Knitting Kids, a mini-thought

I have learned in the past two months that I really don't like to knit. I embarked on what seemed to be a not very ambitious project in the beginning of December, to knit my D#4 a pair of leg warmers for ballet. Learning to knit on circular needles was not a big deal. Relearning how to cast on, how to purl and how to bind off was easy. But oh! The process was tedious.

I think I don't like to knit for the same reason I don't like to dry and curl my hair in the morning: you just have to keep going and going and going, and wait and wait and wait while you keep going and going and going. And so little seems to get accomplished for such a long investment of effort! (I'm being a little dramatic here with the hair comparison. I don't really have that much hair -- I'm just impatient to get going in the morning.)

And then you can't even know if you're going to like the finished project until it's all done and bound off and tried on! You can guess at the size as it drops down from the needles, you can decide if you like the look of the stitches and the color of the yarn. But the real fit has to wait until nothing more can be done about it if it's wrong.

Such has been the case with the one leg warmer I've completed. I like the color, like the stitch pattern, but it's a little too baggy, so it falls down her leg after she's worn it awhile. And it's too short by about 4 inches, but I ran out of yarn. How was I to know that I should have bought 3 skeins of that yarn instead of 2, that each leg would require one and a half skeins rather then just one? I couldn't have known until I was done.

So now I have another skein that needs to be knitted into another inferior warmer for her other leg. I asked her if she'd consider being a one-legged ballerina, but that doesn't seem to be an option. Either I knit one for the other leg, or I throw the first one away and consider the whole project a bust. Hm. I'll probably start knitting.

But anyway, as I knitted away, arthritic thumbs crackling with every stitch, I couldn't help but think about the parallels between knitting and raising kids. It does at times seem to go on and on forever with very little to show for a large investment of effort. It's hard to see the importance of the millions of little tasks along the way. But they add up to create the whole in the end, and the integrity of the whole will depend greatly on the soundness of each "stitch" along the way.

And we can see hints of the final product as we go, but the end result will have to wait.

That thought comforted me as I knitted. I have confidence, however, that I am going to be much more pleased with the end result of raising these four kids than I am with that leg warmer!

My Hero, Elisabeth Elliot

I love Elisabeth Elliot. Right now I'm reading a book by her entitled A Chance to Die, The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael. I love the book because I love her. Amy Carmichael is to E.E. what E.E. is to me I think.

Anyway, I look forward to blogging about A Chance to Die sometime soon – next time I get a day to myself maybe, so don't hold your breath. But I'm still optimistic it will happen, because I do love the book.

But I mention E.E. because soon after I published my last blog entry, I read my daily e-mail devotional from E.E. She discussed, of all things, time alone. See why I love her? It was so pertinent to our most recent conversation that I have to copy 'n' paste it here for your perusal. Here we go: (By the way, she seems to take the long, round-about road to get to her point in this essay -- just like I so often do. Ahh, yet another reason to love her!)

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Love Has A Price Tag
Scripture Reference:

Junk Food

If you're hungry, the airport in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is not a good place to be. The selection of "snacks" in the vending machine is impressive, but there is nothing at all that one could call food. You can insert your quarters, nickels and dimes (no pennies) and get chocolate chip cookies, potato chips (plain), potato chips with "bar-B-Q" flavor, potato chips with sour cream and onion (artificial) flavor, potato "Stix," pork rinds, corn chips, "Cornies," "Pub Fries," "Cheddar Fries," "Cheetos," "Cheese Smackers," and things called "Doritos," "Bugles," "yammers" and "Dunkums."

Alongside that machine is another one offering brightly colored aluminum cans of sweet fizzy stuff with which to wash down all those snacks or, I suppose, to Dunkum. I don't like to contemplate what state your blood sugar or your nerves or your sanctification would be in if your supper comprised a Tab and a package of Jammers, but on second thought, a look around the boarding lounge of almost any airport--at the facial expressions, the behavior of the pre-school-age tots, and the remarks overheard--give a clue. We are a nation "overfed but undernourished," to borrow the title of Curtis Wood's book.

Junk food is not nourishment. It's easily available (if you have the right coins). It is packaged up in eye-catching wrappings, presumably untouched by human hands. It can be transported to plane, to beach, to movie theatre, to school, to bed. It can be grabbed in a moment, wolfed down on the run; and there are no preparations to make, nothing to clean up except greasy fingers. It does away altogether with the ritual of eating--the laid table, the attractive presentation of a dish, the fellowship with others, the leisure to enjoy. In a world that has lost or discarded nearly all other rituals, what will become of us if we do away with even this one?

