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Laudable Linkage

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Barbara Harper

I have just a few interesting links to share this week:

When the Enemy Asks Questions About Disability.

Fiction and Literature: An Interview With Russell Moore.

A few weeks ago I asked you to consider voting here for our assistant pastor in a contest to win a handicap accessible van. I think the contest runs for another week or so. This would be a big help to them as their current one needs to be replaced soon. His story is here:

You might pray for his family as you feel led: his wife has suffered two tears in the membrane covering her spinal cord, resulting in fluid leakage and severe head and back pain. She had a procedure done last night that will hopefully fix it. Her own health and well-being is a major concern, but she’s also the mother of two young children and Bobby’s caregiver, and she has been in pain and out of commission for 10 days now.

And lastly, I thought this sounded like a good idea. 🙂

Hope you have a good weekend. I’m running behind, so I am off to get things done.

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week, a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

It’s been another busy week! Here are some of the highlights:

1. Sundays. The last two Sundays at church have just been especially good: a visiting drama team one day, Skyping with a missionary one evening, other missionaries here another day, a rousing and heartfelt and heart-stirring rendition of “No More Night” from one of our members.

2. Mondays. I know a lot of people don’t like Mondays, but for me it’s a time after a busy weekend to enjoy the quiet and stillness and regroup and figure out what I need to do for the week ahead.

3. A call from an old family friend. One of my mother-in-law’s oldest and dearest friends called this week to see how she was doing (my m-i-l doesn’t hear much at all on the phone, so she can’t call her directly any more). It was good to hear from her and catch up a bit and then to tell my m-i-l about her call.

4. Finding an old keepsake. I was looking through a box in the garage where we keep packing materials, and discovered some things I hadn’t unpacked from our last move down in the bottom. One item was a small cedar chest — maybe 8 ” long by 4″ high and wide. I’ve had it ever since I could remember, and it used to hold childhood treasures. I don’t know where it came from: perhaps it was a bonus when my mom got hers. I had been sad that I lost track of it, so I was joyful to find it again. There’s no time to take and upload a photo of it now — it’s fairly plain and the value is sentimental more than decorative.

5. Dinner with friends. Our last “dinner for six” with our current group turned into a dinner for nine, and it was quite lively and fun and ended up with a rousing game of Balderdash. I was even winning until the last couple of turns. 🙂

I have a busy day ahead, but I’ll look forward to catching up with the FFF crowd and Google Reader later tonight or this weekend. Have a good one!

Focus makes a difference

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Tim Challies has posted a 3 part series on envy this week, and a sentence in the last post stood out to me: this principle is true in regard to any sin:

A mistake you might make is to focus on Envy itself, waking up each day and declaring, “Today I will not envy.” Instead of focusing on not sinning, orient yourself toward obeying God’s commands and especially the commands that are completely opposed to Envy, which is to say, the commands that motivate love.

What a difference that makes in combating sin. In Erwin Lutzer’s How to Say No to a Stubborn Habit (linked to my review), he used the illustration of trying not to think of the number 8, which results in not being able to think of anything but the number 8. If I want to stop thinking of the number 8, I need to actively think about something else.

I was beating myself up for overeating a snack yesterday and wondering how to combat that. This morning I read, “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Corinthians 6:20). Instead of thinking of what I am not supposed to eat, and therefore being preoccupied with it, I need to think about how to glorify God in my body.

The Scriptures are filled with examples of pursuing the right things rather than just being preoccupied with avoiding the wrong things.

Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (II Timothy 2:22).

But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him…Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. (Colossians 3:8-14).

I don’t know if that helps you as much as it does me, but focus really does make a difference.

Allow me to introduce…

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Barbara Harper

For a while now I’ve been wanting to introduce you to a few bloggers, some fairly new, whom I actually knew “in real life” before they started blogs.

Lou Ann at In the Way is a missionary with her husband in Spain. I haven’t met her in person, but we’ve had multitudes of e-mails as I worked with the Ladies Missionary Fellowship at our former church, and we’ve kept communicating since! I have met her daughter, though, when she spoke to our ladies’ group once. Lou Ann is in the process of getting her book, His Ways, Your Walk, published, and I’ll be sure to let you know when that happens.

