Sonnet CXXX, by William Shakespeare

One more Shakespeare sonnet. This one really is the last of the month!

You can hear a pretty creepy reading by Alan Rickman here.



Sonnet CXXX

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

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Success, Weakness, Fear and Trembling

I went to EQUIP Ministry Wives on Saturday looking forward to a day with my friends and hoping to be encouraged. The topic for the day was 'Beyond Success' and was aimed at reminding us that we shouldn't base our perception of 'success' in ministry on worldly measures.

One highlight of the day was an interview (pre-recorded on video) with Kent and Barbara Hughes about the ups and downs of serving God together as a husband and wife, and focussed mainly on a time early in his ministry when he was feeling like a failure and on the edge of giving up. It was hugely encouraging! I'm looking forward to reading their book called Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.

Another aspect that I'll remember was a brief announcement that I was asked to give about EQUIP book club. For some reason, halfway through the announcement, I had a sudden attack of 'stage fright' (like I've never had before in my life!), froze, and stumbled lamely to the end of my announcement. I sat down deeply self conscious and full of wounded pride. The experience and my reaction to it meant that Phillip Jensen's words later in the day (based on 1 Cor 2:1-5) about God being glorified when we speak 'in weakness and in fear and much trembling' were timely and deeply convicting!

And the conversations with friends on the way in and back and over lunch were a huge encouragement too.

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His Eye Is On The Magpie

Last week my children made an exciting discovery: high up in the branches of the gum tree in the back yard of the house next door, a magpie was building a nest. For three days we were transfixed, taking it in turns to look through the binoculars and watch him flying up with tiny sticks, one at a time, carefully adding them to the nest.

On the fourth day it was windy, and we craned our necks, anxiously watching the upper branches of the gum tree. Would the nest survive? Had this little magpie chosen the wisest place to build a home for his family? We talked about how sad it would be for the poor bird if all his hard work was lost in a sudden gust of wind

As I watched the bird in his swaying nest, I thought of Matthew 10 and pondered the fact that that God had been watching this magpie too...

...You can read the rest of this post at The Sola Panel.

Pic by ianmichaelthomas on flickr

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The Pleasures of God, Pt 5

This week's chapter was called 'The Pleasure of God in his Fame'. It was really about how God has a zeal for his name to be spread throughout the earth. He had some interesting implications he drew from this in relation to mission work:

God's zeal for his fame to be spread bursts out in the Scriptures again and again. He wants his fame to be spread to all the peoples of the world. There is the Timothy-type missionary and the Paul'type missionary. I call Timothy a missionary because he left home (Lystra); Acts 16:1), joined a travelling team of missionaries, crossed cultures, and ended up overseeing a church in Ephesus (1 Timothy 1:3). Timothy stayed and ministered on the 'mission field' long after there was a church planted there with its own elders (Acts 20:17) and outreach (Acts 19:10).

Paul, on the other hand, was driven by a passion to make God's name known to all the unreached peoples of the world. He never stayed in a place long once the church was established. He said that he made it his ambition to 'preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named' (Romans 15:20).

...Today there seems to be a great imbalance with too few Paul-type missionaries. Perhaps 90 percent of the missionary force today are Timothy-type missionaries. The point is not to criticise the Timothy-type missionaries...Nevertheless, a resounding call should go out to every church in all the world that there is a great tradition stemming from the apostle Paul to spread the fame of Christ's name to unreached people's and the job is not yet done.

What do you think? Do we need some more Paul type missionaries in the world today?

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New College Lectures 2009 - Bioethics and Future Hope

New College's annual lecture series is coming up in a couple of weeks. This year's topic is 'Bioethics and future hope' and the speaker is Professor John Wyatt, who is Professor of Ethics and Perinatology at the Institute for Women's Health, University College London. He has a long-standing interest in the philosophical, ethical and religious issues raised by advances in medical technology. He is author of the widely acclaimed book Matters of Life and Death (which has been on my list of 'books I must read' for a while now!).

I always find the New College lecture series interesting (for example, the Oliver O'Donovan lectures a couple of years ago), but I'm really interested in hearing what John Wyatt has to say. I'm especially interested in ethical issues to do with conception and birth, and judging by this extract from his book, I think what he says will be worth listening to. Here are the lecture topics and details:

Tuesday 8 September | Bioethics and creation
How do different conceptions of the origins of the cosmos impact on current bioethical debates? What does creation order imply about reproductive technology, parenthood, and the intrinsic value of human life?

