Faith

Categories Everyday Life, Faith

Grace for Today

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All my worst fears came true in Tirzah Mae’s birth.

Is it odd that I never really feared for our baby’s safety? There were days when I was distracted or particularly active and didn’t notice movement so I worried – but, in general, I was at peace.

What I really feared was risking out of home birth, having to deliver in a hospital. When I started retaining water, I feared pre-eclampsia. Most of all, I feared a c-section.

All my worst fears came true in Tirzah Mae’s birth.

And God’s grace was there for each circumstance as it arose.

God’s grace was not there for the fear and anxiety leading up to delivery.

I worried and fretted and stressed over the potential of pre-eclampsia, of risking out of home birth, of having a hospital birth, of a c-section. In all that, grace was absent.

God gave His command long ago when He told the people not to worry about tomorrow.

Worrying about tomoorrow is fruitless- tomorrow will have worries, sure, but God’s grace is available for today’s trials.

Despite my weeks of increasing dread, when the time came, God’s grace and peace was there.

When the urine test at the midwife’s office showed 3+ protein, I went into the waiting room and told my husband and grieved for less than 5 minutes over the loss of a homebirth. God’s grace was there.

When the OB checked my blood pressure and my protein and sent me to the hospital, I settled in for a long hospitalization with a calm every nurse remarked upon. God’s grace was there.

When the perinatalogist said that my platelets were droping and we needed to induce at 32 weeks, God’s grace was there.

When 12 hours of magnesium and cervidil left me exhausted and feeling a foreigner in my own skin, I calmly discussed with my husband and God’s grace was there as I asked the doctor for what had been my worst fear – a c-section.

I learned that God gives grace, not for the worries of tomorrow He commanded us to cast on Him, but for the actual events He gives us in today.

The hymn proclaims

“Strength for today
and bright hope for tomorrow
Blessings all mine
With ten thousand beside.”

And the hymn is absolutely right. God gives the strength and grace for every today – but gives only the hope that allows us to cast every tomorrow’s anxieties upon Him.

May I, may we ever bask in today’s grace – and ever cast tomorrow’s anxieties on Him whose grace is sufficient when tomorrow becomes today.

Categories Following Christ, Pregnancy, Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday: Truth in Song

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As we showered this morning, I began to sing “It is Well with My Soul” (secretly enjoying the allergy-deepened sound of my own voice.)

“When peace like a river
attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever the cost
Thou hast taught me to say
“It is well, it is well with my soul.”

It is well (It is well)
With my soul (With my soul)
It is well, it is well with my soul.”

I began on the second verse

“Though Satan should buffet
Though trials shall come…

And I stopped, searching my mental song bank for the rest of the verse. Where was the promise of deliverance, the reassurance that everything would be all right, the reminder that the trials would not overwhelm?

I gave up my quest and sang what came to mind.

“Let this blest assurance control
That God hath regarded my sinful estate
and hath shed His own blood for my soul.”

It was only after I’d finished the third verse that I realized the truth.

“My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin, not in part but the whole,
was nailed to the cross
And I bear it no more.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!”

That had been the second part of the second verse. This song offers no blest assurance of some future event in this life. Instead, it harkens back to a blest assurance already completed: “That God hath regarded my sinful estate and hath shed his own blood for my soul.”

Yes, the looming threat of preeclampsia, of having to have a hospital birth, of maybe having to quit my job early and be on bed rest, of not being able to fully participate in our upcoming family vacation, of maybe going into premature labor – all those are trials that may come.

But my greatest problem has already been solved. My sin has been paid for, my soul secure. This is where my hope lies, not in happy outcomes on this earth, but in a blood-purchased ransom already accomplished.

So I will sing again through the tears.

“It is well (It is well)
With my soul (With my soul)
It is well, it is well with my soul.”

Categories Pregnancy, Theology

Is Painless Childbirth Possible?

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I think it was Dr. Bradley who stated that pain is not a necessary part of childbirth – and claimed that stating that pain *is* necessary to childbirth is a misapplication of Genesis 3.

But I don’t think a plain reading of Scripture supports that view:

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.”
~Genesis 3:16 (ESV)

In fact, I think a plain reading suggests that pain was likely a part of childbearing even prior to the fall – since this verse refers to multiplication (which implies something pre-existing to multiply – multiplying by 0 doesn’t make anything). And certainly, it clearly states that woman will bring forth children in pain.

