February Reflections

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Once again the end of the month is still a few days away, but there will probably be other posts between now and then. So I thought this might be a good time for my end-of-month post.

February is when winter starts getting old. However, the month has its highlights. One is my daughter-in-law’s birthday. Another is Valentine’s Day, which we celebrate as a family. Another is that the daylight that has been steadily increasing since the winter equinox finally becomes enough to be noticeable.

This year we had the added benefit of the Olympics in February. I rarely watch sports on TV except when the Olympics are on. We watched mostly figure skating, but caught some skiing, bobsledding, and snowboarding as well. One night when we were looking for something from the Olympics to watch while eating take-out, all we could find was a curling match between the US and China on the NBC app. There’s a reason curling is only shown in clips in prime time! It’s not the most exciting sport to watch, though I am sure a lot of strategy is involved for the players.

My favorite Olympic moments: Nathan Chen’s gold medal free skate program, Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner’s win in the mixed snowboard cross (with the two of them being among the oldest Olympic competitors), and Shawn White’s last run and then closing interview with Mike Tirico.

Home and family

A couple of organizing projects had been tugging at me since before Christmas without the chance to do anything about them. I finally got to them this month. It would be too long and boring, probably, to tell all about them. But one involved getting things I only use once or twice a year, like seasonal cookie cutters and pumpkin-carving tools, out of a kitchen drawer and into the pantry. I didn’t take “before” pictures, but here are the bins in the pantry afterward:

And here’s the drawer, the deepest one on the kitchen. Imagine it with most of the stuff in those bins in here in plastic bags. It seemed whatever I wanted in here was always at the bottom of the drawer. I’m so much more pleased with it now.

I used to post Timothyisms, funny little things my grandson would say. He still says cute things, but I don’t think to write them down. He likes jokes now, so I collect them and share them with him. My favorite recent one: Why don’t anteaters get sick? Because they’re full of anty-bodies. 🙂

Jason just took this picture of Timothy and me last week. He’s only 8 (next month), but is almost as tall as I am!

And, yes, he’s in the making-funny-faces-for-the-camera stage of life. 🙂

Creating

February was a banner month for card-making, between Valentine’s Day and a couple of birthdays.

Going in chronological order, this was a card for a friend’s birthday. Only . . . I had the date wrong. I had it on my calendar and gathered a few things together and made her a card. Then the night before, I thought maybe I should check the church directory and make sure of her birth date. And I discovered it was in July, not February! I decided to go ahead and give everything to her since she’d probably get a kick out of it. We could almost call it her half-birthday. 🙂 Plus, I didn’t want to have to keep up with the things until summer. As it turned out, when I dropped the things off at her house, she had had a very draining couple of days. So an unexpected non-birthday gift was a day-brightener.

She likes blue-green and sunflowers. The flowers here were multi-layered stickers.

Here are the Valentine’s cards:

This one was for Jim:

The heart and EKG-type readout were done with the Cricut. The original idea I had seen for something similar to this said, “You make my heart beat faster.” Since I have afib, I thought that might not be the best wording. 🙂

This was for Jeremy, who likes foxes:

The fox here is a puffy sticker. I used a heart-shaped punch for the cut-out and did the wording for the sign on the computer. Everything else is scrapbooking paper.

When I saw this, I couldn’t resist it for Jason, even though it meant downloading and printing a file rather than cutting and pasting. 🙂

If you are not familiar with these characters, they are from the Mandalorian. I don’t know much about Star Wars and haven’t even seen all the movies, but we loved this series. Jason especially like the fatherhood theme in it. “This is the way” is something the Mandalorians say repeatedly. This was designed by Karen, which she generously offered as a free download. It’s designed with multiple cards on one page that can be cut out and distributed to kids’ friends. I adapted it for a single larger card.

This one was for Mittu:

The cupcake was made with the Cricut, the hearts with hole punches, and the words with stickers.

This was Timothy’s:

It’s also Mandalorian-inspired, designed and generously offered free by Mandee. And she even included a link that explained how to download this into the Cricut to be cut there, so I learned a new facet of the Cricut. I hadn’t thought about Baby Yoda when I was at Hobby Lobby buying supplies, and I was relieved to have just the right shade of green paper among my stash.

This was for Jesse. I just liked that paper for him, as he likes red but doesn’t like overly mushy cards.

The “love” and “hugs” were stickers.

Finally, this was for Mittu’s birthday. She likes sunflowers and purple, but until now I had not seen paper that combined the two.

The “Happy birthday” and sunflowers by it were stickers. The rest was from a scrapbooking paper set.

Watching and Listening

As previously mentioned, the Olympics took up most of our viewing time this month. Though I enjoyed them, I’m kind of glad they’re over.

We’re still watching The Amazing Race and the Holderness family podcast/video recaps the day after each episode airs.

Around the World in 80 Days wrapped up on PBS. As I said last month, though no film adaptation is going to be exactly like the book, they rewrote too much of this one. Really, I felt they just hijacked the characters and main story arc to write their own program, adding in modern-day dilemmas and sensibilities. But . . . if I stopped comparing it to the book and just took it as it was, I enjoyed it. My husband had never read the book and enjoyed the series a lot. I tried to resist saying “In the book it was like this . . .” too often, but I did let it slip sometimes.