6. 15 pm The John Niland Scientia Building, UNSW, Drinks & Canapés, lecture to follow from 7.15pm, question time and supper to follow the lectures

Wednesday 9 September | Bioethics and redemption
The minimization of suffering is central to the moral vision of utilitarianism. How does the Easter story transform perceptions of suffering and how does this impact on current bioethical controversies about assisted suicide, euthanasia, ageing and degenerative diseases?

7.30pm Main Common Room, New College, UNSW, question time and supper to follow the lectures

Thursday 10 September | Bioethics and future hope
The Enlightenment project aims to create better humans by the use of technology. How should we respond? What are the implications of the Christian hope for bioethics? How should we treat our patients now in the light of the future?

7.30pm Main Common Room, New College, UNSW, question time and supper to follow the lectures

Entrance is Free. Booking is essential and must be made by 4 September.

For further information, including to book, please contact New College Reception, ph 9381 1999, newcollege@unsw.edu.au, or visit our New College Lectures Home Page.

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Childcare

Jean has continued her series on childcare with an excellent post where she has begun to think through some implications of last week's post. I've really appreciated these posts, and the discussions that have gone with them - they've got me thinking hard about the issue.




Pic from stockxchng.com

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Communal Evangelism - Your Input Requested!

I got an email from Rachel (who reads this blog) the other day in which she asked me for some input on how to do 'communal evangelism' with other young mums. Because I thought it was such a good topic to discuss, and because I feel ill-equipped to answer her question on my own, I asked her if I could post it here and ask for your input. Here's her question:

I'm writing with a question about evangelism. We have lots of stay at home mothers with young children at our church and we are very keen to share the gospel with our non-Christian friends. I believe having people into your home and loving them is a great way on an individual level to build relationships and it provides (potential) opportunities to share the gospel with them.

I have been thinking through the idea with some other stay-at-home mums of doing more coordinated or organised, or at least communal evangelism. We think there is something in Jesus' words "they will know me by your love for one another" that might indicate that when unbelievers see the love Christians have for each other that they can come to know more about Jesus. I think stay-at-home mums have unique and an abundance of opportunities for building relationships and potentially sub-communities where non-Christians could be invited to join and through these communities see the love of Jesus in action...I guess playgroups are one structured way of doing this. My friends and I are trying to come up with other ways of doing it and would love to see if others have been working with a similar principle in mind.

I was wondering if you have thought about this at all? And if so how have you tried to get other mums to build community and be more proactive in evangelism together?

Rachel has promised to share some thoughts that come from brainstorming with her friends, and I'm going to try and come up with some of my own, but I'd love to hear from you before I do. So it's over to you!

Pic from stockxchng.com

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Sustaining Your Spiritual Fervour - Pt 5

In the last little phrase of v 11, Paul tells us to 'serve the Lord'.

Last week, I wrote about how our spiritual fervour is to have its roots within, in a heart that is day by day being set on fire by the Spirit. But it doesn’t stop there – all the way through this chapter Paul keeps moving backward and forward between inward attitudes and outward behaviours.

Being ‘fervent in Spirit’ is meant to be directed towards serving, and it is to be directed toward ‘serving the Lord’.

This sounds kind of obvious, but Paul obviously understood that there is a temptation to forget that spirituality is for serving, or to forget that the one we are ultimately serving is the Lord Jesus.

It’s clear from this passage that serving the Lord involves showing love to other people. Serving Jesus is not an individual, private experience. We serve the Lord through serving others. But it still matters that we remember that it is Jesus we are serving when we are doing this.

This means that when we do show love to others, we do it not to impress them, not to get their approval or thanks, but we are doing it for Jesus.

When people whom we have tried to love and serve disappoint us; when people are demanding and opinionated and thankless; when they have high expectations of us and low expectations of themselves; when feelings of bitterness or resentment or self-pity or self-congratulation begin to creep in, it's important to remember that we are serving not just them but Jesus.

And if we spend our days doing thankless tasks like changing nappies and wiping runny noses and we feel like we have nothing to show for our efforts by the end of the day - then we need to remember we are serving not just them but Jesus.

We serve others not only for their own sake, but ultimately for the Lord. And that makes all service - even the most humble, invisible task - a privilege.

Pic from stockxchng.com

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Sonnet LV, by William Shakespeare

The last Shakespeare sonnet for month. This one is another where he shows a breathtaking confidence in the power of his art to attain a kind of immortality.





