A few years ago, I discovered the kids on loan program. I was in a small group that met in my neighborhood with several single people and a few families with small children. We had communal living down. We saw each other for meals throughout the week, we met at pubs, we knew each other's families and childhood friends and co-workers and neighbors, we went on trips together. It was a fulfilling time. One day I was talking with one of the mothers in the group, and she suggested to me that the couples with children would love some babysitters to emerge from within the group.
"I think a date night once in a while would be great," she said. It was obvious. But I had missed it. I felt like I'd been really thoughtless and selfish. These exhausted young parents had repeatedly opened their homes, listened to many of us go on and on about all our problems, fed us meals, and invested so deeply in our knowledge of Christ. I was taking taking taking, with no thought about how I could serve or bless them. In the evenings after work here and there, I started saying "Get out of here, I'm hanging out with the kids."
At that point in my life, I didn't have a huge desire to spend time around children. I was in my late 20s and not thinking about having children of my own anytime soon. I just wanted my friends to have date nights. And in some small way, I was hoping to repay them for their incredible and seemingly endless generosity. The irony as you probably guessed was that I ended up being blessed even more, grew to love their children and be loved by them, discovered a yearning for kids of my own, and my friends had time for a little outside of the home romance kindling. (It was a win-win that I'm officially hooked on to this day. :)
Fast forward to the last year or so. I stumbled into children's ministry, partly to meet a need and mostly because Father led me there. I was convicted and gained a passion for it because of a couple key talks I heard on ministering to the next generation. At a conference for church planters, one SC pastor declared "Everything we're doing should have the next generation in mind." I really resonated with that but wasn't sure what to do about it.
Several weeks later at my home church, a wonderfully convicting sermon on Psalm 127 turned another light-bulb on in my head, in the style of the "please babysit our kids" conversation from circa 2007. The building metaphor somehow really snapped things into clearer focus. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. This was the first time I had truly *heard* this verse, like heard it in a way that it really made *sense* (and suddenly seemed so relevant), and it's still ringing in my ears. My pastor took the opportunity afforded by this psalm to remind parents of the calling on their lives to disciple their children. And he asked the rest of us, What are we doing to help each other in that huge and glorious responsibility? How are we equipping our parents to disciple their children? I got more involved from that point in our church's children's ministry; I was passionate about learning how we can better train our parents to train their kids. I wanted to help in the process of our kids regularly hearing about Jesus, whenever our doors open, to reinforce what the parents are teaching and modeling to them at home.
I still yearn for children, and I talk to Father about it often. The longing pangs aren't typically intensified by time around kids, or by hearing my friends talk about their kids; in fact, I've been filled and healed and cheered and given opportunities to nurture that in some ways have sustained me in the longing. When I began working more frequently with our children, I remember having fears that at some point I would be pierced on Sunday mornings and that the only eventuality was bitterness and despair. So I committed this to the Lord and asked several friends to do the same. I have a dream of adopting a child one day, but in the meantime, I don't describe myself as childless. We have 45 children who bring great comfort and joy every time I'm around them. This is something I want to be careful to praise Him for. It reminds me of the barren woman referenced in the psalms; He settles her in a family, and makes her the "happy mother of children."
Thank you Father! In barrenness You've filled my heart with 'greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound.'
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
'. . .i'm glad we did'
are you on a team you're glad to be on? are you modern day adventurers? are you on a mission together?
"we were unprepared, in the dark, disavowed. . . and the only thing that functioned properly on that mission was this team. i don't know how we ended up together, but i'm glad we did."
-ethan hunt, mission impossible iv
but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. . . all this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
"we were unprepared, in the dark, disavowed. . . and the only thing that functioned properly on that mission was this team. i don't know how we ended up together, but i'm glad we did."
-ethan hunt, mission impossible iv
but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. . . all this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
Monday, July 2, 2012
soul rest
i recently learned (thanks to mary willson) that the jewish leaders who criticized Jesus for breaking the sabbath had added 39 prohibited activities to the original, God-given sabbath legislation. and while i don't observe these additional regulations, i have my own areas of 'gospel deficit.' this calls for some examination (and possibly a future post). in the meantime, read this:
. . .there is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the Fall, is a near-constant emission of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something I say or even think so much as something I breathe. . . And I'm seeing more and more, bit by bit, that if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root. . . you find gospel deficit. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment is the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of Law. The gospel really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom-- that existential calm which for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you see for a moment that in Christ you truly are invincible. The verdict really is in; nothing can touch you.
I am believing tonight the unbelievable: The radiant sun of divine favor is shining down on me and while the clouds of my sin and failure may darken my feelings of that favor, the favor cannot be lessened any more than a tiny, wispy cloud can threaten the existence of the sun. The sun is shining. It cannot stop. Clouds, no clouds-- sin, no sin-- the sun is shining on me. Because of Another.
The Lord looks on his children with utterly unflappable affection.
. . . How strange the gospel is. In one sense I am not restored. How painfully obvious. Sin clings, weaknesses and failings abound. Anxiety, anger, idolatry. But in another sense, a deeper sense, I am restored. Perfectly, already. . . And the sweep of New Testament teaching is that it is the latter that now defines me. That is the fundamental reality defining my existence. . . And I suppose the whole Christian life is simply the process of bringing my sense of self, my Identity with a capital 'I', the ego, my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of that gospel deficit, into alignment with the more fundamental truth.
-dane ortlund
as mary willson put it, "a remedy for the restless" was needed, and provided, in the finished work of the cross. a remedy from attempting works that lead to self-salvation (and self-sufficiency and self-glory and self-absorption) was needed. so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. for the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.
. . .there is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the Fall, is a near-constant emission of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something I say or even think so much as something I breathe. . . And I'm seeing more and more, bit by bit, that if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root. . . you find gospel deficit. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment is the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of Law. The gospel really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom-- that existential calm which for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you see for a moment that in Christ you truly are invincible. The verdict really is in; nothing can touch you.
I am believing tonight the unbelievable: The radiant sun of divine favor is shining down on me and while the clouds of my sin and failure may darken my feelings of that favor, the favor cannot be lessened any more than a tiny, wispy cloud can threaten the existence of the sun. The sun is shining. It cannot stop. Clouds, no clouds-- sin, no sin-- the sun is shining on me. Because of Another.
The Lord looks on his children with utterly unflappable affection.
. . . How strange the gospel is. In one sense I am not restored. How painfully obvious. Sin clings, weaknesses and failings abound. Anxiety, anger, idolatry. But in another sense, a deeper sense, I am restored. Perfectly, already. . . And the sweep of New Testament teaching is that it is the latter that now defines me. That is the fundamental reality defining my existence. . . And I suppose the whole Christian life is simply the process of bringing my sense of self, my Identity with a capital 'I', the ego, my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of that gospel deficit, into alignment with the more fundamental truth.
-dane ortlund
as mary willson put it, "a remedy for the restless" was needed, and provided, in the finished work of the cross. a remedy from attempting works that lead to self-salvation (and self-sufficiency and self-glory and self-absorption) was needed. so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. for the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.
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