Mary Beth at Annapolis Online is a sweet young mom of a lovely family. I first knew her when her family came to the church where we used to live in SC, and she was in the last year or two of high school then. She married a young man from our youth group, and a year or two later I was privileged to give the devotional at her baby shower. I think that might be the only time I’ve been asked to do that, and I enjoyed it, though it made me very nervous. The subtitle of her blog is Creativity in the Everyday, and that’s mainly what she writes about: neat, creative homey things. She inspires me in many ways.

Susannah at Learning to See is another sweet young wife and mom. She was in the youth group with my older boys and now is the wife of a medical student and the mom of one baby girl. She writes about what she’s learning in her walk with the Lord as well as an occasional recipe or observation, etc.

Debbie at Purple Grandma is a missionary wife in Canada, and I’ve known her family for years, since early married days. She blogs mainly about missionary biographies and other Christian books with an occasional devotional thought or two.

Michael at Sovereign Ostomy attends the church where we currently go, and his wife is a lovely, sweet example of a Christian wife and mom. The blog’s kind of odd title came from Michael’s experience of having Crohn’s disease for years, since his teens, and the recent removal of his colon. In his research before and since his ostomy, he had not found anything on the topic from a Biblical perspective, and he wanted to write from that viewpoint. His is profitable reading not only for those who have had the types of trials he has dealt with, but also for anyone who has had any kind of trial or knows someone who has.

Paul at Piano Animato also attends the church where we do now and is a wonderful pianist. He blogs mainly about music.

All of the above are fairly newish bloggers, I think. But while I am writing about people I knew before I started reading their blogs, I’ll go ahead and mention a few others who have been blogging for a while and whom I may have mentioned before.

Ann at From Sinking Sand and I have known each other since college days, got reacquainted on an online Christian forum, and then started reading each other’s blogs. We found out we were only about 45 minutes away from each other, and we saw each other once a year when my boys were playing basketball and we played her school. Ann has been an English teacher in a Christian high school for years and writes about teaching, education, family, and general observations about life.

Rita at The Jungle Hut was a missionary in the jungles of Venezuela for years until her family had to leave, and now they minister in Paraguay. Our church in SC supported them as well, but I didn’t know she had a blog until another friend, Susan at By Grace, mentioned her friend Rita, and I realized it was the same Rita I knew. Rita can be quite funny and a little saucy, and she writes mainly about missions and sometimes about life in general and politics.

And though she hasn’t blogged in a while, I wanted to mention Bet at Dappled Things, too. I think we knew each other in college — I knew who she was, anyway — and she had my oldest son in a class she taught. We got acquainted, or reacquainted, in the same online Christian forum I mentioned before. She teaches journalism and related courses at a Christian university and oversees the student newspaper there. I’m hoping maybe her summer schedule will let her blog again. 😀

I think that’s it, though I hope I am not leaving anyone out. If you’re looking for good online reading on any of these topics, I can vouch for the fact that these are good folks.

E-book winner

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Barbara Harper

The winner of my contest for the e-book of 800 or so tips, That Works For Me is…

Ann!

Congratulations, and I’ll get the info. for downloading the book to you in just a moment.

If you’d like to buy your own copy, you can do so here, and you can save a dollar off the $8 price of the book by using the coupon code SAVE1.

Thanks for participating!

Of grace, law, commandments, rules, and effort

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Barbara Harper

This is one of those posts where I am trying to work things out in my own mind. Some of these thoughts have been swirling around for years, and even now I’ve sat staring at the computer for a while wondering how to start. I guess I’ll do so by pulling out one strand at a time.

Much of the discussion on grace these days emphasizes that we’re not only saved by grace through faith plus nothing, but we’re kept “safe,” kept in Christ the same way. His love for us and our position with Him is not based on what we “do,” it’s based on His grace.

I agree with that.

But some go on to say that there is no room for any kind of law (spiritually speaking, not referring to the civil laws of the land like traffic lights and speed limits), commandments, or even effort in the Christian life, and anything related to such is labeled legalism.

What, then, do they do with passages such as these:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. John 14:15

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. John 14:21

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. John 15:10

Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. I Thessalonians 4:1-2

And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. I John 2:3-4

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. I John 5:2-3

And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it. II John 6

And these are from the grace-drenched New Testament.

Where some get it wrong is in thinking that we have to keep His commandments in order to be saved or in order to “earn” His love and favor, and that’s not correct. But where others get it wrong is in thinking that, since we’re saved and kept by God’s grace, there is nothing that should smack of commandments or rules in the Christian life, and that’s wrong as well.

As I understand them, these New Testament verses about God’s commands are saying that obeying God’s commands is an outflow of our relationship with God and love for Him, not a way to earn His love. The early part of John 15, for instance, talks about abiding in Christ, being a vine in His branch, not being able to do anything without Him, and then it goes on to say, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (v. 10). And far from chafing under His commands, “his commandments are not grievous” (I John 5:2-3), and we obey them out of love.

I think it’s something like my relationship with my own children. They were born my children. They didn’t do anything to earn that spot in the family. They’ll never have to do anything to earn that spot: it will always be theirs. I will always love them, no matter what they do. Even if they rebelled to an extreme extent and I had to ask them to leave my home, it would not nullify my love. But their actions do have an effect on whether that relationship is a happy one or a grieved one, and it reflects on their love and maturity. Sure, a child’s motivation for obedience in their early years is so that they don’t get into trouble, but as they mature, their motivated by wanting to respect and honor their parents.

Going on from commandments to rules, I’ve seen many totally eschew the idea of rules in the Christian life since we’re saved and kept by grace and not by rule-keeping. But not being saved by rules doesn’t mean there are no rules. For instance, I have a rule for myself that I attend church unless I am sick or something comes up (company suddenly coming in, bad weather, extreme tiredness, etc.). It’s not that I think God won’t love me if I miss church. It’s more an effort to apply Romans 13:13-14: “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” I should go to church out of love for God, a desire to learn more about Him, a desire to fellowship with others in the body of Christ, and ultimately I do. But we all know that even in our closest and most loving relationships, we don’t always “feel” like doing what we should. So sometimes we have to deliberately make an effort in spite of our feelings of the moment. And as one professor used to say, good feelings follow right actions: usually my feelings catch up after I do the right thing. This all doesn’t mean that I live a life of rules out of duty devoid of feeling: it means my actions are based on underlying love that’s deeper than my momentary fleeting feelings.

And that brings me to effort. I’ve read some who point to passages like John 15 and say that we’re vines abiding in the branch, and the branch doesn’t do anything to help itself grow, neither do we have to expend any effort. Similarly, the fruit of the Spirit is something wrought by the Spirit, not something we work to produce.

And I agree with that. On the other hand, the New Testament is filled with action verbs. Love. Obey. Yield. Put on. Put off. Abstain. Work. Walk in certain ways (circumspectly, or carefully, for one). Do not do certain things. Do certain things. Strive. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).

I liken it in some ways to the Old Testament battles. Sometimes God did something supernatural to deliver His people, like parting the Red Sea or having the sun stand still in response to Joshua or sending a noise to scare the Syrians into running away. But most of the time the people had to actually pick up their swords and fight. Yet even then they couldn’t win battles in their own efforts alone: if something was between them and the Lord, He did not help them and they lost.

In the same way, we can’t live the Christian life in our own strength. Yet God doesn’t always come in and just do away with whatever battles we face. But as we rely on Him, He enables us to do what He wants us to do.

Being saved and kept by grace doesn’t mean I’m just a happy little blob taking up space on earth until I go on to heaven. It doesn’t mean that since God loves me no matter what, then it doesn’t matter what I do. But it does mean that He will enable me to do whatever He wants me to.

Ephesians2:8-10 sums it up nicely:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

We’re not saved by good works, but we’re created unto good works.

And Romans 8:13 shows how our efforts work together with God’s enabling:

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

He doesn’t mortify it for us: there is a response expected from us. But we can’t do it on our own: we can only do it through the Spirit.

Book Review: North and South

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Barbara Harper

I listened to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell as an audiobook and loved it.

Margaret Hale has been living with her bright and beautiful cousin, Edith, until Edith’s marriage, then Margaret returns home to Halston in southern England. Shortly thereafter her father reveals that he has had a crisis of conscience and must step down from his position as a vicar. It’s not quite clear exactly what this crisis involved (one problem with an audiobook is not being able to flip through pages to reread parts where you might not have picked up on everything). He doesn’t abandon his belief in God entirely, and that is demonstrated later in the book, but he doesn’t feel he can continue as a vicar in his denomination. His close friend, Mr. Bell, has arranged for Mr. Hale to become a tutor in the northern mill town of Milton.

This throws the family into an upheaval in several ways: the loss of position, the reduction of an already small income, the move away from not only all that is dear and familiar, but also the move to a place radically different than where they have lived, chosen purposefully by Mr, Hale so as to hopefully lessen the sorrow of leaving a place he and his daughter loved.