But worst of all, junk food feeds (feeding will make you fat) but does not nourish. Nourishment makes you strong. I sat on the molded fiberglass seat in Fayetteville, waiting for the small plane which would take me to Tulsa, and wished for a few crunchy fat Bing cherries or a slice of the wheat-honey bread that I make regularly at home--real food.

Don't misunderstand. I like potato chips. I like Cheetos. I haven't tried the commercially packaged pork rinds, but I certainly enjoyed the kind the Indians gave me in South America--fished out of a cauldron of hot fat bubbling over an open fire in some jungle clearing, eaten with a chunk of steamed manioc or a plantain roasted in the ashes.

We are people of our times and culture. Because of the "schedule" I seem to be obliged to keep, I am always looking for ways to use my time more efficiently, and one of them is to listen to tapes while I do my hair and face. I switched the recorder off the other day, disgusted with what I told my husband was spiritual junk food. A man was rambling on about his own feelings, his "meaningful" experiences, and how he got in touch with himself, with other people, and with God. No doubt he was telling the truth, but there wasn't a single reference to Scripture, and not much there that would nourish me.

Christian bookstores usually carry some real "meat," if you can find it. It is not likely to be up front where the paperbacks, the tapes and the records are, which display on their jackets color photographs of the author, the speaker or the singer, often taken in an open meadow, in a soft, misty light, and with a few wildflowers. (Are there any analogies here artificial color, perhaps, or flavor? What about preservatives? I understand preservatives are used in foods to give a longer "shelf life." The booksellers have thought of some tricks, I'm sure, to keep their wares in the public eye for a few weeks longer, but no trick takes the place of quality for preserving a book's shelf life.)

Tastes are developed. Solzhenitsyn, in his speech at Harvard a few months ago, deplored the "TV stupor" in which Americans live. He spoke of the decadence of art, of intolerable music, of mass prejudice, spiritual exhaustion, material luxury, and a morally inferior happiness. He is right. Alas, his own experience of totalitarianism and concentration camp gives him the perspective and the authority to judge our society. We must hear him.

Doctors have been learning of the physical exhaustion that can result from artificial or refined or highly sugared foods. Might not one cause of the spiritual exhaustion which Solzhenitsyn observes be the spiritual junk food we consume? What shall be done for the child fed on the snack-pack, the soft drink and the TV dinner? Will he never choose, let alone enjoy, vegetables? Will the Christian whose spiritual sustenance has been limited to the mass-produced, who is accustomed only to "snacking," whose tastes have been conditioned by the majority, ever choose what is truly nourishing?

What it comes down to, with regard to spiritual things, is that we ought to learn to do some of our own cooking. Granted, it is much easier to grab a package. But sometimes we ought to start from scratch.

Let us start with silence. That may be the hardest thing to achieve in our world. But it is not impossible. For one thing, it takes the will to be quiet. It is possible to be quiet on a crowded subway or in the kitchen when the bacon is frying, the washing machine is running and the baby wants more milk. It is easier by far to be quiet when things around us are quiet, and for most of us this means getting up early.

I was in my study this morning before the traffic had started up on Route 1A. No sound came from the road or the house. Only the sweet susurrus of the crickets in the grass and the cawing of a crow in a beech tree broke the silence, yet it took also an act of the will to be still and know that He is God. My mind races quite naturally over things done yesterday (burying a beloved friend's beloved little dog, getting my sister from the hospital, swimming in the ocean, writing a page or two) or things to be done today (writing more than a page or two, having a friend to tea, getting my mother from the airport). Be still. It is a command. The Hebrew word used in Psalm 46 can mean "Shut up."

The great books that have been spiritual meat and drink for me have been produced, I feel sure, out of great silence. Men and women of God have learned of him by being quiet and allowing him to speak to them in their solitude. They have been willing to be alone, to shut up, to listen, and to think and pray over what they have heard. In our modern world most people choose noise. Go to the beach or a forest camp and find portable radios, television sets, record players. Sit down in a waiting room and listen to what Malcolm Muggeridge calls that "drooling melange" of Muzak. People want noise. They would far rather discuss than think, talk over their problems than pray about them, read a paperback about what somebody else thinks about the Bible than read the Bible.

