Life Doesn’t Always Turn Out Like We Thought It Would

Posted on June 2, 2024 by Barbara Harper

Several years ago, two individuals from my college who were known for their close walk with the Lord found each other and began to date. They married and attended a local church, the same one we came to later, while the husband finished his graduate degree. He became an elder. The wife was active in the ladies ministry and teaching children. They had a couple of children.

After several years, they left to go to the mission field. There never seemed a family more perfect for missionary work.

After a few years, our pastor went to visit them on the field. He had nothing but positive things to say. He reported that the wife, in particular, seemed in her element.

A few years later, though, we received devastating news. The husband had been caught in infidelity. The family came home, and the elders met with the husband. He refused to repent, saying he loved his sin too much.

The wife was crushed. Not only had her husband turned into someone she didn’t know any more, but she lost the ministry she loved and was so suited for. Plus their coworkers back on the mission field had to pick up the pieces and minister to the people who were shattered by the fall of their leader.

I don’t know if the wife asked herself these questions, but in her place, I would have wondered if I made a mistake somewhere along the way. Had I married the wrong man? Had I missed signs that he had fallen away from the Lord? Had I failed him in some way that caused him to turn to someone else?

I do know that the pastor encouraged her that the situation was not her fault. Not that she was sinless, of course. No one is. But her husband’s sins were his own and he bore the responsibility of them. She was in the center of God’s will even with such things going on in her life.

It’s a shock that you can do everything “right,” so to speak, and end up with a life seemingly in shambles.

I imagine Joseph must have felt the same way, going from the favored son to being sold as a slave by his own brothers and then thrown into an Egyptian prison.

Or Job, described by the Lord as an upright man, yet he lost everything he owned as well as ten children all in one day.

Or John the Baptist. He was the forerunner of the Messiah, preparing the way for Jesus, pointing people to Him. Yet he ended up in prison, and ultimately was beheaded.

The Apostle Paul enjoyed a little over twenty years of public ministry. He took three long missionary trips, shared the gospel with who knows how many people, instructed and encouraged believers, and wrote several epistles which were incorporated into the canon of Scripture.

To be sure, life wasn’t all rosy. Paul experienced beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, sleeplessness, hunger, and more (2 Corinthians 23-28). But overall, his life could be considered a success in terms of being able to minister to large numbers of people.

But then Paul got arrested. He had not done anything wrong, but others supposed he had, and the resulting riot ended with Paul being taken into custody.

Paul was imprisoned for two years, released for a couple, then imprisoned again for a couple of years until he was beheaded.

Paul went from a leading apostle and well-known traveling preacher to a prisoner for many of his last years.

To the world, it might look like Paul’s life ended in failure.

But God encouraged Paul all through the book of Acts that he was on the right path.

And Paul’s ministry didn’t end just because he was in prison.

In the course of explaining why he was imprisoned, Paul was able to share his testimony before Felix, the governor of Judea, Festus, the governor who replaced Felix, and King Agrippa—all people he would not have been able to talk to under normal circumstances.

Paul wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon during his first imprisonment and 2 Timothy during his second. Philippians is one of the most joyful books in the Bible, and Philippians and Colossians both have an emphasis on Thanksgiving—though they were written from prison.

Paul was chained to a Roman guard while imprisoned, so the guards heard all he had to say to his visitors. Paul tells the Philippians, “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household” (Philippians 4:22). So evidently the gospel had filtered even into Caesar’s staff from Paul’s witness.

Friends were able to come talk with Paul and be taught or encouraged by him. Acts ends by telling us Paul “welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:30-31).

“Without hindrance.”

In 2 Timothy 2:9, Paul says, “I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound!” Though Paul was bound, the word of God was not.

God can redeem and work in and through a life in shambles.

It was Paul who wrote of God’s strength in our weakness: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

And what God can do in our lives through suffering: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

And the glory that waits us after suffering: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Others in the Bible found the same grace to endure.

Joseph was released from prison and became second to Pharaoh, eventually saving his own family, the future nation of Israel, from starvation.

Job’s fortune, family, and health were all restored to him, but most important of all, he encountered God in a way he never had before.

John was not spared in this life, but there was a place prepared for him in heaven.

The wife I mentioned at the beginning found God’s grace to sustain while she did the best she could in difficult circumstances.

We tend to equate spiritual success and God’s blessings with smooth sailing and positive circumstances. Saints through the ages have not found this to be the case. In fact, some whose lives seem to shine brightest for the Lord have experienced great trials—maybe because they have to seek the Lord and His strength to navigate their circumstances.

Meanwhile, God’s Word encourages us to “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12) because “after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Peter 5:10).

