The Week in Words

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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 stayed with me recently:

Seen at Challies:

“Pride can look like arrogant self-confidence, or it can look like timid self-pity. Real humility is courageous un-self-consciousness.”~ Jared Wilson

I don’t know who Jared Wilson is, but this rang true and echoes a C. S. Lewis quote about humility.

The Ink-Slinger posted several quotes from G. K. Chesterton. A few of my favorites:

“Feminism is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”

“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”

“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”

You can share your family-friendly quotes 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 hope you’ll visit the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And I hope you’ll leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share.

Laudable Linkage

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Here’s some of the good reading I found this week:

7 Steps to Walking the Spiritual Walk, HT to Lisa.

How to receive Criticism Like a Champ. HT to Challies.

Gracious Candor: A Tutorial in Speaking the Truth in Love, HT to Challies.

Fighting Anxiety.

Reading Literature, HT to Lisa.

Sentiments from last weekend which will give Princess Bride fans a chuckle:

This is my niece and nephew-in-law’s beautiful adoption story:

Have a great weekend! I am hoping the rain lets up before I go to the store!

Friday’s Fave Five

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

Wow, I am running super late this morning, but here are some of my faves from the last week.

1. Spring break! A little earlier than I am used to, but I’ll gladly take it whenever it comes!

2. Eating out. This one is actually a “leftover” from last week when Jesse was on his senior trip. It wasn’t planned this way, but Jim and I ate out twice, we brought pizza in one night, and then I got take-out from Cracker Barrel for one lunch. Plus Jason and Mittu had us over for dinner Saturday night. It almost felt like vacation, not having to plan for meals, cook, or clean up. A bonus is that in most cases there were leftovers! It’s probably not healthy financially or physically to eat from restaurants that often regularly, but I felt very rested.

3. Jim’s belated birthday celebration. We ate out at a restaurant right on the Tennessee Riverand got a table right at the window.

By the way, the bottle in front of Mittu is root beer. 🙂

4. Cleaning the stove-top — the result, not so much the process.

Before:

During:

After:

5. The Settlers of Catan iPhone app. I resisted getting it for a long time because it is one of the more expensive apps, but then I reasoned that I paid more for the board game and we don’t get together to play it all that often. I figured the app would help me learn how to strategize better. Well….I may be getting a wee bit obsessed. It’s fun, and it has improved my game!

Bonuses: A good report at my first dental visit since we moved here, and NOT losing power in the storm last night. We knew it went off while we were out because the computer was off and all the clocks were blinking when we got home, but we were thankful it was on and stayed on the rest of the night. Our first year here the power seemed to go off a lot so that’s a concern in any bad weather.

That’s my week. How was yours?

Thoughts about Amish fiction

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The first Amish fiction I ever read was Beverly Lewis‘s The Shunning some years ago. I don’t think I had heard of Beverly before that, and I am not sure what drew me to the book except for maybe curiosity about the Amish shunning. I enjoyed the book and have read everything of Beverly’s ever since (except for her books for younger people).

There is much about the Amish to admire: their gentleness, their work ethic and industriousness, their sense of family, their willingness to forgive evidenced some years ago after a tragic shooting.

I suppose all of those elements plus a curiosity about them and their ways has driven burgeoning market for Amish fiction in recent years.

At first I thought all these people were just copying Beverly, and out of loyalty to her I didn’t read any others. But I don’t think she would want people to feel that way, and I’m sure she’s not the only one who is knowledgeable about the Amish. I do tend to trust her perspective because of her grandmother’s having been Amish.

I especially appreciate that Beverly makes a distinction between Amish who are believers and those who aren’t. In some of her books, the characters are caught in the system, so to speak, even though it doesn’t satisfy them or meet their needs, and they eventually see the light and come to faith in Christ, and sometimes that costs them. Some leave the Amish for the Mennonites. Other characters have quietly become believers and stay, speaking when and however they can about Christ. And others are in an Amish community that is made of of true believers.

And this is what concerns me about the bulk of Amish fiction. The one Amish-based book I read that wasn’t written by Beverly wasn’t clear on this point: an Englisher with a variety of problems escaped the pressures of modern life to live with the Amish for a while, struggled with faith issues, was told, basically, “Live like us and you’ll catch on eventually.” I don’t know how other authors portray it, but I think we have to be careful not to think of the Amish as just another branch of Christianity. Tim Challies reviewed a book called Growing Up Amish a while back. I’ve not read the book, but I can identify with what was excerpted there. We need to remember that by and large their trust is in their system, their church membership, rather than in Christ, and even for those who are believers, their ideas of what is “worldly” is often determined by the bishop and may be far removed from Scriptural principles. Their communities are shot through with extreme legalism and extreme punishment for stepping outside “the rules.”