We cannot stand stillness. Yet we need it. I wonder if the popularity of transcendental meditation is due to this felt need. Whatever may be said about TM's being a religion or not, the measure of success it seems to enjoy could be attributed in part to the simple fact that its devotees spend a certain amount of time daily in motionless silence. That can't hurt anybody.

As one of those who write the stuff that is for sale in the bookstores I referred to, I know that responsibility is laid upon me to provide real food. So I speak to myself--I must do my own "cooking." It is not fast food that I ought to provide for my reader. I must feed him, but in order to do that I must myself be fed. What I speak or write must come out of silence where only a still small voice can be heard.

I speak also to my reader. Seek what is good for the soul, even if it doesn't come in paperback. Read an old book once in a while. (Try P. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, or Luther's Letters of Spiritual Counsel.) And once in a while lay aside the books and the tapes. For a set period of time be alone, be still. "The man who lives on me will live because of me," Jesus said. "This is the bread which came down from heaven."

Copyright 1979, by Elisabeth Elliot
all rights reserved.

Part II

After Christmas I posted a blog entry entitled, "Overwhelmed." I talked about feeling like I was drowning in work I couldn't get to, about the need to bring this difficulty to God on a minute by minute basis. What I didn't tell you in that post was how it all related so perfectly to the "constructive criticism" I had for my friends during the past weeks. 

One day in the midst of the Christmas crush, in lofty tones, I told my sister all about the error of my friends' ways, even though I knew I was throwing stones at her glass house. She loves me still, which is a testament to her Godliness because I was pretty frank with her. I cannot recant my words, however. I know God is making me eat them somewhat, but everything I said, all my frustrations and grievances, are still just too true.

That feeling of drowning in work I couldn't get to has been an on-going saga all through the month of January. It is a multi-faceted issue, also relating to my homeschooling efforts with very social daughter #4. (Actually, she's child #4 who happens to be a daughter. Technically, she'd be daughter #2…but I'm going to go with daughter #4 here.) It also relates to T's decision that our kitchen is a much more comfortable office in the morning than his real office, which happens to be a 50 minute drive from home. And it has to do with my own introverted personality, which requires (apparently) a bare minimum of 5 minutes a day of quiet somewhere between 6:30 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. (I'm a very high-maintenance gal, I know.)

By the way, when I told you all about our new mattress did I mention that it came with a new TV? We haven't had a TV in our bedroom since the early days of marriage. Never missed it, but neither did it ever occur to me that it would actually be a problem to have one either. So when this monstrosity was thrust upon us, I viewed it benignly. Disinterested, really. 

T, however, was very interested. Up it went onto the wall, snip, snap – with great alacrity and attention to the minutest detail: the best height for viewing with minimal neck strain, aesthetic considerations accounted for, centered perfectly, cords (somewhat) hidden.

Well, getting back to the point, even with one kid off to college, my life is in the throes of blessing with three busy children still at home, one homeschooled, and a husband whose business life is very much intermixed with his/our social life. It is a glorious, albeit ping-pong ball-like, existence. The rush begins with opening my eyes, throwing on my workout clothes, dashing downstairs to make coffee and throw lunches together, just in time to scramble into the car and take the kids to school at 7. Off to the gym to work out until 8:30. Back home to find T getting his day rolling at the kitchen table (my office, by the way). Shower, D#4 is up and hopefully beginning her schoolwork. The hours from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. are spent juggling her schoolwork, my housework, and T's little needs for food/conversation/questions/reminders of things I need get done (thank you, dear), all while jumping every time he's on the phone to make sure she isn't practicing piano, trying to shush him or urge him into another room if she's trying to concentrate on her work (imagine that…). By 1:00 most afternoons, we're off somewhere – ballet, her Bright Lights group, piano lesson. Except on Friday, when we're off by 9 a.m. to a full day of home school classes. Then back home to finish schoolwork, homework for S#3, dinner, hockey practices/games, coordinating work schedule for D#2, choir concerts, etc. Drop into bed and start all over the next day.

Do I sound like I'm complaining? Really I'm not (except the parts about T working in my kitchen – okay, there I'm complaining). It is great. Life is full and busy and who would want it any other way?
What I didn't realize, however, was how much of my ability to cope with all this fullness was predicated on that 5 minutes of solitude and quiet I have just before I drop off to sleep. Well, that and having some time during the day to focus on my work without interruption or distraction, which is where my griping about T and his new office habits comes into the conversation. D#4 and her schoolwork is a distraction from my housework, but somehow that's different…she is my work. This is the way my thoughts went.

