the beginning of wisdom

sundered and sealed

2012-02-17T19:20:00.000-08:00

Why do you believe the Bible is the book it claims to be? Why do you believe it is the very Word of God?

Scholars say it can be trusted because of manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, prophetic accuracy, and the statistical probability that a message could be written so consistently across so many different authors and so many years. M-A-P-S. I’ve taught that acronym many times, and it is reassuring to think about even now. Knowing there is objective proof that the Bible is the book it claims to be appeals to my love of reason and my desire to keep reason and faith inseparably joined. But I have a deeper reason for believing the Bible is what it claims to be: I believe it to be the Word of God because it has done exactly what it said it would do.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

And this it has done: it has divided me. It has cut me to the bone.

It has severed the offending hand of my greed and gouged out the offending eye of my desire.

Over and over again.

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True to its diagnosis, I am a creature of a thousand grasping hands and a thousand roving eyes. Yet it continues its ministry of a thousand faithful amputations, parsing the sin from the sinner, separating the lie from the truth, dividing the darkness from the light.

And in the dividing, miracle of miracles, it is rendering me whole.

So, yes. I believe the Bible is true. It says this is who you were and it is right.

It says this is who you are and it is dead on.

So when it says this is who you shall be I can readily hope.

And when it says this is who I AM I can readily worship.

No blind leap required. This book has not lied to me. Not once.

It knows me. I am known by it.

I thank God for dusty scrolls and artifacts and fulfillments and probabilities all raising their voices in a chorus of affirmation: this book is what it claims to be.

And I add my own voice to the clamor: “You have sanctified me by the truth: thy word is truth.”

I believe because I have been sundered. I believe because I have been sealed. Living Word, cut and cut again, that truth may be found in my innermost parts. Separate me from my sin. Seal me unto salvation. And what you join let none put asunder.

a lesser communion

2012-01-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

"Thou preparest a table before me...my cup runneth over." Psalm 23:5

If you were to visit my home, you would see this sign hanging above the cook top in my kitchen:

It started off as a joke - a little irony directed at the Martha Stewart mindset that anything less than the perfect pork roast could potentially unhinge the cosmos - but as time has passed it has become less of a witticism and more of a manifesto.

When the kids were small I remember thinking that family dinners were a tool to bind us together as a family for the time we lived under the same roof. They would help Jeff and me to raise our children to adulthood with good dialogue and good nutrition. Check, and check. Family dinners were a snap back then. Now, four adolescents and their accompanying schoolwork and schedules have made shared meals more of a challenge than I ever anticipated, even with our notoriously stingy approach to activities.

But I’ll continue to fight for family dinner around our table. It is where little heads learned to bow in prayer, little hands learned to serve one another, little voices learned “please” and “thank you” and how to take turns in a conversation. It is where we learned to read the Word as a family and to talk about how it changes us. More and more, it is a place where we are all learning that we would rather be together than apart.

Friendships may wax and wane – this year’s best friend may be next year’s acquaintance because of a schedule change or a falling out, or anything that severs the fragile thread of our overlapping experience. But the people who remain constant in our lives, the relationships worthy of our deepest investments, are our family. With family, overlapping experience is not a fragile thread but a strong cord, binding us together and lending us the strength we need to navigate the years ahead.

And that’s why much depends on dinner. Though work, school and activities may pull us in different directions, nightly dinner is our chance to sit down together and strengthen the cords of family. Dinner is the time we gather to share not just a meal, but the stories of our day, our victories and losses, our observations and questions. Though it may happen at other times as well, dinner is the time of day when biblical community consistently happens in our home.

I hope that we are building at our kitchen table a bond that holds not just for the eighteen or so years we will share the same roof, but for the 60 years after those – years during which our children will navigate marriage, having children of their own, job successes and failures, moves, the decline of their parents, and their own aging as well. Whether we like them or not, our family travel the length and breadth of life with us. How much better, then, to like them? To welcome their company on that path? Yes, much depends on dinner because dinner deepens our dependence on each other. It binds us together for the long haul. And we will need each other for the years ahead.

Here is what I am coming to realize: there is only one shared table in this life more holy than that table in my kitchen. This lesser communion we gather for each night whispers of that other table: the breaking of bread, the sharing of truth, a nightly remembrance of what matters most. No, not a sacramental meal, but certainly a sacred one. This lesser communion we gather for each night differs from that other table: its gaze is fixed not backward but forward. Tonight we gather as parents and children, but one day we will gather as brothers and sisters. Tonight we hunger and thirst for food that will fill us for a time, but one day our hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. Tonight we give thanks together around a simple kitchen table, but God willing, one day we will give thanks together around a banquet table in the presence of the Lord.

I want my children there. I want my children’s children there. So, yes, much depends on dinner. No coach or choir director or church program or career gets to supersede this ritual. Whether we dine on chateaubriand or cereal, this nightly intersection of our lives means strength for today and hope for tomorrow. We will not grow weary of meeting together. A table is prepared for us. This is the place where we are fed.

Related posts:
Guarding Sabbath for our Children
Worship Together

new year, new self-control

2011-12-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

A new year is upon us, and unless this one is much different from others, our conversations will be laden with talk of fitness goals and holiday diet missteps. The New Year is traditionally a time for resurrecting our self-control, so this is no surprise. But this New Years' I have a different form of self-discipline in view - one with potentially longer-lasting impact than dropping a dress size.

I recently came across an article showing ads from the 1930’s and 40’s selling products to help people gain weight. The ads made claims that sounded completely comical to our 2012 ears: “Add 5lb of solid flesh in a week!” “Since I gained 10lb…I have all the dates I want!” I showed the ads to my daughters, whose response was “Mom, I don’t think those are real. Have you checked that on Snopes?”

But they’re real alright, despite how preposterous they seem. My first reaction, I am ashamed to admit, was that I was born too late. How great would it be to live during a time when well-padded women held the glamour-girl title? (As long as I’m being honest, I had a similar reaction to learning that in South America women get implants in their bottoms to achieve their culture’s ideal shape. By some cruel twist of fate, had I been born on the wrong continent? Why couldn’t I live where hips were hip?)

But of course, to seriously entertain these thoughts is to drink a Kool-aid that has been served up to women since the dawn of time: the belief that ideal physical beauty exists and should be pursued at all costs. For much of human history, the curvy beauty has prevailed. Statues of women from ancient Greece and Rome celebrate a body type we would call “plus-size” today, as does Renaissance art. Historically, padded women were considered beautiful because only the rich and idle could achieve such a figure, and because curviness indicated fertility. For women of past generations curviness was extremely hard to achieve unless you had the money to eat well and work little. Thanks to trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, this is no longer the case. Ironically, the rich and idle of today strive to look undernourished and overworked. And the rest of us rush to follow suit.

So, would it have been better to live during a time when well-fed women were hailed as beauties? I doubt it. Because the issue is not “fat versus thin” – it is “perfect versus imperfect”. There has never been a time when women have not defined themselves by (enslaved themselves to?) some ideal of physical beauty. Though its definition may change across the centuries, one element remains constant: it is always a definition of beauty that is just beyond our reach. We want what we cannot have. If curvy is hard, we want curvy. If thin is hard, we want thin.

The expectation of physical perfection hits modern females early and often. In middle school, girls cut themselves to deal with the pressures of conforming to the ideal. In middle age, women do, too – but allow the surgeon to hold the knife. We carve the record of our self-loathing into the very flesh of our bodies – a self-marring, a literal carving of an idol. Increasingly, physical perfection is the legacy of womanhood in our culture, handed down with meticulous care from mother to daughter, with more faithful instruction in word and deed than we can trouble to devote to the cultivation of kindness, peacemaking and acceptance that characterize unfading, inner beauty.

In this as in all things, there is hope and good news for the believer: one day we will be free of our self-loathings and will live in harmony with our physical appearance. We will be given new, incorruptible bodies – bodies that are no longer on a collision course with the grave. We dare not reduce this future hope to that of an eternity with thinner thighs or a smaller nose. We must celebrate it as the day when vanity itself is dealt a fatal and final blow.

But how should we live in the meantime? By all means, we should steward the gift of our physical bodies – but for the sake of wellness, not beauty. Two women can step onto two treadmills with identical fitness goals and widely different motives. Only they will know the real reason they are there.

January is typically a time when we talk a great deal about calories, work-outs and weight loss. What if we didn’t? What if we didn’t talk about body sizes at all? What if we made it a point not to mention our own calorie sins or victories in front of our girlfriends and daughters? What if we started living in right relation to our bodies now, instead of at the resurrection? What if every time we looked in the mirror and were tempted to complain we said “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, laying claim to the future hope that our bodies will one day celebrate function in right relation to form, living in the glorious truth of that future hope now?

What if this New Years’ we decided to fast not from food but from body-talk? Sure - hit the gym, eat the Paleo diet, run six miles a day, wear Spanx from neck to knee - just stop talking about it. Stop telling your friend she looks skinny – instead tell her you love her sweet spirit. Choose compliments that spur her to pursue that which lasts instead of that which certainly does not. If someone comments on your own shape, say thanks and change the subject. Banish body-talk to the same list of off-limits topics as salaries, name-dropping, and colonoscopies. Apply the discipline you use to work out to controlling your tongue. Do this for your sisters, and by the grace of God, we could begin a legacy of womanhood that celebrates character over carb-avoidance, godliness over glamour.

Sister in Christ, physical perfection is not within our grasp, but, astonishingly, holiness is. Where will you devote your energy in the New Year? Go on a diet from discussing shape and size. Feast on the Word of Truth. Ask this of yourself for your sake, for the sake of your friends and daughters, for the sake of the King and His Kingdom. On earth as it is in Heaven.

“Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:10-11

the hope of advent

2011-12-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

We crowd into the room, shuffling songsheets so everyone can see, children in front. I turn so Jeff can read the chords, the neck of the guitar jutting awkwardly in front of me. We have an audience of two.

He lies next to her on the bed, on her left. He is neatly dressed, his white hair carefully combed. She lies slack-jawed, eyes staring up to the ceiling. Purple blotches cover her arm. Her right hand rests loosely on a baby doll placed on her chest. He is holding her left.

He smiles and wishes us a Merry Christmas. He has a request: could we sing “O Holy Night”?

We find it on our songsheets and begin to sing. The key is a bit high, and we search for the top notes of the chorus.

He closes his eyes as we sing.

They have been married for fifty years. She has been in this room for three. When the dementia blossomed, she forgot his name and began asking for the man who left her a widow in her twenties. He requested a larger bed be brought into the room so they could lie next to each other. So he could hold her hand. Some would say he belongs outside this building, but he does not agree.

We marry ‘til death do us part, but we do not choose the manner of our parting. We speak with longing of the desire to grow old together, but we do not picture this. And yet he stays, and he waits for what is next, and he holds her hand.

“Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease.”

Oppression ceasing. No more slack jaw, no more vacant stare. No more hours of airless waiting, marked off by the whir of the blood pressure monitor. The death of death at the birth of Christ. O Holy night.

My eyes are pulled to the hand strumming the guitar.

I will hold that hand. I will hold it. Or it will hold mine. I do not know what the years will bring, but I know this with increasing certainty: that hand will stay in my hand. And we will wait together, for as long as we are given, for the end of oppression. He has come. He is coming.

“Thank you, that was beautiful.”

He is being kind – we are not great singers. I am the one who should speak those words. Thank you. Thank you for the hope in your hand.

the ministry of mary

2011-12-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

December means Advent, and at the Wilkin house that means reading nightly from our traditional Advent book. Each page contains a door that opens onto a scene from the Christmas story - twenty five doors, twenty five days to Christmas. Behind the first three doors of this beautiful book lies the retelling of the Annunciation, and immediately I am drawn into the story. A teen-aged Hebrew girl learns from an angel that she will miraculously give birth to God in the flesh. Mary's response? “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Nothing about this story is typical.

The record of what unfolds next for Mary is mind-boggling in its own right – we open the doors of our Advent book to see Elizabeth’s confirmation of the angel’s words, Joseph’s response, the actual birth of the child – but ever since the birth of my own children the quieter details of Mary’s maternal role have stirred my curiosity. The gospels do not tell us much about Jesus’ earliest years, those years during which any mother is consumed with the care of her child. Surely Mary encountered all of the typical weariness, worry, work and wonderment of raising a little one. The doors to these everyday scenes are closed to us.

Was raising the Christ-child a typical experience of motherhood? It's hard to imagine that it was. Even the ordinary would have touched the extraordinary. Think about this: Mary was charged with caring for the very body that would one day be broken for her. Her hands bathed and clothed him, her breasts satisfied his hunger, her lips kissed his skinned elbows, her arms embraced him, her voice soothed him to sleep. In the simple everyday tasks of motherhood, Mary ministered to the very body of the long-expected Savior. Even her most basic acts of mothering were sacred.

That's not a normal experience of motherhood. Or is it?

In Matthew 25:31-45 Jesus speaks of the day in which the righteous will be separated from the unrighteous according to their deeds. The righteous act selflessly to minister to those in need: shelter for the shelterless, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothing for the naked, help for the sick, compassion for the friendless. Jesus indicates that when we meet the most basic needs of those around us we show forth the reality of our changed hearts. But He says we do more than that. He tells us that when we do these things for others, it is as though we have done them directly for him. This is a pivotal realization for us: when a love for our Savior motivates us to serve others, our most basic acts become sacred acts - as if we had done them for Christ himself.

I am in the process of raising four children. Weariness, worry, work, wonderment. If you opened a door on our lives, you'd find typical scenes: disorder barely confined to the closets and second floor, daily trips to the grocery store (bananas, bread, milk), dirty clothes draping every surface of the laundry room. It feels like someone is always hungry, sick, cranky, or out of clean socks. It is my job as the mom to address these conditions, and I may not always show up to work with a smile on my face.

But if what Jesus says is true, these basic mothering acts are some of the most sacred of all - shelter for the shelterless, food for the hungry, clothing for the naked. As if I have done them for Christ himself.

I don’t share much in common with Mary. I have great kids, but I can say with some confidence that none of them is a sinless Son of God. But by meeting their everyday needs out of a love for that Son, I share in some indirect way in the profound mystery Mary knew of ministering to the physical body of her Savior. Even my most basic acts of mothering become sacred.

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.” Such an insightful response to the calling of motherhood. A teen-aged girl could see it. Oh, that I might see it as well - that I might recognize the object of my service as Christ himself, that I might reckon the tasks of mothering not as work but as worship, not as an aggravation but as an altar, not as drudgery but as my dearest delight in service to my Savior. Oh, that sacred service might dwell continually and joyfully behind the door of my home.

Matthew 25:37-40 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

friend and mentor

2011-11-30T07:56:00.000-08:00

Oil and perfume make the heart glad,and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. Proverbs 27:9

For much of my adult life it has been my great joy to know and be known by Pat Conner. Pat is my “frentor” – my friend and mentor, whose company I dearly enjoy and whose wisdom I eagerly seek. With transparency, compassion, patience and insight she has guided me through seas both choppy and calm. I owe her such a debt as a mom and a ministry leader. She has spared me many pitfalls and gently helped me to stand after the ones I managed to tumble into anyway. She is a champion of the underdog and a cheerleader for the discouraged.

