The Week in Words

Posted on September 26, 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 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!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few of the good reads I discovered around the Web this week:

Gender Inclusive Bible: A Good Idea? No, for several good reasons listed here.

“Poor People.” Lizzie shares several thoughtless and insensitive remarks people tend to make about “the poor.”

Spiritual Abuse.

How to Glorify God at Work. First and foremost, by doing your best at your job. If you’re a slacker, no one will respect your message.

Mothering in Hostile Territory.

What Would Pat Robertson Have Done With My Dad?

Divorce Because of Alzheimer’s? This and the above are poignant testimonies against doing such, testimonies of laying down’s one’s life to care for another.

Twelve Essential Films for the Moral Formation of Boys.

Books Every Guy Should Read, Part 1 and Part 2.

Karla Dornacher is offering a free download of “Prayer Changes Things” artwork through today.

A Holiday Craft Along. Neat ideas and tutorials to get ready for Christmas.

Seen around Facebook:

Too cute: two seniors trying to figure out their computer:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcN08Tg3PWw&feature=player_embedded%5D

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week. This has been 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.

Here are a few favorites from the past week:

1. Headache relief. I don’t get headaches often, but I had one hanging around most of six days this past week. It wasn’t incapacitating, but even with taking a couple of ibuprofen at a time, I still just felt draggy and a little down most of the week. Thankfully it seems to be mostly gone now.

2. Jesse’s birthday. I not only enjoyed celebrating his 18th year, but with Jason and Mittu coming over and Skyping Jeremy, birthdays are like a mini family reunion.

3. The official arrival of fall today. The temperatures have been a little cooler, and I am looking forward to more of that.

4. The new fall season on TV. Hope that doesn’t sound shallow. 🙂 But it’s nice to have a few more options than summer reruns. There are a few older shows I’m glad are resuming and a couple of new ones I’ve been anticipating.

5. Reminders that God is in control and cares. With our church going through Job and with recently reading Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job and The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God, the realization that nothing takes God by surprise and He has a purpose for everything He allows has helped as a difficult situation has arisen just yesterday. It is still unfolding, and it’s still easy to get very frustrated when people don’t realize the consequences of their actions. But He still promises wisdom and grace sufficient to meet every need.

Book Review: Amy Inspired

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I found Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce while looking for bargains at Border’s going-out-of-business sale: the cover looked familiar and I remembered seeing it mentioned by a blogger or two.

Amy is an aspiring writer supporting herself by teaching in a college. But she seems to be piling up one rejection after another, both for her written work and in her love life, as her current boyfriend breaks up with her on his lunch break before class. She catalogs her rejections and is obsessed with lists. She lives with an eccentric housemate who brings home a friend, Eli, who needs a place to stay for a while. Amy finds herself strangely drawn to Eli though he is quite different from her and from her expectations of the kind of man she would be interested in. Meanwhile, Amy struggles with what the Christian life is truly supposed to look like, with her writing, which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, with single life, with her family, with a lovestruck student, and even with her roommate and Eli.

I spent the first — oh, third or so of this book not really liking it very much. The plot seemed to amble along, not really going anywhere, though it was unfolding more about Amy’s character. But I had more serious problems with a couple of aspects of the book.

First, Amy comes from a Fundamentalist background, and there are several digs in the book at fundamentalists. As a fundamentalist myself, I do get tired of the stereotype and the fact that Christendom feels that fundamentalists are fair targets for such digs. On the other hand, I do have to admit there are segments of fundamentalists who give fundamentalism a bad name and who focus on stricter external standards than the Bible calls for, so I can understand someone coming from that background wrestling with exactly what Christianity is and how it’s to be fleshed out.

Secondly, the book is a little…edgier than much Christian fiction. There is a scene, for instance, when Amy and her house mate, Zoe, carry a conversation into the bedroom and continue while Zoe changes clothes. No problem there, but when the author goes on to give a description of Zoe’s body in her underwear — I just don’t need that mental picture. And in another brief scene, Amy is down to her bra and underwear herself when she tells her boyfriend that they have to stop and she can’t have sex with him. It’s good to stop yourself even at that point, but it’s better to not let yourself even get to that point, and Amy knows that and regrets it, but, still, the scene as described leaves a mental picture I don’t want to carry with me.

Besides those issues, though, I did like where Amy ended up in realizing where some of her compulsions were coming from and in finding rest in forgiveness. There is humor laced throughout the book and real pathos as many characters experience varying degrees of loss and growth.

And I liked some of Pierce’s phrasing here and there. For instance, “Grandma FedExed a Ziploc bag of crumbs that had once been homemade oatmeal cookies” (p. 145) made me giggle. A description of a painting (p. 168) almost made me visualize it and her insights helped me understand it. And this paragraph I thought was particularly beautiful (p. 252):

I couldn’t save Ashley. But I hoped I was the first of many people who would lead her step-by-step until her fledgling wonder turned to faith and took flight, one of many believers burning in rows like lights illuminating the length of an airplane runway.

