Can frugality go too far?

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Frugality is a good thing. We’re supposed to be good stewards of the things God has entrusted us with. We’re supposed to exercise self-control, reduce, reuse, recycle, save, watch for bargains, etc. But is it ever possible to be too frugal? Are there any downsides to frugality?

I believe so. I want to share a few excesses or misapplications of frugality. Of course, not every frugal person manifests all of these traits, or any of them, necessarily. But these are things I have seen in real-life people and situations that we need to watch out for in our own hearts and lives.

1. Pride

There is nothing wrong with a sense of joy and satisfaction when we’ve found a great deal. There is nothing wrong with putting frugal practices into place as we feel led. But it can be easy to look with condescension or even scorn on others who don’t follow the same practices. One of the hardest things in the Christian life is to deal with the fact that not everyone feels led to the same place we feel the Lord has led us to in various aspects of life.

Once I was at a friend’s house when she invited me for lunch. She began making macaroni and cheese from scratch, and I was amazed that she would go to such trouble when the boxed varieties were less than a quarter back then. She responded that she usually had all the ingredients on hand and she didn’t consider it any trouble. Yet when we talked about spaghetti sauce, she admitted that she used the kind in a jar because she felt it was too much trouble to make from scratch, while I made spaghetti sauce from scratch all the time and didn’t consider it any trouble at all. I was relating this to a mutual friend and commented on how funny it was that different things were considered “trouble” by different people when this friend said, “Well, I wouldn’t use either of those!” It didn’t bother me that she didn’t use jars of spaghetti sauce or boxes of mac and cheese, but what bothered me was the condescending tone with which she said it.

Frugality does take time, either to make items from scratch or to search for deals or clip coupons or fill out rebate forms or whatever. Some people may choose to use mixes or jars occasionally as a time-saver, and if that’s okay with their families and within their budget, that’s fine. It’s not necessarily a sin to pay full retail price for items.

2. One-upmanship

This is somewhat related to the first point. Once I was showing a friend a new purse that I had found, that was the color and style I wanted with just the right little pockets, handle length, etc., and I happened upon it for $2 at a bargain table. Instead of saying anything along the lines of, “Hey what a great deal!” her response was, “I found one like that at a yard sale for fifty cents once.” It felt like a put-down. It’s normal to want to share our bargaining conquests, but when we try to outdo each other, something is wrong.

3. Lack of willingness to pay for quality

One friend who had a retail business had an interesting conversation with one her vendors one day. They both had dealings with a Christian university which had students, faculty and staff living in town. The vendor said, “Those folks recognize and want quality, but they don’t want to pay for it.” I don’t think that was necessarily a good testimony. Other people need to make money from their efforts. After all, if we were to make and sell goods or provide services, we would want, even need in most cases, to make enough money for it to be worth the materials and time involved. It’s not wrong to look for sales or deals or ask for a better offer, but, as I said above, it’s not wrong to pay full retail prices if it fits our budget and the Lord allows. There is a difference between being frugal and being cheap.

4. Obsession

Finding good bargains and saving money can bring joy and satisfaction, and once people get started on the lifestyle, frugality tends to grow. But if one’s life is so obsessed with bargain-hunting and implementing frugality that they become one-dimensional, can’t talk about anything else, or other interests or people are neglected, they may be going too far.

5. Hoarding

I know a dear older lady who grew up in the Depression and WWII era. She learned frugality and “doing without” as a lifestyle. She never put great stock in having a lot of things or having nice things, but she can rarely let go of what she does have for fear that she might need it some day. Her home is overflowing with things that are falling apart, outdated, or unneeded, but she can’t let them go. She can’t even be motivated by the thought that the things in good condition that she doesn’t use (and hasn’t in 40 years) could be sold or given away and become a blessing to someone else.

You know, you don’t have to be rich or have a lot to be materialistic. An over-preoccupation with the meager “things” you do have can be just as materialistic a mind-set.

6. Excess

Many coupons or specials require the user to buy multiple items in order to redeem the coupon, and some keep a few shelves for the “extras” or donate them to missions closets or rescue missions. But I’ve heard of people having whole rooms for such extras. Is that really necessary? Must we have 3 to 5 or more bottles of shampoo, deodorant, or whatever on hand? One lady I knew kept buying and then getting free an excess of hair care products and then had a hard time finding someone to give them to, and I thought, “You don’t have to buy them just because there is a deal on them.”