In the book of James, we are told to ask for wisdom if we lack it (and we do!), for our Heavenly Father gives it generously without finding fault. He has done this for me through the person of my friend Pat, who has consistently embodied that uncalculated generosity of insight James speaks of – for me and for so many others.

This year, Pat is enjoying a Birthday Of Significance. To celebrate her, I thought I would share a few of my favorite things she has taught me - through her words and her actions. I hope you benefit from them as I have. And I pray that you, too may find a frentor-of-great-worth.

My Top 20 Favorite Words of Wisdom from Pat

(in no particular order)

It is hard to be a mother. It is hard to be a daughter. No one else can fill those roles in your family. You should fill them well.
Treat children as people. They bear the image of God, just like you.
Siblings can and should be best friends.
Though the answer to someone’s problem may be obvious to you, it is not obvious to them. Sit and listen, even if you don’t have the time, even if it takes a long time.
Don’t judge others according to your strengths. Maybe you love Bible study (or prayer, or missions) more than they do because God wired you differently. Maybe He wired you that way so you could serve them with your gift.
Teacups make any hot beverage taste better.
Times that are free of suffering are opportunities to reach out to those in times of suffering.
Times of suffering are opportunities to glorify the Father. Sometimes they last a long time.
Bearing the burdens of others sometimes means bearing the burden of their foolishness, even at great personal cost.
Wisdom chooses silence over speech more often than not.
Buy the cute pajamas. Everyone wins.
Anger, unaddressed, poisons every area of a person’s life.
Funny birthday cards are kind of a cop-out. Say what you mean.
If you ever succumb to the belief that people cannot change, it is time to get out of ministry.
See more in people than they see in themselves. Trust your intuition about placing someone in leadership, even if they doubt themselves.
Use simple words to express yourself. Speak plainly. It helps to think for awhile before you speak.
Stay at the Broadmoor at least once before you die. Even if you have to knock off an ATM to get there.
It is wiser to be an asker of questions than a teller of answers. When you must answer, an answer softly worded and softly spoken turns away wrath, even when the answer is a hard one.
Love your calling more than your pride or your safety. Do the thing you “can’t not do” for one or for one hundred, on easy days and on hard days, with excellence.
We are all God’s favorites.

Happy Birthday, dear friend. Thank you for the fragrant offering of your friendship and counsel. We reflect on the years behind you with gratitude. We look to the years before you with joy.

Pat writes a great parenting blog. You can find more of her wisdom here.

santa, strategically

2011-11-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, compost piles are riding high with pumpkins from last night’s celebration of Halloween, a holiday that in years past was treated warily by Christians but has more recently been allowed back onto the calendar by many. Why did we salvage it? I’m guessing because we recognized the sheer joy of it for our children, and that for many of us it was the only time all year we interacted meaningfully with our neighbors. Gone are the days when you could tell the house of the devout Christian on the block by the darkened windows and candy-less bowl of tracts on the porch. And I admit I’m glad.

But there’s a new holiday villain “comin’ to town”, and his name is Santa. If “good Christian parenting” of the 80’s and 90’s was marked by snubbing all things Halloween, it now appears to be marked by a wariness toward the Jolly Old Elf himself. I know this because of the frequency with which Jeff and I are asked "What did you do about Santa?" In the minds of many conscientious Christian parents, Santa now rubs shoulders with other shady characters like Harry Potter, the Tooth Fairy, and Ariel the feminist shell-wearing Disney princess. And why not target Santa for hostility? After all, (spoiler alert) he isn’t real. Sure, he’s a historical figure, but the fat-white-guy-in-the-red-suit-who-sneaks-into-homes-to-leave-presents-for-kids-who-have-earned-them-by-good-behavior is not just a myth, he’s a creepy myth. Good Christian parents don’t lie to their children, especially not about works-based, anti-gospel, diet-dodging, voyeuristic Santa. Ask anybody in the Bible Belt.

So, here’s where I confess: The Wilkins kept Santa as part of Christmas. And we loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And we’d do it the same way all over again if we could.

Stay with me. I can explain.

Jeff and I walked into parenting without a plan for Santa (I guess his heretical status had not yet been firmly established in 1996). We both had fond memories of Santa from childhood. As adults, we knew there were parts of Santa we liked and parts we didn’t like, so we improvised, keeping what we liked and ditching what we didn’t. We gave him a cultural place in our family’s holiday traditions without allowing him to undermine the message of the Advent story. So I offer for your consideration our approach to Santa, in case you, too, harbor a secret sadness at seeing the Jolly Elf vanish from the Christmas landscape.

What we did:

We waited for Santa to show up. We didn’t start the topic – we waited until our oldest child introduced it, and then we responded as briefly as possible to questions and comments.
We stacked the deck. Once Santa was on the radar, we told the kids “There’s a secret to Santa. If you think you have figured out the secret of Santa, come ask Mom and Dad.” For awhile, the kids would come to us thinking the secret was that Santa used the front door instead of the chimney, or that the reindeer didn’t really fly. We would respond “That’s not the secret of Santa, but keep thinking!” When they figured out that the secret was that we were Santa, they thought it was hilarious: “All this time it was YOU filling our stockings!” They knew they had not been tricked or lied to, but that their mom and dad had planned a fun surprise for them to discover.
We limited Santa’s clout. Santa only brought stocking presents. We wanted the kids to thank Mom and Dad for the big stuff.

What we didn’t do:

We didn’t give Santa center stage. Our Christmas tradition centered (and still centers) heavily around the nightly reading of an Advent Book that told clearly the story of the birth of Christ. It is by far the kids' most meaningful Christmas tradition at our house, and they can recite the Christmas story by heart because of it.
We did nothing to hype Santa or perpetuate the myth – if they started to suspect, we didn’t try to throw them off the trail. No boot prints in the fireplace or reindeer footprints on the front lawn. If they asked “How can he bring presents to every child in one night?” or “How does he fit down the chimney?” we would say “Good question. That’s part of the secret of Santa.”
We happily edited Santa to match the reality of who he is (mom and dad). When a child asked “Does Santa really not come if you’re bad?” we’d answer with “Well, what do you think about that? Does that sound like Santa?” They were more than eager to alter their view of Santa to that of a gracious giver instead of a meritorious one.

Why we’d do it all again:

You might be thinking, “Okay, so you found a way to keep Santa, but why bother? Why not just tell your children he’s not real and move on?” We had a couple of reasons for not doing this.

Matt and Mary Kate meet Mall Santa 1997

First, we supported a child’s natural right to possess a huge and wonderful imagination. Research shows that about 65 percent of all children develop imaginary friends between the ages of three and five. Most Christian parents would not put an end to an imaginary friend – they would wait for the child’s imagination to outgrow the friend. And we would not accuse those parents of lying to their child. Santa is not an imaginary friend, but he appeals to the same place in a young child’s imagination, much like a Disney princess or a character in a book. The line between reality and fantasy is blurry for little children, as is their developmental right. They outgrow their capacity for fantasy as they mature emotionally. We were willing to let that process take its natural course with Santa, remaining cautious not to do anything to reinforce or prolong the fantasy.

Second, we didn’t want to ask our four-year-old to be an apologist for an adult view of Santa. In other words, we didn’t want to send him into preschool having to conceal from (or reveal to) his friends the terrible secret that Santa was a fraud. By giving him the chance to figure out the secret of Santa on his own, we bought him some anxiety-free time with his peers in which he could share their excitement over Santa without having been deceived by a parent. All of our four children figured out the secret of Santa by about age six. By that age, keeping the secret from peers was far more within their powers of self-control than if we had laid the burden on them from the beginning.

Parting thoughts

Rest assured Santa will be culturally imposed on your family: he will be on the radio, on the TV, and at the mall for a photo op. Whether or not he overshadows the gospel message of Advent is up to you. If that message is only talked about in your home during the Christmas season, you should definitely loathe St. Nick. But parents who impress their children with the gospel message year round have little to fear that Santa will compromise their worldview. In reality, December is only one of the twelve months in which our children are assaulted with anti-gospel, materialistic messages. We would be remiss to make Santa the December scapegoat for a negative message we have neglected to address from January to November.

Can Santa be harmful? Absolutely. Our children reported adamant Santa-belief among their peers well into the fifth grade. It takes a firm commitment to deception on the part of a parent to prolong a child’s belief in Santa to age eleven. And that’s not okay. But at the Wilkin house, we remember Santa fondly. In fact, he still fills the stockings each year. Keeping Santa on our own terms, deliberately making him an extension of ourselves as parents, a minor figure in the holiday celebration, and a clever riddle to be solved allowed us to preserve a fun childhood memory of our own and to hand it down to our children. Not surprisingly, Wilkin-Santa looks a little familiar if you take time to notice: he gives freely without asking for anything in return, and he reveals himself to those who earnestly seek him. And Someone like that will always be welcome in our home.

the secret giver

2011-10-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Last night in the Bible study we talked about Jesus’ words to us regarding giving to the needy. In Matthew 6:2-4 Jesus describes a type of giving that is known only to the Father, a giving so unselfconscious that our left hand does not know what our right hand is doing. The idea of giving unconsciously, without keeping a record and without expecting the praise of others is a lofty one and an appealing one, but it can be hard to find practical ways to live it out. All gift-giving requires a certain level of creativity, and none more so than the secret giving described by Jesus. With that in mind, here are a few creative ways we can give to others in secret. First, some ways to bless those outside our home:

1. Instead of writing a personal check to a person or organization, send an anonymous cashier’s check. If sending the check to a friend or family member, mail it from a different zip code than yours. You can even enlist the help of a friend in another state: mail them your envelope and ask them to send it. On a smaller scale, gift cards can easily be sent anonymously in the mail as well. You can include a typed note that acknowledges the purpose of the gift: “For your house payment this month”, “For your car repair”, etc. This helps the receiver know how intimately concerned God is that their specific needs be met.

2. Some people have trouble accepting help with meals when they are going through a tough week. It’s hard to drop off a home-cooked meal anonymously, but you can leave an anonymous note on their door telling them to expect delivery of a meal from a local restaurant on a certain day and time (do as much recon as you can to pick a good window).

3. Help anonymously with school-related expenses. Secretly pay for a child’s tuition to mother’s day out for a young mom who needs a break. Contact the grade school of a struggling family and ask to anonymously fill a child’s lunch account.

4. Send a lawn service over to mow the yard of a single mom or ill friend. Or send maid service to clean their house. Speak to the service provider to set up the arrangement and pre-pay. Then mail an anonymous note to the recipient giving them the name and number of the person to contact to schedule their appointment. The possibilities are endless here, depending on the size of your gift: house painting, window washing, home repairs could all be handled in a similar way.

5. Send movie ticket vouchers and a restaurant gift card anonymously to a young couple who need a date night. Give symphony or theater tickets to a family that might not ever be able to afford to go. Think specifically about how a particular person or family could be blessed by your anonymous giving with a gift they would choose themselves if they had the money.

Now, what if there were ways to practice secret giving without spending money and without leaving our homes? We would be remiss if we only practiced secret giving toward those in our community. If charity begins at home, secret charity begins there as well. Moms, you are especially well-positioned to be a secret giver, but the entire family can get in on the fun. Any time you are home alone is an opportunity to bless anonymously. Think creatively about how, and encourage your kids to do the same. Look for (but don’t be limited to) things that need to be done, but that often go unnoticed:

1. Fold and put away someone else’s laundry, even if it’s not your job.

2. Put fresh sheets on someone else's bed and hang fresh towels in the bathroom. Restock the toilet paper.

3. Mow the lawn one weekday before the person responsible has a chance to do it.

4. Unload the dishwasher or take out the trash, even if it’s not your turn.

5. Organize a closet that everyone uses. Or organize the garage.

6. Clean the baseboards or the air vents. Dust the ceiling fan blades. Clean all the toilets. No one will even notice that you did it. Which is exactly what makes it great.

Even in homes where gratitude is well-trained and properly displayed, most moms or dads have encountered the thought “There are a thousand things I do that my family takes for granted.” What if, rather than resent this lack of perceptiveness, we viewed it as a means for secret gift-giving? What if moms and dads kept things clean and operating and paid for without resentment, recognizing that one day their children would look back as adults and say “You did that!”? Or even recognizing that their kids may never look back in gratitude, but that the Father who sees in secret has not overlooked a single selfless gift?

Public giving certainly has its place, but so does secret giving – both outside and inside the home. The real trick to secret giving is to keep no record – to give expecting nothing in return – not a name on a building, not a sense of indebtedness in the receiver, not a tax receipt, not even a thank-you note. One day all of our giving will be known – those we have blessed in secret will know the instrument of their blessing was us. Our recipients will look back and say “It was you!”

And isn’t that a picture of how God gives to us? For our God is a Secret Giver – He gave us Christ before we knew we needed him, a Secret Gift whose value will take an eternity to properly value. He gives us grace throughout our lives in large and small ways that we will not see clearly until Glory. On that day we will look back and say “It was you!” for a thousand graces. Secret giver, live in light of that truth today. Freely you have received. Freely give.

Do you have creative suggestions for secret giving? Leave a comment!

wormwood and gall

2011-10-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

A young woman asked me to meet with her recently to help her learn how to deal with bitterness. She had suffered harm at the hands of a fellow believer in the form of hurtful accusations and outright hypocrisy. Though months had gone by she found that bitterness toward this person kept creeping back into her thinking.

I could relate. Several years back I found myself in a similar situation when my integrity was called into question unjustly by a fellow believer. I had always thought that the enemies Jesus commanded me to love were people I labeled as such, either because they were unbelievers or because they drove me crazy. I believed an enemy was someone I chose. Most days I didn't have anyone on that list. Suddenly I found myself confronted with the truth that my enemy could choose me, out of the blue, as I went about my life - that despite my best efforts to live at peace with all men, someone could still choose to walk in enmity toward me. And that someone could even be a believer. This was a new kind of hurt for me, the kind that tempted me to drink deeply of bitterness.

Here is what I wanted during that time: I wanted my adversary to be brought to justice. I wanted my side of the story to be heard and my hurt to be acknowledged. I wanted to be vindicated in front of those who had heard my integrity questioned – not tomorrow or next year – today.

That’s not what happened. Because God is better to me than I deserve, no opportunity came for any of those wants to be met. And in that season of wormwood and gall He taught me truths I would otherwise never have sought. Here are a few bitterness-barring realizations I learned to cling to:

Realization 1: God knows the real story. Every justification I wanted to raise was already known to God. Every misconception I wanted to correct was not misconceived by God. He knew both sides of the story perfectly, and more importantly He knew the truth that lay somewhere between. My sense of urgency to clear my name was misplaced and self-reliant. So instead of fighting to make my side of the story known, I learned to let my words be few. And I asked God to show me where I had shaded the truth to mollify my hurt or downplay my own sin.

