Encore

All this


glory


sent


to my own
address.

What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Psalm 8:4

Mom asked me to be a judge at the area interscholastic speech event this past Monday.  My sister put it this way, "They're that short on judges?"

So I was prepped with a room full of teachers - some of them who taught me in high school - and throughout the night I was posed questions.

1.  "Where do you teach?"

2.  "Where did you go to college?  For teaching?"

3.  "What's your degree in?"

In short,

4.  "What qualifies you to be a judge?"

1.  At home.

2.  Dordt...but only for two years.

3.  English Education....but it's only an AA degree, which, technically speaking, gets you nothing.  Nothing, I guess, except the lessons I learned in those two years.  About literature.  About teaching.  About dorm life.  About others.  About myself.  Ultimately, I'm still working for my degree - is that why your questions ends with a preposition?  A masters...in Life.

4.  A college speech class?  Love of words, written and spoken?  Love of kids?

“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the rule of three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No. A woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”  G.K Chesterton

Quotable

...We have mistakenly begun to consider gratitude an emotion of the heart – as just another response to our circumstance. When things are going well, it’s easy to respond with a thankful heart. But in the seasons where it is most needed, thankfulness never even enters our mind.


We would fare far better if we learned to consider gratitude a discipline of the heart – one that requires attention and consistent practice. It requires practice when it’s easy and even more practice when it’s difficult... 


-Joshua Becker

Do you talk to God?

So several months ago I began a devotional for the Enterprise with this question: Does God talk to you?  I went on to write about the necessity of studying the Scriptures.  I intended to follow that devotional with one on prayer, one that would begin with this question: Do you talk to God?

I never wrote it.

If I could point to one part of my Christian life as most lacking, it would be my prayer life.  When I read the Bible or other Christian biographies I am humbled by the amount of time that men and women of faith who have gone before have spent in prayer.  Many of them set aside hours – some even an entire day or days each week – to spend in prayer.  Jesus Himself sometimes rose very early in the morning to pray or stayed up all night to pray (Mark 1:35, Luke 6:12).

And I?

I squeeze in a few prayers here and there, but when the kids and all the demands of each day press close, prayer is the first thing to go.

I go through vicious cycles where I pray very little, and then I start to feel as if I have very little for which to pray.

And yet prayer is the activity in which the Christian soldier is commanded always to be involved:  “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:17-18; see also Luke 18:1-7).

No wonder I am so quickly discouraged, so easily dismayed.

Perhaps you’ve heard “Prayer changes things.”  Or maybe you’ve read The Prayer of Jabez, and have come to believe that if you adopt a prayer style like the one recorded in I Chronicles 4:9-10 your life will be one abounding with incredible blessing and grandiose witnessing opportunities.  But Christ warns us not to use vain, repetitious prayers in Matthew 6:7 (see also Ecclesiastes 5:2).  And the Scriptures testify to God’s eternal, unchanging counsel: “The LORD of hosts has sworn, saying, ‘Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass, and as I have purposed, so it shall stand’” (Isaiah 14:24).  Nor do our prayers inform God of our needs or our troubles:  “Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8).

So why pray?

Well, from one point of view, prayer does change things.   Prayer changes everything.  When we come humbly before the Father in prayer we acknowledge His rule and our reliance. We take our eyes off of our grief, and fasten them on His glory.  We quit focusing on ourselves and consider the needs of others.  When we pray, the Spirit helps our infirmities, aligning our mind and heart with the will of God for us (Luke 11:9-13, Romans 8:26, Philippians 2:13, I John 5:14-15). Prayer is a privilege God graciously grants us, enabling us to express our submission to His will for our lives.

So pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:17).

Continue instant in prayer (Romans 12:12).

Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us (Psalm 62:8).

And be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6).

and she became his wife...

When we were growing up, we owned two white cassette tapes full of clips of Garrison Keillor telling the News from Lake Woebegone.  We listened to those cassettes over and over while we dried dishes or drew clothes for our paper dolls at the little table by the wood stove.  In one of those News clips, Keillor told the story of a man from Lake Woebegone who went to New York City and came back with tales of city life and $7 dinners, which made New York City an awfully intimidating place to some people.  But to me, Keillor said, in the way only Keillor can say it, it was extravagance, wonderful extravagance...and I couldn't wait to get there myself.


My little sister Valen married the love of her life, Kurt Randall, yesterday.

I don't have many photos.  Not my department.

But it was day of extravagance.


Nathan woke me at 4:35, and I after I settled him back down I lay there next to B.J. like a little child on Christmas morning, unable to go back sleep.  

I caught the sky while B.J. and the girls finished breakfast.  The morning was clear, still.  I shoot the sun rising over the place where I grew up, and I smile to myself, knowing that people I love are up and moving in those trees, their hearts skipping just like mine.