7. Shady practices

Sometimes this excessiveness can lead to less than noble practices, to put it mildly, or outright wrongdoing. Ann recently wrote about seeing a TV program where people with more coupons than the store allowed at a time went back to the store ten times for ten different transactions so they could use all the coupons, getting about a thousand dollars worth of groceries for about $20. That might sound great like a great deal, a super conquest, but how many stores could handle it if several customers did that? I can remember the days when stores had no restrictions on how many coupons could be doubled or the amount that could be doubled, but when articles started coming out about how shoppers could buy groceries for just a few dollars, or even get money back, then manufacturers and stores had to start adding restrictions lest they go out of business. So those few excessive couponers negatively impacted other shoppers, when these restrictions might not have been put in place if everyone had kept in moderation.

In another vein, this sentence jumped out at me in the biography Goforth of China by Rosalind Goforth: “”Graft, sweating of the poor (fed by women’s thirst for bargains) were horrors of cruelty to him that must be and were denounced” (p. 154).

8. Leaving some for others

Something else to think about when buying more than we need is the principle in the Old Testament of leaving something in the fields for poorer people to glean (Leviticus19:9-10). You might think with all that the Bible teaches about industry and diligence and hard work that God would want people to be careful to pick every possible piece of fruit off the vine. But He wanted people to leave some for others. We need to think about that before we buy an excess of items because they’re on sale: if the first twenty shoppers did that, would there be any left for anyone else? I don’t think this principle means that if the toy we want to buy our child for Christmas is the last one on the shelf, we should leave it for someone else. We have to keep all these things in balance. But perhaps we don’t need to buy twenty cans of pumpkin on sale if we’re just going to make a couple of pies and a few batches of bread or muffins with it over the winter.

I’ve also wrestled with this in regard to thrift stores. I feel I am supporting the charity that operates the thrift store when I buy something there, but I’ve wondered if I am taking something from someone else who couldn’t buy it anywhere else. I’m still pondering this one.

9. Time factors

As I mentioned before, most frugal practices do take time. There are some situations in life where there is really no choice: for various reasons there is a lack of income and time must be spent looking for ways to save money, even if those ways cost more time. But sometimes time itself can be put to better use than spending most of the day dragging children to five different stores, spending hours making something that would have been less of an investment to buy, spending time scouting online frugality sites when that time might be better spent in other pursuits, etc.

10. Impact on others

I was in a home once where I felt hampered by the hostess’s ultra-frugality, though she had the best of intentions. If I threw a paper plate in the trash, she got it out (sometimes seconds after it left my hand) to put it in the fireplace (where it burned in seconds, not really providing any long-lasting fuel). If I started to throw away a bit of food my child didn’t eat, she’d say, “No, don’t do that: save it for the dog.” I felt like I was constantly doing things “wrong.” Maybe your family (or guests!) would like you just to relax sometimes rather than feeling you’re constantly hounding them, or spend time with them rather than spending Saturdays scouting yard sales. Maybe they’d rather you didn’t buy three boxes of cereal they’re not crazy about (or like, but would also like some variety) because it was a good deal.

11. Neglect

If we neglect buying something we really need or avoid going to the doctor when sick because we don’t want to spend the money, we may be carrying frugality too far. There is a difference between not being able to do these things financially and not doing them just because we don’t want to. Good health is a good investment.

12. Health and sanitation

Even canned goods have an expiration date on them (another reason not to store an excess of them), and sometimes it’s best to throw away questionable leftovers than eat them. I’ve been sorely convicted by Proverbs 12:27 while throwing out food: “The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious.” I need to do much better to be diligent to use my “substance,” but if it does spoil, I shouldn’t use it just because I don’t want to throw it out. Once a dear lady pulled out some leftover corn from the refrigerator, remarked that it didn’t look very good, and then, instead of throwing it out, added more fresh corn to it. I was less than excited to eat that meal!