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

Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 1, 2024 by Barbara Harper

Here is some of the good reading that caught my eye this week:

You’re Gonna Lose Everything, HT to Challies. “Pursue life apart from Christ and you will lose your life. But if you lay it all down, you will find life indeed. And this is the turning point for us. As we call others to follow Christ at the expense of everything else, we are calling them not to poverty, but to unsearchable riches: Yes, you’re gonna lose it all, but you have everything to gain.”

The Actual Divisive Ones, HT to Challies. “The divisive ones are those who reject what God has revealed in Scripture and through the preaching of the apostles. Being able to properly label the divisive ones is important.”

What to Do With the Nice Things People Say, HT to Challies. “Because just as we have blindspots that keep us from recognizing our weaknesses, some of us have trouble seeing the good God has entrusted to us and the good he is doing in us. Thus, humility here might look less like deflecting encouragement and more like saying, ‘Perhaps what I am seeing when I look at myself is not the most accurate picture.’ Growth then might begin with learning to believe trustworthy people when they tell us things about ourselves that we wish were true, but we’re not sure are.”

Be Quick to Listen, Slow to “Therapy Speak,” HT to Linda. “But all of us, and Christians in particular, should be careful about overrelying on therapy speak to describe our relationships with others. This language has consequences—not only for understanding our own lives rightly but for living together as the body of Christ. How we speak shapes what we do, and therapy speak might be limiting our ability to love our neighbors well.”

3 Things to Consider Before You Pick Another Fight. “A quarrelsome spirit never stays slow and steady. Unchecked, it becomes a torrential downpour of misery, soaking a home in resentment, pettiness, and frigid silence.”

Parents, Are You Raising Angry Partisans? HT to Challies. “Christian parents are called to raise our children ‘in the discipline and instruction of the Lord’ (Ephesians 6:4). Our children, in other words, should be able to look to us to see what a life submitted to Christ looks like. We should live in a manner that makes the gospel more intelligible to our children. I wonder, however, if our angry partisanship models the way of the flesh more than the way of Christ.”

What Does “Train Up” Mean in Proverbs 22:6? “Probably the most quoted verse in Proverbs is 22:6. Over the years, the verse has held as a precious promise to parents that if they do everything right, their kids will turn out right. It has also been used as a guilty club to beat up parents who are feeling defeated over the choices of a rebellious child. Both responses are a misinterpretation and a misapplication of the text.”

King Crimson—my thoughts on that portrait, HT to Challies. A thoughtful analysis of King Charles’ portrait in red, by someone who has actually seen it in person.

How the Legal System Enabled—and Will Curtail—the Transgender Movement, HT to Challies. This is both scary and hopeful.

There are rare Christians whose very presence incites others to be better Christians.
–A. W. Tozer

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Barbara Harper

It’s the last Friday of May already. I’m pausing with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story to look back over the blessings of the past week.

1. The National Memorial Day Concert on PBS Sunday night reminded and helped us honor the memories of those who died that we might enjoy freedom.

2. Grilling and family time. Monday, we enjoyed grilled burgers, hot dogs, sausage, sides, and cheesecake. We ended the day playing games.

3. Our care group met Sunday after church for a shared dinner and time of fellowship and prayer.

4. Sunny days. After several torrential downpours, tornado watches, and a bit of hail last week, it’s been nice to see the sun out all this week.

5. Pantry reorganizing. Our kitchen pantry is the size and shape of a small walk-in closet. The shelves on the right hold food. The shelves on the left hold some small appliances, paper goods, serving dishes, and assorted other items. I had an idea to reorganize some of the items on the left. I had hoped to create more space. Though that didn’t happen, the area looks neater and seems a little more efficiently arranged. That’s been on my mind to do for a while, so it was nice to have a chance to do it.

And that ends another week—and month! What’s a blessing from your week?

May Reflections

Posted on May 30, 2024 by Barbara Harper

When our kids were in school, May was one of our busiest months. We had end-of-school-year recitals, plays, programs, and parties.

Now May is a relatively quiet month. I love that it’s still technically spring. It’s warmer than April but not as hot as June.

I told a friend recently that it seems the older you get, the more doctors’ visits you have, even when you’re healthy. I think May was the first month this year that I have not had any kind of medical appointment. Yay! I have three in June. But that’s life.

This month we enjoyed Mother’s Day, a lunch with morning and afternoon sessions for women at church one Saturday, getting a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis, and getting spring plants in as well as regular family gatherings.

Making

The first card I made this month was for Mittu for Mother’s Day:

The daisies are multi-layered stickers. I had a little different design idea in mind when I started, but it eventually involved into this. It happens that way sometimes. I was pleased with it. I tried to use a decorative punch on the corners of the “Happy Birthday” part, but it messed up—so I just lopped the corners off. 🙂

This was for Timothy’s end-of-fourth-grade celebration:

The “4th Grade” letters are puffy stickers.

