We look for the Saviour

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So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. Hebrews 9:28.

The heading of my Daily Light reading for today is “We look for the Saviour” from Philippians 3:20, and all the rest of the verses had to do with looking for the Lord’s appearing. After reading and pondering the verses for a while, the difference between what they instruct and what Harold Camping and those like him advocate is clear. Some years ago when there was another prediction of the supposedly exact date of the Lord’s return, some people actually sold all their property and went to some hillside and waited before being sadly disappointed. But Scripture nowhere teaches that response.

Really,  most of the New Testament gives instruction about what we’re supposed to be doing til the Lord returns. The Bible does say we’re strangers and pilgrims on this earth and our eventual home is in heaven. But there are some verses that tell us specific things to do in anticipation of His return.

The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Titus 2:11-14

1. Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts

2. Live soberly, righteously, godly

3. Look for His return while actively living here

4. Be zealous of good works.

We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless, And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation… Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.II Peter 3:13-15a, 17-18.

5. Be at peace with Him.

6. Be without spot and blameless, and be diligent about both of these.

7. Be glad for His longsuffering that gives more people a chance to be saved.

8. Beware of error and falling from steadfastness.

9. Grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Philippians 3:17-20

10. Follow the Bible’s teaching.

11. Don’t live for earthly things, even though we partake of them.

12. Remember our conversation, manner of life (citizenship, some translations say), is in heaven.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Colossians 3:1-5

13. Seek those things which are above.

14. Set your affections on things above.

15. Mortify (put to death, or, as the NASB says, consider as dead, echoing Romans 6 about reckoning ourselves dead to sin and not yielding to it any more) our sinful tendencies.

16. The rest of the chapter tells of things not to to and to do.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. I John 3:2-3

17. Purify ourselves.

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. Acts 1:7-11

18. Be His witnesses (Matthew 28:18-20: Make disciples and teach them what I have taught you.)

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. Isaiah 25:8-9

19. Rejoice!

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. 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.

Love the new banner!

Here are a few favorites from the past week:

1. My son’s testimony about God’s provision of a job. Then the day he heard he got the job, his car died. God worked it out that they were able to get a new car trading in both old cars and getting a decent interest rate after some checking around for options. Though I hate that they have another payment to add on to their responsibilities, it’s good to have a reliable car under warranty with good gas mileage since they’re driving more here than they were in SC. Though they’ve had a difficult year, God is providing and things are looking up for them.

2. Chicken chimichangas from a local Mexican food restaurant. Love those! I’ve thought about trying to make them from scratch at home — but these guys do it so well.

3. School’s out! No more alarm clocks! Most days, anyway.

4. My mother-in-law’s bird feeder and a bird book. My husband had gotten her a bird feeder for Mother’s Day, and she has enjoyed so much watching the visitors. We didn’t know what all of them were, so I ordered a bird identification book for her this week which she was delighted with as well.

5. My blog returning to normal. I don’t know if any of you noticed, but for most of the week my blog format was messed up — the grey from the sidebar background was extending all the way across the blog and the widgets were not right and half of them migrated to the bottom of the blog. The WP techs worked on it and it finally got back to normal last night. (Evidently there were some unclosed HTML tags in the widgets — they didn’t seem to cause a problem til I downloaded Firefox 4). It feels so clean and neat now! It wasn’t the biggest of blog problems, but it did bug me, and I am glad to have it fixed.

Have a great weekend!

My Mom’s birthday

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Today would have been my mom‘s 74th birthday. She passed away 5 1/2 years ago.

So far this day isn’t as weepy as some of her previous birthdays have been, though I have been a little moist-eyed a couple of times. The first year or two I couldn’t even go near a Hallmark store the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day. The first year I accidentally wandered into one in April looking for something completely unrelated to Mother’s Day but was undone by all the Mom stuff in the store and had to leave.

There are still moments when I am unexpectedly blindsided by grief or by missing her, but they don’t come quite as often. One day I came across something that would have been a perfect gift for her and was lamenting that I couldn’t give it to her when it hit me that, where she is now, she’s seeing things so much greater than earthly perishable gifts.

She had been so dreading retirement, fearful of going crazy or being bored to death at home alone so much (she was never the homebody I am), I kind of hate that she missed the birth of the blogosphere and Facebook: she would have loved both.

