"Only one life, 'twill soon be past,
Only what's done for Christ will last.

We need to always keep eternity in our minds. Don't be so distracted by the affairs of this world that you forget that you will live into eternity and this life on earth is just a dot in time. I know this is hard to truly comprehend - at least it is for me - but always evaluate what you are doing in the light of eternity. Work and school are important, but it is your relationship to the Lord and to his people and those who don't yet know Him that is truly important and that is where you want to invest you efforts. God has made us to glorify and enjoy Him. Enjoy Him through his creation, including those whom you love, and glorify Him by your words and deeds.

good quote

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Christmas 1993

I came across this list of Christmas gifts from 1993 - we had just moved to Lubbock in November. I thought you'd have fun looking at it.

Rob - Bike, sweatshirt, Bible study book, piano books, computer game from William, bike speedometer from Michael and camera from G&G. Stocking - clay, mechanical pencils (of course, also orange, apple and candy!)
Michael - Nintendo, Joshua game, Jeopardy game, hat, Bible study book, Batman game from Rob and William. Stocking - Jungle Book, magnifier
William - Carmen San Diego, Outburst, Quiz Whiz, knife, hat, Bible study book, pano book, PJs, Lego, beanbags, gun from Michael, stuffed animal from Rob. Stocking - history activity book
Daddy - shirt, belt, Clarion Ledger subscription, computer Bible, calendar from Michael, wallet from Rob. Stocking - pen, poem, coupon book
Mom - Bible, jacket, tablecloth, cross-stitch book, poem, turtleneck from Michael, earrings from Rob, calendar from William. Stocking - razor, lipstick, spatula
For our Christmas dinner we had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing broccoli casserole, crescent rolls, jello with fruit cocktail, cranberries, pound cake with ambrosia.

Doesn't sound too lavish, but we had a happy day. I probably didn't list garage sale stuff - or maybe I hadn't started that yet!

You might be emergent if:

In the book, DeYoung gives a long list of things that might make you emergent. He says a little later, "Don't assume we dislike all things emergent. The longer sentence (which I'm going to quote) describes us in some ways too." So I thought it would be fun to see how emergent we are. I'm going to type in the long quote first. Then I will add a comment by copying the quote and highlighting the things I have read, like, etc. Then each of you do that too, when you have time.
So here is the sentences:
"You might be an emergent Christian: if you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash's Hurt (sometimes in church), use sermon illustrations from The Sopranos, drink lattes in the afternoon and Guinness in the evenings, and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard, Brenning Manning, Jim Wallis, Frederick Buechner, David Bosch, John Howard Yoder, Wendell Berry, Nancy Murphy, John Franke, Walkter Winks and Lesslie Newbigin (not to mention McLaren, Paggis, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D.A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don't like George W. Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; if you are into bohemian, goth, rave, or indie; if you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainty; if you lie awake at night having nightmares about all the ways modernism has ruined your life; if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren't sure it can be found; if you've ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles, Play-Doh, chalk-drawings, couches, or beanbags (your youth group doesn't count); if you loathe words like, linear, propositonal, rational, machine, and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage, and dance; if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naive, and rigid; if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; if you disbelieve in any sacred-secular divide; if you want to be the church and not just go to church; if you long for a community that is relational, tribal, and primal like a river or a garden; if you believe doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus; if you believe who goes to hell is no one's business and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back in shalom with its Maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way; if it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us; if you disdain monological, didactic preaching; if you use the word "story" in all your propositions about postmodernism - if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian."

