4:54 p.m. - Found

goin' campin'

We are just back from a few days camping with my dad and mom, siblings, spouses, children, and a few special friends.


Talk about
fish catchin'
boat ridin'
lake swimmin'
bug huntin'
burger grillin'
bike ridin'
birthday celebratin'
camp-fire singin'
s'more makin'
kid chasin'
heat-wavin'
thunderstormin'...

Mmm...ice cream cake...

There really were not a lot of overly sentimental moments for me.  Too much heat and weary children for that.


But this was one.


When I get home and open Dad's e-mail with the photos attached, my eyes swim warm, and my throat hurts.

Looking our best - who doesn't after a few days camping?  ;)

What a privilege to belong to this group, to call them "brothers" and "sisters"...and mean it two ways.


Now add to that spouses, whom we call "brothers" and "sister"...and mean it two ways.


Add to that children, abundant children, who will be here when each of us has run our course, to carry on the Father's work.

Looking our VERY best....

My heart and my eyes...they overflow.

1 year

Today is Little Man's 1st birthday.

He is aptly named Nathan, gift.

Thank you, Father.  My heart still overflows.

Remember when...

...convention banquet, 13 years ago today, our first "date."

(I'm listening to this country song and feeling sentimental this morning.)

many things mulberry

If had to choose a photo to represent this summer, I might pick this one.


Not because I think it is such a great photograph.  I do not.


But for these reasons:


For the brilliant blue of the sky.


For the bright green of the leaves.


For the magical little bubbles of light (do you see them?) that play behind the ordinary.

For the hum of the flies in the top of the mulberry tree.


For the way the sun beats into the shoulders,


and for the way heat crawls down the backs of the legs.

Photo by Leah

I'd pick it for the way the mulberry trees in the grove grow spindly and tall, reaching for the light, their fruit out of reach to everyone but the birds.


For mulberry stains - on the hands, on the clothes, and on the sheets on the line (these left by the mulberry-eating birds).

I'd pick it and remember many things mulberry...

Photo by Jerron

10:23 a.m. - Marie calls this one

"Butterball"

Where your children rank

Another superb article by Rachel Jankovic.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God

My parents still live in the house where I grew up, a half mile from where my husband and I now reside.  My brother and sisters and I used to ride our bikes this way, too, down the road to the west toward Mud Crik.  Sometimes we brought our fishing poles and a Cool Whip container of night crawlers and fished off the bridge.  Once we rode past the bridge, over the railroad tracks, and explored the old Persoon place.

The house still stands at the end of a driveway that winds parallel to the tracks for a quarter mile or more.  I see it now as Marie and I crest the hill, gray and weather beaten.  It slumps like an old man, the vacant gaze of the upstairs windows directed at the ground. 

               

The story goes that when Mrs. Persoon died, Leo, her grief-stricken husband, left their home and all that was in it.  There is also the story that Leo once chased trespassers off his land with a shot gun.  And there is the prohibition of our mother: “You kids are not allowed to go there!  Do you understand me?”  My heart beats hard as we pedal up the driveway and walk through the crooked front gate. 

I remember the porch of the house, the chicken coop, and the way Mud Crik curled around it.  I remember the carvings on the barn walls, one of them – the profile of a man smoking a pipe – dated 1886.  I remember the television lying face-down in glass shards on the living room floor, the silverware still in neat rows in the kitchen drawer, and the baby cards in the scrapbook.  I can still see the mass of books that covered the floor of the room at the top of the stairs, the shelves blown over by the elements that entered in through empty window frames.  I remember the cotton dresses hanging in the bedroom closet, and the two pairs of square-heeled shoes that waited below them.

I went back to the Persoon place once more, when I was in college, a member of the Photography Club, camera in hand.  The floor of the porch was so rotted that I didn’t dare enter the house, and animals had dug a den where the cellar once had been.  Coyotes, perhaps?  Now, when the train rolls through at dusk and sounds its whistle, a whole chorus of coyotes down that way yap back, laughing and scolding as the engine chugs past.


And where is your treasure?

Is it in a house or barn – the one that you now have or one that you hope to have some day?  Is it in possessions – a car or computer, television or books?  Is it in memories, carefully preserved in scrapbooks and photo albums?  In dishes or in the clothes that your wear?


Sometimes we are just like the Israelites, with our gods of wood and stone.

Jesus tells us to lay up our treasure in heaven (Matt 6:19-21; Luke 12:34).  Eventually all of our possessions, whether we carefully maintain them until we die or abandon them like Leo did, will fade away.  Even our names will be remembered only for a short time.


Stanley Kunitz put it well:


I’m passing through a phase: 

gradually I’m changing to a word...   

nothing is truly mine

except my name. I only

borrowed this dust.

List the names of your great-grandparents if you can.  And what do you know about them?  Even your body, your life, is not your own.  And the name that you leave behind, it will not last long, either.


How do we lay up treasure in heaven?  Jesus tells us that in the parable of the steward in Luke 16, an unfamiliar parable with a much-disputed interpretation.  But our Lord Himself expounds its meaning, instructing us to use our money and our earthly possessions to invest in eternal treasure.   He notes that the unrighteous are wiser than we – they believe that this world is all there is to live for, and then they live accordingly.  In contrast, we say that our home is in heaven but expend our resources investing in earthly things.  We forget that we are stewards of the mysteries of God (I Cor. 4:1) and that only our works that cannot be destroyed by fire will endure (I Cor. 3:11-15).