I started out today, though, thinking that I just didn’t want it to be a sad day. Though I miss her, miss sending her gifts and talking on the phone, miss telling her about what’s going on in our lives, today I just want the comfort of remembering her.

And I pray for many in my extended family who are grieving her loss as well today, many whose own relationship with the Lord I’m not sure of, that this reminder of death and loss and grief might be used of God to help them see and deal with their own need of Him so they’ll have His forgiveness and help and grace here and now as well as when their time comes.

Missing something? No, I don’t think so after all.

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When we were preparing to move last summer, I unearthed a whole stack of family-oriented magazines from several years back. In more recent years I had marked and torn out what I was interested in (or checked and bookmarked the article online) and then passed it on to a friend, but this stack must have accumulated and then been forgotten before I started doing that.

I brought them with us to look through as I had time and just got to them last week. Many had turned-down corners noting something I wanted to consider doing with my own sons. I started looking at the dates of the magazines: many were from the time my youngest was in his toddler to preschool to early elementary years.

At first I started to kick myself and feel really guilty that I had never done all these neat activities with my children.

But then, I thought, “Now, wait just a minute!” We did do lots of things together:

We sat on the floor and made Lego creations.

We read books. Lots and lots of books. We made regular trips to the library and every library day afternoon was spent in happy reading all the new treasures.

We built tracks and loops for Hot Wheels cars.

We did puzzles.

We colored and painted.

We made various Play-Dough creations.

We had a multitude of Little People sets, thanks to my mom, and played seemingly endless scenarios with them.

We played untold rounds of a game called something like Memory Match (like Concentration from my childhood), Hi Ho Cheerio, Sorry, Candyland, and other games.

We took walks.

We went to the park.

We visited friends.

We played in the sandbox.

We blew bubbles.

We went to the zoo.

Even going to the grocery store was considered fun at certain ages.

We may not have done some of those neat unique activities in the magazines, but we did a lot of fun things and spent a lot of time together. I’ve thought to myself that I hoped that my lack of keeping up with baby books as I would have liked was due to my actually spending time with my kids.

Were those magazines a waste, then? I don’t think so. I did use some ideas over the years, but even the ones I missed using had a positive influence. Just like visiting a craft store or craft show or craft blogs sparks my own creative juices even if I never do the specific crafts I see, I think family magazines and idea books and these days mommy blogs can inspire my own goals with my family. But they need to be kept as an inspiration, a creativity-sparker, a supplement to our own real lives, not a burden, a guilt-producer, a competition against other moms and kids, an addition to an already crowded schedule.

As long as we’re spending both quality time and quantities of time together, nourishing our relationships, learning and growing, we don’t have to worry that we’re not keeping up with whatever everyone else does. Attentive time together is what matters most.

This post will be 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.

Book Review: Lady in Waiting

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Lady in Waiting by Susan Meissner caught my eye when both Susanne and Quilly highly recommended it.

It’s a dual story of two Janes. Jane Lindsay’s husband unexpectedly walks out on her, and she is stunned. They had been married twenty-two years, and she thought everything was fine. Giving him the space he says he wants, she occupies herself with her antique business, confiding in her friend, who urges her to see a counselor, yet trying to keep the situation from her meddlesome mother. She finds an unusual, very old ring in the binding of an old book, a ring that happens to have her name engraved inside it, along with a phrase in Latin. Intrigued, Jane tries to learn who her namesake might be.

Lucy Day becomes the new dressmaker to a very young Lady Jane Grey and assists her for the next several years, becoming as close a friend and confidant as their two different stations will allow. Lady Jane’s entire life seems to be under the control of others, and as events unfold and political forces begin to swirl, Lucy fears not only for her lady’s happiness, but for her life.

Both Janes seem to be victims of their circumstances and the choices of others, but both find, as the back of the book says, they each have “far more influence over her life than she once imagined. It all comes down to the choices each makes despite the realities they face.”

Lady Jane Grey is one whose circumstances I could never remember, though I thought she came to an untimely end. But I am sure that from now on I’ll remember her story. Though Lucy and the ring and Jane’s possible love interest are all fictional, Susan Meissner paints a realistic portrait of the kind of person Jane might have been.