Realization 2: God sees the heart of my adversary. God sees my heart. As my hurt blossomed I began to take comfort in the knowledge that, if God’s word can be trusted, one day my adversary’s sin would be called to light. I found peace in knowing justice would eventually be served, even if not in this lifetime. It took awhile for me to realize that on that day my own sin would also be fully revealed. We can all rely on the Just Judge to do His job. One day my adversary’s sin will be known, and so will mine. On that day I will cling to the mercy of my Savior. I will beg for it, though I do not deserve it. If I do less than this for my adversary I am a hypocrite of the highest order. So instead of taking comfort that justice would be served, I began praying for my enemy to receive mercy.

Realization 3: I have caused hurt as well. I may have done nothing to deserve this particular hurt, but I have certainly caused similar hurt (known and unknown) for others. So instead of feeling superior to my adversary, I began to develop empathy for them. And I began asking God to show me my own sins against others.

There is only one person who has ever suffered unjustly in the purest sense, and that is Christ. The rest of us may indeed be wronged by another, but never without the guilt of having caused harm ourselves at some point in our lives. So when we suffer unjustly, insofar as that is humanly possible, we can be instructed by the way in which Christ endured. When falsely accused and convicted by his own people, he remained silent. 1 Peter 2 says he “continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” When at last he did speak (after the unjust verdict had been passed) it was to cry out not against, but on behalf of his oppressors.

Think about this: At no time are we more like Christ than when we suffer unjustly at the hands of those who should have loved us best. We claim that we want to be conformed to the image of the Son. What if it takes this kind of suffering to accomplish just that? So instead of asking why God would let this injustice happen, I began asking Him to use every bit of the hurt to mold me into the likeness of the Savior.

Realization 4: I must refuse the bitter cup. The Bible speaks of our times of hard trial as seasons of wormwood and gall, of bitter herb and bile, times that leave us with the lingering taste of resentment in our mouths if we drink deeply of their vintage. Perhaps the greatest temptation in a bitter season is to drink in the gall that besets us, to take it into our very souls and harbor it there, crying for justice to be done. Bitter trial may surround us, but we need not internalize its acid sting. We can choose to refuse the bitter cup when it is brought to our lips.

We see a picture of this truth at Golgotha. As the death sentence passed on him by those who should have loved him best was carried out, Jesus cried out in thirst and was offered gall to quench it. He turned his face away. Scholars are divided on why this is so. Either the cup was offered to mercifully shorten his life by poisoning him or it was offered as an analgesic to lessen his physical anguish. But Christ was unwilling to shorten or diminish his appointed suffering by the smallest amount. He had come single-mindedly to do the will of the Father. In the bitterest trial of his incarnation, Christ refused the cup of bitterness raised to his lips.

You and I mistakenly believe that drinking deeply of bitterness will satisfy our hurt, but Christ has shown us the better way. In all suffering the cup of gall will be offered to our lips. We who have drunk from the cup of Life must seek no comfort in that caustic drink. Like Christ, we must refuse it. The bitter thirst of injustice is only quenched with the Living Water of the gospel. In our seasons of wormwood and gall may we drink deeply and often from its streams, exchanging bitterness for the hope and portion of steadfast love, of mercies that never come to an end – for us and for our offenders.

Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!

My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentations 3:19-24

civility in the christian home

2011-09-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was sitting in an outdoor area and overheard an argument between a teenage boy and his mother. The son was refusing to do what his mother had asked. After shouting back and forth at each other for a few minutes, the mother ended the encounter by yelling “F____ you, Kevin!” and storming away. I was pretty unsettled by what I had witnessed. Surely a decade ago when Kevin was a cherub-faced little boy being tucked in at night, his mother could never have conceived of a day when she would have an exchange like this. How had things deteriorated so badly?

As a mother of three teens and a tween, I can vouch for the fact that the teen years are times of sudden conflict over unexpected topics. But they don’t have to be times that conclude with civility lying bleeding in the gutter. Civility, the practice of treating others with kindness and respect, is foundational to society, and even more so to the Christian home. Why? Because it lives out the Great Command. When Christ admonished us to love our neighbors as ourselves he pointed us not toward fair treatment of others, but toward preferential treatment: We want others to treat us better than we deserve. We should treat others that way. However, as parents we sometimes forget that our children are our neighbors. And the end result is the scene I witnessed between Kevin and his mother, the result of a home where civility has gone missing.

Our culture wants us to believe that civility cannot survive the teen years, that we should resign ourselves to exchanges like the one I heard. Hence, the oft-repeated knowing phrase “Just wait until they’re teenagers.” But this is precisely the problem: too many of us wait until our children are teenagers to realize the importance of civility, understanding its value only as we watch it walk out the door.

Civil children are the product of civil environments. Many parents feel free to speak to their children with a level of incivility they would not use with anyone else they know. They bark orders. They raise their voices. They use sarcasm and contempt: “Seriously? That’s how you cleaned your room?” They poison civil language with contemptuous tone: “Ryan, please put your shoes on.” They patronize. They eye-roll or sigh. They construct a cocktail of word choice, tone, and body language that they would not serve to a co-worker, a friend, or a stranger on the street. And then they serve it liberally to an under-aged consumer - the smallest neighbor they are called to love preferentially - their own child.

Yet they are shocked to end up with an adolescent who is fluent in the language of contempt.

Many of us have wrongly defined our homes as places where parents are to be respected rather than as places where everyone is to be respected. Children do not hold equal authority in the home but they do hold equal personhood, equal dignity. They are image-bearers of God, every bit as much as their mothers and fathers. As such, they deserve kind words, level tone, neutral body language. Even when they disobey. A child who is consistently treated with respect is far more likely to treat her parents with respect, no matter what her stage of life.

Parents of young children, look toward the adolescent years by asking yourself some critical questions now:

Do I address my child with kindness and respect, even in conflict?
Do I use my tone and body language to communicate civility or contempt?
Do I guard my child’s exposure to media sources that model uncivil exchanges between children and adults?
Do I teach my child that civil words are not merely “magic words” that achieve a desired result, but are “moral words” that obey the Great Command of preferential love?

Parents of uncivil adolescents, ask yourself the same questions. It is never too late to start doing the right thing. You may not be able to rein in your adolescent’s incivility, but you will begin to obediently model preferential love toward him and to live at peace with him as far as it is possible with you.

Christian parents must begin early to train their children in the language of civility. They must do this because it is good for families. They must do this because it is good for society. They must do this because it portrays the character of the Father, who responded to the rank incivility of human sin with a Word of profound kindness and a preferential love beyond our ability to grasp. In the civil word of the gospel is found our redemption. May it be spoken in our homes as it is written on our hearts.

beatitudes

2011-09-20T19:41:00.000-07:00

Blessed in poverty and grief,
Blessed my will to set aside,
Blessed in hunger and in thirst

At Your table satisfied.

Blessed Your mercy to impart,

Blessed with sight, now pure in heart.

Blessed the lost to reconcile,

Blessed to be refined in trial.

Blessed, because you loved me first –
You, who were yourself accursed,
You who bore my guilt and shame,
Who for me a curse became.

You, though cursed (how can this be?)

Speak your blessing over me.

j. wilkin

9.23.08

the gospel in a green felt coat

2011-09-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

Remember Magic Eye? Those fuzzy pictures that, if you stared at them long enough, would suddenly form into a razor-sharp 3-D image? I loved those. Okay, I hated them. I’m pretty competitive when it comes to games, and for some reason my eyes just couldn’t compete with those of…well, let’s just say for example, my husband. Who is also a little competitive. We’d stand side by side in WalMart staring at those things, our grocery shopping completely forgotten, my adrenaline surging with every passing second as I knew Jeff was getting closer and closer to seeing what my brain could not hurry to sort out.

Him: Jet plane!...Dragon!....Niagra Falls!...Porpoise!

Me: Porpoises are stupid. Can we go now?

Apparently, the trick was to keep your focus off of any individual point and gaze at the whole picture. Apparently I was no good at that.

But I think I’m getting better.

Yesterday my Friday took an unexpected turn when I had to take one of the dogs into the vet for a bladder infection. Which is bad on so many levels, but I’ll spare you the journey that brought us to the point of actually seeking medical attention. My bad attitude may or may not have lengthened that journey. I’ll just leave that part out as well.

So I’m sitting there sulking when I get a text from one of two friends who were out to lunch celebrating their birthdays together, presumably not smelling like dog. Here is the exchange that followed:

Friend: Where are you?

Me (initial response): At the vet hemorrhaging money.

Me (edited, actual response): At the vet doing my duty to unconditional love and companionship.

Friend: We’re coming to see you. Don’t leave. You’ll want to see us.

Me (initial response): What beverages came with Birthday Lunch? Are you in a limo wearing sombreros?

Me (edited, actual response): I’m in the exam room. Coming here would be weird. Oh, and Happy Birthday!

Friend: Too bad, we’ll be there in 5. It’s going to feel like YOUR birthday!

Sure enough, five minutes later two pretty heads with enormous grins popped around the door of the exam room where I was sitting covered in dog fur grouchily waiting my turn to get fleeced. And now, apparently, embarrassed, too.

It took me a minute to register that no one was wearing sombreros.

And then my sweet friends handed me a gift bag containing perhaps the loveliest green felt winter coat ever constructed, in just my size. They had seen it in a boutique after lunch and had immediately thought of me because it was my favorite color. They wanted to bless me with it. And my birthday wasn’t for five more months.

We’ve established that I shop in places where they sell giant Magic Eye posters, so let’s just say a coat of this quality and style was not in my future. Not even a little bit. And with all the dog shenanigans, I hadn’t quite nailed down birthday gifts for the two actual birthday girls. So I stood there empty-handed and misty-eyed in a place I hadn’t wanted to be trying on a coat that should never have been mine on a day that should not have been special from friends who should never have come and found me at all.

And it took me until five o’clock to see the Magic Eye. (I said I was getting better, but I’m still pretty slow.) Suddenly, in the midst of all the incongruous pieces of my day, there it was – razor sharp and 3-D: the gospel in a green felt coat, the gospel in my clear-eyed, joy-laden, openhanded friends on an interrupted day in an unexpected place. For surely Christ, on a day that shouted his glory, set it aside to come find me in much the same way – me, with my bad attitude and my hands empty of gifts – and gave me a garment I could never afford, dearly purchased, joyfully.

What kindness to have been given friends like mine. What mercy to have been given the friendship of Christ. For certainly the truest friend is the one who lives out the gospel for the sheer joy if it and for the glory of the Father. The gospel imbues the very canvas of the believer's life on the average day and the exceptional day, but one needs a steady gaze to trace it. God grant us eyes to see.

the truth about pain in childbearing

2011-08-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

It’s that day again – the photos are everywhere on Facebook and Twitter: scrubbed faces, neatly-trimmed hair, un-scuffed shoes, and bulging backpacks all heading out the door. The faces in the photos are all smiles - it’s behind the camera where the tears usually spring up, as mothers everywhere faithfully create a steady record of that bittersweet morning when the kids return to school.

Jewish rabbis taught that a woman’s most blessed season of motherhood was during pregnancy, reasoning that at no other time in her role as a mother would she know the peace of mind she had while pregnant. During pregnancy she could know with certainty that her child was safe, warm, nourished, and near - a certainty that would vanish as soon as the child entered the outside world. With a measured inhale, a steady exhale, and a mighty push, she would irreversibly move her child from safety and provision to separation and uncertainty.

I think the rabbis may not have been far off the mark. The moment of birth is one of euphoria, and also one tinged with the ache of separation, the loss of a kindred closeness that will never be quite like it was during pregnancy. It feels a little like a betrayal of a trust, thrusting a tiny person from a place of relative self-sufficiency to a place of complete dependence. It is undeniably natural and necessary (I’m glad my fifteen-year-old is not still in utero); nevertheless, we are stunned by the pain it involves and astonished at the amount of adjusting we must do to come to grips with our new reality as a mother.

As the years unfold we begin to understand that we have been introduced to the great truth of pain in childbearing, a pain we naively believed would be confined to Labor and Delivery, but that visits us at every transition we nurture our children toward: The measured inhale, the steady exhale, the mighty push. And separation. Preschool. Kindergarten. Middle school. High school. College. Career. Marriage. With a familiar aching euphoria, we push them out – from safety and provision to separation and uncertainty. It feels like they would be safer just staying with us, as if safety were the greatest gift we could give them.

And somehow, this painful separation process is for our sanctification as mothers. For years I was not sure what the Bible meant when it said that women would be saved through childbearing, but it grows clearer to me now. I once thought it referred only to giving birth, but its meaning encompasses the span of motherhood. Children are born in an instant, but they are borne across a lifetime. Childbearing saves me because it faithfully (albeit painfully) reminds me over and again that I am weak. It reminds me that I am not self-sufficient, that I do not have what it takes to preserve and protect my children, but that my Heavenly Father does. It saves me from the belief that I am God. The experience of motherhood teaches women the imagery and language of the Gospel on an intensely personal level. How appropriate the intertwined imagery of childbirth and the Cross: the necessary spilling of blood for the commencement of life, great loss holding hands with great gain. How appropriate the intertwined language of motherhood and the Great Commission: at the threshold of an unkind world we smile bravely at our children and say “Go”, though our hearts may whisper “stay” as the door closes behind them.

My maternal feelings mislead me. There is no betrayal of a child’s trust in sending him out into uncertainty: there is only opportunity to further teach him the one worthy Object of his trust - and to learn the lesson again for myself. To paraphrase a favorite author, I cannot raise my children to be safe, but I can raise them to be strong.

So on days of transition like today, I will steady myself to take those precious photos and send those precious children out. Inhale. Exhale. Push. And it will hurt the way great loss holding hands with great gain tends to do. I may cry for a little while after they go, but I will also give thanks for God’s faithfulness – faithfulness in turning the pain of childbearing from a curse to a means of grace. Only He can do that. He can be trusted, and He alone.

a single suggestion

2011-08-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

I recently had the opportunity to talk with a young single friend about some of the challenges she and other single Christian women face as they look expectantly toward marriage. This summer marked eighteen years of marriage for me. You might think that my thoughts on being single were growing a little dim at this point, but that has turned out not to be the case - raising two teen-aged daughters has sharpened my perspective quite a bit. I look back on my own time of being a single adult woman and pray that my daughters and my young single friends will ask more from that time than I did.

I’m not one to dwell on regret. I’m pretty good at letting the past be the past, at allowing for growth and maturity to wear down the sharper edges of my experience and personality. So it is not insignificant that I say the following: I regret how I handled being single.

I could blame my parents – maybe they didn’t outline clearly enough for me the appropriate boundaries for male-female interactions outside of marriage. I could blame my circumstances – maybe having four brothers gave me a level of comfort around men that was taken as flirtatious instead of just friendly. I could blame garden-variety immaturity. But if there’s one thing more pointless than dwelling on regret, it’s dwelling on where to lay the blame.

I’d much rather spend time…umm…limiting the amount of blame that can be laid at my door.

So, here is what I wish I had done as a single person: I wish I had acted like I was already married.

Let me explain.

As a married woman I am careful not to spend time alone with men who are not my husband. This is partly to guard against misconceptions, but it’s also to guard against weakness. I’m not interested in opening the door for trouble. Having watched infidelity play out in other peoples’ marriages I’m under no illusions that mine is bullet-proof, nor that my craving for attention from other men is dead simply because I got married.

