Mission Accomplished
19 Apr 2010 4 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: Bible, church
This won’t be long because it’s Monday morning and I’ve decided to reinstate “Monday is Housework Day,’ a ritual that I’ve held for years, but have never gotten the swing of since we moved into our new place.
And from the look of things around here, I have a lot of work to do.
But I’ve been mulling an idea all weekend and I wanted to pop in and share it with you in the spirit of having a more upbeat blog.
Last week, in this post, I told you all about my little speaking incident. I told you about my failure, my lack of skill as a speaker and my queasy stomach from nerves. In true Danica style, that’s all I told you. The icky part. Here’s the other half of that story. Only shorter, because, like I said, Monday is housework day and it’s already 8:30. I need to get on with it.
When Leanne asked me on Monday morning if I could speak on Wednesday morning, I decided within an hour what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk to the ladies about reading their Bibles more.
But immediately upon deciding that, I was faced with this conundrum (remember, I am not an experienced speaker): These are church going, praying, volunteering, Christian women. First of all, they already know they need to read their Bibles more and they don’t need me to tell them that. Secondly, these are busy women who, like just about every woman I know are doing a juggling act of parenting, career, being part of a church, volunteering, and any number of other things. They are bombarded daily with voices from ever direction saying ‘you need to exercise more!’ ‘you need to do things with your kids more!’ ‘you need to put more effort into being sexy for your husband!’ ‘you need to put more effort into saving the planet!’ and, of course, ‘you need to read more, especially your Bible!’ I didn’t want to be one more voice laying a guilt trip.
I remember being a young woman, in the first handful of years of my Christian walk. I worked a heck of lot less than I do now. I had plenty of spare time and yet, somehow, I spent more time feeling guilty about not reading my Bible than actually reading it.
Now, a handful of years later, I love it. I can’t get enough. And so I spent some time brainstorming both what kept me from diving into it the first place, and how I got from there to here. I’m not going to bore you with all those details right now. Maybe some other time.
I just came to this blog today to tell you something positive. Before I told you about my churning stomach. Today I want to tell you about my success.
I had no desire to lay a guilt trip on anyone or present them with one more chore to add to their list, one more ‘should’. What I wanted was this: to walk in there, open my mouth and talk for a few minutes, and when I stopped talking someone, anyone, would have a desire inside of them, in their heart more than in their brain, to read their Bible. I wanted to make a little spark, make a little connection maybe between some ideas they already had, and inspire them to enter this world of magic and wonder that I have found myself wandering around in.
So I went there, and I opened my mouth (and fumbled over my words) (sorry, I couldn’t resist) and when I was done, and I sat back down, a lady who I don’t know looked at me from over at another table and said “Oh. I just want to go home right now and read my Bible.”
Awesome.
Sweet Words, Hard to Digest
09 Apr 2010 2 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: Bible
I’m piecing together a few thoughts here about what it means to live a Christian life. Here are some of the thought-pieces. They’re only part of the puzzle, I know. I hope you have your own piece to add to these thoughts in the comments section.
At WOW on Wednesday morning, I was hanging back on my way out the door, listening to the last few shards of discussion I could get my ears on before I really had to go. I always have to leave 15 or so minutes before it’s over because I have to pick Grace up at the door of her kindergarten at the same time the ladies are wrapping up at the church. Anywhoooo, our teacher Deb was talking about the difficulty in the Christian life. Some people look at Christianity and say it is nothing but a crutch for the weak. But really, walking in the Christian life can be hard. Really hard.
I remember the first little while after I gave my life to God. My broken heart was being healed. I was giving up some sinful, hurtful patterns in my life. I was letting go of a very skewed perspective of the world. I thought I was well on my way to everything being fixed, perfect, easy, fun, and that everything would be okay.
It didn’t take long before I realized that even with my newfound joy, my endless hope, my salvation life, some things would remain difficult, and in fact, some things would become more difficult because of my faith.
In the past I have wondered at John’s vision, a biblical metaphor for reading the scriptures (I think) “I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, “Take it and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.” And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was bitter.” Rev 10:9-10.
