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 especially spoke to me this week:
When we think of making a difference, we think about making the world a better place for the next generation, not caretaking people who have no future. This is one reason we are quick to push the incontinent into “managed care” staffed with “skilled nurses.” No question that this is indeed a necessary move for many families—I had to do it with my own father, sad to say. But let’s face it. A fair amount of our motive is mixed. How much skill does it take to clean up excrement from an elderly body? Mostly it takes forbearance—and a willingness to give oneself night and day to something that, according to our usual reckoning, is not all that significant.
While the whole article is not about caring for the elderly, it makes the point that quietly taking care of someone’s most personal needs behinds the scenes can be ministry just as much as the more visible and seemingly higher-impact works. I highly recommend that whole article.
When I consider my crosses, tribulations and temptations, I shame myself almost to death thinking of what they are in comparison to the sufferings of my blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. —Martin Luther
That definitely puts things into perspective. Nothing any of us has faced can compare to what He underwent for us.
My problem was that I was trying to get God to surrender to me.
That one pulled me up short. When we’re wanting our own way that’s exactly what we’re doing, but I never thought about it in quite that way before.
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.
Make me know your presence Lord, the King of Glory here.
You know each thought and action, hope, anxiety and fear.
How can I hide from Thee? Can darkness hide iniquity?
Oh how can I unfaithful be, when You are very near to me?
When God is near, all the world seems far away.
When God is near, every fear is set aside.
When God is near, how can I stray? How can I falter?
I’ll stay upon the altar, I know my God is near.
Make me know Your presence Lord, when I feel so alone.
You know each trial and testing pain, the hurt that is unknown.
Oh, why can I not see Your hand so firmly guiding me?
Oh how can I untrusting be, when You are very near to me?
When God is near, all the world seems far away.
When God is near, every fear is set aside.
When God is near, how can I stray? How can I falter?
I’ll stay upon the altar, I know my God is near.
James 4:8: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.”
You know, at first I just started to put the first half of that Bible verse, because it sounds so warm and cozy and secure, but the second half is a part of drawing nigh to God. Thank God that we can be made clean:
I John 1:5This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
6If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I don’t know who these folks are, but this is a nice rendition of this song:
Here are some things I found interesting this last week that I thought you might, too:
I love this idea for etching your initial on a glass pan so that when you take it somewhere, it’s marked as yours and you don’t have to scribble your name on masking tape and stick it on. The article is based on using the Cricut to make a stencil, but you could use a pre-made stencil just as easily.
Insignificant Is Beautiful, HT to Washing the Feet of the Saints. Quote: “The search for significance, especially if it requires changing the world, can blind us to the everyday tasks, the mundane duties, and the dirty work that is part and parcel of the life of discipleship.”
Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share 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 five of my favorites from the past week:
1. Lunch out. One lady at our church here organizes an informal lunch for ladies at a restaurant about once a month, and this month’s lunch was Tuesday. Only four of us showed up — she said they usually have six or eight. But I had at least met all of the ladies there, and it was a fun time to get to know them a little better.
2. Not doing dishes! I mentioned a while back that my daughter-in-law, Mittu, got a job here. It started this week, so she and Jason are staying here until he finds a job and they can get an apartment. I usually have dinner started by the time she gets home, but she has insisted on doing the dishes afterward. It’s been lovely to be done in the kitchen after dinner is over.
3. A good report card. Jesse had some of the worst grades of his school career the first few weeks here, I think just due to adjusting to new teachers and a new school. But he brought everything up to As and Bs by report card time.