As a married woman I guard my speech around men who are not my husband. This is a hard one for me because I love to use humor to put people at ease. Teasing or sarcasm so often communicate flirtation, and innuendo invites disaster. Social media and email add another layer of complexity to the problem.

As a married woman I think hard about what I wear around men who are not my husband. Looking nice is not a crime. Dressing to intentionally attract the attention of men is (see related post). I dress so men will look me in the eye.

As a married woman I think twice about my body language around men who are not my husband. I avoid even the casual physical contact of a hand on an arm or shoulder. I hug like there’s a beach ball between me and the recipient, and then only when it’s completely unavoidable.

As a married woman I guard my thoughts about men who are not my husband. If I find myself idealizing the appearance or admirable qualities of a male acquaintance or even a movie character, I confess and set aside those thoughts. If I find myself fantasizing about “what if” or “íf only” scenarios, I shut that dangerous thinking down.

These may seem like fastidious guidelines, but I hope they reflect the high regard in which I hold my husband and my marriage – and the low regard I have for my own self-control. Even as a married woman I know that my desire to be noticed and appreciated by other men still prowls around waiting to pounce – even though my marriage is strong and fulfilling. I think I naively thought that desire would go away once I found “The One.”

Here’s the reality I want my girls to understand: The world is full of men-who-are-not-my-husband, but the world was full of those men before I ever met my husband. I wish I had had the wisdom to recognize this, and to live like I was married even before I was married: to guard my time, my speech, my dress, my thoughts, my actions jealously for the husband-who-was-to-come.

I say this as a woman who went into marriage having done nothing more than kissed men-who-were-not-my-husband. That’s pretty weak fuel for remorse by our culture’s standards, but regret follows me just the same. I regret every kiss that was not given to my spouse. I regret every flirtatious word, every thoughtless touch, every incautious proximity, every ill-chosen outfit, every over-entertained thought.

So, what do my married-girl guidelines have to say to the single girl? Do yourself and your future husband the favor of embracing them now:

· As a single woman, be careful about spending time alone with men who are not your husband.

· As a single woman guard your speech around men who are not your husband.

· As a single woman, think hard about what you wear around men who are not your husband.

· As a single woman, think twice about your body language around men who are not your husband.

· As a single woman, guard your thoughts about men who are not your husband.

Though these guidelines apply a bit differently to the single woman, how much leeway she grants herself with them will set the tone for her relationships with men. The question for the dating Christian single woman, the question for my daughters will be this: What will you give to this man-who-is-not-your-husband? Because anything you give him beyond friendship is wholesale theft from the man you will marry. Don’t cheapen yourself with the legalistic gymnastics of “How far is too far?” Ask instead “What is my motive for the thoughts, words, and actions I am choosing in my interactions with men?” If you can answer that question without shame you are more likely to stay on safe ground. If you can answer that question without shame you are more likely to attract a man you'll want to keep.

Scripture describes the church as a bride awaiting a husband-who-is-to-come. That bride is admonished to keep herself pure, to live as though she is already the wife of her bridegroom. To me, this is a powerful image of what being a Christian single woman should look like. Whether a husband is ever in your future, a Husband is certainly in your future. Honor Him now in eager expectation of meeting Him soon. Think like a married woman whether you ever become one or not, guarding your heart from sin whether married or single.

big church for small kids

2011-07-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

In a recent blog post I explored the “Why” of bringing school-aged children into weekend worship with their parents. I thought a follow-up post on the “How” might be helpful. While our hearts may urge us to bring our kids to worship, our heads may question exactly how we’re supposed to make that happen. What if my child is a distraction? What if I have to leave the service? Don’t let fear of the unknown keep you from cultivating this vital shared experience for your family – it really is possible to bring small children to Big Church in a way that builds up your children, your family and the church body. Here are a few suggestions that proved helpful to our family as we began transitioning our small kids to Big Church.

Begin with the end in mind.

As parents, we make decisions for our children’s future, not merely for their present. This means we begin with the end in mind, asking the question: “Where do I want my children to worship when they are adolescents?” Then we think strategically about how to train them to that end. If we wait until they are adolescents to bring them to worship with us, we wait too long to model worship for them and we heighten the unfamiliarity they will feel entering that environment. Far better to ease them into their rightful place in corporate worship during their younger, more teachable years. This might mean that in the short term they sit in a room that does not always engage them at their level. And that’s really okay. Your child may not catch every sermon point, but attending with you is still a huge win because of the modeling they will see and the familiarity they will develop. And you might be surprised by how much they do take away.

Start small, but definitely start.

For our family, the transition to Big Church began at age five. If having your child with you every week in worship feels overwhelming, start with once a month and work your way up to every week. A kindergartner is old enough to sit through a worship service in a respectful and participatory manner as long as a clear expectation has been set, which leads me to…

Set the expectation.

Before coming to Big Church together, explain its purpose to your child: it is a time for believers of all ages to enjoy worshipping God together. It is a place where both children and adults belong. Talk about how long the service will last. Talk about the order for worship: first we greet each other, then we sing, then we listen to the pastor, then we pray. Finally, set specific, age-appropriate expectations along three lines: Behave-Follow-Listen

1. Behave Explain to your child that we behave well during Big Church. We use self-control so we can worship and allow those around us to worship.

We sit upright (no sleeping) and keep our belongings and hands to ourselves. We try not to wiggle.
We keep our shoes and socks on.
We potty and get a drink before and after the service, not during. (Remember to take the child for both of these needs before the service starts.)
If we must speak to mom or dad, we whisper.

2. Follow Explain to your child that we follow along during worship. We do what everyone else is doing as part of sharing worship together.

We stand when others stand (sit, pray, sing, greet, give, etc.) Help your child meet this expectation by guiding him through the participation process during the service. Sit where he can see the song lyrics on the screen or share your hymnal with him. Help him turn to the scripture reading, following along with your finger while it is read. If an offering is taken, let your child drop the envelope in the plate or offering box. Model how to pray, sing and greet others.

3. Listen Talk to your child about the importance of listening to people who God has placed over us: a teacher, a police officer, a parent. Explain that a pastor is also placed over us by God. We listen to him because he teaches us God’s truth. He does this in Big Church during the sermon. When you go to worship, give your child a small, age-appropriate assignment to help her listen to the message:

“Write down three words you heard that you didn’t know.”
“Draw a picture of something the pastor talks about.”
“Write down something true that God showed you through the sermon.”

Set them up to win.

Now that you’ve set an expectation for how you want your child to act in Big Church, take a few steps to help her meet that expectation.

· Have a special “church-only” tote filled with a Bible and noise-free activities for your child to do during the service. If your church does not allow food or drink in the sanctuary, do not bring them for your child. Even if they do allow it, think twice about bringing it from a noise and mess perspective. Leave electronics at home. Make sure your phone is off limits to your child during the service.

· If Children’s Church does not teach your children the songs sung in Big Church, burn a CD of them for your child to listen to in the car, during room time, etc. Even better, if your church has its own worship CD, play it so your kids will be familiar with the music.

· If possible, introduce your child to your pastor and worship leader. A child is more likely to Behave-Follow-Listen if she feels seen and known by the person leading the service.

· In your early attempts, consider giving a reward for meeting the expectation of Behave-Follow-Listen: “If you behave well, follow along and listen during the service we will go for ice cream after church.”

Debrief and reinforce.

After attending Big Church together, remember to talk to your child about how it went and what could go differently next week.

· Ask your child for feedback: “What did you learn in church today?” “What was your favorite part of worship?” “Tell me about what you drew.” Talk about what you liked from the sermon in terms they can understand.

· Affirm success: “I liked how you sat quietly and colored, even though the sermon went long today.”

· Correct failure: “Next week I want you to try to wait to ask me questions until after the service.”

· Reset/re-emphasize the expectation of Behave-Follow-Listen for next week.

· Reinforce the sermon message: plan a family devotion or service activity to correspond with what the pastor talked about.

Persevere.

Be patient and don’t give up! It takes many offerings of leafy greens before a child learns to eat them, and many more before she learns to enjoy and value them. Big Church is also an acquired taste and a learned value. Allow your child time to develop his taste for the spiritual food of corporate worship. The act of worship takes self-control – believers of every age must learn to set aside distractions and devote our full attention to the adoration of God. Self-control takes time to develop for all of us, and especially for children. Give grace during that process. The One you are training them to worship is a patient Father to you. Persevere in training your child to take his rightful place among the community of believers. Before you know it, Big Church will be just the right size for everyone in the family.

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done. Psalm 78:1-4

parenting class audio

2011-07-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have asked about the audio for the parenting class, here is a link. The workbook is downloadable from this location as well - click on the blue icon marked "Study Guide" to the right of the audio button.

cracking the dress code

2011-06-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

This is a reworking of a blog post I wrote for the church website a couple years back. Thought it was worth tweaking and posting again here.

Recently I read an article addressing choice of dress among Christian women. It was written by a man, so I was particularly interested to hear how he would approach a topic of such delicacy from a male perspective. What I read was a sensitive, well-presented plea for Christian women to consider the weaknesses of their spiritual brothers when choosing their clothes. Though many discussions of dress focus on “how short is too short” or “how low is too low”, this one avoided these legalistic pitfalls and took aim for the heart: what is your motive for choosing the clothes you choose?

The plea to bear with our Christian brothers by covering ourselves is an important one for Christian women to hear. Dressing modestly is one of the simplest ways a believer can distinguish herself from the world around her and keep herself free from sin. But any female over the age of eleven can tell you that modesty may not be the biggest hurdle to overcome in aligning our fashion with our faith.

For Christian women, the way we dress is a reflection of the extent to which we have embraced the Great Command to love others as we love ourselves. This is a preferential love: a love that places the needs of others above the needs of self at every possible opportunity. What is the perceived need a woman seeks to meet when she chooses her outfit each day? A woman who chooses immodest clothing is clearly craving the attention of men. Or is she?

Consider the following incident related to me by my thirteen-year-old son: With summer approaching, the band at his middle school planned a party at a local water park. Several moms went along as chaperones. One of the mothers, a woman presumably in her forties, chose to spend the day in a very small bikini that showcased her enhanced assets. As she snoozed in the sun, she became the topic of lively and inappropriate discussion among her son’s classmates.

Wait a minute – didn’t I say modesty wasn’t the biggest struggle for women in choosing their dress? How can Malibu Mommy possibly support my claim? I have to ask myself: Did this woman wake up the morning of the trip and ask “What can I wear today to excite lust among my son’s peer group?” No, the question she more likely asked was “What can I wear today to impress my own peer group?” – a group in this case, composed not of both genders but of one: other women.

While dressing for the attention of men is problematic, dressing for the attention of other women is epidemic. The question “How do I look?” implies the answering inquiry “Relative to whom?” Far more powerful than the desire to dress to tempt a man is the desire to dress to trump another woman. It begins in elementary school, at an age before many girls have even begun to think about boys at all.

Bikini Mom wanted to be the hottest 40-something woman at the pool. She may not love Jesus, so I am going to have to let her off the hook. But what about me? How do I compete with other women by the way I dress? Do I dress to be the trendiest? The wealthiest? The thinnest? The fittest? The quirkiest? What about the purest? In certain circles, even modest dress can be a venue for self-promotion. There is nothing inherently righteous about a denim jumper or culottes. Nor is there anything inherently sinful about platform peep-toe stilettos. Is having great fashion sense wrong? I don't think so - I know women with effortless style who I would never say distract with their dress. The heart of the problem, then, is not the length, style or fit of any particular outfit but my craving for the superlative, the “-est” of any wardrobe choice – a craving rooted in the desire to elevate myself above others.

Crazily, those black and white habits the nuns wore in The Sound of Music are starting to make more sense, aren't they? They take all the guess-work out of dress-work. Unfortunately, they wouldn't exactly achieve the goal of diverting attention off of myself if I wore one on a grocery run to Walmart. American women live in a culture of endless clothing choices. Without a uniform as an option, we will have to train ourselves to focus more on the "why" of those choices than the "which".

Here is the bottom line: Godly women do not seek to elevate themselves above others – not by immodest dress, and not by competitive dress. They seek to provoke neither the lust of men nor the envy of women. They love preferentially by keeping the focus off of themselves. Clothed inwardly with the righteousness of Christ, their outward clothing becomes a matter for sober consideration: How can I best reflect the character of God through my wardrobe choices? May we, as daughters of the Living God, be measured not by our hemlines but by our humility. May our character outshine our clothing, so that whether we wear a habit or a hula skirt Christ is magnified.

Well, maybe skip the hula skirt.

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memorial day 2011

2011-05-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

Proverbs 21:21 Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor.

This Memorial Day weekend our family celebrates the service of our dear friend Marine Lt Col J.C. “Smitty” Smitherman. I remember about ten years ago emailing Smitty on Memorial Day to thank him for serving. He laughingly told me that he had no desire to be celebrated on Memorial Day any time soon. Since then it has been a running joke between us, but this year we will honor him nonetheless.

A friend from our time at Texas A&M, Smitty had the excellent sense to marry my stunning college roommate Nagelle. In the intervening twenty years our families have grown up together, sometimes separated by hundreds of miles, sometimes - for a few sweet years - only by blocks. Our friendship has been a rich one of shared time, shared affection, shared faith. I remember Smitty calling me in the hospital the day my daughter Mary Kate was born to tell me that their son Cullen had arrived that same morning. Of course, we planned their wedding on the spot. Our son Matt idolizes Smitty. I love and hate this – grateful that Matt recognizes an honorable man, fretful that Matt might decide to go into the military, still selfishly wanting that burden to be borne by other women’s children.

It was no surprise to Smitty’s family that he would enter the military - his father and two brothers all served as well. Nagelle knew what she was getting into, having grown up as the daughter of a Marine. She has shepherded their three sons with strength and dignity through long months of single-parenting during Smitty’s absences, deepening our family’s understanding that military service is an obligation the entire family bears. We kept the hand-written letters from Smitty’s first deployment to Somalia. Future deployments found us scouring our inboxes for email updates and photos. When he deployed to Iraq and asked that we send decent coffee, our friends and relatives responded with such enthusiasm that his office was clogged with boxes of java for weeks.

When Smitty deployed to Afghanistan this past October, he did so knowing that his father would most likely lose his battle with cancer before his return. On Christmas Eve as our family was headed to church we got a call - Smitty was at DFW airport, home after thirty six hours of travel to lay his dad to rest. Could we come get him? We turned the car around. He took only half of his allowed bereavement leave, hugging his wife and kids and returning to his post, knowing that to be absent longer might mean other families would grieve. His adeptness at making the selfless choice in the midst of personal trial bore evidence to the years he has spent living in the tension between duty to family and duty to country.

So this Memorial Day weekend we celebrate Marine Lt Col J.C. Smitherman, regardless of his objections, because it marks the day of his homecoming from Afghanistan. He returns to his family whole and hale, alive and well, and even higher in our regard than before. He has made the Lord his dwelling place, no matter where he dwells. Thanks be to God, it is time for him to dwell at home again.