God’s Word is easy to read. It is tasty and nourishing. It feels good going in. Sitting alone in my living room, it tastes like honey in my mouth and I savor it. I understood that part from the beginning. But what does it mean that it is also bitter in the stomach? I think (and this is me, I could be way off) that this metaphor speaks to the difficulty in the ‘digestion’ of the Word – it’s practical life-application. The ‘walk the walk’ that comes after the honey-talk.
For instance, I have had throwing stones on my mind because of a novel I just read. The story was an interesting modern take on the Biblical story of the woman caught in adultery. The people are ready to stone her to death and they bring her before Jesus. Jesus says, whoever here is without sin, go ahead and hurl the first stone at her. The people put down their stones and walk away. It is a picture of forgiveness. Often in my life, I have felt like the woman in the story, but the novel sort of got me thinking of the stones I hold in my own hands. Stones I didn’t even realize I was grasping. Because of the novel, I’ve been allowing some of them to drop to the ground, one by one.
Last night at work I was pondering forgiveness and stone-dropping. I was thinking specifically about the adulterous woman in the story. Culturally speaking, we modern folk can easily see ourselves putting down our stones in this instance. Adultery is a fairly common sin these days. Forgiveness is easier when the adulterer is someone we barely know. It is more difficult if it’s someone in our circle, in our community. Even more difficult if it is a friend or family member who has committed the sin.
My thoughts suddenly took a different turn. What about other sexual sins, or any old sin at all? What about a child molester? A killer? A child-killer? Earlier the same day I had read a story in the local paper about the fate of a local man who brutally murdered his three children years ago. I read the mother’s agonizing words; she still cries daily for the children that were ripped away from her so suddenly and painfully. I had also read that blog that got me onto thinking about child-molestation inside the church. I thought about a girlfriend of mine who lives in a different city who found out a few years ago that her own father, a central figure in their own church while she was growing up, had abused her younger sister for years. Her story was a wake-up call for me. A child of abuse myself, that sort of thing was always outside, far away from this salvation life with my God and these wonderful people I call my church family. The closer sin gets to us personally, the more painful. The more difficult to put down our stones.
These things are hard. Some stones seem almost impossible to put down. Some feel like they shouldn’t be put down. Where do we draw the line of what we can and cannot forgive? The occurrence of evil can be a slippery slope. Studying ethics, I find that if we allow this one little thing that doesn’t seem so bad, then can find it easier to allow something just a smidge worse. Before you know it you’ve crossed a lie you never thought you would. If evil is a slippery slope, then love is the opposite – real love is a difficult climb.
I remember a year or so ago, I was walking through something particularly difficult. I was so wounded and one night alone in my car I cried out to God Why? Why did you let me be hurt this way? Didn’t you see it coming? What do you want me to do? You can’t possibly expect me to forgive… A thousand questions, many of them wordless, came pouring out of me. After God let me vent, he presented me gently with a hard picture. A man hanging in excruciating pain up on a cross. Usually when I get this picture, God reminds me of what he did on my behalf. But this time, a different verse came to mind with the picture. Take up your cross and follow me.
He said that I was free to turn away from friendship with this person who had hurt me so deeply. They had hurt me so much that the natural consequence was for them to lose my friendship. Walking away was a very real option. But, Jesus, my teacher, was reminding me of another way, his way, an example he had already led by. I was free to walk away, yes, but if I want to follow him, then I would have to follow him.
Someone I love very much, someone in my extended family who, so far, has rejected God’s offer of salvation, doesn’t like Christianity because Christianity allows brutal murderers to just say ‘Yes please!’ to God’s free offer of salvation. My beloved family member doesn’t think that is very fair. He’s right. It’s not fair. Most of the people I know and love have lived good lives, and not done anything that bad. We have an easy time forgiving one another of these little trespasses that might sting a little, but really don’t hurt all that much.
Christianity goes beyond that. It’s easy to love the people who love you. It’s easy to be good to the people who are good to you the Bible says. Pray for your enemies. Love the unlovable. You will be forgiven as you forgive. Walking the Christian life is a continual struggle. Like mountain-climbing. A race, Paul called it. Body-building – continually working out so that you can handle more and more weight. It’s not going to get easier. I will keep running until the end, Paul says.