Sonnet LV

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

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Whose Land? Part 2

I'll never forget the first time I learned that I was living in a land that had not been 'settled' but invaded. I was in year 8 at high school and we were studying Australian history. I wrote an assignment about the Myall Creek massacre. I read the accounts of the rape and murder of Aboriginal people, of the smallpox and effects of alcohol on their communities. I was horrified.

At uni I studied Aboriginal history and spoke to Aboriginal women who told me of the time when their children were taken away. I took courses in Indigenous law as part of my law degree, and toyed with the idea of using my degree to fight legal battles and 'change the world'. Dave and I wondered about the possibility of mission work in the Northern Territory, visited an Aboriginal community and a training college for Aboriginal pastors, and stayed with some people who worked with indigenous churches in western NSW.

In the end (for a variety of reasons) we ended up pursuing a different sphere of ministry; the issues of Aboriginal dispossession and disadvantage and the cause of the indigenous churches never disappeared completely from our thinking, but it is fair to say that it shifted slowly to somewhere nearer the back of our minds. We started feeling overwhelmed by the extent and seriousness of the problem. We listened to accounts from friends who'd spent time in the NT that we found paralysing. And because our attention was on other things, what was out of sight came to be out of mind.

Last week's lecture by Peter Adam brought the issues back to the front of my consciousness.

After reminding us of the reasons why the invasion and theft of the land ought to be viewed as such a grave wrong, he argued that we who have profited from it need to say sorry, to repent and make recompense. 'Sorry' is hollow without repentance into the future and (to the extent that it is possible) recompense for the past.

When he described how recompense might happen, he spoke about two levels at which we can take action. At one level, because the land was taken by a nation from nations, recompense would need to be made as a public, national, political act, involving costly compensation, framed on terms worked out through a long and complicated process of consultation with the various contemporary communities of indigenous Australians. At that first, political, level he urged us as Christians to be involved in contributing to the discussion about whether and why and how that must be done, and helping to shift public opinion.

In addition, secondly, he suggested that measures of 'voluntary recompense' could be made by churches in the mean time, without waiting for the nation and the government to act at a public, political level:

We could also implement voluntary recompense by churches in a coordinated way, and should include support of indigenous Christian ministry and training, as negotiated by the leaders of Christ’s indigenous people. Christian churches should lead the way in this, not least in supporting indigenous Christians and their ministries. For churches too have benefited from the land they use, and from income from those who have usurped the land.

For Dave and me in our situation, for example, it set us wondering whether there are ways that we could help to make ministry training more accessible and hospitable for the Aboriginal pastors of the next generation.

Measures like can hardly replace the need for a national, public, political process in which we as a nation, collectively, attempt to make some repayment for the land that we, collectively, usurped in the name of the Crown. And the desire to make some recompense for the stolen land we inherited is not the only reason why we might decide to do things like offering better support to indigenous ministry and training - we may also be motivated by a desire to grow the gospel, a love for our fellow-believers, and so on...

But (a little like the logic of Paul's reminder to the Gentile Christians in Rom 15:27?), thinking about these possibilities within a recompense framework may help us to remember that projects for supporting indigenous ministry are not really optional gestures of 'charity' that we can congratulate ourselves on if we do them. Nor are they simply one opportunity for gospel growth among thousands of others, to be evaluated solely on the basis of which is most 'strategic'.

Lots to think about - I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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The Story of Stuff

I discovered this short film called 'The Story of Stuff' a little while ago, and after clicking on the link, I found myself completely absorbed. Author Annie Leonard is a very gifted communicator, and gives a simple, passionate and engaging critique of our consumerist society. She asks the question "Where does all the stuff we buy come from, and where does it go when we throw it out?”.

What I found most fascinating was her examination of the history of our consumption driven economy. She examines how the economic circumstances of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” —and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today.

It sounds heavy, but she explains things clearly and engagingly - and trust me, I'm no economist! Anyone who has ever bought anything will find this interesting and a little sobering.

Here are a couple of teasers. You can watch the whole thing (20 minutes worth, so when you have the time!) here.

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The Pleasures of God, Pt 4

This week's chapter was about how God takes pleasure in his creation. God's creation expresses his glory, his wisdom, his power. I listened to a talk by John Piper that corresponds to this chapter as I walked along Shoal Bay last holidays. The sky was awash with tints of pink and purple, the water glinted with a million different shades of green as the sun slowly fell down the horizon. So I walked along and I watched as I listened.

