To Die is Gain

It is late and it is quiet. Reflection has set in. How has this day been? How have I spent it? For whom have I spent it? What kind of choices--big or small--did I make? Why did I make them? Why do I do what I do?

In the context of my life as a wife and a mother, there are many times when I truly can say that there is a sense of "suffering." Usually this kind of "suffering" comes in the form of "dying-to- self"--the relinquishing of personal time, energy, desires, dreams, etc. (most of which may even be "good")--to fulfill my ministry to my husband and my children. As I hope to build a Godly home, I understand that it is a tremendous resposibility with a great reward. As I invest time and energy, I must wait for His work to be done in their lives. Romans 8:25 is so sweet to me, "But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perserverance." The vision of my husband being all he can be for the Lord and my children loving Christ and serving Him is my hope and my reward!

Even with this understanding of my calling and the vision I have for my family, I struggle with getting so easily entangled by the things of this world. Often, I listen to its voices telling me who I should be, how I should spend my time, where I should expend my energy, what my desires should be, and what I should dream. Its message is loud and clear"cling-to-self."

So, as I reflect on my day, what I see clearly is that I NEED GRACE to once again fix my eyes on Jesus the Author and Perfecter of my faith. I NEED GRACE to not get bogged down by the temporal, but to see the eternal and all its glory. I NEED GRACE to count it all joy when I fall into various trials...the "dying-to-self" moments.

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. --Philippians 1:21

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. --John 12:24

Begin

"Then he said, "Who shall begin the battle?" And he answered, "You."

1 Kings 20:14

"Arise and begin working, and the Lord be with you."

1 Chronicles 22:16

We started school last week. It's the 10th year that late August arrived in our home and we started schooling, at least in a formal reading, writing and 'rithmetic kind of way. Ten years. A decade. That seems like a long time. And yet, a blink of the eye.

I remember that first year like a slow motion film in Technicolor. I was pregnant, and it seemed, about to get more pregnant, if such a thing were possible, when in mid-September we found out it was not one baby but two. I was so tired that fall. I would hold our not-quite-two-year-old by the ankle during naptime as she would squirm and I just needed to keep her on the bed so I could sleep. For. A. Moment. But my almost 5 year old wanted to read and that's what almost 5 year olds in Connecticut did- go to school. So, with the 3 year old little boy and the not-quite-two-year-old little girl, we went to school. At the dining room table and on the couch and laying on the beds and picnicing in the park and picking apples and collecting leaves and even through winter's first snow.

We moved to the Pacific Northwest that winter, and our new house had a schoolroom. Other people might call it the basement, but it was our schoolroom. It rained and rained and rained and we had two new babies join our classroom. And still, we schooled. We schooled at the Little Tykes picnic table in our schoolroom and on the couch while feeding babies and at the shore while waiting for a submarine to float by so we could wave at our dad.

I figured what we began we just might as well keep doing.

And so we did.

And so we have.

Now I know some of you are starting school now. With little ones in arm and little ones under foot. With husbands that are away. With uncertain schedules and visitors coming and going. With family that isn't quite sure what you are doing. With personal doubt and uncertainty.

You want school to look right and things to be in order and plans in place and...

Just begin.
Pray and commit it all to Him, for His glory, with His help, by His grace.

And begin.

Only grace

In Instructing a Child's Heart, Tedd and Margy Tripp remind us that "sin cannot be remedied by 'getting one's act together.' Only grace can bring radical heart transformation."

"Our children's needs are the same as our needs. We need the heart transplant surgery that is promised in the grace of the new covenant, 'I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols' (Ezek. 36:25). Our impure thoughts and motives show how profoundly we need cleansing.

Verse 26 continues, 'I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.' What does this mean? Grace brings radical internal change. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Both our children and we need change that is radical and thorough. When a child has gained renewed interest in a toy simply because a brother would like it, that child is exhibiting a stony heart. That hardness of heart will not be melted through anything other than grace. Manipulation of behavior through rewards or punishments will never touch the stony heart. Only grace can change the heart. What encouragement! The very thing that we need is the focal point of God's work."

The Tripps go on to remind us that God also has promised the Holy Spirit to empower us (Ezek. 36:27), for though "we know what we ought to do, we cannot do it apart from grace. We have the assurance that God's grace empowers us."

What a comfort- that we know forgiveness and cleansing and change and empowerment as children of God, and as the earthly parents of these children of God!

Qualifying Our Successors

Our influence upon the young is an exceedingly important part of our witness for Jesus Christ. In fact, God has assigned us a double duty to perform while we remain here. First, to use the world well, while we continue in it; and secondly, to prepare a generation to receive the trust when we shall pass away from the scene. We are not only to occupy well ourselves, but to train up and qualify our successors. -- Jacob Abbott, Training Children in Godliness

Dance of Youth by Pablo Picasso

Arise and tell

Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not conceal them from their children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wondrous works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.
Psalm 78:3-7

Arise and tell.

I didn't come from a family where my father told me, but I seek to be the generation that sings the praises of the Lord to the generation to come. I can so very clearly see and tell of His strength and His wondrous work in my life, in the life of our family. The testimony of Jacob is our family's testimony as well.

But even more than arising and telling my children to put their confidence in God, to not forget His works, to keep His commandments, I desire to show them. The Gospel is meant to be lived out. In Instructing a Child's Heart, Tedd and Margy Tripp write, our children "will believe that Christian faith is the genuine article if we know God- not just know about God."

Arise and tell. And know God.

Running Interference

(note: this has nothing, well, little, to do with sowing seeds of great faith. It just made me smile, and made me thankful for the opportunity to keep interfering in the education of my kids...)

from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee-

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.

"Teach me?" I said in surprise. "He hasn't taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything," I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. "Why, he's so tired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads."

"If he didn't teach you, who did?" Miss Caroline asked good-naturedly. "Somebody did. You weren't born reading The Mobile Register."

"Jem says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch instead of a Finch. Jem says my name's really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that I got swapped when I was born and I'm really a ---"

Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. "Let's not let our imaginations run away with us, dear," she said. "Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage ---"

"Ma'am?"

"Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now."

Destinies of Immortal Souls

Parents! You are fashioning the destinies of immortal souls!

What we want to do with our children, is not merely to control them and keep them in order—but to implant true principles deep in their hearts which shall rule their whole lives; to shape their character from within into Christlike beauty, and to make of them noble men and women, strong for battle of life. They are to be trained rather than governed. Growth of character, not merely good behavior—is the object of all home governing and teaching. Therefore the home influence is far more important than the home laws; and the parents' lives are of more significance than their teachings. Whatever may be done in the way of governing, teaching or training—theories are not half as important as the parents' lives. They may teach the most beautiful things—but if the child does not see these things modeled in the life of the parent—he will not consider them important enough to be adopted in his own life.

This quote taken from a sermon by J.R. Miller (1882), Home-Making, has once again challenged me to examine myself. How often I forget that who I am before my children is really what they learn. As Mr. Miller reminds me, I don't want to just teach my children beautiful things, I want to be those things for them. I want to be accutely aware of what I am communicating to them through my character -- is who I am is consistent with what I do and say. I pray that we boldly and willingly examine ourselves so we can be as true to what we teach and train as possible, by the boundless grace of God. May we be able to say, "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ (1 Corinthians 11.1)".