4. Joann’s. I don’t know if it really is, but I have always considered Joann’s Fabrics and Crafts as the ultimate in fabric and craft stores — and I had never been to one because we never lived near one. But there is one about 20 minutes away from here, and I finally got to visit it yesterday. I wasn’t shopping for anything in particular, just exploring and seeing what they had. It was a lot of fun. It’s too far to just drop by often and I still like my local Hobby Lobby for most things, but it is nice to know it’s within range if I want to go again. I especially enjoyed looking through the quilting fabrics and books — some of my blog friends are into quilting, some expert and some beginner, and I loved looking at the new designs and styles in some of the books there. Maybe some day…
5. Great finds. One bathroom is a little bare of decorations, so I have been keeping my eye out for something suitable in a brown/beige/tan/blue combination. I found the first at Joann’s and the second at Hobby Lobby, both 50% off.
Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.
The prompt for this week is:
What was Halloween like when you were growing up? Did your family participate? If not, was there a substitute activity? Did your school or church have a fall festival or carnival? Were there stipulations regarding costumes? What sorts of activities did they have? What about Halloween parties? Have you ever bobbed for apples or been on a hayride? What are your memories of “haunted houses”? (I’m not referring to the ultra-scary, secular ones, just the fun kid ones, with bowls of grapes and cold spaghetti!) If you went trick-or-treating, what were the rules, both for trick-or-treating and for candy consumption? What types of costumes did you wear? Were they store-bought or homemade? Did you carve a jack-o-lantern? How are your children’s experiences similar or different to yours? And the most important question: Do you like candy corn? What is your favorite (and least favorite!) Halloween candy?
My family did allow us to trick-or-treat. I can’t remember any of my costumes except I know I wanted to be a princess one year. We usually had store-bought costumes with the plastic face masks, and I can remember the masks getting all sweaty and irritating after a short while. But it was fun to dress up and get candy and wasn’t a terribly big deal.
One cousin did have not so much a haunted house but a creepy scary tour in his garage with low lights, boiled eggs for eyeballs, spaghetti for “guts,” etc, that we were supposed to run our hands through. It was pretty well done for his age and wasn’t scary so much as icky, but one other cousin got pretty shaken up by it. That’s the only thing like that I can remember going to — I had no interest in them as I got older.
I was a teen-ager before I heard of or attended an alternate party — the church I attended had something, but I don’t remember what it was called. It was basically a youth activity with games and food and fall decorations — wholesome, nothing scary, no costumes. I enjoyed it.
As a young wife and mom, I was pretty anti-Halloween. I had become a Christian as a teen-ager, and you can find a lot of reading material about the negative influences and symbolism of Halloween. Naturally I wanted to protect my children from anything evil. Plus the day seemed to stray from just innocent dressing up and gathering candy from neighbors to something darker and gory, and stories sprang up across the country about tainted candy. So I was very surprised when I saw faculty and staff from my Christian college let their kids trick-or-treat on campus in the faulty housing area. Of course, it was probably the safest place in the country to trick-or-treat, but, still, what about all those evil origins?
Well, over the years, after observing what several other Christian families did, I did come to the conclusion that it would be possible to celebrate the day as we did in my childhood, with just an opportunity to dress up and get candy, without endorsing evil. I never did feel comfortable letting my own children trick or treat, but we did give out candy as well as children’s tracts and a little leaflet a family in town published with a phone number kids could call to hear Bible stories. If I had young children today, I would probably let them trick-or-treat just on our street or maybe at a mall or zoo or somewhere like that with an organized candy distribution.I would still feel uncomfortable taking them to total strangers.
One of my close Mom friends did have a fall party several years in a row which I just loved. She purposefully kept it away from the day or week of Halloween for those who had problems with it, but she did ask kids to dress up. She had a theme each year: one year it was storybook or fairy tale characters (Jeremy and Jason were Robin Hood and Little John); another year it was clowns, another it was “what you want to be when you grow up.” She had games and prizes and fall decorations. It was a lot of fun.
One year when we were in GA and were discussing with the Awana leaders whether to have any kind of fall party with the kids, one couple strongly objected: they were so adamantly against Halloween that they were against doing anything at all related to costumes or candy or parties anywhere near the date. But I have no objections at all to alternate activities. In fact, in many missionary stories I read, they came up with alternate activities to some of the pagan or unwholesome ones on purpose to help the Christians who might have been tempted to go back to situations that would have proven a major temptation for them.
