern the Spirit’s leading daily.”"

I have just so, so many issues with this.  I don't know if I can articulate this properly.  To start with, I think we need to address the sentence "Chan said he plans to still minister in the United States but will be "based in Asia..."  So, if you are living in Hong Kong, with lots of money to fly back and forth to the States when the need/desire strikes, this isn't really 'leaving to be a missionary'.  "Our current plan is to move to Hong Kong in February" - ah!  Well, seeing as it is November I'm assuming you aren't going with any kind of sending organization that needs to fulfill standards.  I think it's likely he's just funding this whole thing out of his own substantial funds.  It's an issue with finances because franky, if you have the money to do what you please without anyone having the ability to check you, pride, selfishness, even heresy, can happen oh so quickly.  Which is not to say that this will happen with Chan, but just that there is a reason why we submit to authorities and regulations and remember our 'dusty' selves.  There's a reason for this.  Cut out the leanings towards pride.

His daughters and their families are moving with him - and both of his sons in law have worked with him as pastors in the same church movement, so he has a ready made (and, I assume here, free) workers for this new ministry endeavour.

But ultimately, what is the biggest sticking point for me is that Francis Chan has not shown, in his actions, that he 'has a heart' for the poor of Hong Kong.  He has not said "I am leaving everything.  I am removing myself from this place because God told me to go."  God has certainly not said 'keep a vacation home in Miami' or 'just go in February and I might move you again in March'.  A call that involves "We will just try to discern the Spirit's leading daily" is worrying.  God doesn't call like that, he is not a God of chaos and confusion.

Here is his announcement, if you'd like to watch it.  Tell me what you think.

How To Have Christmas When There is Very Little Money

Image from The Graphics Fairy

I have been there, in years past, when money was very, very tight and there was no way to make things stretch to the big, wonderful Christmas I had planned.  My goals were reasonable - a few gifts per child, a nice festive meal, decorations, sending out Christmas cards...but they were well beyond my budget.  Of course I realize that Christmas is ultimately a Christian celebration, but you still want to make it a 'feast', for the eyes and the palate, in addition to experiencing and celebrating the birth of Christ.

Here is a great article with some ideas on just that.  And I'm going to add a few of my own (and repeat a few already mentioned) ideas to this!

First off, decorate, decorate, decorate.  Buy a bag of popcorn kernels and pop them on the stove and string them on strings, or hang up pine cones, put a few pine boughs in water and hang whatever decorations you have on them.  Make paper chains and paper snowflakes and pompoms!  Whatever you can manage, do it.  If the house looks festive, it will feel like Christmas.

Play Christmas music!  Sing carols at the sink doing the dishes!  Get as much Christmas music into the season as possible to build the mood.

Make Christmas outings and events an important part of the month.  Take an evening to walk or drive around and look at the lights and decorations.  Watch old Christmas movies on the sofa.  Have a 'decorating' day.  Buy an Advent calendar at the dollar store if you can, and open up a cheap chocolate every day of Advent.  If your local church has something special like a Christmas Eve candlelight service, consider going.

Consider your gifts carefully.  The most important people to get gifts are the children in your immediate family - your cousin's kids you see once a year don't HAVE to have a gift.  If you're in a position where you must buy for people outside your immediate family, either let everyone know that you are working in a budget this year or else just send something small and let the chips fall where they may.  Don't be embarrassed to say you have a budget, everyone should have a budget!  Simply say something like "With the children getting older (or whatever reason you would like to use) I think that this year we should keep the budget at X per child.  Would you like to send me some gift ideas for Sally and Jimmy or do you want me to surprise them!?"

Cut the Christmas cards to the bare minimum.  You don't need to send a card to everyone at church, just wish them a Merry Christmas.  You don't have to send Christmas cards to relatives you see all the time.  You don't have to send cards to people who have never sent you cards!  You can just choose to not send the cards!  In fact, if you take an evening to make a 15 minute 'Merry Christmas' phone call to your nearest and dearest, they would likely appreciate that much more anyway.

When you do buy, remember to wrap absolutely everything you possibly can.  Buy a roll of lifesavers and wrap it.  Buy a pair of socks - wrap it.  Wrap everything in the stockings and everything under the tree.  Wrap things in fun ways - newspaper funnies and sheets of old music and pillowcases with lots of ribbon.  Wrap something in string and elicit all the laughs.  Wrap something in box after box so the children have to unwrap layer after layer to get to the chocolate bar inside!  Wrap gifts and then tie strings to them and let the kids 'find' their presents.  Or use a treasure hunt with clues.  The gifts may be small in price and in number, but the wrapping will be utterly unique and memorable.

Think outside the box to find presents.  Wrap stuff you already own for younger children.  Seriously, take a bunch of trains from the train-obsessed 18 month old's stash, clean them up, and wrap them again.  Wrap hand-me-downs from other families that you had put aside, wrap toiletries you would need to buy anyway for a child or even beloved foods and beverages.  If your child loves a certain kind of cereal, for example, buy them a box 'all their own'.  Look through second hand stores for gently loved books, toys and clothing, of course, but also advertise on buy and sell sites.  Often people are getting rid of things before Christmas.  Try saying something like "Does anyone have Lego they are thinking of purging before the holidays?  Looking to spend no more than $5 but open to any and all pieces!"  Sometimes people have things they just don't even realize someone else would want, so they never bother advertising.

The Christmas meal can be made more special with a well-dressed table.  Fancy Christmas napkins from the Dollar store, or a pretty Goodwill tablecloth.  Candles go a long way to making a table beautiful, and dimmed lights.  Invite guests!  Every meal looks more festive if someone else is there.  Simmer a cinnamon stick and a few cloves in a pot on the stove to make the house smell 'Christmassy' while you cook.  No matter what you serve as a meal, offer a special drink and a dessert.  It can be anything - some shortbread cookies with a little piece of maraschino cherry on top, or red and green jello in a glass with a spiral of whipped cream, but dessert makes a regular meal festive and a sparkly drink (ginger ale mixed with cranberry juice is always a good bet) is unusual for supper, so it adds to the feeling of 'special'.

I love what the blog above mentions about Christmas Day - keep the nice holiday feeling going through the day so that it doesn't feel like when the gifts are done, everything is done.  It's a good time to go sledding, or arrange a visit with a neighbour, or go to church in your very best clothes, or serve at the soup kitchen, or walk around handing out dry socks and new toothbrushes to the homeless, or go see a matinee.  Whatever you do, make sure there is something 'next' on Christmas Day after the presents are done.

So there you go!  I know that for many people, Christmas is an entirely secular time of year, so I hope I've included lots of ideas for the non-church people who celebrate.

But...that's not what that means, and other surface theology

Almost nothing riles me up more than people taking small snippets of a faith, reading them entirely out of context, and building a theological understanding out of them.  It's so aggravating.  Not just for me, but I imagine also for THEM, because the weird frankenfaith they've come up with is not equipped to handle anything beyond the most basic of problems.  There's no depth!  What are you doing with your pain?  How are you handling your difficult times in life?  What about horrible things?  What about wonderful things?  How do you answer your questions and live your LIFE???

Take this glorious example of ridiculous:

Taken from the Mindful Christianity Today facebook page - I don't know where they got it from.

It's from Facebook, which is obviously the best theological tool out there.  That being said, how on earth...what is this meme ABOUT?  So we've got a person giving another person soup.  Well golly, that's super nice of them.  Or maybe it's gruel.  Well, whatever - the point is I'm assuming Guy #2 is going to eat this.  Food is being passed around.  How lovely.  Now, we have two verses, separated for emphatic purposes by this picture.  Let's take a look at those.

Verse #1 - Jesus doesn't care how many Bible verses you have memorized.