I really enjoyed reflecting on the delights of God's creations and the way that God himself takes pleasure in them, quite independently of us! I'd always thought about creation as something that relates back to us (and the creation does reveal God's glory to us, as it says in Romans 1:19-23), but I'd rarely thought about the fact that God creates for his own pleasure as well. Most of creation is beyond the awareness of humankind, but God still creates things that no one else will ever see, for his enjoyment: "Why did God create great sea monsters? Just to play, to frolic in the ocean where no many can see, but only God. The teeming ocean declares the glory of God, and praises him a thousand miles from any human eye" (p. 90).

The other thing that I found it helpful to think about was that the wisdom and the power of God is revealed in creation. So often I take the world around me for granted, and I don't marvel at it or what it says about God. Piper suggests we should pray that we see the world like children seeing it for the first time. My children have taught me a lot about the appropriate way to respond to God's creation: whether it's through watching David Attenborough documentaries with Jacob, enjoying the scent of the Jasmine growing in our backyard with Rebecca or seeing Elsie experience the feel of the sand on her feet at the beach for the first time. What I want to do is to react like they do, but also help them to see past the material thing - to the creator!

As I thought again about the pleasure God has in his creation, I was challenged about the importance of looking after his world. Our motivation doesn't come from a idolatrous worship of the creation, but from the fact that we share God's delight in the creation.

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Sustaining Your Spiritual Fervour - Pt 4

Last week, I looked at the first part of verse 11, where Paul says "do not be slothful in zeal", and concluded that working hard at loving people and maintaining our spiritual fervour is an essential part of the Christian life.

But in case we start thinking that the Christian life is all about being outwardly, visibly busy, the next part of the verse reminds us that there is an inward, spiritual dimension to this. Paul tells us to be "fervent in Spirit".

The Greek word translated here as ‘fervent’ means ‘boiling’ or ‘burning’, like being ‘set on fire’. Paul is talking here about outward acts of service that are fuelled and driven by an inward fire of devotion to God.

And when he says ‘fervent in spirit’, most of the commentators agree that he isn’t just meaning ‘in your spirit’ but ‘by the (‘capital S’) Spirit’. He is talking about something that God the Holy Spirit does within us.

So how do we be zealous about our spiritual life in a way that takes account of the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who sets our hearts on fire day by day? One very simple and obvious part of the answer is to remember the close relationship in the Bible between the Spirit of God and the word of God. The normal means that the Holy Spirit uses to set our hearts on fire is the word of God that the Spirit breathes out like oxygen.

This is true at the start of the Christian life. In 1 Thessalonians 1:6, for example, the Bible reminds us that it was by the Holy Spirit’s work, through the word of the gospel, that we responded to Jesus with joy when we first believed in him. It’s true at the beginning, and it is also true day by day as we go on. Day by day, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, through the Word, that continues to keep us ablaze with love for Jesus. So the command in Ephesians 5 to us to go on being filled with the Spirit is exactly parallel with the command in Colossians 3 to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. By the Spirit, through the Word.

This is why its so important to feed ourselves with God’s word. And it’s why it is so important that we read the Bible hungrily, purposefully, prayerfully, asking God to be at work in our hearts by the Holy Spirit as we read.

If we don’t keep feeding on God’s word day by day we so easily forget the goodness and the glory and the kindness and the severity and the power of God – or we forget to live as if those things mattered to us. God’s word isn’t just given to us to sort out our world view when we’re twenty and curious; it’s given to feed us and sustain us and remind us through all the pressures and temptations and weariness of our thirties and our forties and our fifties, all the way to the end of the race.

God wants us – indeed God commands us – not just to be theologically correct and outwardly well-behaved. God calls on us in his word to be zealous, fervent, joyful in our hearts, day by day, set on fire by the Holy Spirit. It is a daily challenge, a daily struggle, and it requires daily disciplines.

C.J. Mahaney writes in The Cross Centred Life:

Do you want to live a Cross centred life? A cross centred life is made up of cross centred days. And those days are ones in which we stay near enough to the cross “for its sparks to fall on us,” to quote from John Stott; we don’t let ourselves forget that the cross of Christ is a blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled. (p. 132)

Pics from stock.xchng

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Sonnet XXIX, by William Shakespeare

Another Shakespeare sonnet. This one made me cry when I read it last night - I think it might be my favourite one now (at least until I have to decide on next week's one!).




Sonnet XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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Book of the Week: 'Looking for Crabs'

This week's Book of the Week was also inspired by our recent trip to Shoal Bay. During our time there the kids had a great time exploring the rock pools and even discovered some pretty impressive looking crabs (see pictures below).

In 'Looking for Crabs', the family also look for crabs, but leave the beach disappointed. The illustrations tell a different story though, revealing to the reader on every page that the crabs were there all along, and the family just didn't manage to spot them!