All Creatures Great and Small on PBS Masterpiece Theatre finished its second season this last Sunday. I’ve only read the first book in Herriot’s series, and that was a long time ago, so I am not sure how much was changed between book and film. But I loved this series–so heart-warming. I’m looking forward to their third season.

Jim and I watched the old movie The Guns of Navarone one night. Another night, we watched Good-bye Christopher Robin, kind of a sweet and sad telling of A. A. Milne and his family: how he came to write books about Christopher Robin (his real son’s name, though he didn’t go by it in real life), how the fame affected all of them. I knew that Christopher had liked the fame at first and then resented his father’s sharing of his life later on. This might be a cautionary tale for those who write about their real-life children. In the film, Christopher eventually overcomes his resentment when he realizes the comfort and joy the Pooh stories gave people in their childhoods, the memories of which brought comfort to them even as adults. I had Christopher’s book, The Enchanted Places, in my Kindle app and immediately started reading it, hoping he came to a similar conclusion in real life. Pooh was a big part of my children’s growing-up years, though we were more familiar with the Disney videos and toys than the original books. But Pooh and Christopher Robin and the rest will always have a soft spot in my heart.

One other series I watched was on PBS was the two-part A Very British Romance, tracing romantic rituals through English literature. Pluses: the literature, courtship history, host Lucy Worsley’s dressing up as some famous literary heroines, some elaborate original Valentines. Minuses: the feminist lens through which much of this was processed, the looking down on virtuous heroines and equating virtue with weakness, the amplification of sexual liaisons or reading into books more sexuality than was originally meant. Since I recently listened to The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, where Mary Bennet read much of Thomas Carlyle, it was interesting to hear more about him here.

Reading

The Olympics cut into my reading-before-bed time. But here’s what I managed to finish this month:

  • Half Finished by Lauraine Snelling (fiction). A group of friends starts a UFO club, not for exploring extra-terrestrial life, but for finishing unfinished projects while fellowshipping with each other. Relationships form and people band together to help each other through the sorrows and joys they encounter.
  • The Road Home by Malissa Chapin (fiction). A woman running from her past encounters a recipe box in an antique shop. An attempt to return the box to the owner’s family leads to a road trip in a pink Cadillac and the story of another woman who tried to hide truth. A very good debut novel.
  • Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope, the fourth of his Barsetshire Chronicles (classic fiction, audiobook). A young vicar trying to get in with society’s elite gets into trouble. The village matron’s son falls in love with the vicar’s sister rather than the beautiful but cold society maiden his mother had picked out for him.
  • The Middle Matters: Why That (Extra)Ordinary Life Looks Really Good on You by Lisa-Jo Baker (nonfiction). Lisa-Jo discusses the impact of our middle years in eight areas: our bodies, marriage, parenting (which gets two chapters), in a breezy chatting-with-girlfriends style.

I’m currently reading:

  • 100 Best Bible Verses to Overcome Worry and Anxiety (still. Almost done.)
  • Be Successful (1 Samuel): Attaining Wealth That Money Can’t Buy by Warren W. Wiersbe
  • IBS for Dummies by Carolyn Dean and L. Christine Wheeler
  • The Enchanted Places: A Childhood Memoir by Christopher Milne
  • The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope (audiobook)
  • Just 18 Summers by Michelle Cox and Rene Gutteridge

Next in the queue: The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers, The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope, Wiersbe’s “Be” book on 2 Samuel.

Blogging

Besides book reviews, Friday Fave Fives, and Saturday Laudable Linkage, I had these posts on the blog this month:

  • Ways to Disagree Without Tearing Each Other Down. Disagreements are inevitable, even among those we love best. But we can disagree graciously and constructively without belittling each other.
  • Don’t Let Truth Become Cliche. If some parts of the Bible seem trite or overly familiar to us, the solution is not to scale back on our Bible reading. I share some ways to refresh our view and renew our love for the Word.
  • Does He Still Love Me? Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend God’s love for us when we continue to mess up. Maybe that’s why Paul prayed the Ephesians might “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19).
  • What Can We Know for Sure? Some say there is no absolute truth, even in Christianity. But, though people will argue about some things until we get to heaven, God has given us core truths that we can know for sure.

Incidentally, I noticed a while back that I had passed the 5,000 mark in posts. I’m at 5,059 now in 15 1/2 years of blogging.

As we wrap up February and turn to March, we look forward to my husband’s birthday early in the month and Pi Day (when we eat pie on 3/14). Then the calendar is pretty much free until mid-April. I hope to dig into some writing then.

I’m aware of the news, though I don’t mention it much here. I figure it’s mentioned plenty elsewhere. There’s not much we can do about any of it except pray, but that’s the biggest, best, most important thing we can do. Among my prayers: wisdom for our leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-4), that events will cause people to turn to the Lord, “that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you” (1 Kings 8:43), that those suffering may know “The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you” (Psalm 9:9-10).

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

The Middle Matters

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I’ve often thought that the “middle-aged spread” refers not to an expanding waistline, but to the number of years we claim middle age. Because what’s next after middle age? Old? Elderly? We need some designation between the middle and the end.