Watching

We enjoyed quite a few good films this month.

The Match was based on true events about a Nazi prison camp that arranged a soccer match between the prisoners and German athletes to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.

Hugo was about a boy living in a Paris train station in 1931. His father had worked in a museum and liked to tinker with inventions. He brought home a mechanical man found at the museum and tried to get it to work, When his father died, Hugo was given to the care of an uncle who kept the clocks at the train station. When the uncle died, Hugo continued to wind the clocks but remained hidden from the station inspector, stealing food from vendors. He becomes friends with a girl named Isabelle whose grandfather runs a toy shop in the train station. The older man turns out to be Georges Melies, a pioneering filmmaker (if you’ve seen the iconic image of a moon face with a rocket stuck in its eye, that’s his work). The film starts slowly at first, but eventually becomes quite interesting. Isabelle refers to a lot of literary classics, which was fun as well. The station inspector has some lines of double entendre, but otherwise the movie is clean.

The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music tells the story of the family from The Sound of Music, but from the viewpoint of Agathe, the oldest daughter. Matthew MacFadyen plays the father, who is a little less intimidating but also a little clueless in this version. Several points in this film are quite different from The Sound of Music, leaving me wondering which was closer to the truth. I have a book about the von Trapps in my Kindle collection, and this film is motivating to read that sooner rather than later. But as a movie and story, I enjoyed the film.

One Life is about the real-life Sir Nicholas Winton, played by Anthony Hopkins. The younger “Nicky” was a broker who had gone to Czechoslovakia in 1938 and saw families who had escaped from the Nazis in Germany and Austria but were living in desperate conditions. Worse, Czechoslovakia was under imminent threat of invasion. Nicky worked with a small crew to try to get as many children out to freedom as he could before the borders closed. The point of view goes back and forth between the older and younger Nicki. The older Nicki has a scrapbook he kept with all the details about the children he saved. He thinks it should be given to some historical site for preservation, but it ends up in the hands of a BBC television show. As I watched this scene, I realized I had seen a real-life clip of it in a video somewhere. This was quite a moving story. It makes you ponder the influence of one man. Nicky didn’t act alone, but if this telling is correct, nothing would have happened without his initiative and convincing others that it was possible. Yet he felt guilty for not doing more.

Lastly, one night Jim surprised me by suggesting we watch the 2007 film version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. This is my favorite of Austen’s novels. I like the 1995 film version with Ciarán Hinds and Amanda Root much better, but it was still fun to revisit the story (except for the worst movie kiss ever in the 2007 version).

Reading:

Since last time I finished (titles link to my reviews).:

Be Satisfied (Ecclesiastes): Looking for the Answer to the Meaning of Life by Warren W. Wiersbe, nonfiction. Very good.
The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done by Kendra Adachi, nonfiction. We tend to go all out to solve problems (the genius way) or decide they are not worth the bother (the lazy way). Kendra suggests combining approaches to know what needs effort and what doesn’t–which may differ from person to person.
Now and Then and Always by Melissa Tagg, fiction, audiobook. Mara is running from several hard life circumstances when she ends up at a Bed and Breakfast owned by a woman named Lenora, who takes her in like a daughter. Lenora goes on a trip leaving Mara in charge, but ends up being gone for months with no way to contact her. Meanwhile, Detective Marshall Hawkins ends up at the B&B when placed on administrative leave from his job. He helps Mara with renovations while trying to overcome the crippling grief of losing his daughter. Good.
All My Secrets by Lynn Austin, fiction, audiobook. When an elite 1920’s family’s patriarch dies, his mother, wife, and daughter discover that the family’s wealth will go to a near male relative. The mother thinks the daughter should find a wealthy suitor before news of their financial ruin gets out. The grandmother thinks they should embrace a simpler lifestyle. Both try to influence the daughter. Very good.
Yours Is the Night by Amanda Dykes, fiction. A solider, fake chaplain, and reporter are all tasked with taking a French woman to safety during WWII, and the journey changes them all. Very good.
For a Lifetime by Gabrielle Meyer, Fiction, audiobook, third in her Timeless series about time crossers–people who live in two different timelines and have to chose one when they come of age. These time crossers are twins in 1692 as the Salem Witch trials begin, and one is a reporter and one an aviatrix in 1912. Very good.