I’m sharing the following not to disparage my mother-in-law, but to help others understand how older people’s thought processes can work. My mother-in-law grew up in an era where you rarely if ever threw anything away. Now in her old age when she doesn’t always think clearly, she wants to reuse straws. We use bendy straws to make it easier for her to handle, and she’ll take them out of her glass when she’s done and put them on her end table. The next time we get her something to drink, she’ll want us to reuse those straws rather than get a new one – even if that straw has been sitting there long enough to have dried milk globules in it. I don’t know if she could get sick from drinking through a used straw, but I don’t want to take the chance. She fusses at me for throwing them away, but I tell her teasingly she’s not so poor that she has to reuse straws (and I try to throw them away when she’s not looking so it doesn’t disturb her.)

13. Lack of faith.

Frugal practices can be a good investment in wise stewardship. But if it is causing any of the above problems, yet the one involved feels she can’t possibly scale back, it might be evidence of not trusting the Lord for His provision.

I know a dear younger lady who is trying very hard to be as frugal as possible because her husband is in a ministry that isn’t able to pay much, and she wants to stay home with her children rather than work outside the home. That is commendable and I applaud that. Yet she is so frantic about it that it seems a constant source of worry and consternation to her. She reads a number of frugality sites, always feeling like a failure because there is more she feels she should be doing. But there is so much information online about this kind of thing now, we can’t possibly do everything recommended, go to every store, find every deal, and then beat ourselves up if we paid for something and then found a better price elsewhere. It’s a miserable way to live. We really need to seek the Lord for what practices He would have us employ and remember that ultimately our provision is from Him.

One former pastor used to say that for every strength there is an off-setting weakness. Couponing, yard-saling, thrifting. repurposing and other frugal practices are good and effective, and most of us should probably work on being more frugal. But like anything else, if done to excess or in the wrong spirit it can lead to other problems. We need to remember to do unto others what we’d have them do for us if we had a business. We need to work hard yet trust God and keep all of these principles in balance. In an excellent post about frugality, Tim Challies sums up:

I guess the long and short is that money can be as big an idol when you seek not to spend it as it can when you do nothing but spend it. Frugality in and of itself must not be an end in itself but must be a means to a greater end of bringing glory to God and of serving others. Ever and always it is a matter of the heart.

(Graphic is courtesy of Microsoft Office clip art.)

This post will be also linked to “Works For Me Wednesday,” where you can find an abundance of helpful hints each week at We Are THAT family on Wednesdays, as well as Women Living Well.

The Week In Words

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

Here are a few that stood out to me, with little commentary:

Seen on Facebook, I think:

Let God have your life; he can do more with it than you can. ~ D.L. Moody

From a friend’s Facebook status:

Stop trying to fit in when you were born to stand out.

From Candy Troutman:

“What the Israelites feared (the sea) became their way to freedom.”

From another friend’s Facebook:

“The best training is to learn to accept everything as it comes, as from Him whom our soul loves. The tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life, silly little nothings, things you are ashamed of minding one scrap” ~ Amy Carmichael

In a similar vein, from an Elisabeth Elliot devotional:

An angry retort from someone may be just the occasion we need in which to learn not only longsuffering and forgiveness, but meekness and gentleness; fruits not born in us but borne only by the Spirit. From “God’s Curriculum” in Keep a Quiet Heart.

From The Old Guys:

Shall we give entertainment unto that, or hearken unto its dalliances, which wounded, which pierced, which slew our dear Lord Jesus? ~ John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation

If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

Dear Lord and Father of Mankind

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Longer text is here.

Every day is a gift

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Yesterday could have been one of those no-good awful very bad days.

As I was waiting on my cream of wheat to gel in the microwave, I noticed anew the sad state of a burner on the stove that had been spattered with bubbling potato soup a few days ago, and thought, “I really need to clean that up.” As I took my half-formed cream of wheat out of the microwave above the stove in order to stir it, I bumped the microwave and the cream of wheat spilled onto the burner pan in question and its neighbor, looking, honestly, like someone had thrown up on them. So I took that as a sign to clean up that burner pan now.

The next several hours were fine except that I got out the door to go visit my mother-in-law later than planned. I have to pass through three school zones to get to her place, and at the wrong times of day that can be a nightmare. Plus I like to be home when Jesse gets home. He’s capable of being home alone, but I can remember the difference in my teens between coming home when Mom was there — warmth, interest, communication — and coming home an empty house when she was working to — lonely and desolate. This is Jesse’s last year before college, and I want his memories to be of mom being there when he gets home from school.