At any rate, even though I’m on the far side of middle age, Lisa -Jo Baker’s book caught my eye when it was on sale for the KIndle app: The Middle Matters: Why That (Extra)Ordinary Life Looks Really Good on You. I had heard Lisa Jo’s name but never read her, and I’ve not often seen books for this stage of life.

Lisa-Jo discusses the impact of our middle years in eight areas: our bodies, marriage, parenting (which gets two chapters), our homes, failures, friendship, and faith. “Discusses” is probably too formal a word. Each topic is addressed in three to seven essays. Lisa-Jo writes in a breezy chatting-with-girlfriends style.

It’s hard to summarize a series of essays, so I’ll just give you some samples.

One of my favorite chapters is “When You Think Your Love Story Is Boring.” The epigraph of this chapter comes from a teenager quoted in Huffington Post who feels her love life will never be adequate “until someone runs through an airport to stop me from getting on a flight.” Lisa-Jo shares many examples of love demonstrated in the everyday rather than the once-in-a-lifetime grand gesture.

He lays down his life, and it looks like so many ordinary moments stitched together into the testimony of a good man who comes home to his family driving the old minivan, the one with the broken air-conditioning (p. 40).

And this is a love life: to live each small, sometimes unbearably tedious moment… together. To trip over old jokes and misunderstandings. To catch our runaway tongues and tempers and tenderly trust them to the person who now knows firsthand our better and our much worse (p. 41).

He’s never run through an airport for me. But he goes to Walmart at 9: 30 p.m. for back-to-school supplies that we’ve had all summer to get and of course have left till the last minute. When he walks into the living room at 11: 00 p.m. with bags full of the obligatory red, green, yellow, and blue folders and all the million pre-sharpened number-two pencils, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve seen all week (p. 41).

Another chapter that I loved told of a joyous night with Lisa-Jo’s daughter’s triumph in a school program. When Lisa-Jo looked at the photos taken that evening, first she saw the joy. Then, looking more closely, she noticed a picture of her “generous muffin top bulging over her jeans as she presses up next to her daughter” (p. 26). Instead of being embarrassed or deleting the photo, she decided “There was too much happiness to ever diminish it by worrying about waistlines” (p. 26).

In “What You Don’t Know About Parenting,” Lisa-Jo tells of a time her daughter was in another program, where she struggled with what Lisa-Jo thought was pre-program jitters which would be fine once the performance started. But her daughter had full-blown stage fright, tears streaming as she danced her part. Lisa-Jo struggled with indecision as to the best course of action—sweeping her daughter off the stage or letting her finish. “I don’t know if we can ever actually protect our kids from their own fears. Maybe all we can do is show them how brave they are to face them” (p. 90). After the program was over and everything settled down, Lisa-Jo called her mother-in-law to pour out her heart.

And as mothers have always done, she listened and loved me and then encouraged me with the deep understanding born of her own lifetime of learning what you don’t know by simply walking through it. This is what we mothers do for each other—we offer our own failures as proof that our sisters and daughters, our nieces and grands, will make it through the perilous journey of mothering too. Because no matter how many books you read or podcasts you listen to, nothing can prepare you for the fall you weren’t expecting (p. 91).

When heroes fall, Lisa-Jo wants her children to know, “fame is not where we go when we’re looking for something to believe in. Neither is the pulpit nor the soccer field, nor the stage nor the movie studios, for that matter. . . . power and influence and fame can be a slippery, lying slope” (p. 95).

When her son wants to race in the Olympics:

When they ask you if you believe that they’ll make their way to the Olympics someday, what do you—that mother behind the steering wheel who can’t see the future—tell your son?

Do I really want to be the anchor here holding him back? How do I cheer for him while also being a plumb line for truth? (p. 163).

Concerning a twice-monthly potluck hosted at her home: “Some weeks I look forward to it. Some weeks I’m exhausted at the thought of it. But we just keep opening the door no matter how we feel” (p. 136).

A couple more quotes:

Sometimes friendship is a deep conversation. Sometimes it’s a shared ugly cry. But sometimes friendship is the gift of not being afraid of silence (p. 204).

I don’t have easy answers to the hard questions, whether they’re on the news or coming from your doctor or your kid’s teacher or your coworker or a dear friend. I have only the hope of a hand in mine. The hand of this man, Jesus, who isn’t afraid and who builds things that don’t sink (p. 242).

I enjoyed this book and found it very easy to read. Lisa-Jo definitely has a way with words and weaves them with humor and poignancy. Some reviewers felt the book was more of a memoir or only appealed to women in the exact same stage of life–forty-something, married with kids. But I benefited from it even though I am an older empty-nester. Even though Lisa-Jo’s style is not didactic, readers can learn much from what she shares.

(This book will count for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge, where I am doing the Nonfiction Grazer track of basically doing my own thing. 🙂 But this would also fit in the “Linked to a Podcast” category a of the challenge since Lisa-Jo has a podcast [which I have not yet listened to] with Christie Purifoy called Out of the Ordinary.)

What Can We Know For Sure?

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One philosophy popular in the last several years espouses that there is no absolute truth.

This works out conveniently for those who want to follow nontraditional courses. If there are no absolute, inarguable truths, then everyone can define their own truth.

But what happens when individual truths differ, or even clash with each other?