At what cost, freedom? Ask our friend. Because he knows us, he knows exactly what will be in the glass we raise in his honor. Because he knows us, he knows exactly what will be in our hearts. Welcome home, dear friend. May decades of Memorial Days pass before we honor you again.

children, media, and the christian home

2011-05-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

What is a medium? The dictionary defines it as “something in a middle position; a means of effecting or conveying something; a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment."

Thirty years ago the media populating my childhood consisted of books, magazines, radio, and TV (cable, if you were lucky – three local channels if you weren’t). Movies were watched in theaters, unless you had HBO. We didn’t. My mom dubbed it “Hell’s Box Office”, and that was pretty much the end of any dream of watching movies at home. I was forbidden to watch the movie Grease, but snuck over to my neighbor’s house to learn every scandalous song and commit to memory every picture on the album jacket.

In the thirty years since my childhood the media scene has changed so dramatically that knowing how to navigate it for my own kids feels absolutely overwhelming. Electronic media pervade our lives. No longer is “screen time” confined to the TV in the living room. Screens are virtually everywhere we go – in restaurants, waiting rooms, in cars, and for many of us, in almost every room in the home. They are even in our pockets.

The average amount of time American children spend in front of a screen of some kind is conservatively pegged at 4 hours 41 minutes per day. That’s 33 hours a week – almost the equivalent of a full time job. Increased screen time has been linked to obesity, violence, over-consumption fueled by advertising, and learning disabilities. The secular community sees and decries these negative effects. But how should the Christian parent respond? Should we aim to beat the average, high-fiving ourselves for limiting screen time to four hours a day? Should we ban screens from our homes? I want to suggest three reasons that Christian parents should soberly consider the role of media in the lives of their families: because of message, conversation, and time.

1: because of message

As our dictionary definition points out, all media seeks to communicate a message. Every song, every TV show, every movie, every YouTube video, every app has something to say: buy this, wear this, eat this, value this, mock this, speak in this manner. Not all media messages are harmful, but many conflict with the greater message we are trying to communicate as Christian parents. Children have limited ability to recognize and interpret media messages. They require parental involvement to screen, filter, and interpret the messages they take in.

Most parents know to dodge obviously bad media messages such as violence or sexual content. Watch out for subtle messages like imitative behavior: children are often socialized by the way characters speak and act on TV or in movies. Even if a movie or show has been rated as age-appropriate, ask yourself if its characters speak and act in ways you want your children to speak and act.

Most of us would never allow our children to talk to a stranger. We would certainly not invite a stranger into our homes and allow him to teach our children his worldview. But unmonitored screen time can do just that. Limit, supervise, and share screen time to ensure that your worldview remains intact in the hearts of your children. Educate your children about media messages. Teach them to look for the message being communicated and to assess the value of it.

2: because of communication

Two of the most frequently-asked questions I get from other parents are “How do you talk to your children about sex?” and “How do you talk to your children about your faith?” Young parents can get pretty panicked anticipating some of life’s bigger discussions. I tell them that our conversations about sex and faith were just several of hundreds of conversations we had about every topic imaginable. We worked to create a climate of conversation in our home so that any topic was safe to discuss, so that the big conversations happened in the course of the small ones.

Think almost five hours of screen time a day is a staggering number? Here’s another one: the average time per week parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children is 38.5 minutes. Screen time sabotages a climate of conversation in the home: it steals eye contact and mental focus from people and places it on screens instead. When screens hover around the dinner table, or dominate car trips, or fill up any potential moment of boredom they rob our families of the sacred spaces where good conversations develop. We trade face time for screen time.

Deuteronomy 6:7 commands parents to “teach [the commands of the Lord] diligently to your children, [talking] of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” A climate of conversation is clearly implied here. In a world where media walk with us through every step of the day, parents must discipline themselves and their children to value face time over screen time.

3: because of time

Ephesians 5:15-16 says this: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” Advances in modern medicine appear to be helping us make the best use of time: between 1909 and 2009 life expectancy in the United States rose from 51 years to 78 years. That’s an impressive gain of 27 years. John Calvin wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion at age 26 and was dead by age 55. Jonathan Edwards pastored his first church at 17 and was dead by age 54. Charles Spurgeon became a pastor at age 19 and was dead by age 57. Think what these men might have accomplished had they been given 27 more years of life.

Now think about this: if a child who begins watching 4½ hours of screen time a day at age 4 maintains that amount of screen time to the age of 78, guess how much time he will have spent consuming screen media in his lifetime? That’s right – twenty-seven years. And what are the odds he'll be penning theology in five volumes at age 26?

In Psalm 90, Moses asked that God would teach him to number rightly his days, that he might gain a heart of wisdom. I’m guessing Moses would not have been a big fan of screen time. Number your days and the days of your children rightly. Give your children the gift of years. Give them the gift of face time over screen time. Give them the gift of an uncluttered mind, of a heart of wisdom open to receive the most vital message of all: the gospel of Christ, given through the gracious media of the Word and the Spirit.

For more facts and figures that will light your hair on fire, go here.
For great tips on how to limit, supervise, and share media with your kids, go here.
For other helpful information on children and media, go here.

a meditation for the inner room

2011-05-25T14:36:00.000-07:00

One of the things I dreaded most about moving back to North Texas four years ago was tornado season. Since my childhood I have held a healthy respect (okay, paralyzing phobia) of high winds and swirling clouds - in 1979 a mile-wide tornado tore through my hometown. I still remember the howling, clattering roar of it. Since then, if the sirens are sounding you'll find me in the closet under the stairs.

Of course, Houston boasted its own scary brand of weather: the hurricane. Last night as I was sitting in my Dallas home (in the closet under the stairs, listening to the sirens) I remembered this poem that I had written a few years back during a Houston hurricane season. On re-reading it I found it to be a good reminder for the fearful and the doubtful, of whom I have certainly been both.

We are literally thunderstruck by the display of God's power in the elements. But are we adequately amazed at the deeper truth they point to? Sometimes I need my eyes reopened to the greatest display of God's power I have ever witnessed. So here's what I'll meditate on as I "enter into my closet" each spring.

reflections on a hurricane

A churning vortex, reeling unconfined -

In wind and water, terror finds its form.
“Behold,” Derision croons into my mind,
“Believest thou His finger stirs the storm?”

“Is it His voice that thunders in the gale,
That roars above the rising of each swell?
Is it His breath that spews the rain and hail?
Speak, little fool, and own thy folly well. “

Believest thou His finger stirs the storm?

A vastly deeper foolishness I own:
Not only doth He sky and sea transform,
More wondrous still, He stirs the heart of stone.

Job 26: 14

And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power?"

chamber of secrets

2011-04-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might...he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding; he reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with him.” Daniel 2:20-22

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit an enormous cavern in the hill country of Texas. For over an hour we walked through “rooms” of exquisite calcite formations, painstakingly formed over thousands of years as water dripped down through the limestone into the cavern, growing each formation a mere inch every hundred years. The caverns existed unseen by human eyes until 1963 when the highway department drilled into them by chance.

Visitors to the caverns get to view each stunning formation in all of its delicate beauty thanks to carefully placed lighting. At one point in the tour, our guide turned off all of the lights so we could experience total darkness. I whispered a quick prayer that I wouldn’t scream like a girl, thinking I was about to experience sheer panic. But what I encountered was another sensation altogether: an acute awareness of the extravagance of my God. For those brief seconds of complete darkness I realized that we were “seeing” the caverns as they had existed for all but the smallest fraction of the earth’s history. For millennia the beauty of that place had rested in absolute darkness, silently growing in splendor, for no other eyes than those of its Creator.

Every formation in that cavern, every column and fissure, every flow stone and vault declared the glory of the God who reveals Himself at His pleasure. Each offered its praise to its Maker: My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. And had humans never stumbled across the beauty of this secret place, its testimony would have been no less truthful, its Maker no less glorious. God delights in glorifying God. And sometimes we are invited to witness the display.

How humbling to consider how much of the splendor of creation lies beyond what our eyes will ever see. For a brief fifty years this ethereal chamber of secrets has testified to man of the glory of God. The wise marvel at creation and respond in worship of its Creator.The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of (His) law. As creation declares the glory of God, how much more so the Son, who revealed the Father by bringing light into the utter darkness of our fallenness? The revelation of God entrusted to us is to be treasured. It is a down payment on the full weight of glory that will one day be revealed to us when that which is created passes away.

But while creation remains, may the things which are seen point us to Him Who is Unseen. May they speak truth to our innermost parts as they declare what was once hidden, as they illuminate what was once total darkness to the eyes of our souls. And may we join in the chorus the creation has sung for millennia: Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

the death of idolatry

2011-03-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

Gen 35:2-4 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.” So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem.

Last week in our study of Genesis we watched Jacob come to terms with the price of idolatry. After a shocking display of his own inadequacy in chapter 34, Jacob renews his resolve to worship only God and commands his household to get rid of the foreign idols in their midst. Determined to put the past behind him and live in the truth that God is his only hope, he symbolically buries the idols under an oak tree. Why there? Because it was the place idol worship was practiced. With beautiful irony, the place for idol worship becomes a burial ground for idolatry. It is not until Jacob perceives clearly his need for God that he is able to bury his idols. Until that point, a “both-and” relationship has worked fine for him. I can relate.

For the unbeliever an idol is someone or something that takes the place of God in their affections. Believers, too, wrestle with idolatry, though perhaps not in the same way that unbelievers do. For the believer an idol is something that competes for our affection for God. Rather than replacing God in our thinking, an idol fills a gap in our ability to trust God. Idolatry is a “both-and” arrangement: I need God and I need my idol. I need God and I need a husband. I need God and I need outward beauty. I need God and I need my health. I need God and I need my stuff. We do not replace God with our idols – like Jacob we simply add our idols to God. And it often takes a crisis to point out our folly.

The summer I turned twenty-seven I joined my first women’s Bible study. I had just had my first baby and was feeling all the inadequacies of new-motherhood. The farther into the study I got the more I became aware of my complacency toward the things of God. I clearly remember praying and asking God to show me that He was all I needed – not a career, not the approval of peers, not high-school skinny, not a double income, just Him. As has always been the case, God’s faithfulness exceeded my request.

That October, six weeks pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with malignant skin cancer. Though the cancer was safely removed and I continue to have successful follow-up to this day, I learned something I had previously taken for granted: that each day is a gift from God to which I am not entitled. I learned, as A.W. Tozer says, that I am “a derived and contingent self”, dependent moment to moment on the grace of my Creator – given life by none other than God Himself. I learned to put to death and bury my idols that could neither give life nor sustain it. God answered more than my summer request – far better than showing me He was all that I needed, He showed me He was all that I had.

When life moves along smoothly I forget this truth. I forget the lessons of my times of crisis. I scrabble in the dirt beneath my oak tree to resurrect my idols. I begin to say again that I need God and comfort, God and financial security. I consider again the lie that my life is sustained by possessions, people, circumstances. I begin again to devote my heart, soul, mind, and strength to things that pretend to meet the needs only God can meet. When life is easy I appear as though all is in order, but if you look closely you’ll see the dirt beneath my fingernails.

I am a grave-robber. So though I do not look with pleasure on the prospect of trials or suffering I acknowledge that they are for my great good: burying what must stay buried, raising to life what God would see live. And though it is right to be thankful for times without trials I will celebrate them circumspectly, remembering the lessons of discovering my own frailty, praying for clean hands and a pure heart, praying that the cemetery of my idolatry harbors no empty graves.

There is only one empty grave that brings life - it is the empty grave of Christ, with whom I too have been buried and raised. May our worship and our work be solely devoted to the Chief Grave-robber, who has stolen us from death to life. He is not merely all we need, He is all we have. And He is enough.

Colossians 3:5-10 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

going public

2011-03-11T13:36:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest decisions Christian parents face is how they will educate their children. Should they send their children to private school? Should they homeschool? What about public school? The stereotypes that attach themselves to each of these choices can be comical - guess which mom wears the denim jumper? the North Face jacket? the tight rhinestone tee? The dogmatism that attaches to each choice, however, is not comical at all. Contrary to rumor, the Bible does not endorse one of these choices above another.

The Bible does, however, admonish parents to take seriously and personally the instruction and training of their children. How this fleshes out in practice is a matter for careful consideration. I believe this biblical mandate can be fulfilled through any of the three options I have noted. I also believe it can be completely undermined by any of the three. Each option has its strengths and weaknesses. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that the education option you choose is of secondary importance to the role you as a parent play in your child’s educational environment.

So, which route did the Wilkins go? Despite the fact that I do not own a single tee with rhinestones on it, we went with public school. I want to be honest: it would not be accurate to say that we sat down and gave serious consideration to private school or homeschooling. We did not, and I hope my thoughts below will clarify why. However, with ten years of public school under our belts we have had every opportunity to reconsider. Here are some reasons why, ten years in, we still stand behind our decision.

we couldn’t afford private school Okay, I’m just keeping it real. Financially we couldn’t meet our long-term goals with four children in private school. The lack of ambiguity on this point was actually reassuring to us: It meant that there must be a way to honor God in our children’s education other than sending them to private school.

we believe in public education as an ideal Jeff and I both come from families of public educators, and we ourselves are products of public education. Though the public education system is far from perfect, we believe that by participating in it we help to keep our community and our country healthy. We recognize that these convictions have been easy for us to hold – we have been blessed to live close to excellent schools. In many areas of our country choosing to participate in the public school system would be nothing short of bold, missional living. Furthermore, none of our children has special needs or learning disabilities, removing a huge level of complexity from the decision-making process.

we believe worldview comes from parents I think homeschoolers and private schoolers believe this, too. My point is that we believe children can receive a secular education without sacrificing or compromising their Christian worldview. Ensuring this has required having many conversations about their classes. We press our kids to learn to think critically (discerningly) about what they are being taught. We correct or temper what they learn as needed.

Here are some unlooked-for benefits of a “secular” education that we have found:

Public school gave us early and repeated opportunities to talk respectfully about other religions with our children. Those religions had real faces. Our children have had many opportunities to dialogue about their faith with friends.
Public school clarified for us the importance of time spent together. We had to be deliberate about guarding our shared time since six hours of every weekday would be spent at school (see related post).
Public school reinforced for our kids that home was their primary place of community, rather than their peer group. Home is a safe place where they can expect to be treated with kindness and gentle speech. Their peer group – not so much.
Public school drew clear lines for our kids. They know they are in the minority in terms of worldview. We do not have to convince them that they are aliens and strangers.

we believe children love to learn if their parents love to learn If the public school mom stereotype is unsavory, it pales in comparison to that of the public school student: a drug-marinated, Halo-playing, sailor-mouthed charmer clinging to a 2.0 in theater tech. That child does not live in our home. Though our children’s formal education happens in a school building, it is enriched at home. Jeff and I are dorks who work crosswords together and read classic literature together and enjoy logic puzzles and the math of a card trick and the chemistry of baking and the physics of a game of pool and the biology of gardening. We became dorks because our parents were dorks. Our kids are dorks, too (sorry, kids). They are self-motivated and active learners, which has allowed them to flourish in public school regardless of whether they get the PhD or the PE coach for their Language Arts teacher. Parents set the educational climate for their children. If you are not the stereotypical public school parent, your child will probably not be the stereotypical public school student.

