James Elliot ~ 6 months

Can it be?!

We first held this precious Jem half a year ago yesterday.

As a man feels...

There were four in the tent...

In God's providence, my days are full of caring for little children, who are learning their first words, and older children, whom I regularly have to caution to watch their words.  That doesn't prevent me from studying the words I use myself, however, and lately I discovered something that troubles me: I use the word "feel" far too frequently and, far too often, incorrectly. 

As soon as I became aware of this tendency in myself, I started paying more attention to the way others are speaking, and I've noticed that many of them are "feelers," too.  A friend described her decision to purchase one item and not another because she "felt" that it was of superior quality.  In Bible study a sister explained what she "feels" a certain passage says.  An acquaintance commented on which of the two major presidential candidates she “feels” is the better one.

When I consider my own speech, I’ve noticed that when I use the word “feel,” I typically mean “know” or “think,” as in, “I’ve thought about this, and after careful consideration, this is the conclusion I’ve reached.”  But “feel” and “think” are not synonyms – far from it!  And since so many in our society base everything from their vote to their “gender identity” based on how they feel, I think it’s important that you and I say “think” when we mean “think.”  The Christian faith is a logical, rational faith.  It requires “a certain knowledge;” repudiates willing ignorance; engages the renewed mind.

In short, the people of God do not, must not allow their feelings to rule the way they live.  No, as I’m presently trying to teach my four-year-old, we’re called to take every emotion (as well as every thought) and make them captive to Christ.

And I don't just feel that’s the way it should be: I know it to be true.  

Quotable: People do not drift toward holiness.

People do not drift toward holiness.

Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

~ Don Carson

The Annual Photo Shoot

Here is what all Christians need to ask: “Do we agree with the Bible and face children with arms open in gratitude for the blessing of God, or do we turn our face away from children and count as a curse what God calls a blessing?” There is the reality that “a child may be an inconvenient blessing. A child will usually be an expensive blessing. A child may and often will be a blessing that takes us well outside our comfort zones and into the arms of grace. A child is usually a blessing that will be accompanied by sleepless nights and many tears. But he or she is a blessing, and we must not forget this. Parents struggling with a demanding or wayward child need to remember to thank God for that son or daughter, even as they pray urgently for grace to care for them faithfully.”

But why? Why are children such a blessing? One unique blessing is that, “they force us to welcome into our circle strangers we have not chosen. Husband and wife have chosen one another. But, however much they may have wanted a baby, they did not choose this baby with these particular characteristics! This baby comes into the family circle as a stranger, to be welcomed whatever his or her character and future. And therefore in parenting we learn to welcome the stranger, the one chosen by God for us to love. And we learn to love these children out of love for the God who has entrusted them to us.” While we may choose to have a child, ultimately conception, birth, and the unique characteristics of a particular child are exclusively in the hands of God. As parents, we have the challenge and the honor of loving the little stranger God has given us, of extending godly hospitality to him or her. “Someone has commented that the only home it is safe to be born into is a hospitable home that welcomes outsiders into its circle. Children challenge our self-centeredness and do us good.”  ~ www.challies.com.  Quotes are excerpts from Married for God by Christopher Ash.

Pleasant Summer Over

First day of the 2016-2017 school year.

Our Kindergartener!

At the neighboring houses 

Up and down our street 

Golden transports haunt again,

And the sound of school-bound feet. 

Pleasant summer over 

And most of summer's flowers, 

Gather your books, strap on your packs,

A year of study lowers. 

Sing a song of seasons! 

Soon the leaves will fall!

When God's Word lights your pathway, 

There's something bright in all.

Are Infants Also to be Baptized?

       

         I was born and raised in the Protestant Reformed Churches, Reformed churches of Dutch heritage.  My husband grew up in the same denomination, and we are still members there.  I never questioned paedobaptism - the practice of baptizing infants or young children - until just before the baptism of our first child.  At one of our daughter's first well-baby check-ups, our family physician, a Christian man whom I respected very much, made an off-hand remark to the effect that infant baptism is unbiblical and sprinkling with water is insufficient.  His remark sent me to the scriptures to study baptism, a study to which I've repeatedly returned, most recently while reading aloud to my children To the Golden Shore, Courtney Anderson's masterful biography of Adoniram Judson, who converted from the paedobaptist to the credobaptist position en-route to Burma.