Just spend a little time on social media, and you’ll see. Instead of allowing everyone to have his or her own truth, society “cancels” anyone whose “truth” falls outside current societal values.

This philosophy has even crept into the church, sounding something like this: none of us is God, after all, and none of us knows everything perfectly. Therefore, we can’t be too dogmatic about anything.

It’s true, none of us is God. And it’s true none of us has perfect knowledge of all things. We’ll always be learning, growing, adjusting our philosophy to Bible truth as we understand it.

It’s wise to search out answers to questions. We might (and probably will) end up at the point that God is bigger than we are, and we can’t understand everything He does. But that shouldn’t be the smack-down, conversation-stopping answer to questions. There are many reasons young people have left the faith of their upbringing, but I think one factor is that the church has sometimes treated questions themselves as rebellion instead of invitations to help the person search out answers about the faith

But though all these caveats are true, it does not therefore follow that there’s nothing we can know for sure spiritually. There are some questions theologians will argue over til kingdom come, but there are core truths God has laid out in His Word.

Here are just a few:

There is a Creator.

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” Romans 1:19-20). Psalm 19:1-3 tells us: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.”

God is the Lord

Isaiah 45:6 says, “that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.” The phrase “that you may know that I am the Lord” appears about 70 times in Ezekiel and several times through the Bible in other places.

I used to sometimes see the saying, “Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.” And I’d smile and shake my head, because God is not in the business of remaining anonymous. He wants people to see and know Him.

Jesus forgives sin

Jesus said he healed a paralyzed man “that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26).

Jesus is God

When Jesus forgave the paralytic man’s sin, mentioned above, The Pharisees answered, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” They got the point, even if they rejected it.

Jesus told men who were going to try to stone Him, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10:37-38).

You can know you have eternal life

I’ve known of people who felt it was arrogant to claim salvation, or at least to claim assurance of going to heaven. But there is no arrogance involved, because it’s “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

John wrote, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:12-13).

A few decades earlier, John wrote, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:30-31). See other claims Christ made about Himself here.)

Paul prayed that the “eyes of your hearts” would be “enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:8).

God’s Power

The rest of Paul’s prayer “that you may know” in Ephesians 1, mentioned above, is “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:19-20). God’s power raised Christ from the dead and set Him “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (verses 21-23). Paul prays we might know the greatness of that power. A God who can do that can take care of us as well.

God loves us.

John wrote in 1 John 4:15-16, “If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” Paul prayed that we might “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19) (I wrote more about knowing God’s love for us here.)

We can know God.

Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

David told his son, “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

Israel prayed, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3a).

How to live for God

Peter tells us, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. Through these He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1:3-4).

These are just a few of the things we can know with certainty. These are all verses which mention “know” or “knowledge” in some way. Yet the whole Bible is given that we may know God and know certain things about Him: His sovereignty, the truth and reliability of His Word, His anger against sin, His protection of His own, and so much more.

I’ve mentioned before that one former pastor said that the Bible is “divinely brief.” A God whose thoughts are more than we can number picked out these specific things He wanted us to know about Him and His world and will. It behooves us to apply our lives to His Word and then apply His Word to our lives.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some good reads found this week:

Evaluating Evangelistic Phrases. “Sadly, much of what is called evangelism today lacks gospel clarity. Repentance and faith are often missing or muddied in many of our evangelistic endeavors. Over the years, a number of popular phrases, terms, and shorthand expressions have either watered down or replaced the Biblical response to the gospel.”

What Is the Gospel? HT to the above article. “What exactly do Christians mean when they talk about the ‘gospel of Jesus Christ’?” I especially like the definition of repentance: “To repent of our sins means to turn away from our rebellion against God. Repentance doesn’t mean we’ll bring an immediate end to our sinning. It does mean, though, that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins.”

How Valuable to Me Is My Bible Today? “What would it feel like today not to own a Bible? What if I knew hardly anyone who did? What would I be willing to do to have one for myself?” Written by our beloved former pastor.

The Paradox of Parenting and How to Trust God More, HT to Challies. “From the moment our babies leave the safety and protection of the womb, we are literally and figuratively pushing them out. They can’t stay in the nest forever, and this brings us joy and sorrow. Isn’t this the paradox of parenting? The more we want to hold on to them, the more time reveals we have to keep letting them go, little by little.”

A Common Face, HT to Challies. “One of the best things my church’s women’s ministry does is to have someone share their testimony at our events. I am often stunned at what I hear from the ordinary women around me – women who quietly go about their everyday lives while harboring beautiful, compelling stories of God’s mercy. Why do we pander and scramble to hear the famous, successful and beautiful people speak, when God’s glory is just waiting to be displayed by the sisters and brothers around us?”

Sending Love, HT to Challies. “Sending Christ-like love means moving from the busy lane of one’s own life to enter the path of another, just as Jesus did when God sent Him to earth. It’s a selfless kind of love, not one from which the giver seeks to gain. And when such love is given, it brings blessed relief, casts hope over despair, and offers a glimpse of Christ.”

Church Membership–The Biblical Basis for It and Benefits of It. I enjoyed this creative look at what the church is and does and why we need to be a part of it.