For our family, public school means our children get an affordable, sound education. It means our family crosses paths with people of all backgrounds and faiths. It means we get to invest in the neighborhood in which we live. Our choice of public school is in no way an indictment of private- or homeschooling. Public school is not for everyone, but it is a good fit for our family. Education is a highly personal choice, demanding consideration of individual factors unique to each student and family. I offer here just one perspective in the hope of enriching the dialogue.

full forgiveness

2011-03-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

After studying the story of Lot last week, I have come to face an ugly truth: I’m not as good at forgiving as I thought.

Here’s what bothers me about Lot: He spends several chapters in Genesis edging closer and closer to a sinful lifestyle until at last we find him sitting at the gate of Sodom as a city leader. He is the epitome of recklessness, gambling on living shoulder to shoulder with depraved people, seemingly thoughtless as to the consequences for himself and his family. He calls Sodom’s mob “brothers”, offering his virgin daughters up to them to be gang-raped. He has to be dragged out of the city before it is consumed. His wife dies because she is too entangled in the lifestyle Lot provided for her. He wheedles and begs God’s messengers. His story ends in a cave where his daughters reveal the toll of having been raised in Sodom by committing incest with him.

He’s a dirtbag. But if 2 Peter is to be believed, he’s a dirtbag who was positionally righteous before God. Saved. Redeemed. Which means I’ll be spending an eternity with him in heaven. That makes me crazy. Not the saved part - I’m okay with Lot getting into heaven - I understand that God gives all of us unmerited grace. I just don’t want to have to see Lot, hang out with Lot, befriend Lot. He is someone who had saving faith, yet continued to live a life that harmed himself and others in the extreme. He can come to heaven, but I don’t want to be around him.

I tell myself that I’m pretty good at forgiving other believers who offend me. Most people, by the time they hit adulthood, have at least a short list of people who have hurt them deeply. I am no exception. I have prayed over my list repeatedly, asking God to kill any bitterness that might begin or recur. I have asked Him to give me the heart of Christ, who taught even as he died that those who harm us do not know what they are doing. I don’t dwell on past hurts. But my reaction to Lot, whose offenses were not committed against me, has forced me to examine my feelings toward other Christians, whose offenses were.

My attitude to the Lots on my list has been “I forgive you. I just don’t want to be around you.” Out of sight, out of mind, off the list. Living in big cities and attending big churches has made this a formula that has not been hard to follow. But it is a coward’s forgiveness that I have offered my fellow believers. The reality is that one day I will stand shoulder to shoulder in heaven with them, praising the same God for the same grace. If I cringe at the thought of having to see my offenders there, I have not forgiven completely. And I have downplayed to myself my own need for forgiveness from God and others. I am someone’s Lot as well – who dreads having to meet me in heaven?

Our Lord looks eagerly to the day that His offenders will join Him for eternity. He does not cringe at the thought. He has set aside His wrath toward us. Completely. I pray that I would forgive as I have been forgiven – freely and to the uttermost. That I would not wait until heaven to turn loose the last of my hurt, to seek fellowship with my Lots. And that one day I would joyfully and willingly sing with my offenders, with Lot, and with those whom I have offended:

Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin!

preservation and remembrance

2011-02-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

Genesis 19: 24-26 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

Everyone has a past. Some of us have logged spectacular moral failures, while others of us have managed to confine our sins to less horrifying categories. The longer we know Christ, the more we come to realize that all sin is spectacular when measured against the plumb line of God’s holiness. All sin is a spectacular exercise in self-focus and self-worship.

Saving faith frees us from sin’s power – it enables us to choose what God wants over what we want, and over time it aligns our wants with His. Instead of wanting to make much of ourselves we learn to want to make much of our Maker. But if we are honest, we still harbor places of self-worship in our heart of hearts. As we get better at setting aside one area of sin we often get better at concealing another. It is one thing to recognize sin in our lives, but it is another to learn to hate it. As much as we long to move forward in grace, we find that our past still pulls at us.

And this is where I begin to think about Lot’s wife. You remember her – raised a family in a city known for its sexual depravity, had to be physically dragged out of her hometown to avoid its imminent destruction, checked her rear view mirror, and presto-change-o: turned into your favorite popcorn flavoring. Pretty high up there on the “Weird Stories of the Bible” list.

But when we look at it closer, her brief story has much to teach. The sense of the phrase “But Lot’s wife…looked back” is that she regarded, considered, paid attention to. In other words, dragged free of her life of self-focus and set well on her way to freedom, Lot’s wife looked longingly and lingeringly on her past. Even as it was being consumed by the fiery wrath of God.

I think that a clue to understanding her demise lies in what she was turned into. God could have ended her life in any way, converted her to or covered her in any substance. But Genesis tells us specifically that she became a pillar of salt. To the modern ear salt is a reference to a popular seasoning, but this is because we enjoy the benefits of refrigeration. For thousands of years the primary function of salt was not as a seasoning but as a preservative. An apt metaphor for Mrs. Lot.

What if God had shown mercy to Lot’s wife? What if she had been allowed to flee the wickedness of Sodom to a better place, all the time harboring in her heart a love for her past? The virus of Sodom’s wickedness would have gone with her to her new home, preserved deep within her, waiting its chance to emerge and infect other lives. Rather than allow her to preserve the cherished memory of Sodom in a new place, God preserves her as a pillar of salt. She becomes a memorial for the preservation of evil, a warning to all who might see her frozen in her half-turned gaze of longing.

I am Lot’s wife. I preserve deep within me a memory of sin savored in years past. I see my sin, but I do not hate it. I linger on the idea of re-engaging it, even in my new-found freedom. And I risk spreading it to the lives of those around me. God have mercy.

If your spiritual gaze were frozen at this instant, on what would it be fixed? Every day is a choice to look forward toward life-giving grace or backward toward a sin-saturated death. Will you choose self-focus or God-focus? How will you be memorialized? As someone who preserved the pleasures of sin or the profit of sanctification?

My prayer is that the memory of our past sins would be laced with the pungent odor of the fires of Sodom – the reek of God’s wrath exterminating the godlessness of our former days, the aroma of God’s grace pointing us toward new life, eyes fixed on our Savior.

Luke 17:32-33 Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.

of wicket gates and wider ways

2011-02-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

'...thou hast forsaken the way that is good, to tread in forbidden paths; yet will the man at the (wicket) gate receive thee, for he has goodwill for men.' - John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

Hate not the narrow road
Its path is strong and sure
And safety for the soul
Of him who would endure

Despise thee not the gate
Though entry may cost all
For mercy doth await
Once through that portal small

Though other roads run broad
And other gates stand wide
Esteem the narrow way
That spans a vast divide

Pass not the narrow gate
But seek to enter through
It bars the way to none
But shows itself to few

And hast thou seen this gate?
Pray, run to it this day
For Christ doth beckon thee –
He is both Gate and Way

j. wilkin 11.9.08

Matthew 7:13-14, John 10:7-9, John 14:5-6

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worship together

2011-01-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

Psalm 34:3 Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

I love this verse. When we were married, Jeff and I had it inscribed on the inside of our wedding bands. It summarized so well what we wanted our married life to be about: Glorifying God. Together. As our family grew, so did our desire for this verse to be true of our entire household: glorify the Lord with me - in our home, in our community, in our church.

The with me of church has required some intentionality, to say the least. We go to church in a weird place - so many people want to attend worship each week that just getting a seat is a major accomplishment. People are routinely turned away in large numbers from our services. Great problem. To make things weirder we’re heavily populated with twenty-something’s. Neither of these weirds are the bad kind of weird, but they definitely make the 40-ish Wilkins with their gaggle of kids look almost like circus freaks as we take up half a row in the worship center, seemingly oblivious to the fact that we’re way over our quota on real estate. But every Sunday we all file in, from youngest to oldest, to glorify the Lord. Together.

Together hasn’t always been easy. I recall long worship services with four elementary-aged children scribbling with crayons, begging for gum, and contorting themselves like miniature yogis in the pew. Just remembering it makes my eye twitch. But over time, with clear participation expectations, creative activities and the right cocktail of punishments and rewards our kids have grown to see "big church" not as a place they tolerate but as a place they belong. I'd compare it to learning to eat leafy greens or take naps: not fun at first, but valued in the long run.

Know what's fun? Children's church. Our church offers a ridiculously good children’s worship time. I do not say that lightly - one of their most gifted worship leaders is the father of my babies. The leaders who serve there bring excellence to their ministry each week, and children learn deep spiritual truths in ways that are fun, simple, and crystal clear. Our family values children’s church. We see it as a rich and relevant worship environment for a child, as a vibrant supplement for “big church”. But not as a substitute for it.

Why?

Because we believe there is no substitute for a child watching his parents model worship. For families, the with me of worship matters. What could be more relevant than teaching a young child an appreciation for and familiarity with the cadence and flow of big church? Only in big church will children see their parents model worship through corporate adoration, contemplation, and proclamation of God’s worth. Only in big church will children witness and partake in the sacraments of communion and baptism. If it is true that “more is caught than taught”, parents should value modeling authentic worship for their children more than any lesson that might be taught by a children’s church leader.

But the with me of worship is not easy. As parents it is tempting to avoid the complaints of boredom, the distracting foot-shuffling, the endless drink requests, the bulletin origami, or even the reproachful stares of our child-free neighbors by sending our kids to children’s church while we attend worship. Everybody wins: the kids get fun teaching, the church gets extra seats for grown-ups, the grown-ups get to worship unhindered. Perfect. But we’ve missed the point. A dear friend and mentor (who also happens to be a children’s minister) once told me she did not like to hear children referred to as “the church of tomorrow.” Children, she wisely noted, are the church of today.

Indeed.

So to ask the shorter members of the church of today to worship elsewhere so that the rest of us might have a more orderly service doesn’t sound like a very good model for church. And it doesn’t sound like Christ, who called little children to himself in the very midst of the grown-up assembly.

I am thankful that my church does not ask parents to substitute children’s church for big church. With the shortage of space they face each week it’s a wonder they don’t. Unlike the innkeeper in the Advent story, they refuse to say "no room" to those whose lack of stature belies their great importance. To parents wondering how to navigate a Sunday with school-aged kids, here is a suggestion: if possible, let your kids attend both children’s church and big church. If not, choose big church for all. Choose the with me of worship. In the long run (and parenting is all about the long run) your family will be richer for it, and no doubt so will your church.

For how-to's on transitioning your kids to big church, go here.

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"stuff", satisfaction, suburbia part 3

2010-12-10T09:45:00.000-08:00

Picking up where I left off last week, here are a few final thoughts about guiding our children toward Godly contentment in a consumer culture…

squelch stupid comparisons
Somewhere around age 6, children become aware of the purchasing patterns of others. They begin to ask for things that their peers are wearing, playing with, or bringing in their lunchboxes. The child asks: “Can I have light-up sneakers like Lily has?” The parent hears: “Don’t you love me as much as Lily’s parents?”

It is difficult to say who wants to “fit in” more – the child or the parent. Christian parents must recognize that keeping up with the Joneses has no place in the life of the believer. We are called, rather, to live as aliens and strangers. This means our expenditures will not be targeted at fitting in.

When our son was twelve he asked for a cell phone. All his friends had one, he explained, and he felt left out because he was phoneless. We encouraged him to pay attention to that feeling of being different, to lean into it. We explained that the Christian life is marked by the tension of not-belonging, and that our spending choices would not be geared toward helping him feel accepted by others. The problem was not that he wanted a phone, but that he wanted a phone to find acceptance with his peers.

promote valid comparisons
Give your children tangible ways to learn the proper value of possessions. Rather than just talking to them about how much they have in comparison to others, show them. Sponsor a child in a third world country. Let your children contribute to his support and write him letters. Volunteer as a family at a food pantry so your children can see the faces of those who live in daily need. If possible, go on a mission trip together or send your kids on one through your church. Take a trip to the landfill or recycling plant so they can see how much we throw away. Don’t make it a guilt trip – let the evidence speak for itself.

Look for allies in Christian families of a similar income level who also spend with care. If you have like-minded friends who set similar spending limits, point your children toward their example when the charge is leveled that “we’re the only ones who don’t have x, y, or z”.

stall on them
As a general rule, try not to respond with a “yes” to a first-time request, particularly with young children. Take a “wait and see” approach. Requests made in the heat of the shopping moment rarely represent a child’s true desire to own something. Those that recur over a period of time are more likely genuine requests. Even if you can afford a purchase for your child, wait a couple of weeks. Let your child know the joy of waiting patiently and then receiving what she has waited for.

Let big purchases be “milestone purchases”. You can have an iPod when you turn 12. You can have a phone when you turn 14. Once the milestone expectation has been clearly set, all negotiations on the part of the child should cease. If they continue, simply ask the child, “When did we say that would happen?” Reward the correct answer with “You’re exactly right!” If the child persists, say “I have already answered that” and move on. Bear in mind that whatever milestone age and corresponding purchase you set will need to be repeatable for younger siblings.

understand a true “deal”
Just because something is affordable or a deal doesn’t mean it is a good purchase for your child. When we finally made the cell phone purchase for our son at what we deemed the age-appropriate time, we were faced with two options: add our son to our plan at virtually no extra cost, or let him foot the bill. We went with option 2. Matt got a pay-as-you-go phone that cost him a quarter every time he called or texted. Because he pays the bill he texts and calls very little, using his phone for needful communication instead of recreation. The price-tag is higher, but the pay-off is huge. We didn’t get a deal, but Matt learned a lesson in stewardship he would otherwise have missed. True “deals” are purchases that can teach as well as meet a need or want.

do a gut-check
Check your motive for wanting to give in to a request: is it fear or love? Fear purchases to avoid drama or rejection. Love purchases (or withholds a purchase) to bless. Fear tends to parent in the short-term (to get through the day, meal, or shopping trip). Love parents for the long-term (to get a child to functioning adulthood). Fear concerns itself with avoiding or encouraging a child’s outward behaviors. Love concerns itself with training and equipping the heart.

model well
Don’t you wish I had stopped after the previous point? A parent who sets good spending habits and philosophies for her child but fails to exercise them for herself will likely learn the hard truth about actions speaking louder than words. Our children are watching us to see if our words and our actions are consistent. And for that matter, so is our Heavenly Father. Work hard to model Godly contentment for your children. Pray hard that God would teach you yourself to desire it above all possessions. In your example lies your child’s greatest hope for finding satisfaction beyond “stuff”.

And I--in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness. Psalm 17:15

"stuff", satisfaction, suburbia part 2

2010-12-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

Whether we like it or not, our children are consumers. Parents may be slow to recognize this truth, but marketers certainly are not. The hotbed of spending potential created by suburban affluence means marketers of children’s products are placing your child in their crosshairs. Without the maturity to filter marketing messages, children take their claims as fact.

Marketers want to accomplish two things with your children:
• To awaken and amplify their desire to consume
• To blur the line between wants and needs

A child who succumbs to these two advances will begin applying pressure to mom and dad to purchase, and dismaying behavior soon follows. What parent of a small child doesn’t dread the trip to Walmart with little Ryan perched in the cart yelling “I want that!” at every end-cap? And if his pleas find traction in our sense of guilt, our fear of fit-throwing, or our desire to please him, voila, another must-have item makes its way from the shelf to the cart to the toy bin to the trash.