So on my way to Mom’s, thinking I should make it past the one school zone that lets out earlier without too much delay, suddenly traffic came to a grinding halt in both directions. As several cars made three-point turns to go back the way they had come, I inched forward. It looked like one of those big construction vehicles had stalled (it looked like a truck in front but had a large long crane-type arm on the back), and from what I could tell, had been hooked to a tow truck. Hooked because evidently it was either too big or too heavy to be on the tow truck. But the tow truck, in making a wide turn onto my road with that unwieldy beast tethered to it, had swung too wide and almost went off the slope on the other side of the road. I was almost at the last turn to Mom’s place, so I hated to turn around and try to find another route when I didn’t know the area well (and the GPS wasn’t giving me any better ideas). I kept thinking about it, but every time I was just about to, I’d see some movement with the stalled vehicles and think we were just about to get going…and then realize we weren’t. I ended up there for about 45 minutes to an hour. Thankfully with all of this study about the sovereignty of God in Job, the Lord enabled me to take it all much more patiently than I might have otherwise, but I still stewed over the waste of time for all of us involved and prayed for the situation while listening to some nice classical music on NPR and occasionally flipping through the mail I’d picked up on my way out.

Finally the vehicles blocking the road got mobile and we were all on our way. I visited Mom a while and then, on the way back, felt my blood sugar slipping a bit and decided to pull into a fast-food drive-through for a little snack. But the line wasn’t moving. The guy parked where orders were placed looked like he was having a conversation rather than placing an order, and no matter how much he talked, he wasn’t going anywhere. I assume he was talking to someone in his truck while waiting for someone to take his order. Finally I decided to forget it and head home for a snack, saving money and calories and any more waiting time.

And then I got stopped in backed-up traffic again, this time for a passing train.

I finally got home, a little rattled, harried, and hungry, glad I had an hour or two to unwind before dinner and wouldn’t have to wait in line again for the rest of the day.

Elisabeth Elliot has a devotional I can’t find just now about how even little things that don’t seem to have a major purpose can be taken as the Lord’s will for the moment, and Amy Carmichael has written about God’s grace for disconcerting “little things.” I thought, “Well, Lord, I don’t know what purpose you had in all of that. But thank you for helping me not to get as frustrated as I could have.”

Later in the evening I was sorting through coupons, flyers, catalogs and such while watching The Biggest Loser. I decided to clean out the file folder of restaurant coupons and discovered in it an envelope my mom had sent some time before she died containing several pages from a desk calendar that she thought I’d find interesting. I had glanced at them before but I am sorry to say I had never gotten around to reading them, and I felt bad that she had taken the time and care to send them to me and I had neglected them.

I kept the envelope out and went through it this morning. The desk calendar was evidently a compilation of different Chicken Soup for the Soul books. One particular story was about a lady whose daughter was in the children’s ward of a hospital after surgery and who made friends with a bright cheerful six-year-old boy named Adam receiving chemotherapy for leukemia. One rainy, gloomy day, this woman remarked on what a depressing day it was, and Adam answered, “Every day is beautiful for me.”

Wow. Every day is a gift. For a middle-aged lady stuck in traffic as much as for a six-year-old leukemia patient.

Book Review: Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Worldliness is a difficult topic to consider because people can have some weird ideas as to what is worldly. Yet it is a topic Christians must consider, because the Bible says ” friendship of the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4) and instructs us to “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15). But what aspect of the world? Surely not the physical world, the flowers and sunsets and such that God created and called very good (Genesis 1 and 2), because “God…giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (I Timothy 5:17b). And surely not the people in the world, because “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). John elaborates when he goes on to say, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (I John 2:16-17).

C. J. Mahaney and four other ministers help us think through some of these questions, considerations, and applications in Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World. This book first came to my attention when I was listening to a former pastor’s sermon online and heard him quote from it. It intrigued me both because the quote in itself was very good, but mainly because I knew this pastor to be more conservative in his standards (not in a legalistic way) and thought if he found value in this book, it must definitely be worth reading.

And it definitely was. The authors successfully walk the narrow line between the extremes of making a list of legalistic external standards and eschewing all lists in favor of false understanding of Christian liberty. They seek to explain Biblically what it means to be “in the world yet not of it.” The first chapter discusses the concept, succeeding chapters apply the principles to media, music, possessions, and clothes, and the final chapter shares some right ways to love the world. There are two appendices in the back discussing modesty.