A Message for Young Women. “Somewhere out there in the great, wide world, someone is praying for you. She probably doesn’t know you and you probably don’t know her. You may not meet one another for many more years. But she’s praying for you nonetheless and has been for a very long time. She is the mother of a son.”

Resources for Bible Study and Teaching. I came to this through a link from another post on the Knowable Word site.

Incredible performance. An annual meeting of high school choirs in KY led to a wonderful tradition.

I enjoy listening to parts of Stephen Davey’s sermons on the radio while my oatmeal is bubbling. I’m thankful he puts the transcripts online so I can catch the rest. He had a series of messages about David that I particularly loved. This section from last Tuesday (Feb 8) struck me:

And as we’ve already learned, being a man or woman after God’s own heart doesn’t mean you’re sinless. David was guilty of great sin against God and others.

Why could David be called a man after God’s own heart? Was it because David was perfect? No; it was because God was David’s priority.

Being a man or woman or a young person who pursues after the heart of God doesn’t have anything to do with your perfection – it has everything to do with your priority.

And that is exactly the priority that David wants to ring in Solomon’s ears for the rest of his life.

That’s what I want to ring in my children’s hearts as well. I think I put this verse somewhere in their graduation paraphernalia for each of them: “And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

Friday’s Fave Five

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The days keep steadily passing by, whether seeming fast or slow, despite how much I do or don’t get done in them. Susanne at Living to Tell the Story invites us to pause a moment and recount the blessings of the week lest we forget them. So here are a few of mine:

1. Valentine’s Day is always a highlight at our house with “meat hearts’ (mini meat loaves made in heart shapes) as the main course and heart-shaped cupcakes and peanut butter cookies with chocolate heart centers for dessert.

I make Valentines for the family, which I usually share in my end–of-month post. This year Jason and Mittu and Timothy made Valentines, too! I love them.

Did you notice that Friday’s Fave Five made it in my card? 🙂

2. Saturday at Jason and Mittu’s. Jason had a leak in his downstairs ceiling, and Jim went over Friday night and Saturday to help fix the leak and patch the ceiling. They invited me over for lunch Saturday, and I hung out with Mittu and Timothy while the guys worked. We painted, colored, and watched YouTube videos of Ryan’s World science experiments—Mittu and I may have dozed during the latter. 🙂

3. Landscaping. You might remember that our utility company had to replace the lines in our neighborhood that go to this big ugly box in our yard. To do that, they had to tear out the landscaping we had there. Jim took a day off last Friday, and it was warm enough that he could work on this area. He dug up some bushes from the back yard along with a few daffodils, which for some reason a previous owner planted behind the shed, of all places. If those daffodils survive the transplant ok, we might put the others in the space between the sidewalk and street. Or we might just plant new ones—Jim said they were hard to dig up. The rocks were a part of the previous landscaping, and the utility people had left them piled up on the edge of the curb. Jim said the hardest part of this was bending over to pick up rocks and then bending over again to replace them.

At some point, he’ll put a removable fence in front of the big box itself, so they can get to it if needed.

You can still see some of their writing on the sidewalk. Hopefully it and the dirt stains will wear off someday!

4. Good timing. I placed an online order at the grocery store for a 4 p.m. pickup. But in the process of creating the order, that time period closed. The next available time was 5, which is when I am usually starting to make dinner. But I had dinner in the crockpot that day, so I figured that time would work out. Then the store called and said the order was ready at 3:30. Then my husband texted and asked if I had any prescriptions ready at the drug store: he was going to swing by there on his way home from a meeting. I didn’t, I said, but I did have a grocery order ready across the street from the drug store if he had time it deal with it. Thankfully he did, so that worked out well all around.

5. A good CAT scan report. Nine years ago this coming Sunday, Jim had surgery to remove a cancerous kidney. He didn’t have to have chemo or radiation because we were told they weren’t effective for kidney cancer. He had a CAT scan this week which showed everything was fine, no signs of cancer. We are immensely thankful. We were told this kind of cancer doesn’t usually spread–but they couldn’t say it never would. And if it did come from the original cancer, chemo and radiation still wouldn’t work on it, even if it ended up somewhere else in the body. So a clean CAT scan is a relief in many ways.

Bonus 1: One of my sisters sent the rest of us and my brother packages this week, and I got mine Thursday! I can’t show what it is yet, though, until the others get theirs.

Bonus 2: Signs of spring! Besides the daffodils mentioned above, these mini ones are coming up in the flower bed by the front door. The mini tulips are starting to sprout behind them.

I hope your week has gone well, too!

Framley Parsonage

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Framley Parsonage is the fourth of Anthony Trollope’s Barsetshire Chronicles.

The story opens with Mark Robarts, boyhood friend of Ludovic Lufton. Lady Lufton, Ludovic’s mother, thinks Mark would make a fine vicar. So she pays for his training, gives him the living connected with Framley, and even finds a wife for him.

Mark is grateful for Lady Lufton’s graciousness to him, but he wants his own way occasionally. The one area he steps outside of Lady Lufton’s preference is in his friendships. He feels that to move up in the world, he needs to seek our relationships with some from higher society, introduced to him by Ludovic. Lady Lufton feels that these associates are not of high moral character, beside their being opposite from her politically. Nevertheless, Mark feels, and convinces his wife, that he needs to move in the circles of the elites.