A little more than a month ago, my husband and I stood before our congregation and answered this question for the seventh time: "[Do] you acknowledge that although our children are conceived and born in sin, and therefore are subject to all miseries, yea to condemnation itself, yet that they are sanctified in Christ, and therefore, as members of His church, ought to be baptized?"  We answered sincerely; our answer was "yes."

Are infants also to be baptized?

Yes, because God is a family God.

The three persons of our triune God live in a covenant, family relationship.  That God established His covenant relationship with His people means that He made them part of His family.  Throughout the scriptures, He extended the promises of His covenant to believers and their children (Gen. 17:7, Acts 2:39).  For that reason, when Zacchaeus was converted, our Lord declared, "Today salvation has come to this house," and for that reason the households of Lydia, the Philippian jailer, Cornelius, and Stephanus were baptized.  What about those whom the Lord calls as individuals?  He places those who are solitary in His family (Psalm 68:6).  That family of God, the church, is always viewed organically in the Bible.  For that reason every male child was circumcised in the Old Testament - even foreign slaves who were not of Abraham's line (Gen. 17:12), Ishmael, with whom God did not establish His covenant (Gen. 17:18-19 and 25), and Esau, whom God hated (Rom. 9:13); for that reason all the children of believers are to be baptized in the new.  Does this unnecessarily apply an Old Testament paradigm in the New Testament?  No.  The sign of the covenant has changed because Christ's blood has atoned for the sins of His people: no more blood needs to be shed (Heb. 10:12).  But God's covenant is one covenant, the covenant that He remembers forever (Psalm 105:8).  Circumcision did not distinguish the biological children of Abraham while baptism marks his spiritual descendants.  The outward sign of circumcision pointed to the necessity that God circumcise the heart (Deut. 30:6), the same reality to which baptism points, as Col 2:11-12 explains.  Circumcision was and baptism is to be applied to the family of God organically, for to say that one can know and baptize only Abraham's spiritual descendants on the basis of their profession is a misconception.  Only God knows the heart.  Throughout the history of the church there are those who confess with mouth though they do not believe with the heart.  Not everyone who says to Jesus "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 7:22).  The angel of death passed over the homes of the Israelites who had sprinkled the blood of the Passover lamb on the lintels and posts of their doors; similarly, we sprinkle entire households with the water that pictures the shed blood of God’s Firstborn, the Passover Lamb.

Yes, because those who can receive the reality can receive the sign.

The water of baptism does not wash away sin: the sacrament is a sign of a spiritual reality, the washing away of sins by the blood of Jesus Christ.  Do some receive that reality is infants? The Bible teaches that they do.  God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they had done any good or evil, and He knew Jeremiah before He formed him in the womb.   When the Bible says that God loves and knows a person, the meaning is this: that person is saved.  The beloved apostle wrote not only to the fathers and the young men in the church but also to the little children.  What did he have to say to them?  "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake" (1 John 2:12).  Not only were their sins forgiven them, but, John declared, "You know the Father" (v. 13).  How did they know Him? Not with the knowledge of a theologian, to be sure, and not even with the knowledge of the young men or the fathers whom John also addressed, but with a knowledge comparable to the knowledge my infant son has of my husband and me.  When he was born, washed, and placed in my arms, he knew Mother and desired to be fed.  He cannot yet see my husband clearly, but in a crowd of people he turns toward Father's voice and fixes his eyes on Father's face.  He could not tell you our names - he cannot even reach out his arms for us - but he knows us.  Our presence calms his crying and elicits his first smiles.  His knowledge of us is a beautiful picture of the certain knowledge and hearty confidence without which Jesus said this: "Ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18:3).  It's the nature of healthy, living things to grow.  As our son grows physically, his knowledge of us will grow, too.  The same is true of all who are infants in the faith, no matter if they receive the gift of faith as infants or adults.  Nourished with the sincere milk of the word, they will join the rest of the family at Father's table when they are able to apply that spiritual food to themselves. 