It was written and illustrated by Bruce Whatley (who illustrated 'Diary of a Wombat' and many other well known Australian picture books), and was short listed for CBCA Picture Book of the Year in 1993. I love the concept behind the book and the illustrations are engaging and amusing. All three of my kids love it!

Looking...

The impressive looking crab!

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The Pleasures of God, Pt 3

One of the things I disliked about The Shack (and there were many!), was the way the author sought to limit God. The God portrayed in The Shack had his (or, at times, her) hands metaphorically tied. God looks on helplessly - albeit sympathetically - at the tragedy that occurs in the life of the main character Mack, intervening therapeutically afterwards but not ruling sovereignly over the events at the time.

In this week's chapter of The Pleasures of God, 'The Pleasure of God in all That He Does', John Piper thinks through issues of God's sovereignty. He asks and attempts to answer the complex question of whether there are any limits to God's sovereignty. And if there aren't any limits (as Piper argues), then how can God be happy in the face of suffering in the world? How can the Bible say in Ezekiel 18:23 and 32 that God does not have pleasure in the death of any impenitent person, if in fact he accomplishes all his pleasure and does whatever he pleases (as it says in Psalm 135)? The answer that he proposes (after examining a number of other theories) is:

God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of 10 million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually as a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says), even though among those 10 million prayers some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time—in fact, are always coming to him with no break at all? Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7, 10, 23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked and grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29–30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home? Who of us could dare say what complex of emotions is not possible for God? All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible. And what he has told us is that there is a sense in which he does not experience pleasure in the judgment of the wicked, and there is a sense in which he does.

We can't fully understand this aspect of God's character God is infinitely complex, but I think it's important for us to grasp hold of the fact he is in control of all things.

As I sat writing this post last night, I heard an unusual coughing sound from my daughters room. I went to see what was going on (begrudging, because she should have been asleep), only to find that she was choking on something she'd put in her mouth. I managed to get it out, and as I held her trembling body I thanked God that he had been merciful to our family this time and she was safe. I wondered what might have happened if I hadn't heard her, or if I had decided to ignore her and had gone in to discover her later in the night - too late.

It's not the first time that I've pondered these 'what if' questions as I lie awake at night and replay the scene in my head. It's not the first time I've been shaken by those the knowledge that I have no control over the lives of those I love. A close call in a pool a few years ago with Jacob where he could have just as easily drowned; time and time again as I cross 6 lanes of traffic to get to and from the school where any number of disasters could occur; these are all reminders that I'm dependent on God and his mercy for my very life.

And sometimes things do play out the other way, and we face terrible grief. Here's what Piper says about occasions of that sort:

In the moment of tragedy and world-shattering grief it is time to embrace and be silent. But the time for questions and answers will come. And when they come, it is a shortsighted compromise with the father of lies to say that Satan is stronger than God and that the hands of the Almighty were tied...

I believe with all my heart that the biblical teaching of God’s sovereignty over Satan is the greatest answer in the world when the very meaning of life is threatened by the horrors and tragedies of death and disease. It is the answer of Scripture and it is true and full of hope.

There's no comfort in thinking that Satan has greater power than God in this world. The God whose Spirit groans with my spirit when I am bewildered by the sufferings of the world is the same God who is in heaven, and does all that he pleases. I don't comprehend it, but I am thankful for it.

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Help After a Miscarriage

The other day, Mia posted a letter from a reader who has recently had a miscarriage and is struggling with her loss. I could relate to a lot of what she said (I had two miscarriages before we had Jacob). I also found that I struggled to deal with the gap between the intensity of my grief, and the perception that because miscarriage is so common the grief is somehow not warranted.

It got me thinking. How can we support each other better after a miscarriage? How can we as Christians respond to this is a way that is helpful and God glorifying?

It's a long time since we lost our babies, and my memory of that time is already fading a little, but here are some things I remember I found helpful.

* I appreciated it when people spoke to me about the miscarriages in a way that acknowledged that we had a lost a real little person that meant a lot to us. Eg, asking 'how old was your baby?' rather than 'were you only in your 1st trimester?'.

* I found it helpful when women who had been through miscarriages as well shared their stories with me. Often they had an encouraging story about how they had gone on to have healthy children. While this didn't minimise my pain, it did give me a bit of perspective.

* I found it helpful when close friends encouraged me to find some way (a name, an ornament, a letter, a poem - whatever works) to remember our babies. Losing a baby early in a pregnancy makes it hard to mark the loss. It was helpful for me to do a couple of small things to acknowledge these little lives - and I was glad that I had some friends who suggested this to me.