I’m currently reading:

Be Complete (Colossians): Become the Whole Person God Intends You to Be by Warren Wiersbe
Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis by Douglas H. Gresham
Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own by A. J. Harper
Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri
The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron, audiobook

Blogging

Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

I look through my spam comments occasionally, because, for inexplicable reasons, sometimes legitimate comments get in there. However, lately I’ve had hundreds of spam comments each time I look, most of them from the same IP address. WordPress doesn’t seem to have a way to ban that user. So I’ve temporarily closed comments on any posts older than a month. I hate to do that, because sometimes I do get comments on older posts. But spammers seem to target older posts. I haven’t had any spam comments since, so this tactic seems to be working. I may turn all the comments back on in a few weeks.

Writing

I had a couple of good sessions with my work-in-progress. It seems like the more I do with it, the more I see needs to be done. But step by step, hopefully it will eventually get done.

As we get ready to turn the calendar page, June will be a bit busier than May, but not too bad.

Has was your May? Are you looking forward to anything in June?

Old Age Syndromes to Avoid

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Barbara Harper

In our early married days, I worked in a fabric shop where we had a variety of customers of all ages. Among older ladies, there seemed to be two distinct types. One was very sweet, thankful for any little thing we did to assist them. The other was . . . not sweet.

I remember thinking, “I hope I am the nice kind of older lady when I get that age.”

At some point it dawned on me that if I wanted certain attributes when I got older, I needed to incorporate them while I was young.

“Old” always seems twenty to thirty years beyond my current age. But I am older, and I don’t know that I am yet the kind of older lady I want to be or should be. We’re all a work in progress, no matter how long we’ve lived.

But as I have been around the block a few times, I’ve seen some behaviors I want to avoid.

The “Know it All” Syndrome. When we’ve read the Bible and walked with the Lord for decades, hopefully we’ve acquired some wisdom along the way. But we misuse it if we try to answer most of the questions in Bible Study or Sunday School or feel we have to have the last word that sets everyone straight.

I’ve struggled with this recently. Bible teachers want participation. But I don’t want to monopolize the conversation. Yet I do want to share if I have something helpful to say. I’ve started praying before class that God would give me wisdom to know when to share and when to be silent.

The “We’ve Always Done It This Way” Syndrome. Every new generation brings with it new vocabulary, new technology, new methods. Older people can help younger ones discern between new methods and old truth and try to keep the latter from sliding into oblivion, but we shouldn’t insist that everything be done the way we always did it (or gripe when it isn’t).

The Busybody Syndrome. Busybodies can be any age. Paul is speaking of young widows when he speaks of “idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not” (1 Timothy 5:13). But older women can tend this way, too.

Many years ago, an older lady in our church at the time told one young mom of seven that she was having too many children too close together. She told another young married lady, who, with her husband, wanted to wait until he was out of school before starting a family, that she needed to get busy and start having children. You can imagine that both women were hurt and offended. I am sure that was not the older woman’s intent and that she thought she was helping others with the benefit of her accumulated wisdom. But she overstepped. Before sharing advice, we need to seek the Lord about whether it is really needed and how and when it should be shared.

Gossip Syndrome can also occur at any age or gender, but it’s something Paul specifically mentions in Titus 2 when speaking of the commendable kind of older woman. She’s not to be a “slanderer”–other translations say “gossiper” or “false accuser.” Slander can involve saying things that are untrue about someone else. Gossip can be untrue but seems to include spreading things around that may be true but aren’t anyone else’s business. The Bible has much to say about right and wrong uses of our words.

The Old Wives’ Tales Syndrome. The KJV and a few other Bible versions mention these in 1 Timothy 4:7: “But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.” Other versions, like the ESV, leave out the “old wives” part and just say, “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness.”

This overlaps gossip a bit, but “old wives’ tales” or fables often seem to involve health issues or warnings that aren’t based on fact. These days, they take the form of urban legends. When we were expecting our first child, someone told us not to get a cat because cats can suck a baby’s breath away. When my husband responded skeptically, the woman teared up because she was just trying to “help” us.

I see a version of this when people share dire warnings on FaceBook without fact-checking “just in case” it’s true. Some people do this so often, it’s like the old story of the “boy who cried wolf”: people don’t take the sharer seriously any more. Once again, we need to be careful of sharing falsehoods and unnecessarily scaring people. It’s usually easy these days to search online and find out the facts before we share.

The “Good Old Days” Syndrome. When we look back, our younger days can seem idyllic. We tend to forget or gloss over the negative aspects of certain eras. It’s not wrong to talk about some of the changes that have occurred over our lives or share history we’ve experienced. But we shouldn’t live in the past. We need to be alert for the good gifts God put in our present time as well.