I could empathize with Jane Lindsay’s situation as well and wanted to defend her against everyone else and cheered her on in her journey. Though I appreciated the way the author ended with a glimmer of the future rather than neatly tying the story up, I didn’t want my time with Jane to end: I wanted to see what happened down the road!

Susan Meissner did an excellent job weaving the two stories together and bringing out the theme. Different points or subtexts keep coming to mind from the story even after finishing it. This is the first of Meissner’s books that I’ve read, but it definitely will not be the last.

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

What’s On Your Nightstand: May

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What's On Your NightstandThe folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the fourth Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read. You can learn more about it by clicking the link or the button.

It’s been a busy month, but I’ve been able to get some good reading in.

Since last time I finished:

A Novel Idea: Everything You Need to Know about Writing Inspirational Fiction, reviewed here. Probably a must-read if you’re thinking of writing Christian fiction.

Women’s Ministry in the Local Church by Ligon Duncan and Susan Hunt. Hope to have a review up soon.

Leaving by Karen Kingsbury, first in a new series with Bailey Flanigan from previous series.

Love Finds You in Camelot, Tennessee by Janice Hanna, a fun romantic comedy but with some depth as well, reviewed here with Leaving.

Words by Ginny Yttrup, destined to be one of my top ten books of the year, I believe, reviewed here.

Lady in Waiting by Susan Meissner, reviewed here. Just finished this one yesterday and hope to review it soon. Loved it.

Currently reading:

The Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh.

Up next:

The Judgment by Beverly Lewis, second in The Rose Trilogy.

Mine Is the Night by Liz Curtis Higgs.

The Judgment is the last of my Spring Reading Thing list unless I want to add more of the non-fiction I was considering. But I have a whole list of recommended books to choose from as well.

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 stood out to me this week:

I saw this on Lisa‘s Twitter sidebar:

“When you labor to show yourself righteous so that God will accept you, you are not submitting to God’s righteousness.” -John Piper

Paul says he wants to “be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). There are whole systems built on laboring to be righteous to “gain” God’s acceptance, but even those of us who should know better tend to fall back into that mindset sometimes. I am so glad God’s righteousness is by faith.

Seen at Challies:

There can be no victory where there is no combat. —Richard Sibbes

I tend to want victory without having to expend the effort of combat, and it just doesn’t work that way.

And I hadn’t realized it t first, but these quotes might seem to be opposites. How can we expend victory by effort (or combat) if spiritual victory is by faith? Well, the first quote deals with the righteousness we need to stand before a holy God and not be condemned but rather approved, and Christ’s righteousness is the only kind that will suffice. That we receive by faith. We can’t earn it or work it up on our own. With that righteousness we can stand before a holy God without fear. But working that out into our everyday lives is what we call sanctification. Even that is accomplished by faith, and yet there are times God asks us to act on something in faith. In some of Israel’s battles in the Old Testament, God fought for them in unusual ways; in others, they had to actually take up sword and spear and shield and go to battle, yet they had no victory unless God enabled them. So even though my standing before God and his acceptance of me is by faith, in everyday battles, like, say, eating right and getting exercise, I still lean on Him for grace and strength, but I still have to expend effort: my body isn’t going to exercise itself, God isn’t going to exercise it for me, and I am not going to have any victory in weight loss without expending some effort at it. Someone once said “God will help you with your math homework, but He is not going to do it for you.”

I know many of you already know these principles, but I just felt I needed to explain further for anyone who might be confused by those two statements.

In another vein, this struck me from Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word, p. 293, commenting on Job 21, particularly Job’s “friends” trying to tell him that his suffering must be because of sin because God prospers the righteous:

If comfort and wealth are evidences of holiness, our Lord was not holy, for He had little earthly comfort and wealth, and He died a terrible death on the cross. Perhaps you need to examine your own “logic” and see if you are thinking like God or like the devil (Ps. 1:1; Matt. 16:21-28).

I don’t know how the “prosperity gospel” people miss things like that.

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.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

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Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

Matthew 24:42, 44

Laudable Linkage

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Wow, it’s been a super-busy week — I can’t believe it’s the weekend already.