As both Mr. and Mrs. Hale are distressed, it falls to Margaret to support them both and undertake the lion’s share of details involved in the move.

Milton is not only different because it is a busy, smoky mill town as opposed to the peaceful, quiet, rural setting the Hales came from, but the way of life and way of thinking in the North is totally different from that in the South, and thus the Hales’ interactions with people are rife with several misunderstandings on both sides. Their main contact is with a Mr. Thornton, a busy mill owner. In the course of daily life they also become acquainted with a Mr. Higgins, a common laborer, or hand, as they call the workers there, and his very ill daughter, Bessy. Through these two relationships and the tension building up to a strike, they see right and wrong on both sides of the labor issue and try their best to help the two men to understand the view of the other.

In the course of the story, two very different men seek Margaret’s hand in marriage. She is not at all interested in either of them for personal reasons and because her family depends on her so much. One is obvious at the beginning, and the other emerges as a love interest later in the story. I was actually dismayed at first, because the second one, though a decent fellow, wasn’t very likeable. The changes and growth of the characters, particularly Margaret, make the outcome of this aspect of the story a surprise until the ending.

The feel (I don’t know how else to describe it) of this book was very similar to Louisa May Alcott’s books, especially those in which the main characters undergo a reversal of fortune. Gaskell was 22 years older then Alcott, and Alcott was American while Gaskell was British, but their writing seemed very similar to me (and I regard that as a good thing!)

There are some similarities between North and South with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: I saw North and South described somewhere as “Pride and Prejudice with a social conscience.” There are no balls or dances or frantic mothers in North and South, but there is pride and prejudice on many sides that is slowly overcome as the characters interact and come to know each other. Austen lived before Gaskell (Gaskell was seven years old when Austen died). Austen’s writings have more witty barbs and comic moments, but otherwise there are similarities in their writings as well.

Gaskell was a master of conveying human nature in this book. The words, the thoughts, and even the expressions of some of the characters had me thinking, “Yes, I can see that, I understand that exactly.”

I would not call this a Christian book, and I would differ with Gaskell’s Unitarian beliefs, but there are Christian principles through the book, and Margaret in particular offers Biblical advice as well as words of Scripture in her counsel to others.

My only previous experience with Gaskell’s writing was with Cranford (linked to my thoughts) last year, and I had thought of Cranford as “not spell-binding, but pleasant.” North and South was much more than pleasant: it was quite poignant. I wouldn’t call it riveting in the same sense as a who-done-it, but I did carry my iPhone around much more often than usual to listen to it, and I actually said out loud as it ended, “No!!! I don’t want it to end!” That’s the only real complaint: the ending was rather abrupt, but the book was originally written as a serial for Dickens’ magazine Household Words, so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.

Juliet Stevenson narrated the book and did a marvelous job with the various voices and accents. I don’t always “think in British” when I am reading a British novel, and Juliet’s reading greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the book.

There was a BBC production of North and South which I’ve not seen, but I want to now.

I had seen Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters on DVD some years ago and really enjoyed it: I’m thinking that might be my next audiobook.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Whew! It’s been a busy week! Here are some of the highlights:

1. Getting graduation announcements done. What I thought would take an afternoon took about three days, including running short by about ten, shopping a number of places for the kind you can run through the computer and not finding any I liked, making my own on the computer, having things that look perfectly aligned on screen come out off-center….so yes, I am very glad to have them all completed, addressed, stamped, and ready to mail now!

2. Scanners. Our printer is a scanner as well, and while I used it this week I was remembering the days of having to go to the library to copy things. It’s so nice to have one right here, both to copy things and to scan them into the computer. We’ve had it for a while, but my appreciation for it was renewed this week.

3. A pretty pen.

4. Sentimental notes. For Jesse’s upcoming Junior-Senior banquet, parents are supposed to write notes to their Seniors which are given to them at the banquet. I’m not sure how this custom began and would probably wait to write such a note for graduation and give it privately. But, at any rate, not wanting to buck tradition and leave him noteless at a time when everyone else is getting a note, I made a card and Jim and I wrote notes in it, sentimentally looking at how fast the last eighteen years have gone and hopes for the future, appreciation of him as our son, etc. I especially enjoyed reading Jim’s. Sniff, sniff…

5. Not losing power. I know I’ve said that before when we’ve had severe weather, but we seemed to lose power a lot our first year here, so now every storm has that additional tension with it of the possibility of the electricity going out. In addition, yesterday’s thunder, lightening, driving rain, and hail occurred just between Jim’s and Jesse’s leaving, so neither of them had to drive in it. The rain had cleared to a drizzle by the time Jesse left for school.