It’s not long before Mark gets into trouble. He realizes that these people do not have the same values he has. But then he gets himself entangled in a mess when a Mr. Sowerby urges him to sign a bill for him (essentially to cosign a loan). Mark knows he doesn’t have the money to pay the bill if it should come to him, and he knows Sowerby has an awful reputation for running up debts. Yet Mark lets himself get talked into signing the bill.

Another plot line involves Mark’s sister, Lucy. When their father dies, Mark and his wife, Fanny, take Lucy into their home. Ludovic tries to draw out the quiet young women and soon becomes attracted to her. But his mother has another bride in mind for him—the statuesque beauty, Griselda Grantly, daughter of the archdeacon. Ludovic accommodates his mother by dancing with Griselda, but he finds her cold.

As these two plot lines develop and intersect, a few subplots wind in and out as well: a political falling out, a severe parson “proud of his poverty” whose family needs help that he won’t accept, two mothers trying to one-up each other in the choice of their daughters’ suitors, and even a visit from Dr. Thorne, the main character from the previous book in the Barsetshire Chronicles which bears his name.

It took me a little while to get into this story. I was not much interested in the political aspect and got irritated by Mark’s lack of backbone. But when his circumstances began to catch up with him and affect him, I began to sympathize with him more. Lucy was my favorite character, and I loved her story. The book has a heart-warming ending, with even Lady Lufton seeming more human and less severe.

Trollope continues to have his narrator speak as one of the community, though he never inserts himself into any of the scenes. The narrator also often breaks the “fourth wall” to speak directly to the reader.

Some of my favorite quotes:

It includes two populous villages, abounding in brickmakers, a race of men very troublesome to a zealous parson who won’t let men go rollicking to the devil without interference (p. 93).

I know it will be said of Lord Lufton himself that, putting aside his peerage and broad acres, and handsome, sonsy face, he was not worth a girl’s care and love. That will be said because people think that heroes in books should be so much better than heroes got up for the world’s common wear and tear. I may as well confess that of absolute, true heroism there was only a moderate admixture in Lord Lufton’s composition; but what would the world come to if none but absolute true heroes were to be thought worthy of women’s love? What would the men do? and what—oh! what would become of the women? (p. 136).

She confessed to herself that Griselda’s chance of a first-rate establishment would be better if she were a little more impulsive. A man does not wish to marry a statue, let the statue be ever so statuesque (p. 164).

She was so glad she knew it, that she might comfort him. And she did comfort him, making the weight seem lighter and lighter on his shoulders as he talked of it. And such weights do thus become lighter. A burden that will crush a single pair of shoulders will, when equally divided—when shared by two, each of whom is willing to take the heavier part—become light as a feather. Is not that sharing of the mind’s burdens one of the chief purposes for which a man wants a wife? For there is no folly so great as keeping one’s sorrows hidden (p. 218).

To endure with her lord all her lord’s troubles was easy to her; it was the work to which she had pledged herself. But to have thought that her lord had troubles not communicated to her,—that would have been to her the one thing not to be borne (p. 218)

So he went his way . . . thinking as he went which was most unreasonable in her wretchedness, his friend Lady Arabella or his friend Lady Scatcherd. The former was always complaining of an existing husband who never refused her any moderate request; and the other passed her days in murmuring at the loss of a dead husband, who in his life had ever been to her imperious and harsh, and had sometimes been cruel and unjust. (p. 254).

Wounds cannot be cured as easily as they may be inflicted (p. 271).

At the time of this writing, the Kindle edition of this book was free and the Audiobook was included as part of my Audible subscription. I mostly listened to the audiobook wonderfully read by Simon Vance, but I read a few parts in the Kindle edition.

I’m counting this book for the Classic from the 19th century category for the Back to the Classics Reading Challenge.

Does He Still Love Me?

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Before I became a Christian, God’s law showed me I needed a Savior. I had fallen far short of God’s requirements. But my sins also made me afraid to face Him. It was God’s love that melted me and drew me.

God loved us before we knew Him: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). While we were yet sinners, Romans 5:8 says, Christ died for us. He didn’t wait until we had our act together to show love to us or to die for us. Hosea 11:4 says God drew His own with “cords of kindness, with the bands of love.” “In love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back” (Isaiah 38:17). When the man we know as the “rich young ruler” came to Jesus, naively claiming he had kept all the commandments, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” (Mark 10:21). Then Jesus, in love, pointed out to the young man his main flaw. The young man walked away sorrowing, unwilling to give up his idol. But my hope is that he eventually did come to faith in Christ.

Does God still love me when I fail? After I became a Christian, when I failed yet again, when I allowed something back in my life that I had sworn I was done with, I was afraid to face Him. I feared punishment like sudden lightning. I dreaded profoundly disappointing Him.

Yet He loved me still. I had to learn that the love that saved me would also keep me and that sanctification (growing more Christlike) was a lifelong endeavor.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
    nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
    so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
    he remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:8-14).

Does this catastrophe mean God doesn’t love me? When various trials and testings came into my life, I wondered what I had done wrong to merit them. I did not yet know that God has many reasons for suffering, that He allows them to do work in our lives that can’t be accomplished in other ways. As Joni Eareckson Tada so often says, “God permits what He hates to accomplish what He loves.”

Does God really want the best for me? Sometimes I’d hear people say that God works everything out for our good and His glory (probably based on Romans 8:28). Occasionally I would think, “His glory, yes. But our good?” Scripture shows over and over again God going to extreme measures to show His love for His wayward people. Even though it might not feel like it in the moment, yes, He works everything together for our good.

Maybe this too-frequent tendency to forget or doubt God’s love is one reason why Paul prayed this for the Ephesians:

“. . . that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19), emphasis mine).

Paul follows up this stunning prayer with the statement that God is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (verse 20). We tend to pull this verse out when we have Really Big Prayer Requests to reassure ourselves that God is able to answer them. But Paul applied it to his prayer in verses 14-19.

“To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” How can we know something that surpasses knowledge, that is beyond knowing fully?

One commentary at the bottom of the Bible Hub page on this verse says it partly means that we “may always go on from faith to faith, from knowledge to knowledge, and yet find new depths still to be fathomed.” Another says, “As the breeze fills the sails and bears forward the ship, so the love of Christ fills the soul and moves it in the direction of God’s will. But in its fullness it passeth knowledge; it is infinite, not to be grasped by mortal man, and therefore always presenting new fields to be explored, new depths to be fathomed.”

God’s goodness (another subject for another time) and God’s love are the two guardrail truths that keep me steady when things happen that I can’t understand. God will always do right, and His love for us is unshakeable.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).

When we become fully assured of God’s love, we can rest in Him and quiet our fears.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17).

In addition to these verses, hymns grounded in Biblical truth are rich reminders and assurances of God’s love. Here are a few of my favorites, with a sample stanza or two of each:

From “Jesus, I Am Resting, resting” by Jean Sophia Pigott:

Oh, how great Thy loving kindness,
Vaster, broader than the sea:
Oh, how marvelous Thy goodness,
Lavished all on me!
Yes, I rest in Thee, Beloved,
Know what wealth of grace is Thine,
Know Thy certainty of promise,
And have made it mine.

Simply trusting Thee, Lord Jesus,
I behold Thee as Thou art,
And Thy love, so pure, so changeless,
Satisfies my heart,
Satisfies its deepest longings,
Meets, supplies its every need,
Compasseth me round with blessings,
Thine is love indeed.

From “I Am His and He Is Mine” by George Robinson, 1876:

Loved with everlasting love,
Led by grace that love to know;
Gracious Spirit from above,
Thou hast taught me it is so!
Oh, this full and perfect peace!
Oh, this transport all divine!
In a love which cannot cease,
I am His, and He is mine;
In a love which cannot cease,
I am His, and He is mine.

From “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” by George Matheson, 1882:

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee.
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.

From “The Love of God” by Frederick Martin Lehman:

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

From “Here Is Love” by William Reese:

On the mount of crucifixion
fountains opened deep and wide;
through the floodgates of God’s mercy
flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
poured incessant from above,
and heav’n’s peace and perfect justice
kissed a guilty world in love.

From “Depth of Mercy” by Charles Wesley (We only hear a few verses of this song, when we hear it at all, and not always the same ones. This appears to have all the stanzas.)

Depth of mercy! Can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God His wrath forbear,
Me, the chief of sinners, spare?

I have long withstood His grace,
Long provoked Him to His face,
Would not hearken to His calls,
Grieved Him by a thousand falls.

Jesus speaks, and pleads His blood!
He disarms the wrath of God;
Now my Father’s mercies move,
Justice lingers into love.

There for me the Savior stands,
Shows His wounds and spreads His hands.
God is love! I know, I feel;
Jesus weeps and loves me still.

These verses and hymns are just small samples of the vast riches of a study of God’s love. What verses or hymns especially speak to you of God’s love?

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

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Once again, I’m behind on my blog-reading due to a busy week. But here are a few noteworthy reads:

A Special Valentine Invitation: Will You Be Mine? “Many of us have experienced both highs and lows when it comes to love and special valentine invitations.But the most lavish, epic, and monumental Valentine’s Day to ever take place in history, celebrates the best kind of love—God’s extravagant love.”

All This Wasted Worry, HT to Challies. “A few months ago, I was about to begin onto one of my nighttime worry rituals. There was a flight the next day, and I pictured myself gripping the armrest tightly throughout the flight like I always do—as though holding the armrest with all my might somehow keeps the plane in the air. And I laughed because there isn’t anything as ludicrous as believing that one’s white-knuckled grip on a piece of plastic in economy seating has anything to do with keeping an airplane in the sky.”

The Education of Whoopi Goldberg and Race in Christian Culture. “Whoopi Goldberg was suspended two weeks from The View for stating on air that the holocaust was not about race. . . Personally, I am not sure she should have been suspended. What she said was ignorant and insensitive, but such statements do foster discussion, education, and eventually enlightenment. If we constantly penalize one another for saying stupid things, we will eventually stop talking with one another altogether.”

How Did the Apostle Paul Stand for His Rights? “As we’ve discussed religious liberty in recent months, several people said something along these lines to me, ‘Didn’t Paul stand up for his rights when the Romans threatened him?’ This is a fair question since Paul did use his Roman citizenship on two occasions when interacting with representatives of the government. Let’s look at both incidents and think about how Paul went about this.”