Which brings me to a tangential, but relevant, issue. Biblically, he is my first priority, not the kids. I am his helpmate. Where does it get into my head that D#4 and the others can have a piece of my day – a huge chunk of my very life – but if T asks for any, he is an encumbrance from my real work? So I've been concentrating on getting that sorted out in my head. I really like T, and I'm so glad he seems to like me. He talks to me, which is more than a lot of women can say. And apparently he likes being around me. How lucky am I? He is very much a part of what God has put on my plate – loving him and meeting his needs for conversation, food, attention, etc. And God is not such a cruel task-master that He gives an assignment without providing the time and resources to complete the assignment. Right?

So this is where I've been called on to take the log out of my own eye before I quibble about the specks in my friends' eyes. Time to put my money where my mouth is. If I'm thinking I'm "too busy," "stressed-out," "feeling overwhelmed," then one of two things is happening: either I'm rebellious about what I have to do, or there are things on my list of chores that are not on God's list of chores. Or maybe it's just that the list will take all my time, when I wanted some of that time for myself. No matter the scenario, complete surrender to God precludes being stressed-out.

Okay well, rebellion aside, my situation had put a strain on every introverted fiber of my being. The night before last that TV flickering and talking at me during my once-coveted 5 minutes of dark solitude was the last straw. The camel's back broke, and I exploded, "Turn it off! If you don't I'm going to unscrew the d*mn thing from the wall!!!" I'm not very eloquent at 1 a.m. Otherwise I might have added more about what I was going to do with it once I'd unscrewed it. But, nevertheless, he turned it off.

And as is the case in every healthy marriage, my outburst went unmentioned the next morning. None of this new-fangled "talking things out" for us, and we like it that way. (At least I liked it that way that morning.)

So it was Saturday morning and as it happened, he was off to Chicago. He had a business meeting on Monday morning, but decided to head out there a day early with his brother to visit with an old college roommate. The morning progressed with its usual hairiness, lots to do, kids to see off here and there, D#2 had a car accident, a father came by to pick up the little friend who had slept over, etc. But finally, by 3:15 in the afternoon, he was off with his brother. Son #3 was at a movie, D#2 was gone for the day (even after the car accident), and I had 30 minutes of time alone before D#4 returned from her dance classes.

Oh happy day!!! Oh glory be!!! I could hardly believe it! I went straight upstairs to my beloved bed. Honestly, it was a physical response – my heart was thumping wildly, my breath was rapid, even as my eyes closed and my muscles fairly swooned as they sank into that blessed pillow-top mattress. (Don't tell me muscles can't swoon. I'm telling you mine did.)

I lay there close to 10 minutes, torn between a physical need for sleep and an emotional need to be awake and alone…when the phone rang. T and his brother were at the Sunoco station down the road and had somehow locked the keys in the car. Would I come and unlock the car with the spare key? I answered none too gently in the affirmative, hung up, and cried out to God in a very loud voice, "LORD, HE'S TRYING TO KILL ME! HE IS! HE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW IT, BUT HE'S TRYING TO KILL ME!" I wonder if God laughed.

I survived, didn't die at all. T called as I was driving to Sunoco and asked what was taking so long? How could I explain to him, to the man who strives so purposefully to make sure he never spends a single moment alone, never has a single thought or emotion unsupported by outside noise and commotion, that I was dying of togetherness, not just with T but with the whole world, that I took so long because I needed to accuse him before God of attempted murder? 

No sense in even going there.
T's weekend in Chicago has been God's gift of rejuvenation to me. God knew my need and had plans to meet it all along. I had lots of quiet time and am a new woman already. I really am not a high-maintenance gal.

So, I was a little stressed, wasn't I? But I still maintain, complete surrender to God does preclude being stressed out. God understands about me what T cannot begin to understand – that need, that honest, visceral need for a little time alone every once in a while. And God is able to meet that need. T doesn't even have to know about it; God takes care of me, just like He did this weekend. Maybe next time I'll call on God for help (or wait a little more patiently for His provision) before I go the way of comedic emotional outbursts. But then what would I have to blog about?

Laziness, Laundry, Logs, etc.