Furthermore, plenty of other Scriptures indicate that pain is a normative experience during childbirth. A frequent simile used by the prophets is “pain like a woman in labor” (Psalm 48:6; Isaiah 13:8, 21:3, 42:14; Jeremiah 6:24, 22:23, 49:24, 50:43; Micah 4:9). Jesus spoke of “birth pains” (Matthew 24:8, Mark 13:8) and of the “sorrow” and “anguish” of a woman in labor (John 16:21). The apostle Paul likened his painful toils for the church to the anguish of a woman in labor (Galatians 4:19). Other references that suggest that pain in childbirth is normative include I Samuel 4:19 (her “pains came upon her”), Isaiah 26:17 (“writhes and cries out in her pangs”), Jeremiah 4:31 (“cries” and “anguish” as of a woman in labor), Jeremiah 48:41 and 49:22 (“birth pains”), Jeremiah 13:21 and Hosea 13:13 (the “pangs” of childbirth), Micah 4:10 (“writhe and groan like a woman in labor”), Romans 8:22 (pains of childbirth), and I Thessalonians 5:3 (“labor pains”).

Other Scriptures imply that childbirth is something that requires great strength. The midwives who cared for the Hebrew women in Egypt stated that they weren’t killing the baby boys they were delivering “because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” (Exodus 1:19 ESV) The Hebrew women’s vigor meant that their labors were fast enough (apparently) that the midwife didn’t get there in time to assist. Hezekiah spoke (in 2 Kings 19:3 and Isaiah 37:3) of children coming to the point of birth but mothers not having the strength to deliver them.

From my reading of Scripture, it seems plain that childbirth is indeed labor (work) and that it is generally painful labor.

Yet I am not afraid of childbirth, nor do I wish to blunt the pain of childbirth with drugs. Why is this?

Am I playing martyr, arguing against the umbrella that could guard me from this consequence of the fall?

No. I’m not. I expect pain in childbirth, but I’m not going to shy away from it because I believe two things: I believe that pain in childbirth is purposeful and I believe that it has payoff.

While some pain has no apparent purpose (for instance, in fibromyalgia), most pain does have a purpose. The pain of touching a too-hot stove tells us to withdraw our hand before damage is done. The pain of backache or a strained muscle often tells us to change our posture or our activity patterns. Other times pain simply tells us that our body is working. We feel the “burn” when we’re exercising vigorously. And, when having a baby, we feel pain that lets us know that our uterus is contracting to push baby out. If we know what to look for, pain also tells us when we should be actively working with our bodies’ involuntary impulses to push baby out.

And finally, I believe that the pain of labor has payoff.

“When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.”
~John 16:21 (ESV)

Following the pain of childbirth comes great joy – joy in a new human being. Inasmuch as it depends on me, I want to be fully there and fully aware to experience that joy – even if it means I have to endure additional pain leading up to it.

Categories Following Christ

Contemplating the Word

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I was unfamiliar with the practice of Lectio Divina until I read a post from Tim Challies criticizing it.

According to Wikipedia, Lectio Divina is:

“a traditional Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God’s Word. It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the Living Word.”

This particular practice takes four phases:
1. Reading the Word (Lectio)
2. Meditating on the Word (Meditatio)
3. Praying the Word (Oratio)
4. Contemplating the Word (Contemplatio)

The second sentence of Wikipedia’s introduction to the practice makes clear the intent and focus of Lectio Divina versus other approaches to Scripture: “It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the living Word.”

Challies’ criticism of Lectio Divina, drawn primarily from David Helms’ Expositional Preaching, comes from a strong belief that the Scriptures are texts to be studied – and that the study of Scripture should be our primary relationship with it.

I struggle.

I believe strongly in studying the Scriptures. I love inductive Bible study. I delight in asking questions of the text and using the text to answer those questions. I enjoy cross-referencing and digging deeper into the meanings of words and phrases, looking at how one writer uses a phrase and how another does. I am a fan of expositional preaching. Studying the Word is important to me.

Yet I am also something of a mystic, one who sees Scripture as the Living Word of God, capable of working with our reason but also beyond our reason. Often Scripture is poetry, except more living than any man-turned-phrase, poetry that acts as a balm for hurts reason cannot touch. It is a sword, piercing beyond the brain to the will.

Why must we approach Scripture as either/or? Why cannot we approach it as both?

I prefer to. If I had to describe my favorite approach to Scripture, it would be as a scholastic Lectio Divina

I read the word (lectio) and questions or connections come to mind. I dig into the Word to find answers to those questions or to evaluate those connections.