* Practical help was also a wonderful blessing. Dave and I were a bit shell-shocked and it was a huge help to have a few meals cooked for us.

* Cards, flowers, visits showed me that people cared about Dave and me and understood that we were feeling sad. You really can't go wrong with a card saying that you're sorry to hear the sad news.

* I had a few friends who had babies, or were pregnant, which was hard. There were some who seemed to ONLY talk about babies/pregnancy, and I found that after a while I would start to avoid them because it was too painful. But many of my friends were wonderful at striking a good balance here. They managed to talk about their kids and other things as well that I could talk about too. It was important to me that they didn't avoid all references to their children or pregnancy - I wanted them to talk about their kids and the blessing that they are. But it was good to talk about other things too.

* I had a couple of friends who continued to pray for me for months after, and would ask me how I was going. One in particular was brave enough to keep talking with me about my relationship with God through this time. She knew that I was questioning his goodness and was finding it hard to pray to Him. She encouraged me to keep struggling with him in prayer and fighting to trust him. I'm so grateful that God provided me this friend and her wise counsel when I needed it!

I know that everyone experiences these things differently, so if you've had a similar experience, I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you found helpful/unhelpful.

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'Whose land?' Dr Peter Adam on Aboriginal Land Rights

I went to this lecture, enititled 'Australia, Whose land?' by Dr Peter Adam* last night and found it convicting and challenging.

Peter laid out the reasons why Christians should be leading the way in saying sorry, repenting and making recompense to the Aboriginal people of Australia. I think many of us there were convicted about our hypocrisy and complacency on this issue. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal listeners were moved and prompted to pray together in groups by the end of the night.

I'm intending to write a longer post soon about some of the complexities of the issue and my own response to it, but in the meantime you can download and read the full lecture here - the podcast will be online soon.

* It was the Second Annual John Saunders Lecture, run by the Social Issues Committee of the Baptist Union of NSW. Peter is currently Principal of Ridley College Melbourne.

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Sustaining Your Spiritual Fervour - Pt 3

In verse 11, Paul says, ‘Do not be slothful in zeal.’

This phrase looks backwards and forwards. It looks backwards to what Paul has said about love in vv. 9-10 (as Douglas Moo shows in the introduction to this section of the letter in his commentary). And it also looks forward to what he goes on to say in the rest of the verse about Holy Spirit within you, motivating that love.

And in between those two themes, there is this little hinge-phrase about zeal, about not being slothful, reminding us that in both these things there is a need for you and me to put in some hard work and some energy and some self-discipline.

I think I am sometimes guilty of a kind of romanticism about both love for people (the sort of love Paul describes in verses 9-10) and spiritual fervour (the sort of spiritual fervour that Paul describes in verses 11b-12). In both cases, I sometimes find myself falling into the way of thinking that they're meant to be something that bubbles up spontaneously, and that if they take a bit of work then they're not really genuine. But Paul's flow of ideas here seems to suggest that love for people and spiritual fervour in my attitudes and feelings toward God are both connected with a willingness to be committed to hard, disciplined work - the opposite of 'slothfulness'.

It's a complex relationship, isn't it, between love, hard work and inward spiritual fervour. I don't want to suggest that just gritting your teeth, working hard and doing your duty is enough, in the absence of a heart of love and a genuine joy in God. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 comes to mind, for example, or Luke 15:29.) But there does seem to be an implication in Paul's words here that hard, disciplined work - unslothfulness, for want of a better word - is an essential dimension of a life in which we keep living out real love for others and real spiritual fervour in our relationship with God.

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Sonnet XVIII, by William Shakespeare

Another Shakespeare sonnet this week; again, one of my favourites.

After last week's sonnet, Stuart and Dave (my husband), had an interesting 'conversation' about pronounciation shifts, conventional rhyme and eye rhyme in Shakespeare's poems. (The 'temperate' / 'date' rhyme in this poem raises similar questions.)

It's a funny poem this one, isn't it! For the first eight lines it's all about the shortcomings of summer, with the implication that the woman he is writing for is better than summer, because she has none of these shortcomings. And then in the last six lines you gradually start to realise that he is praising not so much the woman herself (who is actually quite like a summer's day in the fleeting mortality of her beauty) but the-woman-as-immortalised-by-this-poem. Narcissism? Or exactly what poetry/art/sculpture etc are meant to do? Love to hear your thoughts!!

Sonnet XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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Book of the Week: 'Barbapapa' series

When we were on holidays recently, I re-discovered a series of books that were childhood favourites of mine: the Barbapapa series. My dad originally bought them back in the early 70s and we enjoyed reading them again and again and again when I was a little girl. He dug them up before the holidays (all in great condition still!), and brought them along to read to my kids - and they loved them too.

The books were originally written in the 70s in French and have now been translated into 30 different languages. I was interested to find out that it was also made into a TV series in France.

It's quite a quirky series. The Barbapapa family (made up of a mum, dad and 7 children, who you can read about here) are all blob like creatures who can change their shape.

It was strange to look at the books again after all these years. At first I had no recollection of them, then when I saw them I could remember every detail, and I could remember that I did indeed love them!

The other thing that was interesting was that as an adult I wouldn't have looked at them and described them as great books. But, as my own memories came flooding back and I could see my own kids enjoying them so much, it made me wonder whether I am such a good judge of what will engage a child's mind.

Looking at them again, I think it is their originality and creativity make them so appealing to kids. The pictures are bright and colourful and often have presented the scenes in interesting ways (eg. as a cross section or diagram). The storylines are unique and capture your imagination.

I'm not sure if you can easily get these books anymore (in fact, by the looks of the prices on Amazon, my dad might be sitting on a small fortune I think!). But, I'd love to know if anyone else remembers these books from when they were kids! In the meantime, this little excerpt of the TV version will give you an idea of their shape changing antics (although, by the looks of it, the books were better!).

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The Pleasures of God, Pt 2

In this first chapter of The Pleasures of God, Piper reflects on the love and delight that the Father has for the Son. This sounds like a simple statement, but I found that there was a lot to get my head around in this chapter!

I found it helpful to reflect on what it means that Jesus is co-creator of the universe. I also found Piper's discussion of God's delight in being God really thought-provoking. It is right for God to delight in himself because he is infinitely beautiful and glorious. And if God delights in himself, my response should be to delight in him too!

Piper writes:

...the Father’s infinite pleasure in his own perfections is the fountain of our everlasting joy. The fact that the pleasure of God in his Son is pleasure in himself is not vanity. It is the gospel.

If Henry Scougal is right—that the worth and excellency of a soul is measured by the object and intensity of its love—then God is the most excellent and worthy of all beings. For he has loved his Son, the image of his own glory, with infinite and perfect energy from all eternity. How glorious and happy have been the Father and the Son and the Spirit of love flowing between them from all eternity!

Let us then stand in awe of this great God! And let us turn from all the trivial resentments and fleeting pleasures and petty pursuits of materialism and merely human “spirituality.” And let us be caught up into the gladness that God has in the glory of his Son, who is the radiance and image of his Father. There is coming a day when the very pleasure that the Father has in the Son will be in us and will be our own pleasure. May God’s enjoyment of God—unbounded and everlasting—flow into us even now by the Holy Spirit! This is our glory and our joy.

Amen!

If you want to read along with me, you can download the first three chapters of the book here.

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A Home With Boundaries...

This past week or so, an issue has emerged that I would love some help with.

We live in a little cul-de-sac and are working hard at getting to know our neighbours. We're not particularly gregarious, extroverted people by nature, and evangelism doesn't come easy to us, but we really want to try to organise our lives so as to maximise our opportunities to spread the gospel within our local community.

But in the last week or so, I've felt my resolve on this issue being tested a little.

It involves a couple of the kids from up the other end of our street. Apart from one or two brief conversations that Dave's had, we haven't really got to know their parents yet, but over the last week they have suddenly become hugely enthusiastic about playing with our kids.

In fact (I know this sounds paranoid!) I'm starting to feel almost like we're under siege. When we go out, the kids are there waiting for us when we get back home; when we're inside, they peer in through our front window to see what we're doing; they walk up the neighbours' driveway, and look over our back fence. They are pushy with Dave and me - wanting to pin down exact times we'll be back home etc, so they can sit and wait for us to arrive.

Complicating factor number 1 is that I'm not good at saying 'no' to other people. I'll say it - but it's stressful for me, so my initial reaction is usually to just say 'yes'.

The other complicating factor is that, while I am very happy to have them in my home, their parents won't allow them inside strangers' homes (fair enough!!) but are very happy for them to play up and down the street without supervision. My kids, on the other hand, are younger, and I won't allow them to play out the front on their own, so any interaction has to happen in the front yard, with me supervising. This doesn't work if I need to get dinner ready, or hang the washing out!

