moving day...

and we've been hit with the flu.

'Twill be quiet here for a bit.

Love,
Sarah

1 Corinthians 8

             Ah, “Christian liberty.”  That over-used, often abused expression.  Such is the topic of 1 Corinthians chapter 8. 

            The apostle Paul addresses the topic of Christian liberty apparently in response to another question which the congregation in Corinth had sent to him.  He begins, “Now concerning things offered to idols,” but then, it would seem, he digresses for two and a half verses:  “We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.  And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.”  In reality, Paul here lays down the principle for how a Christian must approach matters which the Bible does not specifically address: not with pride in his or her ability to understand and apply the Scriptures, but with love for his or her fellow saints.  Paul reaffirms this idea later in this letter, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (I Corinthians 13:2). 

            Then, specifically addressing the question at hand, Paul affirms, “We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.”  Paul’s statement brings to mind Psalm 115, “But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands,” or Isaiah 44, where the prophet recounts that pathetic scene in which a man cuts down a tree.  Part of the tree he uses to build a fire to warm himself and to prepare food to fill his empty stomach, and what is left over he carves into a god, to which he bows down and implores, “Deliver me!”  So, knowing that an idol is nothing, Paul reasons, whether or not food has been offered to an idol god is of no account.  The Corinthian believers were free to eat it.

But Paul doesn’t stop there.  He acknowledges that there were some whose convictions did not allow them to eat the food that in principle they were free to eat.  Whether one eats or doesn’t eat does not make him or her more or less acceptable to God, writes Paul, “but beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.”  It could be, he continues, that seeing you eat food offered to idols is enough to persuade another to violate his conscience in order join you, making you guilty of causing your fellow saint to sin.  “And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?  But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.  Therefore,” Paul asserts, “if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”

So how do we apply this principle to our own lives?  By remembering that, at heart, “Christian liberty” does not refer to our freedom to dress as we’d like, drink what we’d like, spend our time as we like, live as we’d like…  It refers to our being set free to love our fellow saints.  To our being set free from serving ourselves to serving our God by loving our fellow believers.  Also, by acknowledging that it is the consciences of others that determine how we will live (I Corinthians 10:29).  That rubs us the wrong way, doesn’t it?  As in chapter 6, we prove ourselves more concerned with our “rights” than ready to face our Christian responsibilities to God and to the neighbor.

So do not treat your liberty as license to live in whatever way you please.  Nor exchange your freedom in Christ for legalism.  Rather, remember: you have been set free to love.  

Springtime

 

a day's journey

So I've not only been packing these past few days.  I've been painting, too.  Some time ago I got it in my head that I would like something new, something personal, to hang on our living room wall in CO. For a while I was trying to decide on one of the many photos of the Iowa sky that I've taken over the past year, but I wanted it to be fairly large, and I couldn't justify the large photo canvas prices, even with a Groupon.  Then, after painting at Calvary and packing up several tubes of acrylics, I decided instead that I would take a whack at painting something for our home.  So I spent $20 on Amazon for a 30 x 40 inch canvas, and the past few mornings I've spent the first quiet hour of the day sorting things through and painting.


I think I've painted three things since my grade school days in Mrs. Hunter's art class.  A mural for junior/senior banquet - and that was a joint venture, as several ladies who read this blog will testify! - the Trinity mural, and the Calvary mural.  And I've never painted, made, or created anything that turned out like I had hoped it would.


This piece is no exception - there are things I'd like to change - but it does still do two things that I intended: it moves from tall cornfields in Iowa and across plateaus in western Nebraska to the twin peaks that overlook the place to which we are moving, and it also progresses from sunrise to moonlight.


I entitled it A Day's Journey.

Because it takes about a day to drive from here to there.


But more than that.


Because this transition has caused me to reflect as I never have before on the fleeting nature of my earthly life.  On the temporary nature of most things here below.  On how I long for heaven.


I hear in my head the words of Rev. Haak on the Reformed Witness Hour, several years ago...


Have you already counted the coming year as yours?  Are you looking five years ahead?  God counts in days.  That teaches us the shortness of our human life, especially as it is compared to eternity.  Man thinks that he is forever, that his dwelling places are for generations.  But it is a day.  Infancy is daybreak; youth is sunrise; adult-life is noonday; sickness and arthritis are sunset; old age is evening.  It is but a day.

My life is but a day.


And this move?


But a leg of the journey Home.

I Corinthians 7

If I were to make a list of difficult chapters in the Bible, difficult both to study and to live, 1 Corinthians 7 would rank near the top.  The chapter contains the Apostle Paul’s answers to a variety of questions that the Corinthians had sent to him.  I do not intend to address each specific circumstance mentioned – nor would I do them justice in a column of this length – but to do my best to overview the main ideas of the passage.

This chapter, like the previous two, addresses Christian sexuality.  Paul ended chapter 6 by commanding Christians to flee fornication – meaning sexual perversion of any sort – in body and spirit, for the believer’s body and spirit both belong to God.  Now Paul addresses very practically the sexual life of the Christian.  His teachings were radical in the godless culture of Corinth; they are radical in the perverse society in which we live.

1)      Single life is good – not because living singly is holier in itself, but because one who is single is able to – must! – devote more time to the Lord and to the church without the distraction of a spouse and/or children (vs. 1, 7-9, 26, 32 – 40).

2)      If a single person has strong sexual desire, he or she must marry (vs. 2, 9).

3)      Marriage is a lifelong bond between two persons (vs. 11, 39).

4)      Sex is – at the very least – a consistent, frequent duty that a married person owes his or her spouse (passages like Proverbs 5:15-23 and the Song of Solomon make clear that this is an obligation that the Christian fulfills joyfully.).

5)      Christians are not to seek to divorce their spouses, as Christ also made clear during his earthly ministry, even if one’s husband or wife is an unbeliever (vs. 10-13, Matthew 19:9).

6)      If a believer is deserted by an unbelieving spouse, he or she must not live enslaved to the guilt of that broken marriage: he or she still has peace with God (Note: The words in this verse “under bondage” come from a different Greek word than the word translated “bound” in vs. 27 and 39, though certain Bible translations render them the same way.)

7)      Parents have authority over their children until they are married, and with regard to when and whom they marry (vs. 36-38.  Note: Some translations render the man in these passages as one who is betrothed to a young woman rather than her father).

As I read I Corinthians 7, two passages jump as out as “keys” that unlock the door to living a life of godly purity.  First, whether one is single or married, the life in which God places him or her is a calling.  Not a relationship – or lack thereof – that exists as a result of his or her own preferences or for the sake of his or her ease in this life.  Men or women are commanded by God to live faithfully and contentedly in the life that God has assigned them.

How is this possible?  Some of us, no doubt, find ourselves in very difficult circumstances: single, with no prospective spouse; married, with trouble; deserted, and lonely.  Paul shows us how in verses 29-31: with an eternal perspective.  This life is short, and our time here, though we be single or married, plagued with sorrow or full of joy, wealthy or poor, passes quickly away.  And it is for eternity that the godly will receive – as singles! (Matthew 22:30) – a gracious reward for living faithfully in their calling.  The idea Paul expresses here corresponds to Jesus’ words in Luke 14: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

my favorite mother's day tradition

On the morning of Mother's Day, I have a note ready for each of our children - nothing fancy, in the past I've just used a piece of paper torn from a legal pad or a notebook - in which I tell them how thankful I am that God chose me to be their mom and commend one of their characteristics or encourage them in an area in which I've seen them make a lot of effort.  I leave these notes at each of their places at the breakfast table.

A Happy School

   

     The home we’ve been renting for the past five or so years is an old two-room school house that was hauled here from somewhere in southern Minnesota back in the 40s.  The rafters in the attic are stamped “Sears,” hailing the era when you could order a schoolhouse kit from the Christmas catalog.  The floor of the porch, now enclosed, still slants downward, and the school’s original siding lines the interior of the coat closet.  Our children have tacked bug collections, birds, the letters of the alphabet, and a banner that reads “A Happy School – Today!” to the porch’s paneled walls.  My Grandma’s old alphabet, from the days when she taught kindergarten, decorates the dining room.  Crayons and paper pepper the small table in the kitchen, and artwork adorns the refrigerator.  Our home has the feel of a happy school.

     Our schoolhouse sits just around the corner from The Farm, where first my dad and then later my siblings and I grew up.  Mom told me once that she and Dad, when they were dating, considered living here someday.  Maybe they slowed down as they cruised by in Dad’s T-bird.  When I was growing up, a man by the name of Kurt Powell, the closest thing my siblings and I knew to Boo Radley, lived here.  Powell owned a big black dog and we’d heard that he played the electric guitar and had at least several tattoos – enough to make us threaten one another, “If you don’t behave, Powell’ll come and getcha.”  When we were old enough to pedal down to Mud Crik, a newlywed couple made their home here.  When B.J. and I strolled past hand-in-hand to carve our names on the railroad bridge that overlooks the Persoon place, there was a little boy, followed by a messy divorce, a dad who left, and Mom who ended up in a prison for a while.  When we looked at the house for the first time, it had been empty for two years.  The toilet was filled with cigarette butts, Asian beetles crunched beneath our feet, and a child’s drawing hung crooked on the refrigerator: “To Mom,” it read, “Love Austin.”

     And then we moved in.  We scraped dry dog poo out of the entry and the bathroom’s peeling paint.  We planted a garden.  Soon there was a puppy, chickens, kittens, and goats.  Will was born a few months after we arrived, followed later by Marie and Nathan.

     We’ve made a lot of memories in this little school.  We’ve learned much about living and loving.

     But in only a few short weeks, we’ll be leaving.  I’ve been busy packing stuff into boxes and memories into my mind.  This little schoolhouse will be empty once again, the echoes of our voices and laughter joining those of all the others who’ve learned under this roof.  How my heart aches to leave.  Yet the time has come to move on to lessons that must be learned in another place.
     For as long as the Master Teacher gives me life, I’ve things to be taught...  

      ...'til the day I graduate...to glory.

Eulogy

The piano was the first to move.

I scoured the counter as it creaked

through the living room

and heaved out the front door

into the bucket of the Allis.

My back was turned when it fell

face-first onto the burn pile.

I didn’t watch him douse it with gasoline

nor strike the match,

but as I tugged laundry off the line

smoke billowed like the black clouds overhead.

We huddled in the basement

beneath the threat of a tornado,

the rush of rain,

the smatter of hail.

When I ventured up and peered out,

it was still glowing at the far end of the yard,

hailstones thrumming the charred strings…

the last of a century’s worth of songs.

I Corinthians 6

           I learned a new word today: “litigious.” Perhaps it’s new to you, too.  Merriam Webster defines “litigious” this way: 1) “disputatious, contentious” or 2) “prone to engage in lawsuits.”  A fitting adjective for the society in which we live, perhaps?  Also a fitting description of Greek culture at the time the apostle Paul wrote I Corinthians 6.  There, trials were held in theaters, and juries consisting of hundreds of people determined the outcome of each case.  In order to a win a case, it was important that one be a skillful orator and that he be popular.  No wonder the saints in Corinth were prone to respect the wise and the debaters of their day; no wonder they were guilty of seeking the praise of men (chapters 1-5).  Likewise, the members of the church were also assuming the mentality of the ungodly with regard to the legal system.  Whenever anyone felt that his rights had been violated, he took his suit to court.  Sound familiar? 

            Paul sets forth this principle in I Corinthians 6: no lawsuits between believers.  “Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?”  We’re just like the Corinthians, aren’t we?  More ready to defend our "rights" than assume our God-given responsibilities toward one another.

            Paul addresses the subject of lawsuits through verse 8 of chapter 6.  Then he returns to the subject of immorality in the church, and, more specifically, sexual immorality.  In some ways, verses 1-8 seem misplaced, don’t they?  But wait, let’s refresh our memories on chapter 5.  There was a member of the congregation in Corinth who was leading an immoral life and deserved to be judged by his fellow church members, but was not.  In contrast, Paul points out how quick they were to bring their grievances before the ungodly – thereby giving unbelievers occasion to ridicule Christianity – even though they refused to judge immorality in their own congregation!  So now Paul reaffirms:  “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers (one who uses abusive language), nor extortioners (one who obtains from another by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power) will inherit the kingdom of God.”  And then, this beautiful statement: “And such were some of you, BUT you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”  Ephesians 5:8:  “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”

            Paul then takes on two idioms of the day:  First, “All things are lawful for me.”  Only some things, asserts Paul, are conducive to the Christian walk, and a Christian must never become a slave to a substance or behavior.  Then, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food,” a phrase some apparently used to rationalize sexual immorality: God created the body for sex, therefore we should enjoy sex without restriction.   No, writes Paul, the body was made for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  You may think you are your own, but your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  In chapter 3 we saw that Paul referred to the church collectively as God’s temple, His building.  Now Paul refers to the body of the individual believer as the temple of the Holy Spirit in the same sense in which Jesus does in John 14:23:  “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”  You’re one with Christ, says Paul.  Do not join Christ with a prostitute!  And why should the Christian never become the slave of a substance or behavior?  Because we already belong to another – we’re the slaves of God – and what a price He paid for us!  So honor your Master with your body as well as your spirit.