I meditate on the word (meditatio) and other Scriptures, related words, sometimes disparate thoughts from what seems like nowhere arise in my mind. I jot them down and then dig into the Word to evaluate connections or contrasts between the current text and the new Scriptures that came into my mind. I look at both the words of the text and the new related word that came into my mind, evaluating how the words are used similarly and differently, how the one sheds light on the other – or perhaps doesn’t. I evaluate my strange thoughts in light of the text and sometimes find that they shed light on the text or encourage me to dig deeper, while other times they seem just rabbit trails.

I pray the word (oratio), putting what I’ve learned and seen into my own words and asking God to help me internalize (through attitudes) and externalize (through actions) His living truth. Sometimes He reveals attitudes or actions that are in disobedience to His word, and I am called to repentance. Sometimes He reveals specific actions that I must do to apply His word, and I am called to put them into practice. Sometimes He directs me to go back to the word yet again to dig for something I’ve missed.

I contemplate the Word (contemplatio) as God reveals Himself the Living Word through Scripture. I worship Him, sometimes through thoughts which run through my mind, my pen, or my voice – but sometimes through simple, incomprehensible wonder.

Yes, this is my favorite approach to Scripture – I recognize it as I read through the steps of the Lectio Divina. Yet even as I write it out in my own words, I long to experience this scholastic Lectio Divina more often, more faithfully. Instead, in the busyness of the days, I settle for just reading and possibly exploring one or two questions or connections, without taking the time to meditate, to pray, to contemplate.

Challies is undoubtedly right that emphasizing mystical connection with the Word to the exclusion of empirical study of the Word is dangerous, but I am grateful that his criticism brought to my attention the four steps of the Lectio Divina and reminded me of the value of not stopping at the first step but taking the time to truly savor the Word of God – yes, in the text itself, but also in the Living Word that it proclaims.

Categories Following Christ

Stagnant

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I was reading some of my old posts, some of those posts from the summer I met Daniel, when I was steeping in 1 John and dealing with idols and having my love transformed.

It made me ache. A hollow sort of ache. A how-have-I-lost, what-have-I-lost, where-have-I-gone sort of ache.

I miss seeing God on the pages of Scripture, miss hearing His voice as I read. I miss the intense focused dependence, the desperate knowledge that I needed God above anything else.

What was a flowing fountain has become a stagnant pool, but how did it get here and how can I restore this sullied spring?

I need Elisha’s salt to heal the waters of my heart, so that they would no longer cause death or miscarriage (2 Kings 2:19-22). But where is such salt to be found? Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah, who brings life to dead bones?

I need the water that in me becomes a a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).

So I come to the one who promises drink, the one who promises to cause my heart to flow out with rivers of living water.

I declare that I believe, help my unbelief.

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”‘ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

~John 7:37-39 (ESV)

Categories Everyday Life, Following Christ

A Gracious God Gives

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We were getting ready to sit down to plan out our day of errands. I checked my phone to remind myself of what all we needed to do.

A text from Ruth asked me if I’d be interested in going to the Spice Merchant and the Nifty Nut House with her.

It was the second Saturday of the month, we were already planning on getting our coffee from the Spice Merchant – and I needed some cardamom pods.

We arranged a time to meet.

We explored, we purchased our respective items, we visited for many minutes leaned up against a shelf of Jordan almonds. After we said our goodbyes, Daniel and I got back in the car and decided it was late enough that we needed to prioritize getting recycling to the center before it closed. We’d hold off on the library, but should we drop by the post office before or after?

Might as well go by the post office. It’s on our way.

We get in, start our self service. Daniel pushes the international button. I correct him. Military addresses aren’t considered international. I fumble around, restart the process several times by accident. A postal employee locks the door to the service counter. No worries, we’ll be able to accomplish our business out here at the 24-hour kiosk.

Finally, I push all the right buttons and the screen announces: I’m sorry, we can not process APO/FPO addresses on this kiosk. Please go to the postal counter.

I look at Daniel. He looks at me. I look at the locked door. What do we do?

“I’m sorry” Daniel says.

The door opens and the postal employee asks us if we’d like in. We will be the last people given access to that room. All who come after us are told that the post office is closed.

On our way home, we remark how fortunate it was that we ended our conversation with Ruth when we did, that we chose to go to the past office when we did rather than later.

I muse that God was good to us by giving us what we wanted.

Daniel finishes the thought, “May He give us grace to accept when He is good to us by not giving us what we want.”

After visiting the library, I read the first chapter of one of the books I checked out: Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts .

She reflects on Eve’s thought in the garden: there must be more than this, something God’s not letting me in on. Eve was right, Voskamp writes. There was more. Pain, toil, sin, death. There was more, but it wasn’t good.

It reminds me anew how often I expect God to conform to my idea of good. I rail against him for not giving me the gift I want so badly. But then, occasionally, He opens my eyes to realize that withholding the supposed gift was a gift in itself.

A gracious God gives good gifts. Whatever He gives is good. Whatever He does not give, He does not give because it is not our greatest good.

Shall I accept good from the Lord and not adversity?

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

May that ever be my cry, even as I anguish over a loss or sigh in longing for a much desired prize.

A gracious God always gives good gifts.

Categories Everyday Life, Faith

Wood, Hay, Rubble

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About two weeks after a massive tornado cut a swathe through Moore, Oklahoma, Daniel and I took a team from our church down to help with relief.

We essentially walked around until we found homeowners who were digging through the ruins of their homes–and asked if they needed help with anything.

Different people had different requests.

Daniel and I stopped first at a home where a woman was digging about for anything that might be salvageable. Helping was difficult, because we really didn’t know what she wanted or didn’t want. What was important to her? What did she consider worth saving? We didn’t know, so we busied ourselves with moving bricks and beams and broken furniture, piling up anything that was at all intact for her to sort through. Once she started looking herself, it became apparent that the items she cared about the most were DVDs.

Daniel amidst the rubble

Her next door neighbor stood outside her house, unsure of what to do. This second homeowner, unlike her neighbor, understood that insurance would cover ruined belongings. She wasn’t interested in searching for this item or that. Her daughter (in the elementary school that was devastated) was out of the hospital. Her sons were safe.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t have a request for us.

Her mother was worried that the church people might show up and see the couple dozen trash bags worth of beer cans now strewn across the property. What would they think? Her Christian reputation would be ruined if they could see that evidence of how much she drinks. Would we help?

Two friends held open trash bags as Daniel and I shoveled beer cans as fast as we could. We filled the bed of a pickup truck. They’d be able to recycle them for some cash.

When we met up with some others of our group, they had a different story to share.

A family was searching for an heirloom–a family Bible full of underlinings and notes, with leaves outlining births and deaths and baptisms. Our team searched with them, digging through the remains of their lives.

A Bible was found, was brought to the homeowner. The homeowner opened it, confirmed that this was indeed the Bible. The couple dropped what they were doing, called off the team.

That was it. The rest could be bulldozed. Nothing else mattered.

They circled the team for a prayer of thankfulness before they headed back to their temporary housing.

“Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.”

I Corinthians 3:12-13 (KJV)

Before the Day stands these lowercase days, days when wind–not fire–exposes our hearts. Are we set on the entertainments of this world? Are we building merely a facade to hide our sin? Or will the wind expose a life that sets its hope in the eternal?

I pray that the Day…and every lowercase day…will find me building with gold, searching for silver, storing up precious stones.

What a loss, if the wind should come and all I be left with is wood, hay, and rubble.

Categories Family & Friends, Following Christ

What I pray for your children

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If you are one of my siblings or one of my bloggy friends, I pray for you and for your children. Approximately once a week, your name pops up on my phone and, generally while I’m cleaning the toys in my office, I pray for you. If you have expressed a particular request or if I’ve deduced one from what you’ve written, I’ll pray for that; but otherwise, I pray a very specific sort of prayer.

I do not pray for your children to be obedient.

Obedient, manageable children are nice to have, easy to care for. But that isn’t what I want for you or for them.

Obedience and manageability can mask inward apathy or rebellion. Obedience and manageability can convince a child that they’re a “good kid”. They can begin to rely upon their “good kid” status. They can begin to work hard to maintain their “good kid” status. Someday, they may rebel against their “good kid” status.

I don’t pray for them to obedient. They need something more.

They need Jesus.

Even so, I do not pray for your children to love Jesus.

Many a child who “loves Jesus”–who delights to sing Bible songs, who loves to go to Sunday School, who tells his friends about Jesus–grows up to be an adult who rejects the faith.

“Loving Jesus” is often a cultural thing, about speaking the lingo of the church, singing the songs of the church, acting the way church people do.

But just like the children of hippies turned yuppie and the children of yuppies turned hipster, the children of Christianity often turn atheist or agnostic or non-practicing nothings.

I don’t pray for the to “love Jesus”. They need something more.

You see, I don’t want your children to just love Jesus, like they love their favorite toy, I want them to know Jesus.