As Ryan grows the pleas may become more sophisticated and the scenarios less public, but the problem remains the same: enhanced desire and insatiability of wants. How can we help our children to filter marketing messages so they can pursue Godly contentment?

limit desire-enhancing sources
The Bible draws a clear connection between seeing, desiring, and taking. Help your children to minimize begging for new purchases by keeping temptation out of their line of sight. Point out to them the connection between seeing and wanting. Teach them to reject the idea that “it won’t hurt to look”. If a child consistently hounds you for a particular item, give some thought to where that desire is being fed.

Avoid TV programming that is laced with ads aimed at children. Be aware of product placement in the shows your children watch. Play “catch the ad” – make a game out of identifying marketing messages hidden in TV shows and movies. Ask your kids why their Happy Meal toy might be a character from a new movie.
Watch out for direct mail. Browsing catalogs and ad sections of the newspaper can take children from content to consumer in short order. Rather than asking children to circle their favorite catalog items, ditch the catalogs in the recycle bin before they can be seen.
Make online shopping or browsing off-limits unless for a designated purchase with a parent involved.
Avoid wandering the mall or window-shopping. Not a great idea for anyone in the family.
When you do shop together (i.e. the dreaded Walmart outing), set a clear expectation before you enter the store that no treats or toys will be purchased, but a small reward will be given at check-out to a child who does not ask for anything.

distinguish clearly between needs and wants

To a young child, everything feels like a need. Marketers know and love this fact. As parents we must teach our children to discern between needs and wants. This will initially require saying “no” a lot. By consistently giving in to our children’s wants we reinforce their sense of need for something external to provide satisfaction. Denying their wants mercifully allows them the chance to realize that the world didn’t end just because they didn’t get their request.

Start early talking to your children about the difference between needs and wants. Help them make a list or a collage of things people need to live: food, water, shelter, clothing. Talk about how our wants play off of our needs: we want delicious food, filtered water, luxurious shelter, designer clothing. Help them appreciate the blessing of having their basic needs met by exposing them to people who are in need (more on this next week).

Once children reach an age where they have spending power of their own, enlist their earning potential in the purchasing of wants. Your approach might look something like this:

mom and dad will fund all your physical needs for food/water/shelter/clothing
you can fund your wants
we can both fund “gray area” items: if you want something nicer than you need (i.e. Nike sneakers instead of store-brand), mom and dad will pay the portion for the “need” and you pay the difference for the “want”.

Make your children aware that mom and dad make choices in their spending that reflect needs and wants. On shopping trips, let your children see you pick up items, consider them, and replace them on the shelf. Explain why you have chosen not to buy or to defer a purchase until later.

And finally, every now and then bless your child by getting them something they want. Just for the sheer joy of it. In doing so you model the goodness of God, who takes great delight in the giving of good things to His children.

Up next week:
Dealing with comparisons to others
Understanding a true “deal”
Stalling tactics and milestone purchases
Checking our motives for purchasing

"stuff", satisfaction, and the suburban child

2010-11-24T13:27:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 55:2-4 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.

We moved to the suburbs, like most young families, because they were affordably safe. No danger of gang violence, drive-by shootings, or (gasp) low standardized test scores at neighborhood schools. Not even the danger that our neighbor might paint his trim blue or park his F150 on the front yard. Affordable safety – what could be better?

As it turns out, our suburban neighbors - with the help of dual incomes, starting families later in life, smaller family sizes, and ample credit limits - are able to afford much more than physical safety for themselves and their children. Hence, the first-grader with the cell phone, the fourth grader with the iTouch, the seventh-grader with the $300 purse and professionally-colored hair, the sixteen-year-old with the Mustang GT. The clothes, vacations, parties, electronics and activities which surround the suburban child make our own childhoods look downright deprived, but most parents are happy to forget that stripped-down upbringing. They take satisfaction in knowing that they have given their children more than was given to them.

Ironically, the affordable safety of the suburbs turns out to be neither affordable nor safe. The price-tag for chasing our children’s material desires will be far higher than the total on our credit card statements. As Christian parents, we must think clearly about what our spending patterns teach our children. What do we risk by immersing our children in the suburban baptismal of “stuff”?

We gamble on the future If current economic trends hold, our children can expect to live at a lower standard of living than the one in which they are being raised. Compassionate parents raise their children to be prepared for an uncertain future. Raising children who feel entitled to suburban affluence is neither compassionate nor wise. Raising children who understand that possessions are given us by God to steward prepares them for a future of plenty or of lack.

We feed low self-esteem Researchers have identified a direct link between low self-esteem and materialism in children: the lower a child’s self-esteem, the more materialistic tendencies she will exhibit. Many parents pacify guilt over time spent away from their children by purchasing them things. But what children really need from us is not our presents but our presence. Materialism devalues relationships by placing purchases over people. When we prioritize spending time with our children we teach them to value relationships over things. We teach them their immeasurable value to us and to God, and instill in them a sense of belonging. As psychologist Kevin Leman points out, “Lasting self-esteem comes when kids learn they belong.” Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours, p.30

We act neither alien nor strange 1 Peter 2:11-12 urges believers to live as aliens and strangers in the world (NIV).The NLT paraphrases this as “foreigners and temporary residents”. In other words, our lives should look quite different from those of our unbelieving neighbors. Materialism feeds on our desire to fit in, to be accepted, to live in comfort now. Christianity commands us to stand apart, to expect rejection, to forgo comfort now. Fundamental to our faith is the concept of delayed gratification. A temporary resident does not focus on acquisition of stuff. His home is elsewhere, and so is his treasure. He trains his children in the discipline of delaying gratification, even if it means they look and feel different from their peers. He recognizes that love withholds as often as it gives.

We crush contentment The bible instructs us that “godliness with contentment is great gain”. By continually giving our children more of the latest stuff we teach them not to be content, but to long constantly for what comes next. We offer them the bread of insatiability, we who are charged with holding out to them the bread of life. Rather than granting our children satisfaction, we sabotage their ability to find it at all. There will always be the next thing to desire. Through our words and our actions we must teach our children to forgo the cultural curse of insatiability for the great gain of godly contentment.

The price tag for suburban affluence, untempered by godly wisdom, is far too high for the Christian parent to pay. The danger, though not physical, is real. We must point our children toward the truth that satisfaction is found in God alone. This need not be a call to asceticism so much as a call to sober reflection: ultimately, the stuff is not the problem, our hearts are. We must think hard about the choices we make in our spending. With God’s grace we may spare our children from the poverty of a life spent chasing what will not last by pointing them toward what truly satisfies.

Psalm 90:14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Over the next several weeks I will be posting some thoughts on how, practically, parents can teach and model a right relationship to “stuff”. I admit our family is learning as we go, and I welcome your feedback and ideas.

a plea to the mission-minded

2010-11-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

There is a people group whose language you may not want to learn, whose customs you may find distasteful, whose dress may offend, and whose values may disappoint. They are worshippers of idols. They raise their children in poverty. Many Christians consider this people group either unreachable or beyond the sphere of their calling.

Why?

Because their language is that of white suburbia. Because their customs are as familiar as our childhoods, their dress as unremarkable as the sale rack at Old Navy, their values as fragile as their credit ratings. Their idols are money, possessions, and leisure. Their children starve not for food, but for relationship. And their faces? Their faces look a little too much like our own.

Behold suburbia, the mission field for whom our hearts do not break. We hold them in contempt as those who have heard and spurned the gospel. Their failing marriages, rebellious children, and quiet addictions stir in us weariness and wariness: This is their own doing. This is the fruit of their commonplace lives of capitulation and mediocrity. Suffering and loss may visit them, but they still drive to hospitals and gravesites in late-model SUV’s. Why should we pour out our lives on the rocky soil of suburban America when, for the price of a plane ticket, we can till the fertile fields of Africa, Asia, South America?

But who are we to say that one soil is more fertile than another? Perhaps this field is yours to till simply because you find yourself already in it. No plane ticket required, no bold geographical leap of faith, just a slow and steady determination to respond well to the call to “love your neighbor.” Literally. Even if their problems are messy, and mundane, and not the stuff of headlines or documentaries. Even if they never soften to the gospel.

It is good for our hearts to break for Africa, for Asia, for South America. It is good for seeds to be planted by passionate believers in the fertile soil of distant lands. But I pray that hearts might also break for the suburbs, and that God would raise up faithful men and women who will till where the ground is rocky and unforgiving, believing for a harvest that could only be reckoned as supernatural. Pray with me. Ask the Lord of the Harvest, who sows and reaps where He pleases – both far and near.

Isaiah 57:19 …”Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord

two trees

2010-11-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

Last night at the end of the teaching on Genesis 3 we talked about how the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a shadow of the cross. I shared a poem that I had written as I was preparing the study, and I am posting it now for those of you who have asked. People tend to either love poetry or loathe it. If you are the latter, feel free to skip this post!

I love words and seem to have been born with the Dr. Seuss gene (curse?), so when a truth hits me hard it sometimes comes out in verse. It is hard to share poetry - I think it is the most intensely personal form of writing someone can do. It makes me feel about as exposed as Adam and Eve with their flimsy figleaf ensembles. But I have found that sometimes the hardest things to share are the very things we should offer up for consideration, so here we go...

Two Trees

There is a tree set broad and high,
Partake of it, if you would die.
There, on its branches, plain to see
A feast for thee.

“Take and eat”, O hear the Lie
I live still, and yet I die
Good and evil now I see
O cursed me.

But, see –

There is a tree set broad and high,
Partake of it, if you would die.
There, on its branches, plain to see
A feast for thee.

“Take and eat - my flesh I give”
Die I do, and yet, I live
Shattered curse by Thy decree,
O blessed Tree.

j. wilkin 8.18.10

guarding sabbath for our children

2010-10-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

My oldest son started high school this fall. At his orientation the counselors took a portion of the program to speak to parents about the greatest challenge they see students face in school. I expected to hear about poor study habits or substance abuse, but to my initial surprise, these were not at the top of the list. Apparently, the greatest challenge presenting itself in the office of the high school guidance counselor is a growing number of kids struggling with anxiety and depression. Can you guess why? A combination of over-scheduling and sleep deprivation, linked to two main contributors: electronics use and extracurricular activities. We were encouraged as parents to go home and talk to our teenagers about setting boundaries in both these areas. Parents across the auditorium scribbled notes furiously as the counselors outlined some suggestions: limit texting, monitor bedtimes, cut back on team practices. I couldn’t help but think to myself: tonight there will be many demonstrations of teenage angst when mom shows up with her new list of suggestions.

What is unfolding at my son’s high school is a clear illustration of a spiritual truth: the need for regular periods of rest in our lives. From the earliest pages of the bible we find God instituting patterns of activity and rest – not just any kind of rest, but rest with the intent to engage in worship and community. The concept of Sabbath weaves its way through the Old Testament and the New, occupying a prominent place among the Ten Commandments and informing our understanding of Heaven. Despite its prevalence, few Christians understand or practice Sabbath as a regular part of life, and consequently, neither do their children. Christian parents bear the responsibility of teaching our children the value of rest, through our words and through our actions. Children don’t set the calendar in our homes – if they are overscheduled or sleep-deprived, the fault lies with us. How can we better discharge our duty of raising children to seek Sabbath? To value down-time to reconnect with God and family?

While I admire the high school guidance counselors’ optimism, fourteen is probably too late to start imposing boundaries on our child’s rest habits and schedule. We need a plan, and we need it early. How will we safeguard for our families the key Sabbath concepts of rest, worship, and community? Here are a few suggestions that have helped our family to honor God in our rest.

Electronics
Late-night texting and TV watching, online chatting, surfing the web – all can rob a child of rest. Children between the ages of 7 and12 require a whopping 10-11 hours of sleep each night, an age range during which most acquire the electronics to rob them of it. Parents can guard their children’s rest simply by keeping electronics in sight. We made a rule in our home that no electronics are allowed upstairs: no TV’s, computers, phones, or games in bedrooms or rooms where their use cannot be monitored. Each night, those of us who have phones leave them in a spot on the kitchen counter. These measures give us accountability to each other, keep electronics as a shared rather than an individual privilege, and force our electronics to obey our family’s Sabbath priorities of rest, worship, community. Well-rested kids bypass many of the unsavory habits of their tired counterparts: fits, backtalk, forgetfulness, drama, isolation, and yes – anxiety and depression. Guarding your child’s rest actually gives them a running start at Christlike behavior, even during adolescence.

Activities
So many to pursue, so little time. Don’t be fooled: the proliferation of activity options for children is a reflection of our cultural affluence, not of a child’s need to be well-rounded or socialized. Gobs of money are being made off of our misplaced desire to expose our kids to every possible talent path. How can we choose activities for our family in a way that doesn’t compromise Sabbath principles?

Because the four Wilkin kids are extremely close in age, our schedule and our finances forced us to limit activities to “one or none” for each child. Not all families need to impose a limit this low, but it has taught us something our grandparents probably knew: children who participate in no organized activities at all still lead lives full of activity and joy. To many parents the idea of a child on no sports team, in no music lessons, at no club meetings is completely foreign and a little frightening: Won’t they get bored? Won’t they drive me crazy lurking around the house? Won’t they miss out on an NFL career and blame me? Or, my personal favorite: Won’t other parents think I’m a bad parent? I would answer all of these questions with “Maybe, but who cares?” As is often lamented, parenting is not a popularity contest. With that in mind, here are some good (and highly unpopular) questions to ask when evaluating which activity to pursue:

Does it sabotage weekend down-time or worship?
Does it sabotage family dinners?
Does it sabotage bedtime?
Does it pull our family apart or push us together?
Is it an activity my child can enjoy/benefit from into adulthood?
Can we afford it?

Notice that “Does my child enjoy it?” is not on the list. So often I hear parents justify keeping a child in a time-sucking activity because “He loves it so much”. Kids love Skittles and Mario Kart so much, but they don’t get to decide if, when and how much to consume. Because children possess a limited range of life experience, it is difficult for them to conceive of happiness outside their current circumstance. It is our job to help them learn.

Why do we have such a hard time as parents placing limits on electronics and activities? Both electronics and activities can appeal to parents for less-than-admirable reasons. Both can serve as a babysitter or a diversion. But the appeal of activities extends even further, to our very identity as parents. We actually want to be labeled “soccer mom”, on rhinestone-studded tee shirts and coffee mugs. We carefully arrange our car decals so that every identity-marker is announced. The thought of removing or withholding our child from an activity threatens the very way we view ourselves. Maybe our view needs to adjust to something a bit higher. Families that prioritize Sabbath fix their eyes on and find their identity in Christ, recognizing that their greatest potential for missed opportunity lies not in neglecting activities but in neglecting time - lots of it - spent together as a family in worship, rest, and community with each other.