Yes, because paedobaptism is consistent with Reformed - that is, Biblical - theology.

An infant does not choose to be born. In fact, if given the choice, he would probably not want to leave the warm familiarity of his mother's womb. But when he is born, he experiences what it means to be loved and tenderly nourished. So God regenerates and baptizes His children, then places them in the arms of mother church.  They are not born and baptized of their own will.  Ultimately, the sacrament of baptism is not a sign only to the individual who receives it.  Though believing parents and the congregation of witnesses vow to help or cause their baptized children to be instructed in the truth of the scriptures to the utmost of their power, some children of believers will leave the church, manifesting that they are not all of us (1 John 2:19).  In that sad situation the sorrowing parent, who understands that all "they are not all Israel who are of Israel," must bow before the sovereignty and goodness of God in salvation (Rom. 9:6 and 18-24).  To the individual who is baptized, the sacrament, like the preaching of gospel, is used to one of two ends, salvation or condemnation, according to the sovereign will of God (2 Cor. 2:14-16).  But when believers witness water being sprinkled on the forehead of a helpless baby, they are reminded of the washing away of their sins and their baptism into the Spirit. When Jesus Christ washed me, I was beyond helpless.  Indeed, spiritually speaking, I was dead, unaware of my sins and unable to repent of them.  But he washed me.  And not only did He wash me, He clothed me as well.  When our little boy was baptized one month ago, we dressed him a white linen romper that I had sewed for him.  I'm like him, spiritually speaking: I've been clothed in the white robes of Christ's righteousness (Is. 61:10) and sprinkled with the water of consecration (Num. 8:6-7, Ex. 36:25), set apart for His service and commanded to offer myself as a living sacrifice of thankfulness to Him (Rom. 12:1).  Because salvation is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom. 9:16).  And, wonder of wonders, He shows that mercy to the children of those who love Him to a thousand generations (Ex. 20:6).

Note: For many of these Scriptures references and passages I am indebted to our pastor for the many sermons that he has preached on baptism.

Summer Days

June's arrived, and summer's in full swing.  That means more time outdoors, and less time blogging!  We're relishing visits from family, our sweet Jem, and the sunshine (maybe with the exception of B.J., who's working hard in the heat even as I type).  I wrote the poem below at the end of last summer - it came to my mind this morning as I wiped up all the grass and water the kids tracked in when I called them in for lunch. (They'd been "swimming" in the backyard and jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler.)

May your summer be full of little tastes of God's goodness!
Here's to summer!

Summer 2015

Here’s to summer days,

To long hours of light,

To moments measured in bare feet

And mosquito bites.

To memorizing John 1

And morning devotions from Proverbs,

To waking up to the sunrise

And the airs of the songbirds. 

To sleeping at Grandma’s

And camping with cousins,

To reading and list’ning

To books by the dozens.

To crafting things out of cardboard,

Paper, and wood,

To playing LEGOs and “house”

Whenever we could.

To cutting the grass—

Our own and the neighbors’—

To hours on the trampoline

And sprinkler capers.

Here’s to piano lessons,

Swim lessons, too,

To water fights in the backyard,

And our little blue pool.

To outings at Lake Loveland

And the museum in Denver,

To our backyard view

Of firework splendor.

To every walk

And every bike ride,

To ice cream cones

And eating outside;

To Saturday grilling,

And Sunday dinners with friends,

To time spent in the garden,

And the meditations Mom penned. 

To having our groceries delivered

And maps at lunch-time,

To tomatoes, green beans,

And sweet corn subline.

To bruised shins

And skinned knees,

To the buzz of ciacdas

High in the trees.

To the gondolas in Telluride,

The pool in Ouray

To the jeep tour in the mountains

And the campsite at Ridgway.

To every cry of irritation

And every squeal of delight.

To the song of the crickets

At the dawn of the night.

To hazy, still mornings

And sultry afternoons,

To jogging together at sunrise –

All over so soon.

Here’s to summer days,

To hours sprinkled with sun,

To moments measured and treasured

And too quickly gone. 