Here are just a few of the many quotes I marked:

The gospel makes all the difference between whether you are merely conservative or whether you are conquering worldliness in the power of the Spirit for the glory of Christ (p. 11, John Piper’s forward).

What does it look like when the blood of Christ governs the television and the Internet and the iPod and the checkbook and the neckline?…The only way most folks know how to draw lines is with rulers. The idea that lines might come into being freely and lovingly (and firmly) as the fruit of the gospel is rare (p. 11, Piper).

We will never be useful to the world if we are being deeply shaped by the world. And we will be shaped by the world without intentional efforts not to be (p. 12, Piper).

In the end, the sum of all beauty is Christ, and the sin of all worldliness is to diminish our capacity to see him and be satisfied in him and show him compellingly to a perishing world (p. 13, Piper).

Before Demas deserted, he drifted (p. 20, Mahaney).

One reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church (p. 23, Spurgeon).

Worldliness, then, is a love for this fallen world. It’s loving the values and pursuits of the world that stand opposed to God. More specifically, it is to gratify and exalt oneself to the exclusion of God. It rejects God’s rule and replaces it with our own…It exalts our opinions above God’s truth. It elevates our sinful desires for the things of this fallen world above God’s commands and promises (p. 27, Mahaney).

I’m not saying it’s wrong to watch television, rent a DVD, surf the Internet, or spend an evening at he cinema. The hazard is thoughtless watching. Glorifying God is an intentional pursuit. We don’t accidentally drift into holiness; rather, we mature gradually and purposefully, one choice at a time (p. 40, Cabaniss).

Filthiness, foolish talk, and crude joking are “out of place” — they’re forbidden not because they’re on some arbitrary “banned words” list, but because they reflect the heart and attitude of those who disregard God and His Word (p. 55, Cabaniss).

Christians should dislike and avoid vulgarity…not because we have a warped view of sex, and are either ashamed or afraid of it, but because we have a high and holy view of it as being in its right place God’s good gift, which we do not want to see cheapened (p. 56, Stott).

If we wouldn’t trust a non-Christian to give us counsel on how to live our lives, why would we regularly listen to their counsel set to music? (p. 82, Kauflin).

Materialism is what happens when coveting has cash to spend (p. 95, Harvey).

In my experience, 95 percent of the believers who face the test of persecution pass it, while 95 percent who face the test of prosperity fail it (p. 103, Alcorn quoting a Romanian pastor).

Covetous chains the heart to things that are passing away (p. 106, Harvey).

Your wardrobe is a public statement of your personal and private motivation. And if you profess godliness, you should be concerned with cultivating these twin virtues, modesty and self-control (p. 120, Mahaney).

The Bible doesn’t forbid a woman from enhancing her appearance. But here in I Timothy 2:9-10, Paul isn’t just advocating modesty in dress; he’s insisting that more time and energy be devoted to spiritual adornment in the form of good works. And he’s warning about excessive attention devoted to appearance to the neglect of good works (p. 135, Mahaney).

[The world] held no sway over Paul, nor was he dependent upon it for anything. He didn’t crave its approval, embrace its values, or covet its rewards (p. 169-170, Pursell).

Hope I didn’t overload you there. That’s only maybe a little over half of what I marked, and flipping through the pages again, I keep finding more thought-provoking statements.

There were maybe one or two statements in the book I’m not sure I agree with, but by and large I would consider it an invaluable resource for anyone who has grappled with what worldliness is and seeks grace-based ways of combatting it.

***I must say, as well, that though I enjoyed this book, this is not a blanket endorsement of the authors. I was only familiar with the names of two, knew little about them, and nothing about the rest.

A portion of the book is online here.

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

The Week In Words

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that stood out to me:

From the July/August 2001 issue of The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter:

The Purpose of Trouble

“Whatever else trouble is in the world for, it is here for this good purpose: to develop strength. For trouble is a moral and spiritual task. It is something which is hard to do. And it is in the spiritual world as in the physical, strength is increased by encounter with the difficult. A world without any trouble in it would be, to people of our kind, a place of spiritual enervation and moral laziness. Fortunately, every day is crowded with care. Every day to every one of us brings its questions, its worries, and its tasks, brings its sufficiency of trouble. Thus we get our daily spiritual exercise. Every day we are blessed with new opportunities for the development of strength of soul.” ~ George Hodges

I think I saw this on a couple of people’s Facebook:

Christianity if false is of no importance & if true is of infinite importance but it can’t be moderately important ~ C. S. Lewis

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

The King of Love

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I’ve posted this before, but it is on my mind again today. One of my favorites:

The King of love my Shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never,
I nothing lack if I am His
And He is mine forever.