Well, firstly, Jesus was an actual real, live, historical figure living in a real, actual, historical period of time, so he had a life, and his life was...Jewish.  Because he was Jewish.  He also wasn't white, but maybe that first arm is supposed to be you passing gruel to someone and not him, so I guess if you're white this picture would work.  Or if you had any gruel handy.  But if Jesus was Jewish, then the real, live, historical Jesus would have had opinions from the perspective of...a Jewish man.  So yeah, actually we have a lot of information available to us about historical Jewish men in the middle east, and based on that information, Jesus would have certainly cared if you memorized scripture.  Absolutely he would have.  He did it himself!  He did it so well he taught in the temple!  He did it so well he taught senior scholars in the temple while he was a child!  He had such a firm grasp of scripture that he developed a following and became a serious threat and was killed for it!  And what's more, the scriptures he had access to were the Old Testament teachings, not the New Testament teachings, so in fact he would have expected a decent understanding of the things LEADING UP TO the gospel accounts.  He would, in short, have expected historical faith knowledge.  But don't take my word for this - ask literally any credible Jewish scholar anywhere about the importance of Old Testament knowledge to their faith.  Any. One.

But maybe what the meme is trying to say is not so much 'Jesus' but 'The Holy Spirit'.  That's a pretty major error if that's the case, seeing as Jesus is not the Holy Spirit because they are two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TRIUNE ASPECTS OF GOD.  It would be like saying 'Listen, Debbie, I know you wrote this essay but I'm going to say Susan did because you're both human females so, like, you're pretty much interchangeable'.  This would be incorrect.  And I want to say that whoever wrote the above piece of drivel doesn't actually believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same person but sure, let's, for just a moment, pretend that that's the problem.

So here is where I feel like a little Bible lesson would not be remiss.  See, Jesus DIED.  Like, he ACTUALLY FOR REALSIES DIED.  So now Jesus is dead, okay?  He's put into a tomb and he's still dead, bear with me.  Now, he COMES BACK TO LIFE.  Oh my gosh really, I know, it's shocking.  I'm not being sarcastic - this is shocking news.  It's so shocking that it literally actually changed the course of human history.  Now, what happens NEXT?  I mean, does he live a nice long life and then die again?  Does he start a religion called Christianity?  Does he overthrow the government like everyone seemed to hope he would?  Surprisingly, he spends time with various people, talks to them, hangs out, and then...he goes to Heaven!  So sometime approximately two thousand years ago Jesus goes up to Heaven, and...he hasn't come back yet.  Really!  He's still there!  Well, now that is crazy because these days you have lots and lots of things attributed TO Jesus that Jesus is not here to do.  Like, for example, caring about whether you, Susan, are memorizing your Old Testament!  But Jesus is not physically here, on Earth, because you remember he went to heaven and that is where he still is.

The person who IS here is the Holy Spirit.  Who is actually, tangibly HERE here.  No, you can't see him, he isn't in a human body like Jesus was, but he's here all the same.  So we know the Holy Spirit is here because 1) Jesus told us he would be here and 2) We can see the results of his arrival.  Like...like air.  You can't see air, but you're breathing, and you're alive, and fire works, and something is moving those leaves, and so forth.  You can't SEE air, but you can see the results of air existing.  So you can see that Jesus and the Holy Spirit, while both being God (God is an eternal, unchangeable spirit who is triune in nature.  Triune meaning 'three-in-one'  One God.  Three persons.  Three aspects.  Three separate aspects.  One God.  You'll easily able to tell why I am not a theologian.) are not The Same Thing.  Not.  Not the same thing at ALLLLLLL.  Very different in multiple ways.  In form, in purpose, in location for that matter.  Remember, Holy Spirit - here, with us.  Jesus - Still in Heaven, hasn't returned yet.