I am concerned about the over-romanticizing of our thinking in regard to them. I have a Christian friend who jokes about “running off to join the Amish” when life gets too hectic and pressured. I always want to say, “Are you kidding?” The amount of sheer hard work would do many of us in very quickly, but beyond that, I don’t think actually living among them would be what we think it would be. I think we can still read Amish fiction and I think we can still admire the good characteristics of them, but we need to exercise discernment.

Christian concepts that are a little off

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I wrestled with what to title this post. The title I had on the notes to myself was “Christian sayings that bug me.” But not only did that sound curmudgeonly, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things what bugs me. What matters with any Christian saying is whether it truly matches up with the Word of God.

I don’t mean to be overly nitpicky and critical here. I know what some people mean by some of these sayings, and I think their hearts are in the right place. But when a saying is a little off from what Scripture actually says, it’s not only a little jarring, it can either reveal or cause misunderstanding of Scriptural truth.

So here are a few phrases that to me miss the target a little.

We need to “be Jesus” to people.

We can’t be. We can reflect Him and represent Him. We are “ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (II Corinthians 5:20). We can be instruments through which He works. But we can’t be anyone’s spiritual Savior, deliverer, help. Jesus is the only one.

“Unleashing” God’s power.

This makes Him sound like a genii in a bottle, and if we just rub the lantern in the right way, we’ll see Him work in a mighty way. Even a little study of God’s power and might in the Bible should convince us how ludicrous it sounds to think of ourselves as His gatekeepers. Now, there are passages that indicate our disobedience or lack of faith can block Him from working, and Jesus said some things could only be accomplished by prayer and fasting, and this may be what this saying is getting at, but it shifts the emphasis the wrong direction. His power is His own to direct as He will.

God does not do anything except in answer to prayer.

This may have arisen from James 4:2b: “ye have not, because ye ask not.” It’s true that we don’t have some things because we haven’t asked Him for them, but it is not true that He only acts in response to prayer. There is much to governing the world that we know nothing of, and how many times have we enjoyed our daily bread when we haven’t remembered to ask for it? He does so much more than we know, it’s facetious to think He never does anything except when we ask. I’ve been blessed many times in large and small ways by things He has done I never thought to ask for.

God does not give us more than we can handle.

Of course He does. He doesn’t give us any more than we can handle with His grace, but leaving off that caveat puts the emphasis on us and our ability to handle things rather than on His grace sufficient for everything. It’s “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), not “I can do all things.” I think sometimes He puts us in situations we can’t handle on our own for that very reason, to draw us closer and help us rely on His strength and not our own.

We need God to show up.

….as if He is not already here, and everywhere. I wrote more about this phrase earlier, and I know people mean by this that they really want God to work, to manifest Himself, to display His grace and power by really moving in people’s hearts. But we don’t need to downplay His omniscience or His desire to manifest Himself.

A coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

God is not in the business of remaining anonymous. All throughout Scripture He does things to make Himself known to people. One exception was when Christ was doing miracles during His earthly ministry: often He would heal someone and then tell them not to make it known. I’m not sure of the reasons for that: maybe it would draw more people who only wanted healing or provisions rather than hearing His word, maybe it would draw undue attention from the Pharisees, maybe it just wasn’t the time to manifest Himself in that way. But as a general rule He does things in people’s lives for the express purpose of turning their hearts to Himself.

Have you heard these phrases? Do you think they are off-base in their emphasis? Are there other similar phrases I have missed?

Meanderings

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I don’t mind Daylight Savings Time too much once I get used to it, but I do hate losing that hour of sleep over the weekend, and it takes me days to get my body clock adjusted. It’s nice that we have spring break this week!

I mentioned that last week Jesse was on his senior trip. I didn’t want to say where until after he got home, but they went to Disneyworld.

In previous years the seniors had gone to places like Israel, England, Scotland, Wales, and Jesse was really looking forward to going out of the country for the first time. But only he and one other girl wanted to go. Three other girls were fine with wherever they went, but the rest were just planning not to go if they went out of the country. Part of me wishes they had gone ahead with just those five, but in an effort to try to find a place most of the seniors did want to go, they ended up with Disneyworld.