Kaleidoscope ~ A Quilt for Eli

Jem arrived a bit sooner than I expected, so there are still a few projects on my "to-do" list that are unfinished.  That's OK - they weren't urgent anyway.  But I did finish one project the week before he was born: a quilt for Eli.  And I shouldn't say "I" - this quilt was a team effort!  Leah ironed multiple quilt blocks for me, and Willem, Marie, Nathan, and Eli pulled the paper off the back of the blocks (I sewed the strips on 8.5" x 8.5" pieces of scratch paper).  We made the quilt from fabric strips that I've been cutting and saving for several years.  Whenever I had a fabric remnant not big enough to do anything with, I would cut it into 1 1/2" - 2" wide strips and stash it away.  It was a fun project, and I have plenty of strips left to start a quilt for Sean E. sometime, too!  We named the quilt "Kaleidoscope," but we didn't come up with that title on our own - I saw a similar quilt online once, and we couldn't come up with a better name ourselves.  

Eli and me and his quilt front.

Leah and Eli and the quilt back - if they look a little chilly, snow flurries are falling while I take this picture!

One extra block - I sewed it on the back with this inscription: "For Eli - 'Kaleidoscope' - Spring '16 - Love, Mom."

A Jem for His Crown

If you had in your possession something very precious, would you loan it to someone who had repeatedly shown him or herself to be untrustworthy?  Likely not.  I wouldn’t, either.  Yet that’s what the Lord has done to B.J. and me.  Seven times over He’s entrusted us with His children.  How we are humbled when we consider our weaknesses and failures with regard to our ability and our commitment to raise them in the fear of His name!  But how we are comforted to know that He forgives our sins and equips us through His Holy Spirit and by His Word for this high calling!

Introducing…

Time to cut the cord.

First photo with Dad and Mom - too bad Dad has his eyes shut!  :-)

Lots of help with his first bath!

Happy siblings.

Second photo with Dad and Mom - too bad Mom has her eyes shut!  ;-)

Ready to go home.

We intend to call this little man “James” or “Jem” (J.E.M. also being his initials).  (Scout Finch had a Jem, and so did Anne Shirley.  I decided I’d like one, too.  ;-)

Photo shoot on the kitchen table.

Meanwhile...

Several people have asked us if we named James in honor of Jim Elliot, husband of the late Elisabeth Elliot.  No, not really, though it doesn’t bother us a bit that their names are the same.  You see, for the first three years of our marriage, I pretty much ceased reading anything that wasn’t a cookbook or a homemaking or pregnancy manual.  Just before Willem was born, we moved to the little Kramer acreage right around the corner from Dad and Mom, and I checked out Elisabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor.  Then came The Journals of Jim Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman, Passion and Purity, The Shaping of a Christian Family, Discipline: The Glad Surrender… 

I credit Elisabeth with ending my literary hiatus, necessary though it may have  been, with turning my focus from methods to principles.  Her and Jim Elliot’s devotion to the Lord was a much-needed wake-up call for me.  In the throes of midnight feedings and countless diaper changes I needed their encouragement to find my contentment in Him and to be thankful and fully present in the season of life in which I found myself: “Wherever you are, be all there.”  I told her so in a letter.  She responded via the pen of her third husband, Lars Gren, the one of whom she, having already buried two husbands, often said, “May he outlive me.”  The Almighty answered that prayer in the affirmative when Elisabeth passed through the gates of splendor last June, and again Lars responded to the sympathy card I sent him.  His note lies in the “treasure box” on my closet shelf along with his letter from several years before.

There’s not a book of Elisabeth’s from which I’ve not profited: she’s always pointed, always profound.   And with regard to our little James Elliot, when we look to the future, we can’t help but tremble.  It’s our prayer that he will grow up to be a man who is ready to give his very life for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.  After all, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

When he's not taking advantage of his distracted mama by unwrapping every bar of soap in the bathroom or throwing thousands of Perler beads around the basement, Sean's pretty smitten with "Baby James."

Nathan is my big helper at home!  Here he is "reading" to James.

And when the day comes that the Lord makes up His jewels, it’s our earnest desire and our greatest ambition that this little Jem and his six siblings will be among them.  

Dear James - Mother's Day 2016

5-8-2016

Dear James,

Several years ago I started the tradition of writing each of my children a letter for Mother's Day.  (But last year I forgot and left them at everyone's breakfast seats one week late - there were enough tears that Mother's Day morning that I don't think I'll ever forget again!)  I didn't expect to be writing a letter to you yet this year, but here you are, and I want to tell you in writing how much I love you.  Still more - I want to tell you how great our God is. 

When I first learned that I was pregnant with you, I laughed, but as my discomforts grew, so did my doubts.  Many days, particularly in the last month or so, the fear in my heart prevailed over the faith.  Just a week or two ago I told your dad, "I am not capable of faithfully raising another child."  "No, you're not," he replied.  But He is able."  And Dad was - and is - right.  Our heavenly Father is abundantly able to do far more than we can ask or imagine.  Dr. Kenigsburg prayed at my last couple of clinic visits that you would come sooner rather than later.  I've never had a baby arrive before his or her due date...until you.  Before we went to the hospital I prayed over my contracting belly for patience, endurance, and pain tolerance.  God gave all those things, plus a labor that was over much sooner than I expected.  When I was disappointed that we would have to stay in the hospital for three whole days, I prayed for contentment with God's will in that, too, and He gave you and me three peaceful, pleasant days, the memory of which I cherish.

There will be many more - and greater - trials in the days ahead, little one resting in your sleeping Daddy's arms (across the bed from a wriggling Eli and a squirming Sean - they are responsible, by the way, for the unnecessary squiggles on this card... :-).  But when we belong to such a great God, we need not fear.  He knit you together in my womb (Ps. 139); He is the one who took you out of my womb (Ps. 71); and He will carry you and me even to our oldest age, when He will finally and fully deliver us and bring us Home (Ps. 46).

I love you, James Elliot.

Mom

(More pictures of our new addition forthcoming.  :-)

Beauty and the Beholder

Several Saturdays ago my two daughters and I frequented the nearby Fantastic Sam’s for one of our periodic trims.  We were the first customers to arrive that morning: even most of the stylists wandered in after us.  In general, these women are not the carefully-groomed fashionistas that I typically associate with the beauty business.  Many sport messy pony-tails, and some come straight from the shower, their damp hair resting limply on their shoulders.  After signing in at the computer at the front desk, most of them snagged one of the magazines—Star, People, Cosmopolitan, Glamour—that littered the coffee table near which we sat and plopped into one of the seats in the three long rows of salon chairs, awaiting their first client and chatting with their fellow employees about how they’d spent their Friday night.  Snippets of the latest episodes of reality TV shows drifted our way as additional patrons trickled in, pulling crumpled Val-Pak coupons from their purses and back pockets, ensuring that their cheap haircuts would cost even less.  My younger daughter, Marie, asked if she could read one of the magazines, too.  I glanced at the cover on top of the pile—it featured a shapely starlet draped in a shred of netting leaning on a man dressed in expensive-looking tuxedo—and shook my head “no.”  Charlotte’s Web, which she had brought along, was a much better choice. 

I was third to get my hair cut.  As she parted and combed, Jamie, the stylist, complimented me on my hair color.

“Is it natural?” she asked.  I laughed.

“Yes, even the unruly gray hairs sprouting on the top of my head.”  She reassured me I fit right in with the latest trend in hair color: gray.

“We’ve even had several girls in their twenties go gray,” she commented, adding that the bizarre craze had been instigated by one or two Hollywood celebrities. 

Later that afternoon, as I made up hamburger patties to grill for supper, Marie slipped out the kitchen screen door into the backyard, predictably clad in her favorite “princess” dress-up clothes.  I did a double-take and then snickered softly.  Two big wads of Kleenex jutted from the bust of her frilly top.  But my amusement soon gave way to pensive, teary-eyed reflection.