So what if what the meme is trying to say is that the Holy Spirit doesn't care how many Bible verses you have memorized.  Well, if anything, this is possibly more ridiculous than Jesus not caring.  What we need to ask ourselves is WHY.  Why would Jesus send us the Holy Spirit?  Why bother?  I mean, if the whole purpose of the Bible is entirely fulfilled by God the father creating us and God the son redeeming us then what's this invisible Spirit guy doing in the mix?  Well, he's there for multiple reasons but one of them is GUIDANCE.  So I'm terrible at examples but try and follow my poor storytelling.  You want to go somewhere, so you get in a car.  There's a road and it has lots of signs and everything guiding you to the place you want to go.  But signs and a road and a car are not enough to get from place A to place B.  What if part of the road gets washed out?  What if you make a turn off the road because you think you know a better way but it turns out you navigate like I do and you do not, in fact, know a better way?  What if the windshield wipers suddenly turn on and you can't get it to stop and you don't know what's wrong with the car?  Wouldn't it be handy if there was someone in the passenger seat who knew this road really, really well?  Who was part of the BUILDING of this road?  Who personally lived both at point A and also at point B and could navigate for you?  Well lucky for you, there is!  This is the Holy Spirit's JOB.  He specifically wants to help guide you along that road and all it's myriad twists, turns, wrong ways, detours and crazy oncoming traffic.  What does this have to do with this meme, woman!!!??  I'll tell you - the Holy Spirit wants to guide you.  His purpose in existing is primarily to be the guiding helper.  He will guide you despite whatever stupid stuff you may do, and thank God for that, frankly, but all the same he wants you to travel down this path.  He WANTS you to move towards Point B.  He exists in you to help you get closer to the end point!  This is what he does!  Do you think, knowing this, that he would not want you to deeply know your guidebook?  That he would say "hey, we're on this highway, but don't look at the road signs.  Or learn how to drive the car.  Or read the owner's manual."  Does this sound in any way logical?  It does not.

So okay, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (and God the father as well but I'm hoping I don't need to explain that) all do, actually want you to know your Bible.  All three of them are deeply invested in you knowing your Bible, in fact.

Verse #2 - He cares how you treat people.

Right.  Well, yeeeees, he does care how you treat people.  Yes.  But that is not really in any way affiliated with how much of the Bible you know.  I mean, those two things, if they are in any way attached to each other, actually feed positively from the Bible reading side.  So if you read your Bible and know your Bible and study your Bible you will treat people BETTER because of that, not worse.  No one is asking you to choose.  No one is saying you can EITHER know your Bible OR you can treat people well.  But you only get to pick one of those things.   That's...I don't even know where that would come from.  Absolutely none of the Bible is about choosing between living in this actual world that God has created, and being a Good Christian.  I cannot even think where this dichotomy would come from, and I'm wracking my brains.

Perhaps what the implication here is is less that you're choosing, but that the sort of person who would memorize Bible verses is not the sort of person who would care how you treat people.  That's quite possible, actually, since the world seems to have this fascinatingly strange perception of Christians as weirdos just waiting to leap out of dark corners and throw Gideon testaments at innocent people just trying to have a nice time.  I don't even own a Gideon testament!  Or a long denim skirt!  Obviously someone should be taking away my Christian card.

The irony is that IF that is what this meme is trying to get at, that you can give away bowls of gruel to hairy armed poor hungry people OR you can be all worried about stupid stuff like learning the basis of faith and salvation, then this meme curls in on itself and becomes what it condemns.  It takes its truth, and it hold it above all else, and says 'prostrate yourself in front of this, and not that.  That is wrong, but this...this over here, this social justice, this feeding of people, this is right!'  It ignores the two thousand years where for large swathes of time the Western world owed it's learning and medical care and allievment of poverty to the Christians.  It ignores the Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots flying food to drought-ridden areas of Angola, right now!  It ignores the Wycliffe Bible translators who gave me brand new lovely snowsuits for my two oldest children when we were too poor to manage much on our own.  It ignores the elderly in my own church, who from there own meagre income buy food for the children at the small local elementary school here in town, so that no child has to go through the day without breakfast and lunch.  These people, they did not ignore their responsibility to their own faith, to read the road signs, to learn about the car, in favour of the easier visible things.  They didn't give the box of cereal and then go home and say 'well thank goodness that's done and I don't have to even LISTEN in church next week.'  The study was the fuel that led them forward.

And the Bible, strangely enough, has quite a bit to say about that, too.

Is it you?

There is a funny saying, and I can't remember exactly how it goes but it's something like "There's always an odd person in every group.  Look around and if you don't see anyone, then it's you."  Something like that.

Anyway, I was reading the other day and for some reason this came into my mind.  And I've been trying to untangle why that should be.  Often this happens to me; I will have a flash of insight but then no real understanding of the bridges to get there from here, and then it takes a while to figure out the tangles and side roads.  But I have a thought about what this flash might have been about.

We are not just the ones who need to forgive, but also the ones who need to be forgiven.  If you look around your life and all you can see are the people who have wronged you and who you need to forgive, then you haven't recognized the many ways you have undoubtedly wronged others and need to ask for their forgiveness.  I think we're hardwired in a way to tend towards feeling upset and hurt; I know I am.  Christians, as much as the rest of the world, seem to spend a great deal of time being offended and upset about things and hurt by the thoughtlessness of others.  And yet, how many times do we look around the room and, not seeing someone who has recently offended us, cast out from our minds the possibility that we were the one who hurt another?

I think a regular, careful examination of our conscience is important, yes, but even more than that I think we need to cultivate the habit of seeing something through another's eyes and imagining the other person's life and how that might affect their behavior.  I have been working on this myself, and I assure you it is a truly awful and horrible and also useful and fruitful way of going about apologizing.

- Has someone been upset with you, and you have justified your words and thought "I don't need to apologize".  Have you even considered apologizing?  Can you imagine a world in which you did?

- When you think over your interactions with others, can you come up with a variety of ways in which you've been hurt, but if pressed to think of ways in which you need to be forgiven, you draw a blank?

- Does forgiveness always mean you forgiving another?

- Have you said "please forgive me" as often this week as you have thought "I'm upset at so-and-so"?

Of course, we have ultimate forgiveness of our sins from God alone, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek forgiveness from our earthly family.

"Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar 

and there remember that your brother has something 

against you leave your gift there before the altar. 

 First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come 

and offer your gift." Matt 5:23-24

The Bible has a lot to say about you forgiving your enemies, but of course God won't leave it there, will He.  We are called in Matthew to reconcile ourselves to our brother if he has something against us.  Not if he has something against us that we agree with, or that we recognize as an issue that needs resolving, but if he has something against us period.  If he's upset about something and you disagree with it...you are still required to show up and attempt to reconcile, to work it out, to apologize, to be better.

One of the reasons why we don't think of needing to be forgiven is self-centeredness.  We can see our sides of things, but rarely can we look through another's eyes.  Another reason is pride; no one wants to say they are sorry or listen to another person's side when we feel so much as though we are correct.  Another reason is simply ignorance - we don't even notice that we need to be forgiven and just bulldoze over others.  There are more, of course, there are probably infinite reasons why we don't seek forgiveness, but they pale against the other side, which says, quite clearly: God Says Do This.  And if we are His followers, then that is enough.

The Busy Parent's Guide To Bringing Up A Child In The Lord

I wanted to call this The Lazy Person's Guide, but then I got real with myself and admitted that I'm not lazy.  Overwhelmed?  Occasionally, yes.  Tired?  Sure, who isn't.  But mostly just busy.  Busy all the time.  There are probably a dozen things I should be doing right now instead of blogging and those dozen things will get done after I finish here and before I start the NEXT dozen things on the list - the list that never goes away, never ends, never even seems to shorten some days.  (That list, by the way, is called life.  I always thought other people just got their lists done - now I realize no one is done.  Just one giant cosmic hamster wheel.)

Anyway, you get the point.  But I'm also a Christian and our family is raising children and this brings up the issue of what to do in order to, as some people phrase it, 'bring up a child in the Lord'.  To train them in the Christian faith, to school them in what it all means, to rid them of false ideas they pick up like a boat picks up seaweed and replace that nonsense with truth - how can I do that, being, as I am, so busy?