The “I’ve Done My Time” Syndrome. I hear of women who are still teaching VBS or serving in the church kitchen well into their nineties. Good for them. 🙂 Many of us lose a certain amount of oomph over the years and can’t do all we used to. I wrote posts a few years ago on Why Older Women Don’t Serve and How Older Women Can Serve. We’re always in the Lord’s service as long as we live, but how we serve will probably change over the years. We shouldn’t have the mindset of checking out of active service. We might not be plugged into an official church ministry, but we can still minister to people by walking closely with God and being alert for opportunities to listen, giving a word of encouragement, praying, sending a note, etc.

It’s good to not only look at what to avoid, but what to emulate. Godly older women are to be “reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good” (Titus 2:3). They have “a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work” (1 Timothy 5:10).

Thankfully, in every stage of life, God has placed godly women just ahead of me to observe and learn from.

Instead of gossip, slander, and fables, we share truth. Instead of showing off our accumulated knowledge, we humbly seek God’s timing to share His truth. We hold fast to truth but stay flexible about methods where we can. Instead of tearing down, we build up and encourage. Instead of being busybodies or folding inward towards self, we take kind interest in others and seek to serve however He opens doors.

May God give us grace to walk with Him and serve Him and others well at every stage of life.

Revised from the archives

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

Laudable Linkage

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Barbara Harper

There was quite a bit of good reading posted this week:

The Power of Prayer, HT to Challies. “Sometimes, to protect a passage of scripture from the abuses it receives from those who twist it, we add so many qualifications that we eliminate not only the false teaching but also the profound truth it communicates. We find one such passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you (Matt. 7:7).'”

The Missing Years, HT to Challies. “We were preparing for our daughter’s wedding when she called me one day in a slight panic, ‘Mom, I have no pictures of myself from 2009-2011! What happened?’ ‘What happened’ was, I was in the “desert years’- both literally and spiritually.” This is a lovely piece of writing as well as a comforting truth that God can redeem our “desert years.”

Too Much Times, HT to Challies. “Everyone experiences what I call Too Much Times,’ perfect storms where our most demanding challenges meet our most significant weaknesses and can lead to our lowest moments. Too Much Times are days, weeks, or whole years marked by too many demands, responsibilities, and burdens and not enough internal and external resources to keep all the balls in the air.”

On a Christian Approach to Education. “A materialistic worldview reduces education according to its usefulness in the here and now. But as Christians, we walk by faith and not by sight. We believe in the ‘deeper magic,’ the unseen things that are often more true than the seen things.”

Counseling Children Who Have Already Professed Faith in Christ. “I asked my children if they had any prayer requests. One of them responded, ‘Daddy, pray for me, that I would believe in Jesus and be a Christian.’ This wasn’t the first time that my son has mentioned this request. Like many children who’ve grown up in a Christian home, my son professed faith in Christ at an early age. But, like so many other young people who profess faith early, he struggles with doubts.”

Raising a Leader: 3 Leadership Qualities Your Kids Need. “Regardless of our personal style or our leadership resume, as mothers, we sit in the seat of influence with our kids. How we respond to their initiative, their creativity, and their all-pervasive energy in our home goes a long way in defining our children’s confidence.”

You Are an Influencer, HT to Challies. I appreciated this thoughtful, reasonable take on influencing, curating, and social media.

Don’t Complain; Be the Light. “Instead of moaning about the darkness, look to the light. The solution to a dark, crooked, perverse generation is not to complain and argue with them, but to keep being the light. To keep on being pure and blameless and harmless. To keep living in your identity as a child of God.”

Going to the Party. “Christians faced with terminal illness or imminent death often feel they’re leaving the party before it’s over. They have to go home early. They’re disappointed, thinking of all they’ll miss when they leave. But the truth is, the real party is underway at home—precisely where they’re going. They’re not the ones missing the party; those of us left behind are. (Fortunately, if we know Jesus, we’ll get there eventually.)”

Monday, the US celebrates Memorial Day to honor those who have died in the service of their country. On Sunday evenings before Memorial Day, I enjoy watching the National Memorial Day Concert to be reminded of what this day means.

Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country
can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude.
– President Harry S. Truman

We take this day to mourn for those
Who suffered fates of ills and woes,
For those who fought until the death,
Who gave this nation their last breath.
To these passed on—we now salute.
Their legend we will ne’er dispute,
And as they sleep let us bestow
The highest honor that we know.

Author Unknown

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Barbara Harper

This month is just speeding by. I’m pausing for a few moments with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story to remember and be thankful for the good things of the week.

1. Spaghetti fundraiser. A group of families in our church is going on a mission trip this summer and hosted a spaghetti dinner fundraiser after church last Sunday. It was nice to have dinner taken care of and have some time to fellowship.