God’s Word is a good read – sweet in the mouth. Refreshing and tasty. It’s hard to live though – bitter in the stomach; gut-wrenching. I feel lucky I’m young because I still have so much to learn in this Christian life.
Unveiled by Francine Rivers
23 Feb 2010 3 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: Bible, books, women
On Sunday I read this fictionalized account of the life of Tamar. I’d read the story of Tamar and Judah in the Bible before and been puzzled by it. It is found in Genesis 38:1-11.
People in the Bible often found themselves in very dire and also bizarre circumstances. And sometimes their actions and responses to those circumstances are even more confusing. But God uses them in unimaginable ways.
In the fictionalized version, her mother tells her, “Life is hard for a woman, Tamar. But it is impossible without a man.” And Tamar finds herself abandoned by men. Her father gives her (or sells her for a bride-price, depending on how you look at it) to Judah as a bride for his oldest son, Er. Er is a wicked man and God strikes him down. Tamar is then given to his younger brother to sleep with because she had not yet conceived a child. The tradition was that a widow would marry a brother of the dead man to conceive a child on his behalf to carry his name and receive his inheritance. Tamar’s life only had value if she produced a son.
But the next son, Onan, was also evil and he didn’t want to split his own inheritance with his brother’s heir. So he used Tamar for his own pleasure but ‘spilled his seed on the ground’ to prevent her from conceiving. God struck him down also. At this point, Judah (her father in law) is afraid for the life of his third and last son. So although, by rights, Tamar is supposed to be married to the third brother to try again to produce a son (the only way her own life will have value) he sends her back to her parents house to live as a widow on the premise that his other son is not yet old enough to father a household.
The third son grows up and Tamar realizes that Judah has no intention of marrying the two of them. Worried about how she will live as a widow once her own after dies, she devises a scheme to get what is owed to her by Judah. By law, if the sons can’t provide her with a child, Judah is supposed to do it himself, but he has basically forgotten about her and abandoned her.
She dresses up as a prostitute and hides her face behind a veil and waits for him on the side of the road. He shows up and buys her services, but he doesn’t have the payment on him, so she asks for his personal seal and cord, and the staff that he carries to hold onto until he can get her the goat he owes her. When he returns for his belongings, she has vanished.
A few months later when her father discovers that she is pregnant, in an outrage over her whoring herself, he sends word to Judah asking what should be done with her. Judah sends word back to have her burned alive along with the child inside. Just in time to spare her own life she sends a message to her father-in-law, along with his belongings. ‘The owner of these items is the father of my child. Can you identify them?’
When he saw that they were his, he was finally humbles enough to do what was right by Tamar. He brought her into his household, into a good life and never slept with her again. She had twin boys to add to his household to replace the ones that died.
What a hard life. But in the end, God ensures that Tamar is taken care of, and even better, he honors her by putting her story in his Bible and grafting her into the family line of Jesus through her son with Judah, Perez.
Even more amazing is the change that occurs in Judah made, apparently after witnessing Tamar’s example of steadfast adherence to doing what is right, no matter the cost. You see, the Judah before this story is the Judah who sold his brother Joseph into slavery, marry a woman from another culture who worships idols, and raise sons that were cruel and evil people. This was also the Judah who would do anything to wash his hands of the responsibility he had to Tamar no matter how much her life would suffer for it. Tamar hardheadedly does whatever she needs to to go after what is right – including trickery and dishonoring herself. But she does it all privately in a manner to bring honor to the name of her first husband and his family, and she seeks to know the God of Judah, who is complete mystery to her. After the story of Tamar, Judah transforms into the man who is restored to his own father and brothers and who is even willing to sell himself into slavery to save the life of his other brother Benjamin.
This is the first of five stories that Rivers has written, retelling the Biblical accounts of five women in the Bible who led fascinating lives and who became great great grandmothers (and mother) of Jesus. The others are Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. I’m looking forward to reading the rest.