Why We're Not Emergent

Michael scoffed at this book for being one sided, but actually it is a very fair treatment of the emergent movement. I have become more and more familiar with things emergent and have read and like a lot of the authors favored by the movement - Nouwen, Buechner, Miller (Blue Like Jazz). However, I have not read anything by the leaders of the movement, but have seen a number of DVDs by Rob Bell. This book, however, quotes them extensively. The principal author is very respectful of the leaders of the movement, but disagrees with some of their basic tenets. If you're interested, I'll write what I have learned.
Love, Mom

I'm reading a book about trying to be conscious of God every moment of the day. It is a spiritual discipline and seems quite impossible. I've failed completely today, but tomorrow is another day!
Love, Mom

Weeds

I pulled lots of weeds today. Strange as it may sound, I love pulling weeds. I think because there is such satisfaction in the end product. Dad and I also cleaned out his closet and gave lots of clothes away. Again, great satisfaction. It seems that if we could do the same with the besetting sins and wasteful habits in our lives, we would get the same satisfaction. I guess the problem for me is that I can't see the end result as easily as a nice flower bed without weeds and a clean closet.

estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes et simplices sicut columbae

The NIV reads "Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves," but you can see that the Latin for "shrewd" is prudentes and for "innocent" is simplices. To me, "shrewd" has a negative sense, as if you were trying to get by with something or deceive someone in some way, but prudence, according to Webster, is "the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason." In my Latin book, the definition of prudentia is "good sense." (If you know someone who is a snake expert, you might ask them about prudence in snakes - it could be eye-opening!) "Innocent" is also from a Latin word, in+nocens, which means "not harming," but the Latin word here, simplex, means simple, single; unmixed, pure. It reminds me of the word "integrity," from which we get "integer," meaning whole.
So, we have two goals. One is to have good sense. Use the reason that God has given you to make right choices, to discipline yourself, to judge fairly and rightly. The second is to be simple, not to be double-minded, two-faced, speak with a forked tongue. Let people know who you are - men of integrity who let their yes be yes and their no be no. No lies, no deceit, no pretending.

P.S. I'm not quarreling with the NIV. What I like about looking at the Latin (the Greek, of course, would be better, but not as easy for me), is that it gives you a different perspective.

To my prudent and simple sons! I love you!

Love to my boys

I love you boys! I know you aren't used to looking at this yet, but I hope to be more faithful.
Love, Mom

Confession

Most Christians would agree that we are sinners in need of forgiveness. It's interesting that the Chinese word for sinner is "criminal" and one who sins commits a crime. I wonder if we would as readily agree to that. If we truly believe we are sinners, we must also admit that we are criminals, that we have committed innumerable crimes against our Father. I have been noticing that in my own prayers and in the prayers of others that I pray with, we rarely confess our sins. I think that it is because, deep down, we really don't believe that we are that bad. We seem to believe that God will forgive our little peccadilloes without us even mentioning them. We need to ask the Lord to help us remember to confess, to take time in our prayers to recall our crimes against him, and to humbly ask him to forgive us. Perhaps (do we dare?) we should "confess our sins one to another and pray for one another "so that you may be healed." James 5:16

Hell

"People are free in this world to live for themselves alone if they want to and let the rest go hang, and they are free to live out the dismal consequences as long as they can stand it. The doctrine of Hell proclaims that they retain this freedom in whatever world comes next. Thus the possibility of making damned fools of ourselves would appear to be limitless.
Or maybe Hell is the limit. Since the damned are said to suffer as dismally in the next world as they do in this one, they must still have enough life left in them to suffer with, which means that in their flight from Love, God apparently stops them just this side of extinguishing themselves utterly. Thus the bottomless pit is not really bottomless. Hell is the bottom beyond which God in his terrible mercy will not let them go.
Dante saw written over the gates of Hell the words "Abandon all hope ye who enter here," but he must have seen wrong. If there is suffering in Hell, there must also be hope in Hell, because where there is life there is the Lord and giver of life, and where there is suffering he is there too because the suffering of the ones he loves is also his suffering.
"He descended into Hell" the Creed says, and "If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there," the Psalmist (139:8). It seems there is no depth to which he will not sink. Maybe not even Old Scratch will be able to hold out against him forever." --Frederick Buechner