On Christians Reading Fiction: Stealing Past the Watchful Dragons. This is the first in a series about the value to Christians of reading quality fiction. I especially like the last reason given here, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

An 8-year-old slid his handwritten book onto a library shelf—and now it has a yearslong waitlist, HT to Linda. I love that the library staff’s reaction.

Do you remember Irene Ryan, who played “Granny” on The Beverly Hillbillies? It’s hard not to think of her as perpetually Granny, because that’s the only way we ever saw her. I’m not sure why, but a couple of videos of her were in my YouTube suggestions. This was from one of her early films. The other was a pre-Granny episode of Password against fellow actor Bob Crane of Hogan’s Heroes. I also just recently learned that she was only five years older than co-star Buddy Ebsen, who played her son-on-law, Jed.

Happy Saturday!

Friday’s Fave Five

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Wow, we’re almost halfway through February already. Time passes so quickly, it’s good to pause now and then to appreciate our blessings. Susanne at Living to Tell the Story invites us to do just that.

Some of my favorite parts of the last week:

1. Thoughtful treats. When my youngest son, Jesse, was home, he enjoyed Lunchables as a snack. When he had one that included two Oreo cookies, he usually gave me one. Then my husband, Jim started doing the same thing. Though Jesse has his own place now, we still keep a few Lunchables on hand. I came to my desk one day this week to see that Jim had left his Oreos for me. 🙂

2. Repotting plants has been on my to-do list for a very long time, and I was happy to get to them this week. These had all been on my kitchen windowsill and needed room to grow.

We couldn’t get the little cactus-looking one out of its container. The little pebbles on top were glued together as one unit. I had thought this was a real plant, but maybe it’s a fake.

I’ve mentioned before that I am not good with houseplants. But I hope these thrive.

3. Catching up with friends. One friend and I had been trying to get together for lunch since before Christmas. We had to keep canceling due to illness or other things coming up. We finally met at Red Lobster one day this week. Then, I dropped something off at the home of my friend who recently had a baby, thinking I would only be there for a couple of minutes. I was hoping to talk with her, but wanted didn’t want to keep her too long. But we got to visit for a while. I enjoyed talking and laughing with both these friends.

4. Going out to dinner. My husband and I get take-out probably more than we ever have in our lives—with just the two of us at home, it’s not so expensive to do. And I love not cooking. 🙂 One night this week we decided to actually go to Cracker Barrel. That was nice in itself, since it’s not my husband’s favorite place. But as we discussed options, he said this was ok.

Though I’m a homebody and haven’t actually been too bothered by being home during the pandemic, these outings reminded me that I am not entirely ready to be a hermit. 🙂 It is fun to get out sometimes.

5. A long overdue haircut. In-between running errands and seeing friends, I was able to slip into the salon where I usually go. My regular hairdresser wasn’t there, but the lady who cut my hair did a good job. It’s nice not to feel unkempt.

And that’s a small window into my week. How has yours been?

Book Review: The Road Home

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In Malissa Chapin’s debut novel, The Road Home, Cadence Audley has started a new life with a new name—for the second time. Her past has dogged her steps, but she’s determined to lead a quiet, peaceful life in Deercrest, Wisconsin. She’s found a good job as a barista with a great boss. Antique stores in the area fulfill her taste for vintage purchases.

On one such shopping trip, Cadence finds an old recipe box filled with hand-written recipes. Her coworker Googles the name written inside the box and found that the owner had lived in town. Thinking to return a valued heirloom, Cadence finds Fredonia, the middle-aged daughter of the recipe box owner. Fredonia had donated the recipe box in the first place and is not thrilled to see it again—or Cadence, for that matter. But, upon learning that Cadence likes antiques, Fredonia invites the younger woman to drive with her to Kentucky to help clean out her mother’s home.

Fredonia’s offer comes just in time, because Cadence’s past has caught up with her—again.

This is a split-time novel. The second timeline belongs to Ida Beale Evans, owner of the recipe box. She had been a banker’s daughter in Indiana when she married her sweetheart, Bud, and moved with him to his new pastorate in Kentucky. Though she enjoys life as a country preacher’s wife, she has one sorrow. Suddenly one night, her deepest desire is unexpectedly fulfilled—but to keep it will call for a lifetime of secrecy.

Though Ida is a Christian and Cadence is not, both women struggle with trusting that the truth will set them free. The truth seems like it will destroy them. But Cadence has come to the end of her road. Can she escape and start over yet again? Or must she face her past and its consequences, even though doing so means losing everything she holds dear? Can she trust the young preacher who tells her, “Your sin caused problems everywhere, but God is bigger than this. He’s big enough to help you live a new life” (Location 3415, Kindle version).

I enjoyed following the journey of both women and the truths they learned. I also enjoyed the sense of place in the book, especially the Kentucky sections. There was a nice mix of both funny and poignant moments in the story. Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes from Ida Beale’s box. It was fun to learn on Malissa’s blog what inspired the pink Cadillac road trip in the book and to peruse her Pinterest board for the people and items that inspired or contributed to the story.

As of this writing, the Kindle edition is $2.99, but a paperback version is also available.