2. End-of-fourth-grade celebration. Jason and Mittu invited us over to celebrate the end of Timothy’s school year with homemade Chicago-style pizza, salad, garlic bread, and a chocolate pudding/cream cheese/whipped topping dessert..

3. Dinner offering. Jason and Mittu had to cancel plans with another family because Timothy got sick. But they already had a bunch of food in the crock pot. So Jason texted, “Don’t make dinner! We’ll bring some over at 6.” I was sorry Timothy wasn’t feeling well but happy to receive food.

4. A light cooking week. With the meals mentioned above, plus getting Subway one night and Chick-Fil-A another, I’ve had an unplanned mini-vacation from the kitchen this week.

5. Jim’s routine colonoscopy went well. No problems reported.

A short but sweet list. How was your week?

Review: For a Lifetime

Posted on May 23, 2024 by Barbara Harper

For a Lifetime is Gabrielle Meyer’s hot-off-the-press third book in her Timeless series about time crossers.

In this series of novel, a time crosser is one who lives in two timelines. They live in one period of history, and when they go to sleep, they wake up in a different time without any loss of time between. When they go to sleep again, they wake up back in the first time as the very next day, going back and forth. They all bear a sunburst birthmark that marks them as time crossers, some over their heart, some on the back of their heads. The ones with the head marking have until their twenty-fifth birthday to decide which time they want to live the rest of their lives in. If they knowingly try to change history at all, they’ll forfeit their lives in that time period.

In this book, the time crossers are twin girls, Faith and Hope. One of their timelines is in Salem Village, Massachusetts, in 1692, just before the Salem witch trials begin. The twins are twenty-four, working at their father’s tavern and restaurant. They never knew their mother, having been told she died in childbirth. Their father is harsh and distant, treating them more like servants than daughters.

Their second timeline in in 1912, where Grace is a journalist and Hope is a beginning aviatrix in New York. Their mother in this timeline is a time crosser as well (from the previous book) and lives in Washington DC, where her husband had been a Pinkerton agent during the Civil War and then helped start the Secret Service.

The young women have both decided to stay in 1912 on their twenty-fifth birthdays. Hope thinks they should change history in 1692 so they can go ahead and stay in 1912. Grace thinks the risks are too great–one change could cause a catastrophe.

Grace is dutiful, thoughtful, kind, and level-headed. Hope is adventurous, strong-willed, and prefers acting to thinking.

In 1912, one of Grace’s articles exposed an owner of shirtwaist factories for his unsafe practices which resulted in a serious fire. He struck back by trying to buy the building her parents rented for their orphanage, offering three times the amount the building was worth. Grace wants to confront him, but her father warns that it’s unsafe. So they try to find another way to raise the money to purchase the orphanage themselves.

Also in 1912, Hope is attracted to her flying instructor, well-known aviator Lucas Voland. But he wants to keep their relationship professional. When she introduces Luc to Grace, they instantly dislike each other.

In 1692, Grace is attracted to a neighboring farmer named Isaac, but he only has eyes for Hope. Hope, however, wants nothing to do with him.

In 1912, Grace once looked up a history book about the Salem witch trials and saw, to her horror, that she was said to have accused Hope of being a witch. Grace shut the book and didn’t look up any more information about it. She didn’t tell anyone, and has no intention of accusing Hope–she doesn’t see how such a thing could ever be.

Meanwhile, some young girls are said to be “afflicted,” experiencing convulsions and complaining of being pinched, etc. They accuse a few women in the village of afflicting them. Thus the hysteria begins.

The Salem witch trials are not my favorite time in history to read about. They seem a blight not only on American history, but on church history. The lack of common sense, much less spiritual sense, among the leadership in the village is troubling. If this account is true, if anyone challenged to accusations, then they became a target.

But it was interesting to read how Grace, Hope, and Isaac dealt with life under such situations.

Plus I didn’t like Hope much as first. She seemed immature and selfish. But part of her story arc includes her realizing that about herself.

I had thought, with twins being the main characters, that the major conflict would go one particular direction. It didn’t appear to go the way I was thinking at first until a major, shocking, unexpected plot twist occurred. My interest in the book increased after that.

I listened to the audiobook, nicely read by Rachel Botchan. Happily, this audiobook did include the author’s historical notes at the end. She had ancestors on both sides of the Salem trials, sparking her interest. Her research shows that some of the afflicted girls probably had some form of mental illness, which would not have been understood at the time. But others took advantage of the hysteria. She said the reasons for the hysteria were many and complicated.

She also said both Grace’s and Hopes characters in 1912 were inspired by Harriet Quimby, who was both a journalist and flyer, the first woman to fly across the English Channel. (if you’re interested in reading this book, I would hold off reading about Harriet, or you might get some spoilers.)