And I don’t want your children to just know Jesus, I want them to know Jesus savingly.

And if they are to know Jesus savingly, they must know that they are depraved.

For that reason, I pray that your children would recognize their sinfulness.

I pray that they would be acutely aware of their inability to live up to God’s standard.

I pray that they would recognize the futility of their works to ever change their status.

I pray that they would fall wholly upon the mercy of God in the person of Christ.

That, my friends, is what I pray for your children.

Categories Following Christ

The Discipline of the Gospel

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On our flight home from our honeymoon, I started reading Barbara Hughes’ The Disciplines of a Godly Woman. The first discipline Hughes discusses is the discipline of the gospel.

It’s an interesting idea–that the gospel can be a discipline, that we can discipline ourselves to live out of the gospel.

But more than an interesting idea, it’s a frustrating idea.

How can I discipline myself in the gospel? It’s not like reading the Bible or going to church. It’s not something I can schedule into my day or week.

Or can I?

I tried an experiment. I set a reminder on my phone.

“Remember the Gospel,” it says.

The task pops up one hour after I last marked it complete, so about every hour during my waking hours, I am reminded of the gospel.

But is this effective?

Does this really help me remember the gospel? Does it help me remember more than just the word “Gospel” but the reality that the word represents?

I gave myself limits.

I couldn’t clear the reminder, couldn’t say I’d completed the task, until I’d actually thought about the gospel–about the reality of the gospel.

It’s become almost a game, thinking of new aspects of the gospel to contemplate.

One hour, I recite a verse about the gospel.

“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” (I Timothy 1:15 ESV)

Another hour, I reflect on what the gospel accomplished.

Redemption. Adoption. Justification.

Yet another hour, I try to paraphrase the gospel as I might share it with an unbeliever.

We are all sinners, deserving God’s wrath and incapable of paying our sin-debt. But God loved us so much that He sent His Son Jesus, who bore God’s wrath in our place, dying on a cross so we wouldn’t have to die for our sins. Now He offers salvation to everyone who believes in Jesus’ name.

These are just scratching the surface of the gospel.

I ask myself what the gospel displays about God’s character.

Holiness. Grace. Justice. Love. Sovereignty over death.

I ask myself what the practical implications of the gospel are to my work life.

Forgiven, I must forgive. Loved despite my filthiness, I must love my clients despite their occasional crassness. Having received mercy, I must extend mercy.

As I review the ways I have been reminding myself of the gospel, I think of some more to use in the upcoming hours.

What are some stories in Scripture that exhibit the gospel? Who can I pray for who needs the gospel? What are wrong views of the gospel and what is the truth that exposes them? In what ways should the gospel influence my thoughts, my words, my actions, my writing?

Hour by hour, I discipline myself in the gospel.

How do you discipline yourself in the gospel?

Categories Theology

Remnants of the Temple

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“It’s like the Wailing Wall,” he told us, “Historically meaningful but not much to see.”

That, coupled with the hefty $18 per person price tag for a boat ride out to Fort Sumter, had me thinking it was an attraction to be skipped. Daniel thought otherwise, so we decided to go anyway.

Our friend from home turned out to be right in at least one respect. There wasn’t much to see at Fort Sumter.

I told Daniel once we got back that this didn’t mean I was willing to skip the Wailing Wall if/when we find our way to Jerusalem.

The Wailing Wall is different, I explained. Sure Fort Sumter is an important part of our nation’s history, but the Wailing Wall is all that remains of the place GOD chose for His Name to dwell.

Today, as I read the plans for the Tabernacle in Exodus and consider the Passion, I recall Christ’s words to the unbelieving mobs of Jerusalem:

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
~John 2:19 (ESV)

The unhearing hearers protested the impossibility of rebuilding Herod’s temple in three days.

And they were right. Herod’s temple, which took 46 years to build, now lies in waste for 1,943 years. The Wailing Wall is all that remains of that majestic temple.

But that temple, majestic and meaningful though it may have been, was nothing compared to the temple Jesus spoke of.

“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
~ Colossians 2:9 (ESV)

The ultimate temple is Christ Himself. God in bodily form. God become man.

This temple was destroyed a little less than 2000 years ago. This temple was rebuilt by His own strength only three days later.

As much as I long to gaze upon the remnants of Herod’s temple in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall, I long much more to gaze upon the Resurrected Temple, my LORD in the New Jerusalem.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
~I Corinthians 13:12 (ESV)

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”
~I John 3:2 (ESV)