The only time I dressed up for Halloween as an adult was when I worked at a fabric store in a mall and had to work Halloween Day. I made a Raggedy Ann costume and wore the dress (without the pinafore) for many years afterward. My kids used the “hair” for clown costumes.
Working at a fabric shop, it was fun to see what different people came up with.
I do remember bobbing for apples once — I didn’t like it very well (mainly getting water up my nose). Now the unsanitariness of several people putting their mouths (and sometimes noses) in the same tub of water grosses me out. I can remember going on a hayride or two — it was ok, but I didn’t really see the point. I don’t remember ever carving a jack-o-lantern. I don’t like candy corn. I ate it some as a child and thought it was okay, thought not a favorite, but I can’t stand it now. My favorite candy is Lindt Lindor Truffles, but people don’t usually give those out at Halloween. 🙂 But I like the little fun-size M&Ms, Three Musketeers, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as well as the Hershey’s Miniatures (except for the dark chocolate ones).
And for a nostalgic visit to some of the old-style candies —
Diane tagged me with this on Facebook, and I thought I’d post it here as well:
Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.
1. Elisabeth Elliot
2. C. S. Lewis
3. C. H. Spurgeon
4. Amy Carmichael
5. Isobel Kuhn
6. Jim Berg
7. Erwin Lutzer
8. David Martin Lloyd-Jones
9. J. Oswald Sanders
10. Jim Elliot
11. Charles Dickens
12. Nancy Leigh DeMoss
13. Darlene Diebler Rose
14. Edith Schaeffer
15. Gracia Burnham
I got the first 10 in three minutes; I had to think a little more about the last five.
I am not going to tag anyone, but let me know if you do this — I’d love to see the list of your most influential authors.
I can tend to be too adversely affected by weather. Oh, not the occasional rainy day, but prolonged periods of cloudiness. I have an especially hard time with winter between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day. The numbing cold, for one thing, but more so the colorlessness depresses me.
I was just reveling in the height of color especially on the hills on the drive to church Sunday. I spent most of the 20 minute drive just drinking in the beauty.
But just two days later, many of the leaves on that same drive were blown off with high winds and rain and the hills were sporting several patches bald of color.
“No!” I thought. “Not yet!”
This morning I came across this in F. B. Meyer’s Our Daily Walk:
There are three things that make Springtide in the soul.
The sense of God’s Presence. We know that He is near, though the woods are bare, the frost holds the earth in its iron grip, and the wind gathers together the dead leaves; but we feel Him nearer when every hedgerow is clothed with flowers, every bush burns with fire, every tree claps its leafy hands, and every avenue is filled with sweet choristers.
The optimism of an illimitable hope. Spring is the minstrel of Hope. She takes her lyre and sings of the fair Summer, which is on her way, Life pours through a myriad channels, and shows itself stronger than death for Spring is victorious over Winter, as good shall prove to be over evil.
The exuberance of Love. Spring is the time of love. The whole creation is attracted by a natural affinity, and love rules in forest and field.
For us, the lesson is clear. Cherish the sense of the Presence of God; cultivate an illimitable Hope; be conscious of a Love flowing towards you and from you. Dwell on the loving-kindness and tender mercy that have preceded and followed you all the days of your life, and for you, too, the wilderness and solitary place will be glad. After all, life is not altogether what circumstances make it. They may be everything that heart can wish, and yet the Frost-King may reign within and east its icy mantle over all; whereas there are men and women who have everything adverse in their circumstances, but because they have Spring in their hearts, they find flowers and songs everywhere.
The rest of this devotional is here under October 27.