Marie is seven years old.  Though she probably lives a fairly sheltered life in comparison to many girls her age, she’s already computed the message that the beauty of a woman can be measured by her outward appearance.  Not long and she’ll fully enter the ranks of females, young and old, who will be tempted to base their worth on the clarity of their skin, the alignment of their teeth, and the size of their breasts.  She and her older sister will fret that their waists aren’t small enough, their hips curvy enough, their legs long enough.  How do I know?  They are, after all, their mother’s daughters.

The events of that day prompted the following reflections on beauty:

1)    A Christian is a lover of beauty.

The God revealed in the Bible is indescribably beautiful.  Reformed Christians quickly define God’s grace as the undeserved favor He bestows upon those whom He has saved.  It is that, but the word “grace” also denotes God’s beauty.  His loveliness is reflected in His creation.  Consider for a moment a superb piece of music, the intricate design of a butterfly’s wings, or a glorious sunrise.  Those beautiful things move us, don’t they?  Just as you cannot study an exquisite painting or read a masterful novel without wondering about its creator, so the beautiful things in God’s world cause us to ponder His beauty.  If that’s not true of a person, Romans 1 teaches that his foolish heart is darkened, yet he is without excuse for his denial of God. 

Sean thinks spiders are beautiful.  :-)

2)    God’s beauty isn’t visible to the human eye.

God’s beautiful attributes are reflected in the things that He has made, but He is not a physical being: the things that are beautiful about Him cannot be beheld with the eye. If you’ve ever watched a movie about the life of Jesus, perhaps you noted the handsome face of the actor chosen to play the part of our Lord.  Or maybe you’ve seen a painting of what some artist thought Jesus might look like, portraying Him with radiant skin, shining hair, and gentle eyes.  The Bible teaches it was not Jesus’s looks that drew His followers to Him.  In fact, Isaiah 53 notes that His outward form and physical appearance were not at all desirable.  Rather, it was His word, gracious and authoritative, that drew throngs.

Jesus was (and is!) the image of the invisible God: Jehovah’s beautiful, spiritual attributes shine from Him.  Does His gracious, authoritative word, applied by His Holy Spirit, produce beautiful attributes in you?

3)    One’s God or god(s) dictate what he or she considers beautiful.

 Many of the gods of our nation are people who are outwardly beautiful: sports stars, models, actors and actresses.  Celebrity magazines, reality TV shows, and the Internet are like so many sacred texts divulging the lives of these idols, influencing how many live, what they wear, and who they aspire to be.  Consequently, Americans spend an exorbitant amount of time and money on pleasure-seeking, cosmetics and cosmetic surgeries, hair care, and extensive wardrobes.  The Christian, who belongs to the one true and beautiful God, understands that He beholds not only our outward appearance: he looks on the heart.  He desires to see in us the spiritual traits that make Him so lovely, attributes, like grace and holiness.  The reality that any person finds grace in His eyes, that he or she is beautiful in His sight, is an undeserved and unmerited wonder.

Who dictates how you live and how you adorn yourself?  The idol gods of our nation or the one, only, true and beautiful God revealed in the Scriptures? 

4)    Our outward appearance reflects the state of our heart.

That being said, the Christian doesn’t care only about the beauty of his or her soul.  We understand that one’s outward appearance does reflect the state of his or her heart.  God has washed, sanctified, and clothed our hearts in the beautiful robes of righteousness.  We care for our bodies out of thankfulness: we wash them and give thought to how we clothe and adorn them precisely because they are the dwelling places of the Holy Spirit and dedicated to the service of our God.  Never must we intentionally desecrate or spoil His temple.    While we could all pick out a number of things we dislike about our faces our figures, we still desire to reflect the beauty of our God outwardly as much as we are able.

We also care for our bodies and appearance out of love for our neighbor.  We guard our thoughts, words, and actions out of love for others: we tend to our own cleanliness and appearance so that our bodies don’t offend as well.  Also, many assume that in order to be attractive a woman must dress suggestively, but true beauty never intentionally incites lust.

5)    Maturity = increased beauty.