Well, obviously the first step is to WANT to do it.  To prioritize doing such a thing, which we do.  If I have time to read one story and I have a choice between two books, I will try to choose the one that will start a Godly conversation, or has a good moral to it over the latest Barbie Princess whatever.  If I have some time alone with a child, say on a walk, I will turn the conversation towards God.  If someone hits someone else, I'll use the opportunity to bring up how we treat each other.  It's all about catching your chances to bring faith into the everyday.

But what else can someone do?  Well, we started by introducing grace at supper, and have progressed to grace before any meal.  It isn't always heartfelt, but it is said.  We pray before bed, as well, and I try to make certain that that time we go a little more in depth.  How?  Well, I ask a lot of questions.  'Is there any person you want to pray for?  Is there anything on your mind?  What about so-and-so - since they are sick.'  The questions are meant to be a starting off point for thinking outside of ourselves.

I also make sure the children see and hear me pray.  I know this is a challenge for a lot of people, and praying out loud was for me as well, for many years.  In fact I still don't like it.  But I do it, and I have gotten more comfortable at it.  I pray aloud for them at bedtime, listing good things they have done and thanking God for those pleasant and loving aspects of their spirits, and then asking for Christ's help in improving those areas that could use improvement.  I also pray for myself in their presence - that I would be patient and loving and kind.

Beyond those rather obvious ideas, my main technique is to constantly surround them with as much Christian good influence as I can.  Not all Christian influence is good, but I pick and choose and do my best.  We listen to Christian music in the car while we're driving, and I sing along.  We buy cds for when we aren't anywhere near a radio station (we live in the middle of nowhere).  We listen to Christian music at home as well, but it's more of a car thing for me; at home I prefer to put on the classical station.  If they ask for a movie or a show I will offer something with good morals first.  Not that they watch anything not good as a rule but instead of a junky cartoon, for example.  To this end we've bought a lot of Christian children's shows and older shows.  We love The Andy Griffith Show.  I buy them books and stickerbooks with a Christian theme.  Not all the time, but often.

We also try to talk a lot about our faith throughout the day.  "Daddy's at the church!  What's Daddy's job?"  "Do you remember when we read this passage in church?  What did it mean?"  Or if a child brings up the topic (which happens a lot) "Oh that's interesting!  Let's look in the Bible and see what it says."

So there you go.  Since the children are homeschooled I probably *should* do some sort of more formal Bible study program, but as I said - busy.  Too busy to teach the Bible, just to live it.

Let me know what you do.

Healthy, Happy, Holy

This pretty much encompasses what I want in this life for myself and my family...

To be healthy
          :: to eat well, to limit our exposure to chemicals, to know what 'enough' is, to experiment in our   
             kitchen, to garden, to foster a love of quality food in our children, to encourage understanding
             and compassion in regards to other's choices for their families, to not be afraid of medicine
             and science, to preserve traditional choices, to make our home calm...

To be happy
          ::  to rejoice, to pray, to shout for joy, to rest in comfort, to be at peace, to love and cherish each
              other, to live abundantly, to give willingly, to offer it up, to pour it out, to have fun, to be silly,
              to strive for knowledge, to be merciful, to offer friendship, to support and console, to be saved.

To be holy
          ::  To follow Christ, to be missionaries wherever we are, to listen to the Holy Spirit, to know what
              we believe and why, to be lights, to stand up, to hold on, to believe in love, to say grace, to
              pray first, to go to heaven...

Yes, I think that about covers it.

So in keeping with this...I'm trying to live it out here, in this house, in this family.  I'm working on giving things away right now, if you're curious, and my goal is ONE HUNDRED items!

Today, a friend who is expecting was the first recipient - three changing pads and a nursing cover found their way to her.

Tomorrow, several items of clothing are getting passed along to a little boy I know who will fit them quite well.  I don't need to hold onto these things - let them go.