Though maybe cheerfulness and exuberant worship comes a little more naturally when the sun is shining and there is beauty everywhere, either in fall or spring, I can rejoice in the unchangeable truths of God’s love and care and Presence and hope no matter what the conditions are. A genuine counting of my blessings puts me back in a right frame of mind. Practically, good music, good books, warmth of family and friends, something of beauty to look at or work on in the home all help stoke the furnace of contentment as well, though I am reminded of biographies I have read where people did not have even those resources, yet still rejoiced in God alone.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
When I first saw the book Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore popping up here and there, I saw the front cover went on to say, “A modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together.”
Hmm, I thought. Might be interesting. But not enough to compel me to get it. It just didn’t seem to “grab” me.
Then I began seeing it on more and more blogs, getting rave reviews by people I knew and respected.
Hmm, I thought. Maybe I’d better check it out.
So I got it. And put it on my shelf. And it sat there for weeks.
Finally I had a desire to pick it up and read it — after I found it in a box of books that wouldn’t fit on my bookcases.
Wow. I am so glad I did.
I don’t know if most of us have a truly correct view of poverty in this country. I’ve personally known people who lived quite comfortably and happily under what the government set as the poverty level. I’ve known others who felt they were poverty-stricken because they could not afford cable TV service. The poverty described in this book is raw, real, stark, and almost inescapable — almost unfathomable. Denver Moore escaped from virtual slavery on a plantation in Louisiana by riding the rails to what he truly perceived as a better life as a homeless man in Texas.
Ron Hall began serving at a homeless shelter only because his wife wanted him to come with her. “I hate to admit this now,” he writes, “but I had pictured myself more as a sort of indulgence benefactor: I would give him a little bit of my valuable time, which, had I not been so benevolent, I could have used to make a few more thousand dollars. And from time to time, I imagined, if Denver stayed cleaned up and sober, I’d take him of field trips from hobo land to restaurants and malls, a kind of peep show where he could glimpse the fruit of responsible living and perhaps change his ways accordingly” (p. 111).
It didn’t exactly turn out that way.
Both men were challenged, both learned of their own ignorance, assumptions, and prejudices, both were stretched beyond themselves and the world they had known. Both taught each other, learned from each other, and supported each other.
This is a riveting book. Parts of it horrified me, parts had me in tears, parts were sheer beauty.
And it’s true. A real story with real people.
(This review will be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday review of Books and the next 5 Minutes For Books I Read It column.)
The 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.
Wow, I can’t believe it is the last week in October already. The month just flew by.
Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent, reviewed here, about an unlikely friendship between an art dealer and a homeless man.
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.
Fear is a liar and a thief. A liar, because it fills our minds with hypothetical horrors, and a thief because it steals precious hours we can never get back and strips them of peace. Fear is a cloud, obscuring what’s real, and what’s real is something that can’t be imagined. It can only be received and is only given when it’s needed.
I had never thought of fear in those terms, but that’s so true.
From Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word commenting on the memorial Israel was to set up in Joshua 4 and the need to memorialize or remember how God has led in the past not only to praise Him but as a testimony to future generations (Psalm 78:1-6):
When you have living faith in a living God, the past is not “dead history.” It throbs with a living reality.
I get aggravated when some people discount all of history since it is about “dead guys.” That’s pretty short-sighted!
And from the same book concerning Calebs’ claim to his inheritance in Joshua 14:
What an example for us to follow! Age did not hinder him, the disappointments of the past did not embitter him, and giants did not frighten him!
What particularly struck me about this was his not being embittered by the past. If you remember, Caleb and Joshua were the only ones willing to trust God and go forth when the Israelites came to Canaan the first time, but the others were afraid and refused. Israel was then assigned to the wilderness for forty years while the old generation died off, and Caleb had to wait and wander even though he had been faithful. Yet he didn’t complain and was never bitter — he patiently waited until it was God’s timing for him to receive portion. A lesson to me: I probably would have been inwardly chafing much of those forty years. (I Peter 2:19-25 has more to say on suffering when you’ve done right. What greater example is there of that than the Lord Jesus?)
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.
The folks at 
Stray Thoughts 