Where streams of living water flow
My ransomed soul He leadeth,
And where the verdant pastures grow,
With food celestial feedeth.

Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love He sought me,
And on His shoulder gently laid,
And home, rejoicing, brought me.

In death’s dark vale I fear no ill
With Thee, dear Lord, beside me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy cross before to guide me.

Thou spread’st a table in my sight;
Thy unction grace bestoweth;
And O what transport of delight
From Thy pure chalice floweth!

And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise
Within Thy house forever.

~ Henry W. Baker

The Week in Words

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that stood out to me this week:

From a friend’s Facebook:

Doubt wonders, “Have I done enough to go to heaven?” Grace answers, “No, you haven’t. But Jesus has on your behalf.”

Seen at Janet‘s:

The gospel…is eternally “relevant” or it’s not good news at all. Our concern is not to “make it relevant,” but to be faithful to its message amidst the whirl of our time.

Seen at Chrysalis‘s Facebook:

If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown

A needed reminder as most of us do not like change, or at least not much of it.

From an Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotional, taken from the chapter “Nevertheless We Must Run Aground” from the book Love Has a Price Tag.

Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.

From Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word commenting on Proverbs 23:23:

It costs something to live by the truth, but it costs even more to abandon the truth.

I’m hesitant to add one more, and a lengthy one at that, because I have so many already, but I just don’t feel I can leave it off. It made me sit and think for a good while, and even a few days later provided more food for thought. From the September 20 reading of The Invitation by Derick Bingham concerning Peter cutting off the high priest’s servant’s ear and Jesus healing it:

Interesting, isn’t it, that the last act of supernatural healing performed by the Saviour during His earthly ministry was necessary because of the blundering zeal of one of his followers? Don’t you think the Lord is still constantly healing the wounds made on people’s lives and souls by those who ought to know better? There is still plenty of zeal-without-knowledge in the Christian church and it does more harm than good. Of course, we admire Peter’s honest zeal but Malchus didn’t, did he? Be careful you don’t wound someone today by enthusiasm for the Lord that does not come from knowledge of Him.

There are two admonitions from this passage: to be careful of a zeal without knowledge that wounds rather than helping, and, if you have been the victim of such zeal, to go to Jesus for healing rather than forever nursing that wound or letting it fester into a bitter and vitriolic infection.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

Book Review: The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Barbara Harper

In Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job (linked to my review) author Layton Talbert referred a few times to a set of poems John Piper wrote called The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God. The poems are in book form there with some beautiful photography and a CD of John Piper reading the poems (at least, the used copy I bought from Amazon had a CD with it). The text and audio are also online here (although a few lines are missing from the text).

There is something about poetry that can express truth with beauty and poignancy, and Piper’s poems certainly accomplish that. They don’t cover every verse or every point made in the book of Job, and they include some scenes not in Job (a conversation between Job and God before Job’s calamities struck and between Job and his wife, who is treated much more tenderly here than in most sermons where I’ve heard her mentioned) which is just an imaginative way of telling the story and expressing what kinds of conversations may have passed. All in all they’re a faithful retelling.

I had wondered why Piper said early on, “And Job would lift his hands to God and wondered why he spared the rod of suffering” until I realized he was probably referring to what Job feared in 3:25 when he said, ““the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” We’re going through Job in our church, and just recently discussed what it was that Job might have feared, and it could quite possibly be something along these lines, that God had blessed him so much that he feared that suffering of some kind was going to befall him at some point before it was all over.

There are some really beautiful sections. Here are a few of my favorites (p. 18):

Now tell me, with your heart,
Would you be willing, Job, to part
With all your children, if in my
Deep counsel I should judge that by
Such severing more good would be,
And you would know far more of me?”

What parent could answer that question? Yet we’re called to yield our children to God: they’re ultimately His.