Though Jesse was disappointed at first, he got more excited as the trip got closer and was bouncing-off-the-walls excited the night before leaving. He had a great time, said the attractions and especially the food were wonderful, and said not a single negative thing happened on the trip: everyone got along, the flights were ok, etc. None of the rest of us has ever been there, so it was exciting to hear about.

I’ve pondered since then whether a senior trip should be primarily educational or fun (though of course they can be both!) I can understand students not wanting to put the time and money into something they think will be boring, and if they think a trip to another country is just going to be visiting a bunch of museums, I can understand that doesn’t sound thrilling.  But I think it is quite short-sighted not to take the opportunity to go out of the country when you have it. But be that as it may, there wasn’t much we could do about it.

Jesse completely missed seeing Washington D.C. At this school the tenth grade takes a field trip there, and he wasn’t here then; in his previous school that’s where the seniors went on their senior trip. Jim has always wanted to go there, so we’re giving some thought to trying to make it out there this summer as kind of a last hurrah before Jesse goes to college and maybe meeting Jeremy there. We’re not sure about leaving Grandma for that long, though. She’s cared for in her assisted living place, but we do visit her almost every day and kind of keep on top of things they may overlook, especially since she is not as communicative these days.

His week away gave us a little foretaste of what the “empty nest” will be like. I do hate it when I hear a mom lamenting about the empty nest and someone tritely responds that that’s the way it is supposed to be, that we’re to “train ourselves out of a job,” that we wouldn’t want them to stay home forever and not go out and be full-fledged adults. In my less sanctified moments my inward response to that is, “Well, duh.” Of course we want all of that for our children, but it is also very natural to acutely miss having them around when they have been a part of our everyday lives for 18-20 years.

Nevertheless, there are a few perks. 🙂 My husband’s schedule was the same, but mine was unaffected by alarm clocks, school schedules, etc., so there was a great sense of freedom. I had thought, having whole days to myself, I would get so much done, particularly some writing. I’m not quite sure what happened to the week, but it flew by and I hardly got anything done! Of course, there is still grocery shopping, housework, visiting Grandma and such to do during the week, so it’s not like it was a whole week of free time. But I can foresee that I am going to need to set up some structure to my days when that time comes.

Another thing I am going to miss when Jesse leaves home is having a helper around. I rely on him a lot to help me move things, get or take something to the attic, change light bulbs I can’t reach (I have balance problems, so though I can stand on a chair — I can’t let go of it to do anything else while I am up there), etc. Jim works such long hours I hate to overload his Saturdays with things I need done.

In other news….we finally got an offer on our house in SC. But it was way low, and Jim was in the process of sending a counter offer when they changed their minds and said they decided not to buy a house now after all. We’re thinking they may have run into some credit problems to just drop it like that. Jim’s company had been helping us with the payments on that house as part of his relocation package, but that assistance is coming to an end soon. Property values have dropped due to the economy plus the fact that that area tore down the local high school and built a W-Mart in its place. 🙄 So we’re not going to be able to count on making any money on the sale of the house, but we’d really like not to lose any. Jim is giving some thought to renting it out, and that’s an option, but I would really like to just be done with it and not be responsible for it any more.

We’re having company in about a week and a half. Does anyone else do this: I have some housecleaning things that need to be done but if I do them now I’ll have to do them again before we have people over, so I am tempted to just wait on them, but I am not sure I can stand it. Not everyday housework, but the “extra” stuff. Like the burner pans under the stove: they are white on this stove, so they show up every little drip and spatter. They look pretty bad right now, but it seems just as soon as I clean them, the next day or so something boils over or sloshes, necessitating taking things apart and cleaning them again.  But I think I’ll have to just go ahead and take care of them and try not to make too big of a mess with them between now and then. Plus when company is coming all of a sudden I want to get a dozen household projects done, like finally making curtains for the family room.  I know hospitality isn’t all about how your house looks, but still. We’ll see how it goes!

I do have a number of posts in mind, some with much deeper thoughts than I have shared lately. 🙂 Hopefully I’ll be able to work on some of those soon. I have my next newspaper column due this week plus we’re trying to get a ladies’ newsletter going at church. But hopefully I’ll be able to make some time soon to get some of those posts written.

Thanks for listening to my meanderings. 🙂

The Week in Words

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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.