Here are a variety of interesting things seen ’round the Web over the last couple of weeks:

Gentleness: a forgotten virtue, HT to Challies.

You are my sunshine. Sweet, tender.

Parenting 001. Hilarious and wise at the same time.

Praying for a Pearl. We’ve often heard about praying for our children’s future mate, but what about their future mother-in-law?

What Not to Wear — no, not the TV show, but a little bit different take on modesty.

Everyday Theology: You Need to Feed Yourself. Similar thoughts to what I had in “Not Being Fed.”

Why Won’t God Just Tell Me What to Do?

Animals with stuffed animals — if you need a dose of cuteness.

Preschool Teacher Appreciation Card.

Ten Terrific Teacher Gifts.

Ideas for Graduation Celebrations.

More Graduation Party Ideas.

A Craft Suitcase — a neat idea for storing or transporting certain craft stuff.

Thought this was really cute even though it’s past Mother’s Day. I don’t think I’m this bad! But I do still need help on many things and am thankful for my techno-competent sons being willing to.

Kids, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME! Seriously! (Or adults either, for that matter!)

This is totally too cute:

Happy Saturday!

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. 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.

This will be one of those weeks where it is hard to narrow it down to five. Here goes:

1. Baby-back ribs. This has become my entree of choice at a few restaurants, and that and an excellent salad made for a scrumptious meal out last Friday night at a local place. The only bad thing about the meal was that the noise level inside the restaurant was insanely loud to me.

2. Voyage of the Dawn-Treader. We finally saw this DVD and loved it. It’s been too long since I’ve read the book to remember whether it followed it as closely as I like for films to do, but the film itself was a feast.

3. Mother-daughter luncheon at our church last Saturday. Nicely done. It was a little strange not to have a hand in this one! I did think about calling to see if they needed help, but as it turned out it was best I didn’t this time.

4. Visit from a dear friend. My friend Valorie, one of my oldest (in terms of how long we’ve known each other, not age. 🙂 ) and dearest friends, came up with her dad for just a quick visit. He was visiting her in SC and had friends about an hour from us here in TN, so they came up Sunday in time for dinner and then stayed overnight before going on to see her dad’s friends Monday, and even took me out for breakfast before they got on the road. We met way back in early married days and had kids around the same time (with her having all girls and me having all boys, you’d think there would have been one romance in there somewhere…). Val hosted my baby shower, and then when we had our first kids we lived down the street from one another and shared many walks with babies in strollers and lunches and visits to the park and breakfasts where the buffet was $2.99 and kids ate free. 🙂 It was so good to see each other and catch up a bit.

5. Unsolicited help. This past was weekend unexpectedly busy — it hadn’t clicked in my mind that with Jesse’s Junior-Senior banquet and everything involved there Friday night and then the Mother-Daughter Luncheon Saturday, time for cleaning was going to be tight. Val and I have seen each other’s houses at their worst over the years, but, still, you want to get the basics done before anyone comes over! But you can only clean so much early on without having to do it all over again before company comes. I had to head to the store after the luncheon and naively thought I’d finish my cleaning after that. While I was out my husband saw my list and got most of the tasks done on it for me. I’m not opposed to men helping around the house, but when he works 60+ hours a week and has his own lists of things he needs to do on the weekend, I figure cleaning the house on my own is the least I can do, so I don’t generally ask for help unless I’m in a bind. It was such a blessing that he pitched in and took care of those things for me.

So after a super-busy weekend, the rest of this week has been a lighter, thankfully. We have a few things coming up this next week, and then school’s out and our schedule immediately slows down! Though I miss my alone time in the summers, I do like not having to set the alarm clock and having a generally more relaxed schedule.

Hot off the press bonus: I mentioned a couple of weeks ago a serendipitous encounter that might lead to a job for Jason….I just found out that he did get the job!!! He had gone to one place to submit a resume only to find that the business he was looking for was no longer in that office. But as he talked with the man who was there, this man said he had been considering hiring someone: he had been handling his business alone and wanted to expand at some point. They talked, he had Jason do a couple of assignments to check out what he could do, he looked into what he would have to do as an employer to hire someone — and Jason just got the call this morning that the job was his. Praise the Lord!

Have a great weekend!