I spend the morning mixing up a casserole for lunch, setting out wedding clothes for the kids, and doin' myself up.  Then at 11:45 our friend Lori shows up to watch Willem, Marie, and Nath, and I head to the winery to help do up the bride and her maids.

So we spend the afternoon in the loft of that lovely place while big band music plays in the background, chatting, munching, dressing the bride, making up the ladies, laughing...

The sun rolls high, the air is clear.  

Then home again to get the kids, to the church for photos, food, and then the wedding.  Music and loved ones, Kurt and Val's vows, talk of God's love...

I could write about the way the winery sparkled up on the hill as we approached, the hum of the guests at the tables, watching Kurt and Val, listening to Paul and Erin, Sherry's poem, Tim's toast - Live with your wife - the cheering, the clapping, the singing, the Family, the photos from days gone by...


(See the kids singing here.)
(See us singing here.)


B.J. and I ended the night cuddled on the couch, him tugging pins out of my hair and asking,


"Whatcha thinkin?"
"Not much..."
"It couldn't have been any better, Dear."
"I know.  It was wonderful.  All of it.  This side of heaven, it doesn't get any better than today."


But when my heart is so full, the words jumble and I don't do it justice.  


And today it's back to dishes and diapers, and what's there to eat, Mom?  But first this morning, we're spreading love on toast and thanking the Father for extravagance.  For glasses of wine and faces that shine.  Psalm 104:15

We left even before the bride and groom - Nathan is not yet well - but I don't think they missed us as they drove away.  As we drove away, I leaned my head against the cool glass of the van window and thought extravagance.  What  heart-aching, breath-taking, wonderfully extravagant delights have filled this day...

...and I can't wait to get There, to that sparkling, hilltop Mansion, myself.  

Quotable

Sheila Walsh quoted it yesterday; I'm not sure of the original source.


For everything that has been: thanks, Lord.
To everything that will be:  yes!

So my posts have had a gloomy overtone lately.  My mood, too...


I'm sorry.


It's just that the highs this year have been high, and the lows, so very low.


Somedays I'm Iris, singin' My Life.  That's the old man, I think.  Somedays, Patti, and I Am Not Alone. The new?


I've been up alone these past few nights (B.J. had meetings) soothing Nathan (he has croup) and taking apart two shirts to sew the little man a shirt and pants for Auntie Val's wedding tomorrow.  These quiet nights I've been both shamed and inspired by John Piper's biographical sermons.  C.S. Lewis, David Brainerd, William Tyndale...  


Tuesday night I listened about Jonathan Edwards, hunched over my machine, and Piper talked about going into a little room in the Yale library where Edwards' original sermon copies and books are kept.  There Piper found a Bible that Edwards and his wife Sarah had taken apart.  They hand-sewed it back together, with a blank piece of paper between each page, on which Edwards wrote notes as he worked through the Scriptures.  I had to smile when Piper said he turned to the first chapters of I Chronicles, curious if Edwards had any notes for those lengthy geneologies.  We are reading through those chapters at the supper table this week, the kids snickering periodically as B.J. valiantly attempts to prounouce names like Mahli and Mushi, Huppim and Shuppim.  Even Edwards' note pages on these chapters were full of writing. 


How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!  If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.  Psalm 139:17-18

Stuck by this poem at breakfast this morning...

Possible Answers to Prayer

Your petitions - though they continue to bear
just the one signature - have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties - despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent
entertainment value - nonetheless serve
to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance - all but obscured beneath
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more
conspicuous resentment - is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes
recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly
righteous indignation toward the many
whose habits and sympathies offend you -

these must burn away before you'll apprehend
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passion.

-Scott Cairns

Quotable

Ravi said it yesterday.

Hypocrisy...the compliment vice pays to virtue.

Back home

My, what a sky this morning.
I run between Cheerios and unmade beds
just to catch it.

The clouds hang heavy,
so I open the lens way up,
losing depth of field,
and shut so slow
the horizon blurs.

And isn't it this way in life also?
I open way up
and lose perspective.
The horizon blurs
for all my
wavering.

Thanks
for this still morning
the gravel rolling beneath my feet
the air that opens my lungs
the whine from the west
the whir up east

his truck sliding into gear,
heading up into the sky
turned gray.

Oh, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain You!

Fields of gold

          

It is dry and dusty.  When the tractors with their grain wagons cruise down our gravel road, clouds clamor through the screen door and settle on the piano.  So dry that combines and fields are igniting, flames and smoke consuming fields.  Farmers are advised via radio to have their disks ready.  Small town fire whistles blow as crews head out to yet another blaze.