I spent some weeks at the end of last year a little disgusted with some of my friends. Just saddened, deeply saddened, as I noticed that most of our interaction revolved around various permutations of complaints, especially complaints of being busy, stressed-out, overwhelmed. My first reaction was to be not only sad, but annoyed and angry that they would go by the name of Christian but have so little cognizance that our time, our days, our minutes, are all His. 

I understand forgetting that. I understand confusion as we bring our time and our chores to God and say, 'Lord, how will all this get done? What here does not belong on the list, because clearly there is not enough time to do this?" I understand God somehow magnifying our time, creating unexpected pockets of time. I understand God revealing that certain things on the list do not belong there, are our agenda and not His. And I understand needing to be reminded of this perspective. 

But what I didn't understand, what saddened me, was that these ideas were completely absent from the conversations, even from their thoughts. I was grieved as I realized that any conversation along those lines just didn't fit in, was a wet blanket, resulted in blank stares and maybe an awkward, embarrassed concurrence.

There are Christian heroes from the past that I envision spending hours on their knees every day – George Mueller, Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor. I picture that they had the mammoth discipline to arise early while it was still dark, to meditate on the Word and pray, committing all the details of their day to God, leaving their place of pray glowing with holiness from their lofty meditations. 

I don't have that. I am rank with human-ness. But I do commit my way to the Lord. I do ask Him what He would have me do, and how He would have me do it. And if it seems undoable, I do ask Him for help or direction. I think I do. I probably do less than I'm giving myself credit for, but certainly if I'm stressed or in a bind, He's the place I go. And it's not because I'm so holy – it's only because I know He's there to ask for help. If my work is His, where else is there to go?

What I have realized is that for me, and I don't know that others share this inclination, but when I am feeling stressed about my chores, often it's not that I don't know when it will all get done – it's that I don't really want to do something on that list. There is something or more than one thing on that list that I am feeling rebellious about doing. So I need to talk to God about that, confess my rebellion over what He's asked me to do that I'm giving Him a hard time about, and ask His help to do it anyway. 

For me today it is laundry and FAFSA – that nasty financial aid form everyone has to fill out. (I don't think it will amount to anything, but with two in college next year and with T's work not going too well, it would only be laziness to not at least fill the thing out.) But let me at least call it what it is. I don't want to tackle the mountain of laundry, and even more, I do not want to fill out that form. This is not about not having time. I'm rebellious. I'm just being a brat and I need to repent and get it over with.

Christmas can bring a lot of this on. There are parts of Christmas work that I do like. I do like to cook and bake, but I hate grocery shopping. I like to buy gifts and wrap them, but I hate decorating and putting up the Christmas tree. And then taking the tree and decorations down – oy! It's salt in the wound! I hated putting the things up, and now I have to take them all down and get all those ridiculous ditties and knick-knacks safely tucked away again, just so they can live to annoy me again next year!!!! I can really cop an attitude, for even weeks at a time while I procrastinate!

But please. Let's call it what it is. It is just rebellion. It's not being too busy. It is a part of the job assigned to me by God. I can take all my crabbiness out on my family, but He's the one telling me to do it and He's the one I'm grouchy with if I decide to cop that attitude, or get depressed, or get mad at T, or eat cookies, or whatever other form my rebellious squirming might take.

Well, I have more to say about this. Actually I haven't even gotten to my point here yet, but I am feeling the need to get up and start a load of laundry. I'll post Part II later tonight I hope, because what I'm really getting at here is God's sense of humor, that if I'm going to remark about the speck in my friends' eyes, I should have guessed He would require that I take the log out of my own eye. I've been learning all about that. Oy!