Obviously a big part of this is my struggle with my own sin. I'm an introvert, I want my privacy and I want things to go the way I've planned them. Often I just feel too tired to deal with another couple of kids that have just arrived on the front doorstep.

But, at the same time, I do think that even with all my sin I need to repent of, that I need to do some serious thinking about boundaries. I have a responsibility to work out how often how door should remain open, and on what terms for the sake of my family, as well as my own sanity. As Edith Schaeffer writes:

A family is a door that has hinges and a lock. The hinges should be well-oiled to swing open the door during certain times, but the lock should be firm enough to let people know that the family needs to be alone part of the time, just to be a family... It seems that there is a danger of having a door so open that there might just as well not be doors, so that there is no shelter at all to be entered. (What is a Family?, pp. 183-184).

I want our family to be welcoming to the other children in our street. I want kids to come into our home and see the difference Jesus makes in our family. So, how can I do this while maintaining some boundaries for our family?

Getting to know their parents a bit better would obviously be a start, and we're keen to do that. But I suspect that we'll still need more wisdom and grace than we have at the moment in knowing where to draw the boundary lines with the kids.

Any thoughts?

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Welcome to Canada Globe and Mail Readers...

...who ended up here by accident.

I noticed a bit of a spike in my stats today that had been a result of google searches for "168 hours". On closer investigation, it turns out that they weren't actually looking for me. They were looking for Laura Vanderkam, who was interviewed about her book, which is about to be published and is called - you guessed it, 168 hours. She also has a blog with a title that is suspiciously similar to the title of my own blog, but I'm willing to overlook that!!

As it happens, I'm kinda interested in what she has to write. She is a journalist and a mum and she's written her book about how to make the most of your time. I guess that is what this blog is about too (hence the fact we've come up with the same name). I haven't yet read enough of Laura's blog to figure out how she decides on what counts as 'making the most of' life. For me, the answer is that the unwasted life is the life that is lived in the service of Jesus, for the glory of God - "glorifying him and enjoying him forever", as it says in the old catechism. That's what I want to use my 168 hours for!

So glad you came this way - please feel free to keep on coming back!

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Sustaining Your Spiritual Fervour - Pt 2

Before I start looking at Romans 12:11-12, I thought it would be good to have a bit of a look at the wider context in Romans 12. There are three things I thought it was worth highlighting from earlier in the chapter, which help to guard us against misunderstanding what Paul says in verses 11 and 12.

1. Paul is talking throughout this chapter about something we do together – about love and about the community of God’s people. So it would be a mistake to read verse 11 and 12 and only think about individual, private, interior things. In all these things, we need each other and we help each other.

2. Paul is very explicit in verse 1 that he is talking about a response to God's mercy that is simultaneously spiritual and physical. We are to offer up our bodies to God as a spiritual act of worship. So it’s a mistake to think that there is a little, discrete collection of practices called ‘spiritual disciplines’ that we can keep up without giving any attention to being disciplined in the ordinary, everyday, physical things like food and sleep and sex and exercise and so on. It’s all connected.

3. Most importantly, verse 1, Paul is talking in this whole section about a response to God’s mercy. So when we get to what he says in verse 11 and 12, we have to remember that this is not about a strategy for earning favour with God by the sweat of our own moral effort. It’s about grace.

But within that context of community and offering our bodies to God and responding to God’s mercy, Paul still has strong things to say about our individual responsibility, and about the need for zeal and labour and endurance in the way we respond to God’s mercy, and about the inner experience of the heart as well as the outward acts of ministry.

In next week's post, I'll be zeroing in on the first little phrase, about 'not being slothful in zeal...'.

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The Home as Mission Field and Mission Base

Our church did a sermon series on the home recently - not so much the different roles that we have in the home, but how to view our homes as Christians: as 'a house of worship' (week 1), as 'a tent in the desert' (week 2), and as 'a mission-field and mission base' (week 3).

I thought Dave's sermon on the third week summed up exactly what I've been trying to think through in my (now annual) 'missional motherhood' series. He started by talking about the tension between the responsibilities of home and the responsibilities of mission (which is often a real tension) but went on to try and explain two ways in which the two responsibilities actually pull in the same direction. So the main point of the sermon was an encouragement to see how our homes fit into the mission of the gospel, and to view them as mission-fields and mission-bases.

If you have a spare 30 minutes, I really recommend you have a listen. You can download it from here.

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Sonnet CXVI, by William Shakespeare

I thought I'd have a month of Shakespeare sonnets this month.

This one was read at our wedding, so of course it's my favourite.




Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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