I am no farmer, but it has been a dry and dusty autumn for me, too.  I feel overwhelmed by busyness.  Inadequate as a mom.  Listless in prayer.  Unmotivated to memorize.  Filled with doubt rather than delight.  Frustration rather than faith.  Weary in well doing (Galatians 6:9).  So dry I fear that these petty, small flames might burn me right up.

Do you feel this way sometimes?  When I am discouraged, I become self-centered, but God’s Word teaches me that times of drought and despair are experiences that all saints share.  I read Psalms 63 and 143 at breakfast every day for a week:  “My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh longs for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is” (Psalm 63:1).  “Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.  I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Thy works; I muse on the work of Thy hands.  I stretch forth my hands unto Thee: my soul thirsts after Thee, as a thirsty land” (Psalm 143:4-6).  At noon we read about Job – now there are some real flames – and I pause on his confession:  “When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

 

When one purifies gold - I learned this at a Bible study once -  he pours it into huge vats and melts it to a liquid form. During this process, impurities within the gold make their way to the top.  The refiner then removes this dross, resulting in a gold that is purer and more valuable.  The higher the temperature, the more impurities rise to the surface of the gold.

So God purifies us.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (I Peter 1:3-7).

“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain.  You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand,” and (remember?) "He shall come down like rain" (James 5:7-8 and Psalm 72:6).

It is dusk, and I am at the end of the driveway.  The hum of combines and tractors fills my ears, and harvest dust hovers on the horizon.  The setting sun burns through this haze, and the fields flame, pure gold.  

  

"My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?”


"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God” (Psalm 42: 2&11).

http://sarahssundries.blogspot.com/2011/06/he-shall-come-down.html

All boy

So the ditch in front of the house is full of field spiders, the big black and yellow kind that used to startle us corn detasselers out of our wits.  One golden evening Will and Leah captured 15 of them, but when it was time to go in that mean ol' Mama said they had to set them free.

So the next morning, Will's back at it, of course, and he wants that mean ol' Mama to come out and see how one goes about catching these things, and she eventually wanders out.


He's ready, open Sunbutter jar in his right hand.

"Watch me, Mama."


I am watching.


Intently.


In my mind, there's a missing component here: namely, the lid of the Sunbutter jar, with which one would swipe these rather large creatures into the container held in the other hand.

Will leans forward.


I inhale.


His left hand shoots forward - whoop! - and grabs that spider.  


He grins at the writhing mass of yellow and black, legs and more legs, there in his fingers, then shakes this rather large, creeping thing into the jar.


The spider runs in mad circles around the bottom.


I blink.


Exhale.

Will shrugs.  Grins at me.  "See.  That's how you do it."


I smile...laugh out loud.


I've said it before.
I will say it again.


This one, he's all boy.

Roll in, winter...

We're ready.

(Haven't had much time to write lately.  We've been busy stacking wood, among other things...)

Leah, seven!?

When I look at m' Leah these days, I am back in American Lit with Prof. Dengler, the poem at hand, Anne Sexton's Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman...

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

She will be seven on Wednesday.
(We are celebrating her birthday today as we will be traveling later this week.)

Quotable - Lewis & Tolkien

And what of Lewis is not quotable?  But here are a few on which I am musing this morning...


If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world...A man's physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man's hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist...


  When this joy, this stab of inconsolable longing, is awakened by certain powerful myths or stories, it is evidence that behind these myths there is a true Myth - with a capital "M".
  There is a true Story - with a capital "S" - that really exists.
  The reason for the joy - that it's desirable - is because it's real.  And the reason it's inconsolable is because where you're getting it isn't the True One.
  The true Myth and the real Joy is the original Shout, so to speak, and the stories and the myths that you are reading everyday are echoes...
J.R.R. Tolkien

It was when I was happiest that I longed most...

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...

to find the place where all the beauty came from...

The books or the music in which we thought

the beauty was located

will betray us if we trust to them;

it was not in them, it only came through them,

and what came through them was longing.

These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past -

 are good images of what we really desire;

but if they are mistaken for the thing itself

they turn into dumb idols,

breaking the hearts of their worshipers.

For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever’. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. 

holiday

Our annual Drop-Everything-and-Watch-a-Combine Day.

Quotable - Now is the time

“Now is the time to get things done…

wade in the water, sit in the sun,

squish my toes in the mud by the door,

explore the world of a girl just four.

Now is the time to study books,

flowers, snails, how a cloud looks;

 to ponder “up,” where God sleeps nights,

why mosquitoes take such big bites.

Later there’ll be time to sew and clean,

paint the hall that soft new green,

to make new drapes, refinish the floor –

Later on…when she’s not just four.”

- Irene Foster