Small Dog, Big Yap

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I issued this apology after posting Jesus Land. After reading the profusion of comments on this post, I don't feel quite so apologetic anymore. I'll leave the post up only because the responses are so interesting and deserve to be heard. And it does remain true that I have no first hand knowledge of the school or its staff. The blog entry, "Jesus Land" (which I've since reposted), was only my reaction to the book by that name; I'll leave it up to the reader to decide for himself if the book is a reliable source of information.
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It appears that if you talk long enough, you'll eventually say something stupid. (Proverbs 10:19, Where there are many words, transgression is unavoidable; But he who restrains his lips is wise.)
While it boggles my mind that anyone finds and reads my blog, apparently it does find its way onto a computer screen or two. As a result, I have been reminded today of my responsibility to be careful with the truthfulness of what I post.
I have taken down the post "Jesus Land," which I published last week sometime. In this post I presented conclusions and personal insights drawn from a book by that name. This book is the memoir of one Julia Scheeres. She grew up in a strongly Christian environment and for a time attended a school in the Dominican Republic called Escuela Caribe.
I was contacted today by the man who runs Escuela Caribe; he was also #2-man during the months Julia Scheeres was there. He read that post and kindly informed me that I needed to be careful not to believe everything I read.
After apologizing, I told Mr. Seabrook I would change the post to remove any disparaging reference to his school. But honestly, now that the possibility has entered my thick head that I could have been reading untruths, I don't think I had any business posting about that book at all. I have no idea what parts of this book are true and what parts aren't regarding her family or the school. In addition, truths can be shaded, and human interactions are always complicated, multi-faceted and nuanced. I should have realized right off that this account, while sensational and definitely interesting, was not a reliable source of information as it presented only one side of a story fraught with human drama and told from the perspective of an angry teenager. No reasonable conclusions or lessons can be drawn from this book at all.
I am sorry for casting Escuela Caribe in a negative light, and for unwittingly providing advertisement for a book that does the same.

Jesus Land

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Apparently there's a storm a-brewin' over this book and New Horizons Youth Ministry, which runs Escuela Caribe referenced below. I'm not involved in this debate in any way. This post is only my reaction to Julia Scheeres book and insights I drew from it personally as a Christian. My judgments and observations are based on information from the book, without any further investigation into the veracity of Ms. Scheeres claims. However, the firestorm of comments elicited from the next post on this blog (Small Dog, Big Yap) are very convincing.
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My son needed some books for school, so he and I were scouring the bookshelves down in the basement the other night and I stumbled on a book I don't remember ever seeing before. I cannot imagine where I got it. Maybe I bought it on sale? Or maybe my sister lent it to me? Can't say. But it caught my attention, so I brought it upstairs to read. It's called Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres, and it is a page-turner.
The book is a memoir, the horrifying true story of her growing up in a Christian home. Maybe I shouldn't "like" the book because it does paint an extremely disparaging picture of Christians and Christian family life. Her cynicism toward all things Christian pervades the story. I can't blame her given the atmosphere in her home, the deep dysfunction of her parents and, essentially, their neglect and their lack of love for their children. What child could possibly not be angry and needy and bitter under those circumstances? What child would not be completely crippled emotionally in that home?
As a Christian, it's a weird read. It was disconcerting to hear the sneer in her voice, her mocking tone, as she described a church service, the pastor interacting with his flock, taking communion, a Sunday school teacher, or the well-intentioned people she and her siblings interacted with in church. But it was weird to recognize everything she describes as an intrinsic part of my own current family life, the fabric of what I've deliberately inculcated into my own children's upbringings – yet she gives it all such an ugly twist, making the basic tenets of Christianity sound ridiculous and church people seem daffy.
So, from my perspective, knowing that the basic tenets of Christianity are not ridiculous and that the people who worship God are not daffy, I'm left with a sobering picture of what evil is done to the name of Christ when folks play Christian without any serious intention of obeying Christ. If her parents were going to be unloving, how much better if she had been raised in a non-religious home! Then she could have discovered the love of Christ as true and the answer to her heart's ache. But instead, Christ became inextricably connected to the abuse she and her siblings suffered at their parents' hands. It's a sickening tragedy.
Eventually she and her same-age sibling (an adopted African-American brother) are sent to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic, Escuela Caribe. Apparently it's a type of boot camp, but with a Christian substructure that makes the overseers appear, as she describes them, to be deranged psychopaths.
I was struck as I read the story of their experience in the reform school with the fact that she and her brother were not the guilty parties in need of reform. Their behavior was only a reaction to their unmet need for tenderness and affection, and they were essentially being punished for their parents' misconduct. The school dealt with their rebellion, but not with the reason for their rebellion. (And it didn't appear that her brother was rebellious at all; the parents seemed to just want to be rid of him. Turns out he was not the only one at Escuela Caribe whose preeminent crime was that of being an inconvenience.) In fact, the school ended up being more of what they had experienced at home, just cranked up several notches: the harsh administration of authority with no foundation in love.
So the book gives us an alarming portrait of what Christianity looks like without love: at best punitive and austere, at worst fiendish and sadistic.
That isn't the way God deals with His children. All His laws are given with the best interest of His children in mind, because He knows their happiness and well-being depends on adherence to these laws, not the other way around. But what a picture this story is of what happens when God's ways are shoved down children's throats without the backdrop of tender affection.
It's a wake-up call to me to make sure that my love for my children mirrors God's love for them. If I'm going to proclaim His truth, I'd better live it out in gentleness, kindness and respect.