God forbid we value the discipline of a sport more than the discipline of Christian living. Both require great application of time and effort, but one is worth far more than the other. Because time is our most limited resource, how we allocate it reveals much about our hearts. Our time usage should look radically different than that of the unbelieving family. We must leave time for slow afternoons, for evening meals where we pray together and share our faith and struggles, for Sunday mornings of shared worship. God ordains Sabbath for our good and for His glory. May our homes be places where Sabbath rest is jealously guarded, that in all things God might have preeminence – even our schedules.

Ephesians 5:15-17 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
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dangerous bible study and puffy christianity

2010-09-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

There is a perception among many evangelicals that Bible study is dangerous. I have heard it articulated by ministers and laypeople alike over the years. Once a woman in my Bible study told me her pastor had discouraged in-depth Bible study, saying it promoted the pursuit of “useless Bible knowledge”. (I like to think that’s an oxymoron.) When I heard similar thinking from two different women in one week I knew it was time to hatch a blog.

The thinking runs something like this: Reading and meditating over scripture on my own, with the help of the Holy Spirit, will yield me all the knowledge of scripture I need. In-depth studying - digging into word meanings, learning contextual information, analyzing themes, etc - will make me prideful. If the Holy Spirit who reveals all truth doesn’t reveal something to me in my personal devotions in the Word, it must not be necessary for my understanding. In fact, that kind of knowledge will “puff me up” with pride.

As a woman who lived through 80’s fashion and hair I can say with certain authority that puffy is not good. We are right to fear the puff. But where does this fear of puffy Christianity come from? We can trace it to the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:1-2, where he warns his readers that ”knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up.

But does Bible knowledge puff up? How can we square what Paul says with the many passages in Proverbs exhorting us to pursue the knowledge of God? (here are a few: Prov 10:14,12:1, 15:14, 18:15, 19:27, 23:12) And what of the words of Hosea 4:6: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

The full counsel of Scripture would indicate that pursuing knowledge is a good thing, not a bad thing. In fact, Paul actually commends his Corinthian readers in the opening verses of chapter 1 for having been enriched in all knowledge of Christ (1 Cor 1:4-5), only three chapters before he warns about puffiness. The historical and cultural context of Paul’s words shows us that in chapter 4 Paul is making a general statement about the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

The classic example of religious puffiness in the Bible is the Pharisee, whose in-depth knowledge of the scriptures did nothing to soften his heart of stone. But consider this: the Pharisee’s problem was not what his head loved, but what his heart lacked. A heart that genuinely loves God finds that the knowledge of God leads to humility, not hubris – to penitence, not puffiness.

It is worth pointing out that Paul himself was a Pharisee prior to his conversion. In a flash of light he went from puffy to preacher, and the world was never the same. Knowledge that before had only fueled his pride suddenly took on vibrancy and meaning as his spiritual eyes were opened to truth. Did his conversion cause him to forsake that knowledge? Not at all - he was thereafter able to bring the full weight of it to bear on the proclaiming of the gospel, with pretty dramatic results.

So, is in-depth Bible study dangerous? Absolutely. Depending on the heart of the student, it will lead to either soaring pride or crushing humility. But the earnest student who loves her Savior knows that humility, though often unpleasant to gain, is not to be feared. As Christ's example has shown us, it is greatly to be desired. Arguably, the church today is in far greater danger from biblical ignorance than from biblical arrogance. Let us be mindful to avoid both of these perils. As those governed not by fear but by perfect love, may we chart a course for informed belief whose compass is humility and whose watchword is grace.

choosing books wisely for kids

2010-09-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

My family loves to read. From the oldest to the youngest, we share a love for sitting and reading away a Saturday, a spring break, or a summer. We’re the poster children for Amazon Prime, and my kids know exactly what time that brown UPS truck (aka Brown Santa) delivers to our street.

When my kids were in elementary school Harry Potter hit the scene and Christian parents everywhere hit the roof. A woman in my bible study wanted to warn me off of letting my children read them, claiming energetically that they taught children witchcraft and a love of the occult. It was the first of many opportunities for the Wilkin family to pronounce a verdict on a questionable book, and it helped us begin to focus in on what made a book acceptable or unacceptable in our home.

Here are some thoughts on how concerned Christian parents can make informed decisions about what to allow their kids to read:

Read the book yourself. I am amazed at how many Christian parents will not allow their children to read controversial books that they themselves have not bothered to read. As a discerning adult, reading Harry Potter will probably not turn you, the parent, into a witch. But it will give you solid ground for consenting or refusing to let your child read Harry Potter. Reading an article in Christianity Today or hearing a Mark Driscoll sermon may be a starting point for investigation of a questionable book, but it should not be the sum total of your inquiry. Form your own opinion, calling on Godly wisdom as your aid. Then you can exchange “because I said so” for “because I read it.” Your children will know you valued their literary intake on a personal level.

Know the difference between reading level and emotional maturity. Just because a child is capable of reading a book does not mean that he should. Our youngest son read the entire Lord of the Rings cycle as a third-grader in the span of several months. When he wanted to read Twilight in the fourth grade, we had to tell him no. Though he was capable of reading it, he was not capable of filtering it yet.

Though all protagonists are flawed, some are more than others. A late-elementary child can have beneficial dialogue with a parent about a protagonist who is dishonest or self-centered (we found this with Harry Potter). Books in which the protagonist is as flawed as he is gifted are probably better for children middle school or older. Evaluate your child’s emotional maturity to know whether to respond to a book request with yes, no, or not yet.

Know what message the author intends. C.S. Lewis incorporates characters from Roman mythology into the Narnia tales, but Christians don’t accuse him of promoting false religion to children. Why? Because his overall message is beyond question.

Not all messages are as easily discerned. Most books are a mix of desirable and undesirable themes. But do we say no to anything that’s not a perfect match with our worldview? Consider allowing your child to read the book in question and discuss it with you as he reads. Ask him where he is in the story and what he thinks about what has happened so far. This gives you a chance to speak into the way he processes the book’s themes, and it also provides a rich shared experience between the two of you.

At our house, our four avid readers have long passed the age where we are able to read everything before they do. As much as possible, we find opportunities to read books and book series together. Our kids know that any book they read could be picked up by Mom or Dad to be read. The result has often been a voluntary disclosure of a book’s less-than-desirable elements, which leads to good dialogue about why the author would include them.

Understand the most dangerous message is not always the most obvious one. For example, in Twilight, I was less concerned by the theme of vampirism than by the theme of a teen-age girl who defines her existence by the affection of a boyfriend (and a moody, troubled, creepy one at that). Conversely, while Twilight may win fans for promoting sexual abstinence in the technical sense, its use of strong sensuality makes it unsuitable in my view for pre-teen reading. Think about it: do we really think that raising a warlock is a greater potential danger than raising a sexually promiscuous or emotionally needy daughter? No wonder non-Christians make fun of us.

Know where children develop their worldview. There is widespread fear among evangelicals that our children will form their values based on the words of a teacher, a politician, a movie, or a book. And it is tempting to blame these outside influences when a child strays from the faith of her family. But the reality is this: children learn their worldview at home. A book’s worldview can only take root in uncultivated soil. Parents who carefully cultivate the worldview of their children have much less to fear from other influences than those who do not. Children do not learn values from books, TV, or movies unless their values have not already been firmly established by their parents. Our children are at far less risk from what a book says than from what we have left unsaid.

As with most parenting dilemmas, the issue is less about reading safe books and more about raising strong children: guide and participate in your child's reading choices as you develop in her a solid framework for choosing well on her own.

why swearing is dumb for christians

2010-08-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

I came across a blog yesterday written by a Christian author on the topic of swearing. After getting off to a reasonable start, he contended that swearing could be used by a Christian, even one with a platform, in certain situations to add emphasis to a point. He cited several examples of lyrics from Christian songs that included some of the more colorful blooms in the expletive garden – think “FUchsias” or “SHastas” – to drive home their message.

I was fascinated by this line of thought. I tried to imagine this author educating my children on the merits of the well-placed swear word in communicating the gospel, or just in everyday conversation. Of course, any discussion of swearing in the Christian community is bound to start someone crying “legalism” pretty quickly (what dirtier word, among Evangelicals?). So bearing in mind that right actions are the fruit of right motives, here are four thoughts on why profanity is just plain dumb for the Christ-follower:

1. It is lazy speech
First, it is lazy because it requires no imagination. Profanity has become so common that it has entered the ranks of not-so-power-packed words like “amazing” and “awesome”. A lazy mouth usually has as its proprietor a lazy mind. This is probably one reason Paul, whose mind was not lazy, managed to express concisely and effectively the message of the gospel without once dropping the Greek equivalent of the f-bomb. Even on the Galatians.

Second, it is lazy because it takes almost no effort to refrain from. Quitting swearing is a cake-walk compared to quitting, for example, iPhone addiction (now, that’s bleeping hard). And yes, it’s a signal to others that you’re at least heading for the path of self-control. Some areas of deficit self-control hide themselves to the casual observer. Speech is not one of these areas – it immediately reveals our laziness. Yet it is a small thing to master. Consider Luke 16:1: He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. (NASB) Put another way, if you can’t resist and flee from this simplest of verbal sins, the subtler ones are going to bleeping eat your lunch.

2. It is the language of contempt
Profanity is the hatchling of anger, incubated in contempt. Anger may call someone a jerk, but contempt would call him a bleeping moron. Contempt implies that its object is not just irritating but valueless – it devalues and implies the desire to harm. Jesus makes this connection between anger, contempt, and our speech in the Sermon on the Mount where he links such language to the sin of murder.

Here is where our edgy Christian artist asks “But what if my anger is righteous? Can I use profanity to communicate it?”

I confess it is hard for me to imagine a situation where righteous anger and profanity would be a “win”. And really, how often is our anger truly righteous in the biblical sense? J.C. Ryle puts it this way: “To say the least, such [contemptuous] language is unseemly and only defeats its own end. A cause which is defended by such language is deservedly suspicious. Truth needs no such weapons.” Holiness, intro, p. vi

3. It denies the value God places on words
God can use any medium to communicate truth to us. In fact, he uses many: nature, art, music, even architecture, to name a few. But clearly one medium surpasses all others in clarity and effectiveness: words. The 66 books of the Bible stand witness to this fact. Could we doubt that He who calls His own son the Word would take lightly the way that we handle our words? The wisdom literature of the Bible is loaded with warnings about our speech. Can speech that is lazy or contemptuous find any place of honor in the vocabulary of the believer?

4. It clouds the message
As a Bible teacher, I ask you to consider: It is hard enough to communicate spiritual truths to lost people and young believers without muddying the message with profanity. Swearing is a luxury that’s simply not worth it. And it doesn’t sound like Christ – it just bleeping sounds like everyone else.

Psalm 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

good news

2010-07-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 45:23 By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked

“Hello, Mrs. Wilkin, this is Dr. Smith. I have good news.” So ended my ten-day wait for pathology results from my annual check-up at M.D. Anderson.

Ten days is a long time. I did pretty well with the waiting for the first five days or so, but as the time stretched on it became more difficult to keep anxiety at bay. Here is one thing I have learned during fourteen years of follow-up treatment for malignant melanoma: good news rides a swift horse, and bad news rides a donkey. Good test results get handed off to an intern or nurse who calls the patient in short order. Bad test results take their time. They get handed around to other doctors to be officially rubber-stamped “bad”. Then they come back to your doctor, who sets them aside until the unpleasant time in her day she reserves for calling patients whose lives are about to be torpedoed. The longer the wait for test results, the more likely you don’t want to take the call.

This time, despite the long wait, the torpedo didn’t come. You would think that after more than a decade of good reports I would have stopped anticipating torpedoes, but I’m not sure that’s how cancer follow-up works. Please understand, my faith in God’s goodness is not on the line. I know that no phone call can shorten the number of my days. No test result takes Him by surprise. But from a human perspective, the waiting is hard. Over the years the cycle of waiting has grown predictable: anxious anticipation, the call with good news, a week of ecstatic relief, several months of perfect assurance, eroding confidence as the next test approaches. Lather, rinse, repeat. Once you’ve had bad news you tend to live life looking over your shoulder. You know the good news of the past could be revoked in an instant.

This is why the good news of salvation matters. The Good Word of redemption, spoken in Christ, is to us a word that will not be revoked, uttered according to the integrity of God Himself. Those who have been declared righteous cannot be un-declared so, and the ecstatic relief of having been forgiven mellows and expands into the perfect assurance of our standing with God. There will never be a day when the penalty of sin is laid once more against our account. It is gone for good, forever. Irrevocably. In the work of the atonement there are no torpedoes, no revocations of grace, no “other shoe to drop”. There is only the steady, mounting assurance that the cancer of sin has been, is being, and will be ruthlessly eradicated from the life of the believer. It is good news that sticks. It is good news that comes to stay, embodied in the person of Christ. Riding, as it happened, on a donkey . Riding, as it shall be, on a swift horse .

Hello, world, this is Jennifer. I have Good News.

good work

2010-07-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

Col 3:23-24
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

This morning as I was taking my daughter to an eye appointment I saw a mother unloading her special needs son from her minivan. What first caught my attention was that we drove the same car. Next, I noticed that her son was about twelve, the same age as my daughter. She carefully moved him from car-seat to wheelchair, talking to him the entire time as I would talk to any of my kids. His head lolled to one side, his arms and legs splayed, his eyes wandered.

I thought about how different this mother’s day would be from mine. I would drop my daughter back at school and then have an entire day to spend as I chose, not a day free from responsibility, but a day that I could order as I wished. She would spend the rest of this day, and the rest of every day of her life focusing care and attention on this child of her heart. Her entire life would be devoted to energetic and faithful service to this son, and she would pray fervently for someone to take up her good work when at last it was time for her to lay it down.

I don’t know why God gave me four children in perfect health. I don’t know why none of them has a chronic illness, a learning disability, or even seasonal allergies. I remember well the intensity of effort, the setting aside of personal freedoms it took to get them from baby to adolescent, so the thought of a mother who will give that level of care until her dying day gives me pause.

Do I work with the same sense of purpose? Or does my lack of hardship cloud my sense of purpose and allow me to slip into half-hearted effort and self-focus? Awareness of what God has not given can be as important as awareness of what He has. Freedom from trial is a liberty not to be squandered. It should imply an obligation to reach out to those enduring trial. Freedom from trial, for however long it may last, should give me a heightened sense of responsibility to “work heartily, as for the Lord” in every sphere of influence and in every task I have been given.

The bible tells us that God, in His wisdom, chooses our circumstances for us. He gives each of us our work to accomplish. Have you known the parent of a special needs child? I have. She does not question her purpose in life and does not need to be told what the next task is. And nor should I. Though not the same work, my work is before me just as clearly as is hers: to love my God and my family deeply and sacrificially, to steward my resources of time and possessions in ways that point toward eternity.

What work lies before you? Are you a businessperson ? A student? A stay-at-home mom? Renew you resolve to labor with purpose. For the believer, all work is kingdom-work. Do not allow freedom from hardship to cause you to treat it lightly. It is God who has ordained your work, it is good work, and He is most glorified in it when you do it well. Devote your entire life to energetic and faithful service to the Son, and pray fervently for someone to take up the good work when at last it is time for you to lay it down.