It is a marvelous reality, really, that our heart follows our money.  Do you wish you had more of heart for missions?  Put your money into missions, and your heart will follow. Do you wonder why you care so little for the poor?  Give them your money, and your heart will follow.  Do you care little for the saints with whom you worship each week?  Give money without grudging when you see a family in need or when you see that the shingles on the church roof need to be replaced.  Use the money that’s been entrusted to you to spread the gospel and to minister to souls. These are eternal things.


And in the end, we will be rewarded according to our works.

"Moreover, it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful" (I Cor. 4:2).

Quotable

But there's a reason why that word - wired - means both connected to the internet and high, frantic, unable to concentrate.
Johann Hari

You know it...

Encore.

7:54 a.m. - Hey, baby

1:04 p.m. - sidewalk chalk

Encore

The neighbors are building a hog barn right to the west of us, beyond the grove.

Right in the way of my applauding, there are now roof beams and silhouettes of machines.

My husband knows this.  So when he sees me eyeing the clouds on the way home from the church picnic, he says, "You run in and grab your camera and I'll drive you past the hog barn for a photo."

So I did.

And he did.

Encore.

"Dad's home!"

Or, as Nathan would put it, "Vroom, vroom!"

(Photo by Leah)

Allow me

...to explain the Encores.

It goes back to joining the applause.  It was late by the time four bodies were showered, four sets of teeth brushed, four books read, four prayers heard.  I got one grainy shot of the sky long after the sun had set.

Back to that, and back to this: Distance adds intrigue.

And the dare.


To live.


Fully.


Right where I am.


All the world is charged with the grandeur of God.
But in Iowa, we've got great sky.
There, it flames out, like shining from shook foil.

How long with this preoccupation last?

I don't know.

But what to call repeat performances besides Encore?

Encore

That's my
diaper clad
smilin' lad.
Bug bites,
strap 'im tight...

Nathan and I...

chasin' the sky.

It's a matter of

            ...memorization.

            When the last bits of oatmeal are scraped from the bowls, we recite.  The order is arbitrary.  This morning, Willem goes first.  He stands, back to the bookshelf, and belts it out:

“I Samuel 17: 45!  Then said David! to the Philistine!  Thou comest to me with a sword! And with a spear! And with a shield! But I come to you!  In the name of the Lord of hosts! The God of the armies of Israel! Whom thou hast defied!”  My David, preparing to meet his own Goliaths.  His hair, too, tinged red.

            “Very good, Will.  Think about the Bible story from which you would like your next memory verse to be.  You’ll start a new one tomorrow morning.”

            Now Leah.  Her text, Genesis 1:26-27, God’s creation of man.   She has two years on Will, speaks more softly, is not as easily distracted, beams when I praise her.

            Marie.  Two and a half.  She slides from her booster seat and bops back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.  She learns more slowly, of course.  We add only a word or two at time.  I choose her texts.  First, Psalm 23.  Now Psalm 100, with a little lisp.

            “Make joyful noithe unto the Lord, all ye landth…”  I prompt her, and she continues, ending on a whisper:

            “He ith God.”  Giggle.

            My turn.  I push my chair back from the table and stand, Little Man on my hip.  The words come hard.  I pinch the bridge of nose, resist the urge to peek at my Bible, open in front me. 

            “I John 1.”  Pause.  Oh yes, John, he starts at the beginning…

            Last October, I think it was, I decided that I, too, should be whetting my sword along with my children.  All the verses that they learned I already knew.  So I joined in and began to memorize anew.  Psalm 143:8.  Isaiah 61:10.  Psalm 96.  I Corinthians 4:1-2…

Now I John.  The whole book.  By the end of the summer.

            I recite all of chapter one this morning.  Without peeking.  I prop open chapter two in the window sill above the sink while Marie and wash the breakfast dishes.

My Bible is there while I knead bread for supper.  Food to feed the living part of me while I prepare food to feed the dying part of me.[i] 

“And hereby…” Thump.  “We do know…”  Thump.  “That we know Him…Marie, quit snitchin’ dough.”  Thump.   “If we keep His commandments...”

I listen to the audio Bible as we drive to the lake.  Track 15.  Over, and over.  “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked…”

­

Sunday morning.  I John 2 open on the pew next to me.  Little Man watches the fans whirling above.  I watch folks file in.  “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now…”

In the end, you see, it’s more than a matter of memorization.  It’s a matter of meditation.  And motivation…to walk, even as He walked.­

Thy Word, Father, have I hid in my heart…that I might not sin against Thee...

Psalm 119:11

               

---

[i] http://www.aholyexperience.com/

Encore

8:56 p.m.


Four kids tucked in.


My kitchen looks like this:

And I?

I am chasing this:

Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.

Let them praise the name of the Lord:

for He commanded, and they were created...

The heavens declare the glory of God;

and the firmament showeth His handiwork...

There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard...

For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen...

Jehovah Nissi

My country ’tis of Thee,
Who telleth the number of the stars.­­

And with Thy stripes we are healed.

Absolved from all allegiance to sin,

we, the pilgrims, seek a more perfect city.

Declare independence:

where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,

secured for ourselves and our posterity.

O death, where is thy sting?

Land for which my fathers died,

of thee I sing,

my hand over my heart.