On pages 32-33, shortly after all his trials came:

O God, I cling
With feeble fingers to the ledge
Of your great grace, yet feel the wedge
Of this calamity struck hard
Between my chest and this deep-scarred
And granite precipice of love.

Part of his response to his wife (p. 41):

O Dinah, do not speak like those
Who cannot see, because they close
Their eyes, and say there is no God,
Or fault him when he plies the rod.
It is no sin to say, my love,
That bliss and pain come from above.
And if we do not understand
Some dreadful stroke from his left hand,
Then we must wait and trust and see.

Part of Job’s response to his friends’ accusations (p. 58):

O that some door
Were opened to the court of God,
And I might make my case unflawed
Before the Judge of all the world,
And prove this storm has not been hurled
Against me or my children there
Because of hidden crimes. O spare
Me now, my friends, your packages
Of God, your simple adages.

And I think my favorite lines of all (p. 72):

Beware, Jemimah, God is kind,
In ways that will not fit your mind.

This book took me just under half an hour to read, and then I listened to it the next day in about the same amount of time while mostly following along reading the words. It was quite an enjoyable and beneficial hour, helping to feel some of what Job might have felt. I think I’ll be returning to this volume again and again.

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

How Older Women Can Serve

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about Why Older Women Don’t Serve at church in an in-front-of-people way or a “take charge of big things like VBS” way. But even though older women may have physical issues and may not have the energy to serve in certain ways doesn’t mean they should not serve at all. Psalm 92:14a says, “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.” God has given to every member of His body gifts to exercise. Older women are given a specific assignment in Titus 2:3-5.

If you’re “older” and can still coordinate the ladies’ group or cook for 200 members for a banquet or teach active five-year-olds in Sunday School, go for it! A friend of mine had an aunt who still delivered Meals on Wheels at 92. But if you’re not quite up to that, here are a few other ideas of ways you can serve:

1. Prayer. You may not have the energy to “go” and “do” a lot, but you might have more time than others to pray. There is a lot to pray for: your pastor, church, missionaries, young people seeking God’s will for their lives, adjustments for newlyweds, harried moms with young children, older moms in the “taxi years” taking their kids hither and yon, moms facing the empty nest, single ladies at any stage…there is enough to keep any of us busy praying for much longer than we do. This doesn’t mean we necessarily need to spend hours on our knees: we can pray while cleaning the kitchen, driving, resting, etc.

I can’t tell you what it meant to me when, while recovering from a serious illness, an older lady from a previous church in the town we had moved from called me to see how I was doing and to tell me she was praying for me. Some of my favorite missionary anecdotes involve people being prompted to pray for a certain missionary at a certain time, and in the days before texts and e-mails it may have been months before they knew what the specific need was, but as they and the missionary compared dates, the missionary had a specific need just when the individual was prompted to pray.

2. Show interest. As you cross paths with other ladies, ask how they’re doing. “How’s that new baby? Sleeping through the night yet?” “How did that job interview go?” “How’s Johnny liking school this year?” Just having someone take a moment to show personal interest can lift someone’s day. Watch out for new people and making them feel welcome. One lady with multiple health problems whom no one would have blamed if she stayed in bed all day instead came with her husband to every sports event, home and away, of our Christian school even though they had neither kids nor grandkids in the school. That meant a lot to those involved. Even in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, there are those who withdraw and keep to themselves and those who try to smile and brighten others’ days.

3. Word of encouragement. When you do show interest in others, you can offer words of shared joy when things are going well and words of encouragement when they’re not. One of my favorite posts of Shannon‘s was It Gets Easier for younger moms (though Shannon’s not in the category I’d generally think of as “Older Women,” we are all older than someone and can offer encouragement to those in the paths we’ve come through).

4. Offers of help. One older lady I knew would sometimes go and help a new mom after the birth of a baby when that lady’s own mother could not come, or when a pregnant lady was on bedrest. Practical help like doing dishes, laundry, tidying, making a meal can lift one’s spirits tremendously when one can’t keep up. Be alert even to little ways one can offer help: when a mom holding a baby is trying to help a toddler go potty in the ladies’ restroom at church, offer to hold the baby; when a mom is trying to coordinate a baby carrier, diaper bag, Bibles, and two preschoolers from the car to the church, ask how you can help (don’t just swoop in — the baby may cry if anyone other than mom holds her, the children may panic if you just take their hands and offer to take them in: ask, “Can I help you somehow? I’d be happy to take the baby or carry the diaper bag” or something similar.)