I have just a couple to share this week, both from a post at True Woman:

“In every situation and circumstance of your life, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.” ~ John Piper

Don’t judge the outcome of the battle by the way things look right now. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

I love those behind-the scenes glimpses that God gives us sometimes in the Bible, like the unseen host surrounding Elisha or Michael’s mention of what had been going on in response to Daniel’s prayer. We just have to take it on faith in our own lives that even though a situation seems insurmountable or prayers seem to go unheeded, God is at work. I think it will be really neat in heaven to learn how God was at work in different situations throughout our lives!

You can share your family-friendly quotes 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 hope you’ll visit the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And I hope you’ll leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share.

Prayer of Consecration

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I’ve loved this song since I first heard it sung in church a few years ago:

Lord of life, sing through me.
Give my heart a melody
So sweet and pure, good and true
That I may offer a song to You.

Come to me and still my fear
Until my song is Yours alone.
Sing through me, Lord of Life;
Make my voice Your own!

Lord of life, pray through me.
Fill my mind with quiet peace
So sweet and pure, good and true,
That I may have only thoughts of You.

Come to me and still my doubt
Until my dreams are Yours alone.
Pray through me, Lord of Life;
Make my mind Your own!

Lord of life, live through me.
Keep my soul in harmony
So sweet and pure, good and true,
That through my living I’ll honor You.

Come to me and still my will
Until my deeds are Yours alone.
Live through me, Lord of life;
Make my heart Your own!

~ Words and music by Deborah Dresie.

The line about having “only thoughts of You” didn’t sit quite right with me at first, because we do have to think of what to get at the grocery store, family needs, etc., and I thought maybe it would be better if it said something like having our thoughts those that would be pleasing to Him. But then I reread the song and saw that that stanza is talking about prayer. Then we do have a great need to focus only on Him and put away distractions.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a performance of it online, but you can hear clips of it from the Soundforth CD Beyond All Praising or Mary Lynn Van Gelderen’s To the Praise of His Glory.

Laudable Link and Neat Videos

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I almost didn’t post today because I didn’t have many links accumulated from the week’s reading — but sometimes short and sweet is nice. 🙂

Forgiveness For Moms Who Fail, which would be…all of us.

This is sooo funny — a dog trying to get a statue to play fetch. Poor doggie!

And this is just amazing: a young man with several disabilities but amazing talent on the piano:

Hope you have a great Saturday! I’m looking forward to getting my boy back today.

Friday’s Fave Five

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

Last week I almost didn’t post a Fave Five because at first I couldn’t think of five highlights of the week. It wasn’t a bad week, but it was a fairly ordinary one. But I did come up with five after thinking about it. This week…my cup overfloweth and I have way more than five! That’s how life goes.

1. Ironing is not one of my favorite things, and thankfully I don’t have much that needs to be ironed any more. I tend to let it sit for a while, but I finally knocked it out in an afternoon this week while catching up on NCIs and The Amazing Race.

2. One of the things I ironed: a new-to-me shower curtain. This was left in our house when we bought it, and I loved the design, but the color was peach: not only is that one of my all-time least favorite colors, but it didn’t go with the pink I do have.

I used Rit color remover on it, but it still seemed to have a peachy cast to it. I had planned to dye it pink, but I felt that might be a little too overwhelming, even for me. So I put it away for several months, got it out this week, and decided in some lights it looked pinkish rather than peachy, ironed it, and hung it up.

I like that a bit of color was left in the thread.

Sometimes it still does look a little too peachy to me and I may still try to dye it. But for now it really does lighten up the bathroom, and I love the design.

3. Jesse has been away this week on his senior trip, and though that’s not a favorite in itself, he seems to be having a great time. I’ve enjoyed not revolving life around the school schedule this week, especially not having to set an alarm. You’d think I would have gotten more done this week….but it didn’t work out that way!

4. Jim’s birthday was Tuesday, but because Jesse was away we planned to celebrate some time next week. But I didn’t want to let the day go completely unacknowledged, so we went out to Outback using a Christmas gift card, and then Jason and Mittu surprised Jim by bringing a cake over that evening, and we each got him a card and a little gift. It was a fun night.

5. Jim also had an out of town trip this week, which, again, is not on my list of favorites, but Jason and Mittu offered to come over and spend the night when he was away. It was nice not to be completely alone.

So — I managed to work in just about everything. 🙂

Happy Friday!