Christmas Break is Over…

I read this excerpt of Tozer's a few days ago. (I found it on the internet somewhere – can't remember where anymore.) But it's great food for thought.

I'm so guilty, especially now around the holidays with so many demands on my time, so many (lovely) people around, so little time alone. It's way too easy to float along, to forget my first love. But now Christmas break is over and it's time to get back to business.

I don't want to become a shallow Christian, one who plays the church-y game, who knows all the verses and how to talk like a Christian and especially how to look like a Christian, who runs around all the church functions like a big-shot, but has no personal walk with God. Oh Lord, save me from that. I want to live to obey You and to know You more fully.

(Truthfully, we don't do any running around at all the church functions…we don't do any church functions at all. And that's okay by me, actually.)

Anyway, this excerpt from Tozer reminds me that my Christianity is a journey, a pursuit, not just a fact. I was born again, and now, just like any newborn grows, I need to grow, not stagnate. And I need to make conscious choices to that facilitate growth, like reading, memorizing and meditating on the Word, and communing with God in prayer, praising Him, pouring out my heart and expressing my trust in His care.

This takes time. That's the kicker. It takes discipline to carve out the time. But O Lord, I want to do it. Help me be a growing believer.

God and Men

Excerpted from Of God and Men

To talk of "better" Christians is to use language foreign to many persons. To them all Christians are alike; all have been justified and forgiven and are the children of God, so to make comparisons between them is to suggest division and bigotry and any number of horrible things.

What is forgotten is that a Christian is a born-one, an embodiment of growing life, and as such may be retarded, stunted, undernourished or injured very much as any other organism. Favorable conditions will produce a stronger and healthier organism than will adverse conditions. Lack of proper instructions, for instance, will stunt Christian growth. A clear example of this is found in Acts 19, where an imperfect body of truth had produced a corresponding imperfect type of Christian. It took Paul, with a fuller degree of truth, to bring these stunted disciples into a better and healthier spiritual state.

Unfortunately it is possible for a whole generation of Christians to be victims of poor teaching, low moral standards and unscriptural or extrascriptural doctrines, resulting in stunted growth and retarded development. It is little less than stark tragedy that an individual Christian may pass from youth to old age in a state of suspended growth and all his life be unaware of it. Those who would question the truth of this have only to read the First Epistle to the Corinthians and the Book of Hebrews. And even a slight acquaintance with church history will add all the further proof that is needed. Today there exist in the world certain Christian bodies whose histories date far back. These have perpetuated themselves after their kind for hundreds of years, but they have managed to produce nothing but weak, stunted Christians, if Christians they can be called. Common charity forbids that we identify these by name, but any enlightened believer will understand.

Evangelicalism as we know it today in its various manifestations does produce some real Christians. We have no wish to question this; we desire rather to assert it unequivocally. But the spiritual climate into which many modern Christians are born does not make for vigorous spiritual growth. Indeed, the whole evangelical world is to a large extent unfavorable to healthy Christianity. And I am not thinking of Modernism either. I mean rather the Bible-believing crowd that bears the name of orthodoxy.

We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone. Large and influential sections of the world of fundamental Christianity have gone overboard for practices wholly unscriptural, altogether unjustifiable in the light of historic Christian truth and deeply damaging to the inner life of the individual Christian. They have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost. The glowworm has taken the place of the bush that burned and scintillating personalities now answer to the fire that fell at Pentecost.

The fact is that we are not today producing saints. We are making converts to an effete type of Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian in our times is but a wretched parody on true sainthood. Yet we put millions of dollars behind movements to perpetuate this degenerate form of religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of it.

Clearly we must begin to produce better Christians. We must insist on New Testament sainthood for our converts, nothing less; and we must lead them into a state of heart purity, fiery love, separation from the world and poured-out devotion to the Person of Christ. Only in this way can the low level of spirituality be raised again to where it should be in the light of the Scriptures and of eternal values.

AW Tozer