I’m off for another busy day. Graduation isn’t for a few weeks yet, but activities leading to it are kicking in, plus a newspaper column and newsletter are due soon, company is coming next week, dessert needs to be made for a church dinner this weekend, we’re having dinner at someone’s home tonight for which I need to make a couple of things, I have been needing a haircut for weeks…and I need to do laundry some time soon!

Have a great weekend!

Psmith in the City

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Carrie at Reading to Know has been coordinating a book club this year, hosted each month by a different blogger friend. Tim at Diary of an Autodidact) is this month’s host, and he chose any book by P. G. Wodehouse.

My only previous exposure to Wodehouse was Carry On, Jeeves (linked to my thoughts). I liked it quite a lot, but the chapters did seem variations on the same theme (Wooster or one of his friends gets in trouble and Jeeves gets them out), so I thought I’d try something from one of his other series.

I chose Psmith in the City, this time, in which English gentlemen Psmith and his friend, Mike Jackson, are thrown into the world of Commerce by starting to work at a bank. Mike’s father has had some financial problems, so Mike has had to quit college to start working in the postal room of the New Asiatic Bank. Psmith’s main purpose seems to be to win over his boss, Mr. Bickersdyke, and failing that, to get the better of him.

Psmith added the silent P to his surname to distinguish himself from other Smiths. He’s tall, thin, wears a monocle, is very generous but not terribly industrious, and is what we’d probably call a charmer. He seems to be able to talk his way out of most anything. He’s also something of a Socialist, but I think even that is for comic effect, something to play off of, rather than a political statement.

In fact, I’m not sure if there is any higher purpose to Wodehouse’s work other than humor and cleverness, and that’s all right: sometimes that’s just what one’s brain needs.

This book started off a little slow for me: the first chapter was primarily about a cricket match, and I know nothing about cricket, although I did get the point that someone walked into his way and ruined his shot. But by the third chapter things had picked up considerably. This is one of Wodehouse’s earlier works, so his skills aren’t quite as developed as the later ones, but the humor is still very evident.

I also have Galahad at Blandings on hand from the library, a sample from yet another of Wodehouse’s series (though I understand Psmith ends up at Blandings Castle eventually), but I am obviously not going to get to it before the month is up. If I have time before it is due back I might give it a try, though.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

I’m featured in an e-book! And you can win a copy!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Barbara Harper

Some of you might be familiar with the Works For Me Wednesday blog carnival. It was started years ago by Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer, and then she gave it over to Kristen at We Are THAT family. Every Wednesday, scores of bloggers share a tip that they’ve found helpful in real life.

Kristen thought it would be useful to take some of the best tips shared over the years and compile them into an e-book, and she asked to use three of mine.

I have posted any tips in a while — my repertoire ran dry a while ago. But I’m glad that some folks can still see them and glean something helpful from them.

The e-book is titled That Works For Me. It contains some 800 tips divided up into 24 categories, from Babies and Blogging to Marriage to Time Management, Frugality, Decor, Cleaning, Pets — almost every category you can think of. Within each category is a list of submitted tips: a brief description and then a link to the original blog post they came from. Some are very practical, like Peanut Butter Dog Treats and iPhone Troubleshooting: some are more philosophical, like my Can Frugality Go Too Far?

There are two contests in connection with the book.

1. You can win a clean house — a $150 Visa card toward a local cleaning company — by submitting a tip here through the month of April. This contest is sponsored by the folks that compiled the e-book: if you want to enter that contest, please go there. Commenting here won’t help you win that one. 🙂

2. You can win a copy of the e-book That Works For Me! by commenting on this post.

You can earn an extra entry by “liking” the book’s Facebook page and leaving a comment here telling me you did.

You can earn and extra entry by following the book’s Pinterest page and leaving a comment here telling me you did.

You can earn an extra entry by following the book’s Twitter feed and leaving a comment telling me you did.

Also, if you want to buy the book and click through from my links here or the button at the top of the page, I get a percentage of the sale. (WordPress Police, I did get prior permission for this.) And if you’d like to save a dollar off the $8 price of the book, use the coupon code SAVE1.

I’ll draw a winner Wednsday morning, May 2, using random.org.

Have fun and enjoy the book!