I loved how everything ended up in both timelines. There are a number of themes in this book, but one that stood out to me was that God often works the most in our lives through circumstances that we did not want.

Song of Solomon

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Barbara Harper

Long-time readers know that I have been using Warren Wiersbe’s “Be” commentaries as companions on my current trek through the Bible. I thought he had written one for every book of the Bible. But when I came to the Song of Solomon, I couldn’t find a corresponding “Be” commentary for it. I searched all the titles. Since SoS is a smaller book, I figured its commentary was probably tucked in with another book’s. But I looked at the table of contents for all the Be books I thought it might be included with, and didn’t see it.

Then I found The Bible Exposition Commentary: Wisdom and Poetry by Wiersbe which covered Job through Song of Solomon. I found a used copy online for $3.99, so I went ahead and got it. As it turns out, the Bible Exposition Commentary series is made up of Wiersbe’s “Be” commentaries. The part dealing with SoS is only about eleven pages.

The subtitle of Song of Solomon says “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.” Both Wiersbe and the ESV Study Bible notes say this means something like “the greatest of songs”—similar wording used in King of kings and Holy of holies.

There are a number of different ways to interpret SoS. Wiersbe thinks Solomon is the bridegroom in the book. The ESV notes say it’s more likely that the book was written in Solomon’s honor or during his reign, but the bridegroom in the story is a shepherd. Both sources also disagree on when exactly in the book the couple marries. But neither of these are major factors in understanding the book.

They do agree that, to some extent, the book is an allegory of God’s love for His people (Ephesians 5:31-21 also says marriage pictures Christ and the church), and on another level it’s a celebration of married love.

While the Song of Solomon illustrates the deepening love we can have with Christ, we must be careful not to turn the story into an allegory and make everything mean something. All things are possible to those who allegorize—and what they come up with is usually heretical.

It’s almost laughable to read some of the ancient commentaries (and their modern imitators) and see how interpreters have made Solomon say what they want him to say. The language of love is imaginative and piles one image on top of another to convey its message. But to make the bride’s breasts represent the two ordinances, or the garden stand for the local church, or the voice of the turtledove mean the Holy Spirit speaking, is to obscure if not destroy the message of the book. Other texts in the Bible may support the ideas expressed by these fanciful interpreters, but their ideas didn’t come from what Solomon wrote (p. 542).

(I love that line—“All things are possible to those who allegorize.” 🙂 )

There are different speakers in the book: the shepherd, shepherdess, and a chorus of others, often referred to as the daughters of Jerusalem. Thankfully, the editors of the ESV and most other modern versions puzzled out who was speaking when and provided us with designations.

We follow the bride and groom through various troubles (she doesn’t open her door to him one night and regrets it, then goes searching for him), deepening love, marriage, and admiring descriptions of each other

Both sources give helpful details in understanding the text. For instance, the bride is compared to a “mare among Pharaoh’s chariots”–but that probably means “the best of its kind,” not that she looked like a horse. Wiersbe says of some of the other descriptions of the bride in Chapter 4:

Doves’ eyes would reflect peace and depth. The bride’s teeth were clean, even beautiful. When you remember that ancient peoples didn’t quite understand dental hygiene, this was an admirable trait. Healthy teeth would also affect her breath (7:8). She had a queenly neck and a posture with it that exuded control, power, and stability. She was a tower of strength! (p. 546).

Another comment that stood out to me came from 2:10, 13), where the bridegroom says, “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.”

“Come” is the great word of the Gospel of God’s grace. It is God’s loving invitation to the weary who need rest (Matt. 11:28-30), the sin-stained who need cleansing (Isa. 1:18), the hungry who need nourishment (Luke 14:17), and all who thirst for the water of life (Rev. 22:17). But “come” is also His invitation to His own people: “Come and see” (John 1:39), “Come and drink” (John 7:37-38), “Come and dine” (John 21:12). In this text, the king invited his beloved to leave her home and work and go with him to enjoy an adventure in the country (p. 544).

Chapter 2:3-4 says, “As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” Elizabeth Poston wrote a beautiful song based on this passage called “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree:

The first time I read SoS, which was probably in high school, I was surprised that it contained some graphic phrases and images. The Bible is often quite frank about the body and its functions.

In early married years, I was comforted by SoS. Growing up even in an unchurched family, about all I heard about sex growing up was “DON’T.” This book and passages like Hebrews 13:4 (“Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge,” NKJV) helped me understand that God created sexual love to be enjoyed by a husband and wife.