5. Sharing what you know. Once a lady told me she’d love to have a ladies’ meeting where someone demonstrated how to bake bread, because she couldn’t get a handle on it, and she could learn it more easily by seeing someone do it and being able to ask questions. But we couldn’t think of anyone who made their own bread. If you know how to make bread, can vegetables, knit, etc., you may or may not want to do so in a ladies’ meeting, but maybe you could invite one or two others over, or go to their houses to show them. I know one lady who went to help another younger mom harvest and put up her produce from her garden, and I know another mom who asked a retired school teacher to teach her daughters to sew, so that they could be influenced by her sweet godliness as well as being taught the basics of sewing.

6. Having one or two women over. I mentioned in the previous post a retired lady I looked up to who found various unique ways to serve. One thing she did was to have a couple of ladies at a time over to lunch at her house. She didn’t do so specifically to Try To Be a Good Influence, but people who walk with God do carry a sometimes unconscious godly influence into the lives of others.

Indwelt

Not merely in the words you say,
Not only in your deeds confessed,
But in the most unconscious way
Is Christ expressed.

Is it a beatific smile,
A holy light upon your brow;
Oh no, I felt His Presence while
You laughed just now.

For me ‘twas not the truth you taught
To you so clear, to me still dim
But when you came to me you brought
A sense of Him.

And from your eyes He beckons me,
And from your heart His love is shed,
Til I lose sight of you and see
The Christ instead.

—by A. S. Wilson

6. Visiting shut-ins. We tend to think of this with shut-ins who are alone, but when they have family nearby we assume the family is meeting all their needs and they’re well taken care of. The lady I mentioned above also brought another lady with her to visit my mother-in-law in an assisted living facility. One of us saw her every day, but it brightened her week as well as ours when these ladies came to visit her.

7. Sending notes. Or cookies. Or both. How many people send hand-written notes any more? Yet we all still love receiving them. You can brighten the day of a college student, military personnel, your pastor, or just about anyone with a little note (or even an e-mail or a Facebook post). And you may not have the stamina for a marathon cookie baking session, but maybe you could bake just a few and send a package to one person at a time.

8. Volunteer. When my dad was in the hospital, the “pink ladies” were older volunteers who kept the coffee pot going in the waiting room, stocked donuts, helped people find which way to go, and just generally made themselves available and useful. Having a sweet, friendly face in that place helped a lot. Similarly, Christian schools are having a tough time of it with decreasing enrollment, and volunteers can help provide services that the school couldn’t otherwise offer. At the Christian school my boys attended for twelve years, one older lady oversaw the library part-time while moms or sometimes grandmothers would handle each class’s library time, checking out books and reading a story to the class. Some helped with class parties, some helped sorting papers for students’ weekly folders, some helped in the lunchroom. And the students seemed to love their grandmotherly influence in the school. When I was coordinating our ladies group, sometimes when we would work on a project like cards and bookmarks for missionaries or favors for a ladies’ luncheon and wouldn’t quite get finished, ladies who took some of those things home to finish helped me tremendously.

9. Blogging. Sharing what God has taught you along the way can be a blessing to others who read.

A younger woman may be thinking, “Wow, I’d love to find an older lady to help me in some of these ways!” Pray about it and maybe take the initiative: they may be suffering from a crisis of confidence either in the loss of some of their abilities or the thought that perhaps they’re not wanted. I think many of these kinds of ministries work together: maybe as you invite someone over for coffee or ask them to show you how to do something, that can spark a relationship where some of these other things can flow.

Not everyone will be able to do all of these things, of course. Time and energy will vary from person to person. But if you’re older (in any way) and wanting to be used of the Lord but don’t know how best to serve, pray, seek His will, and start where you are with a word of kindness here, an expression of interest there, prayer here, an offer of help there. He does have work He wants you to do, and He will guide you to it and enable you to do it.

(Graphics are courtesy of Microsoft Office clip art.)

This post will be also linked to “Works For Me Wednesday,” where you can find a plethora of helpful hints each week at We Are THAT family on Wednesdays, as well as Women Living Well.