We live in a culture that equates beauty with youth and youth with beauty.  It used to be that girls looked forward to the day they could dress like their mothers, letting down their hems and putting up their hair.  Now it’s not uncommon to see middle-aged women dressed like their teen-aged daughters, their hair dyed the same color, their jeans purchased at the same “hip” store.  The aging process is a consequence of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin: it’s a reminder that we’re dying, and that death is a just punishment for sin.  But the natural progression in life should be that as one ages, he or she also matures, and one’s appearance should reflect that.   

The same is true of the spiritual life of the Christian.  We’re called to be adults in understanding (1 Cor. 14:20), and we’re commanded to continually grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 3:18).  The Christian doesn’t want to remain a spiritual child, nor even a young adult!  We want to reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13)!  There is beauty to maturity.  It’s not a sin to dye one’s hair or wear make-up, but the signs of age shouldn’t dismay us.  The Bible teaches that the beauty of the elderly is their gray head.  Why is that?  Because it indicates a measure of godliness and wisdom that the young don’t possess (Prov. 20:29, Prov. 16:31).

6)    Indescribable beauty awaits.

When he lived as man on this earth, Jesus’ physical appearance was very ordinary.  But when our Savior comes again on the clouds of heaven, He will be beautiful to behold!  The man whose “visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” will shine like the sun (Is. 52:14, Rev. 1:12–18).  On that day, you and I will be made beautiful, too.  Like clumsy, earth-bound caterpillars metamorphose into a breathtaking, feather-light butterflies, so our bodies–whether still alive or long in the grave–will be remade into bodies that are immortal and incorruptible.  Nor will our souls be soiled with the ugliness of sin any longer.  And forever we will dwell in the presence of our beautiful Savior and the ineffably lovely Triune God.

It was that beauty that David desired to behold all the days of his life (Ps. 27:4).  Is that your desire, too?  And do you desire to be found beautiful in the eyes of the One who beholds all things, the God who sees and searches each heart? 

Madness and Divine Sense

So this is the world in which we live:

Emily Dickinson comes to mind:

Much Madness is divinest Sense--
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense--the starkest Madness--
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail--
Assent--and you are sane--
Demur,--you're straightway dangerous--
And handled with a Chain--

New Specs

Marie Eve, "Eever" (as Sean E. calls her) or "Marieeve" (as Eli refers to her), got Grandpa VE's strawberry hair, Daddy's olive skin, and the nearsighted genes that dominate both sides of the family.

Here she is serving "soup" to those little brothers...

...and here she is sporting her new specs!

"Winter is Dead"

Daffodowndilly

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,

She wore her greenest gown;

She turned to the south wind

And curtsied up and down.

She turned to the sunlight

And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbour:

"Winter is dead."

~ A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young, pg. 32

God Gave Us Family...

...and how we enjoyed three members of our family last week!  Dad, Mom, and Jerron made the trip to CO over Mom and Jerron's spring break.  We thoroughly enjoyed a relaxing, pleasant week with them.  Thanks again for making the trip here, you three - we love you!

We were so busy enjoying 70-degree weather on Monday evening and Tuesday - eating with the windows open and a walk to the park - that I forgot to take out my camera.  A spring blizzard hit on Wednesday.  The wet, heavy snow and strong wind meant school was canceled for BJ and an ecstatic Leah, Willem, and Marie.  Once the guys dug out a lady whose car was stuck on an adjacent street and shoveled our driveway, we enjoyed a cozy day indoors.

Dad at least seems to be enjoying himself.  ;-)

We played several board games - Clue here.

Uncle Jerron being a good sport as his nieces and nephews bury him with snow.

We relished reading with Grandpa,

crocheting with Grandma,

a couple of games of Ticket to Ride,

cookie-baking,

cookie-dough snitching, ;-)

and Oregon-Trailing.

Sean E. sharing Apples Don't Grow on Pear Trees with Granpda.

Thursday's early morning full moon.

Playing trains with Grandma.

Enjoying those cookies...and Grandma's lap.

Even Midnight got some some extra cuddling!
(Sorry I didn't double check whether your eyes were open on this one, Jer!)

Playing Rock-a-Bye with Grandpa.

How we love you!
God be with you 'til we meet again!