In his last couple of paragraphs, Wiersbe acknowledged the difficulty of preaching or teaching Song of Solomon in such a hyper-sexualized society as we have these days. He advised its use in premarital or marital counseling. He closed by saying:

In using this book in public ministry, we must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and not allow our good works to be classified as evil. Some people are against anything in the pulpit that deals with sex, while others wonder where they can get the help that they desperately need. Wise is the minister and teacher who can keep the right balance (p. 550).

It had been a long while since I read Song of Solomon. It was a blessing to spend time there again, aided by the ESV Study Bible and Wiersbe’s commentary.

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

Review: Yours Is the Night

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Barbara Harper

In Yours Is the Night by Amanda Dykes, Matthew Petticrew grows up with his sister on a racetrack in New York in the early 1900s until the father who never claimed them sent them away. Matthew’s sister, Celia, was sent to nursing school, Matthew to be a groom at the stables of Harvard University.

When Matthew travels with some Harvard boys to Plattsburg Training Camp to deliver horses, a chance meeting with his childhood hero, Jasper Truett, one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, changes his life.

Matthew and three acquaintances are sent to the Argonne forest for more wood to reinforce the trenches.

One of the men, George Piccadilly, is a Brit whose parents had sent him to Harvard to get a divinity degree to avoid having to fight in the first World War. However, through a series of events, he ends up at Plattsburg Training Camp . He has no use for religion but somehow ends up a chaplain. His joviality and Matthew’s seriousness don’t seem like they would mix, but George sticks close to Matthew because he looks like he would know how to survive. Plus George thinks he can lighten Matthew up a bit.

The last acquaintance is Henry Mueller, a bookish young man who was recruited as a fresh-faced, boy-next-door to write for the newspaper about the war under the pen name Hank Jones.

As they gather wood, they hear a woman singing. George dubs her the Angel of Argonne. And then one night they meet her in person at the freshly dug grave of her grandfather.

Mireilles, called Mira, grew up with her father and grandfather in the Argonne. When the war came crashing into their quiet lives, Mira’s father went to fight. Now her grandfather is gone, too.

The men feel they can’t leave her alone in her forest home so near the front lines. But they don’t want to send her out alone, either. They obtain permission to accompany her to her nearest relative’s house.

The journey will change each of them.

It took me longer to get into this book than Amanda’s previous book, Whose Waves These Are. The point of view shifts back and forth between Matthew, George, Hank, Jasper, and Mira. It took a little while to get them all sorted out. Plus there was a lot of bickering between George, whose character I didn’t really like at first, and the other two younger men. It was understandable, even funny at times. But not my favorite.

But at some point, everything clicked into place. The last few chapters were just beautiful. I loved the ending. Right after finishing, I went back and reread the first few chapters, understanding them better.

The prologue and epilogue tell of the choice of a casket for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In the author’s notes, Amanda tells of visiting the tomb on the centennial anniversary year and how much the symbolism meant to her. She writes that she did not mean to fictionalize the unknown soldier, but “His anonymity allows him to represent the countless ones who never came home. . . . I hope that only respect, gratitude, and a fierce guarding of the real soldier’s true story—untouched by this imagined one—is found in these pages.”

Some of the other quotes I liked:

That burning justice is a gift. . . . But you be sure and save it for where it’s needed. Some battles aren’t battles after all (p. 23, Kindle app).

I understood the way words can shape hearts. Evade the creation of mobs and fear, and instill a home-front army of citizens armed with hope (p. 65).

The sky rumbled like only the earth should, and the earth bled like only people should, and people—people lived and died like nobody, ever, should (p. 151).

War happens. We help. It’s what we do. Not one of us can fix this whole mess, but maybe we can help this one moment (p. 151).

Men of few words, I was realizing, said much with their silence over here (p. 174).

“The matches . . . they are hope.” They are hope. The three words socked the air from me. Bringers of hope . . . creators of light from dark, when struck on hard places (p. 178).

It’s not mine to change what has happened . . . I cannot. It is mine to walk through what will come (p. 181).

There are none who can undo the past. But there is one who will carry the pain of it. He knows too well the sting of injustice. No, more than that. The blood of it. But with it, He bears the scars of his own injustice with the same hands that carry me now (p. 182).

Her brother was a thoughtful speaker, one who weighed his words and chose few of them to speak, ones that seemed always to carry so much in their depths. His sister seemed to do just the opposite—speak her words, then catch them and consider them, then say more words to explain. As if she were swimming in them, and happily so (p. 195).

What if what we believe to be our shortcomings, our oddities, are actually purposeful quirks that suit us for the moments we were made for? (p. 257).

Though I loved Whose Waves These Are more, I came to enjoy this book quite a lot as well. I’m a fan of Amanda’s writing and eager to read more of her books.