There’s no doubt Bethany Pierce is a skilled writer. I think if some of the scenes had been written less explicitly I’d have fewer mixed emotions about the book.

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

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.

The Week In Words

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Barbara Harper

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

Seen in Claudia Barba’s Monday Morning Club e-mail:

“Damage is easier to prevent than to repair.”

That is so applicable in so many areas!

Seen at girltalk:

“They that love God as they ought, will have such a sense of his wonderful long-suffering toward them under the many injuries they have offered to him, that it will seem to them but a small thing to bear with the injuries that have been offered to them by their fellow-men.” ~ Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, p.78.

This concept, also seen in the parable of the servant who would not forgive a lesser debt after being forgiven a great debt, usually melts whatever resistance I have against forgiving someone. As long as I am focusing on what they did, my heart remains hard against them, but when I remember God has forgiven me so much more than I’ve done against Him, so much more than anyone else could ever do to me, I have no grounds to withhold forgiveness to anyone else.

Seen at Diane‘s Facebook:

“Prayer is the place where burdens change shoulders.”

From The Old Guys:

When you sailors see the haven before you, though you were mightily troubled before you could see any land, yet when you come near the shore and can see a certain land-mark, that contents you greatly. A godly man in the midst of the waves and storms that he meets with can see the glory of heaven before him and so contents himself. One drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and bitterness of all the afflictions in the world. ~ Jeremiah Burroughs

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” II Corinthians 4:17-18.

Also, for those who might not have seen it and might be interested, I shared several good quotes from Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job by Laytin Talbert in my review of the book here.

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!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here’s some great reading from the Web this week:

Homeschooling Blindspots is applicable to parents generally, not just homeschoolers. A great, convicting article.

50 Rules for Dads of Daughters. Sweet, touching post. Some of it good for either parent of any child.

The Manly Virtues: Courage. Again, though specifically and needfully applied to raising boys, girls need courage, too, and some of this applies to them as well.

Building Strong Foundations.

Do you know the bones of your Bible? Good to have a grasp of these things even with all the electronic aids we have these days.

The Six Ugly Sisters in the Kingdom of Error. Creative explanation of writing errors and ways to deal with them.

Pretty Organized: Hair Accessories. A neat and pretty way to store them.

Fall Apple Cake from a sweet young wife and mom I know in real life.

Really neat conversion story of a 78 year old Jewish man.

Have a great weekend! It’s been a fun but busy week and I’m looking forward to a pretty low-key day today.

Happy Birthday to Jesse!

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Barbara Harper

18 years ago yesterday, I was in the hospital laboring to give birth to our third child.

That pic was before being induced!

We knew he was a big baby , but we were surprised he weighed in at 12 lbs.

He’s been a smiley, cheerful guy most of his life.

Jesse's first birthday

I hope he always will be! It’s so hard to believe he is 18 already!

I meant to post this yesterday — but the day got too busy with other activities!

Jesse, I hope you had a wonderful birthday, and I pray you continue on growing not just in mind and body but in your relationship with your Creator and Savior as well. We love you immensely!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Barbara Harper

It’s been a good week! Here are a few faves:

1. White cheddar popcorn. When we were in a hotel a couple of weeks ago, Jim’s “premium” status afforded him a little snack bag, and one item in it was a bag of Smartfood white cheddar popcorn (made by Frito-Lay). Oh. My. Word. Sooo good. Fortunately (or unfortunately, calorie-wise) I found a store that sells it here. Jim has also tried making it from scratch with the air popper, spritzing spray butter, and sprinkling with white cheddar flavoring, and it’s pretty close.

2. Pumpkin Spice cookies. I saw a mix of this at Hobby Lobby and got one for my “secret sister” at church and one for us as well. Wow, these were good as well. They were expensive — more so when I realized I had misread the price! And they don’t discount it in their 40% off autumn stuff. I need to find a good recipe.

3. Computer help. My computer evidently acquired a set of viruses from somewhere. Thankfully I have a son who has expertise in that area and is willing to help his mom and whose company allows him to use their remote software free for immediate family. It took the whole day to deal with it, but thankfully it looks like it’s all taken care of. When he is logged in remotely, there is a little window showing it in the bottom corner of the computer, and it was a comfort to see it there, even though most of the time was just letting the anti-virus software run.

4. Online ordering. Since the mall and many shops are 20 minutes away (and I am used to five from our previous location), it’s so nice to order online for birthdays and such rather than traipsing from store to store. And a couple of places had free shipping!

5. The Tennessee Valley Fair. We went last night, and it was perfect — weather a little coolish and not too crowded. Here are a few pics and a really cute video of a duck slide:

Just noticed the 2010 — guess they saved it from last year.

Jason and Mittu.

Notice the sign….

Chicken on a stick. It was pretty good!

Funnel cakes! Can only handle those about once a year.

Jim and Jesse on the Ferris Wheel.

This was the cutest thing — a little slide for ducks. It seemed a little mean to place the food just out of their reach like that — but they didn’t seem to mind: