On Saying “Everything’s Fine,” When It’s Not: Our Solidarity with the Shunammite Woman

I had been apprehensive about Titus’s eye appointment. Whenever I’d scan my calendar for what was coming up, that appointment would catch my eye–memories of difficult appointments we’d had before still fresh. Titus’s eye doctor is someone whom I thank God for–she is a brilliant surgeon and one of the keenest doctors I’ve ever dealt with (and I’ve dealt with a plenty). She performed Titus’s eye surgery to correct his severe crossing when he was just six months old–a surgery many doctors won’t do that early. She’s aggressive for her patients, she’s frank, competent, no-nonsense, and I trust her.

When she first saw Titus and he was just 3 months old, she told me Titus’s vision problems were not vision problems, but neurological problems that may be impossible to fix–but she said she’d do everything she could to at least get his eyes straight enough that his brain could try and understand what he was seeing.

I’ll always remember that moment and her directness. The truth she spoke, hard as it was, was a kindness. How much of his progress is a result of her assertiveness and competence–allowing eyes to start to learn to work together at a young developmental stage?

But, even with my love for our doctor, eye exams and dilation are hard for Titus. Knowing this, I did everything I could the morning of the appointment to keep us cheerful and well-functioning so that we could get into that appointment with all the resources we needed to survive it.

And everything fell apart–which wasn’t a huge surprise, it’s what I was expecting. It was traumatic enough that they will likely do general anesthesia next time. What was a surprise was that it felt as though God had forgotten us that afternoon. I’ve been through traumatic events with Titus before–much more traumatic than an eye appointment, but it was always God’s presence that carried us–the trust and reality that he wouldn’t leave. But that day in the little exam room, my prayers seemed to bounce down off the ceiling and slap me in the face. I could endure anything, if only Jesus was close at hand, if only he was there opening my eyes to his goodness despite the obvious difficulties, if only he was letting me know he cared about my son–yet my sense of him had vanished.

A week or so prior, I had been reading about the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4. She was a wealthy, married woman, who showed over-the-top hospitality to Elisha the prophet. She even had a room built for him to stay in whenever he came by. Elisha wanted to repay her for this kindness and so he miraculously pronounced to her that she would have a son, although she had no children and her husband was old. She couldn’t believe Elisha and said to him, “No, my lord. Man of God, do not lie to your servant.” But it was true. She had a son one year later.

The boy grew and one day came to his father complaining that his head hurt. The father sent the boy to his mother. She held him on her lap until he died. I know something of holding my son in my lap, all but lifeless and gray–so horrific, so peaceful, waiting, wondering, with death so close at hand. It is the sort of angst that only the Spirit can express.

So the Shunammite woman took her dead son and laid him on Elisha’s bed in the room she had built for him.  Then she went to her husband and told him she was going to see Elisha, but when he asked her if everything was ok and why she was going to see him she said, “Everything is all right.” Or, in the ESV, “All is well.” No mention that their son had died.

When she comes to where Elisha is, his servant approaches her and asks if everything is all right, inquiring about her husband and also her son, and again she says, “Everything is all right.” We might start to wonder if perhaps she was simply full of faith and hope; if she was saying all was well because she so trusted that all would be well. But we see a very different story unfold. Everything was NOT fine, to the point that it was too terrible for her even to speak it. She was using “Everything’s all right,” as a cover for her deep pain–so deep that it couldn’t be voiced.

The Shunammite woman would not rest until she had Elisha himself. She went to him and grabbed hold of his feet. Elisha begins to see the truth, though she has said nothing, and he says, “She is in severe anguish, and the Lord has hidden it from me. He hasn’t told me.” Severe anguish. That sort of anguish isn’t the kind you can let out in bits and pieces when asked. It is the kind that overtakes you.

Her recrimination of Elisha is crushing. She says to Elisha–to God really, “Did I ask my lord for a son? Didn’t I say, ‘Do not lie to me?'” It’s like she’s saying, “Why did you give him to me in the first place if you meant to take him like this?” She still can’t bring herself to say that the boy is dead. Her grief only exposes itself to the ONE person she has some tiny hope could help her–not her husband, not the servant–only to the Man of God.

Elisha tells his servant to go and put his staff on the boy to revive him, but it isn’t enough for the Shunammite. She will not leave Elisha, forcing him to go himself to the boy. After the servant’s effort to bring the boy to life fails, Elisha then acts. Two times he acts to bring the boy back to life, laying over him, bending over him, and making him alive.

I confess that the recriminations that bubbled up in my heart after Titus’s awful appointment were a shock to myself. I have not been one to question God when it comes to Titus. In the dark times I have cried, I have wavered with weak faith, but to question God? Whenever one would start to form, my mouth would be stopped in reverence. Now they poured out.

The shape my recriminations took were from the gut, “You said you’d be with me. You said wouldn’t leave me. Why did you make me walk through this fire alone? Do you love Titus? He can’t understand what’s happening–has he suffered enough?” as I sobbed my way home.  As the tears ran, so did my mind–to the Shunammite woman–given a gift she didn’t ask for and trial she couldn’t even speak aloud.

As my friends checked in on how the appointment went, I so much wanted to say, “Fine. Everything’s all right.” But it wasn’t. And as I contemplated who the Shunammite took her complaint to, I remembered she finally let her grief out to the man who could do something about it. And these sisters in Christ also could do something about my problems, my grief. They, like Elisha, are connected to God. They know him, he has written his words on their hearts and put them in their mouth, he has given them his Spirit. So I didn’t say, “Everything’s all right.” I owned that I felt abandoned–not because God put me in a hard circumstance, but because it felt like he put me there alone.

Even as I confessed this, I was beginning to know it wasn’t true. God was pummeling me with evidence of his care: the story of the Shunammite that God had put in my Bible reading the week before the appointment, in the friends who prayed, even in the breaking loose of the questions that drove me to no one but God himself forcing me to tell him that, “Everything is not all right.” And most important of all, the evidence of Jesus, on the cross and risen–the one place that silences all questions of love or nearness, permanently fixed in history, permanently true.

I don’t know if you’ve ever struggled like did, like I do, to trust his presence, to trust him, when he seems far away. To own the real feelings inside, to take them directly to him and to the people connected to him. I don’t know if the pain feels so big that all you say is, “Everything’s all right.” But if that’s you, remember the Shunammite woman with me. Sometimes our grief feels so deep that it’s unspeakable. The only Person who can bear it fully is God himself, so take it to him.

Like the Shunammite, do not walk away from God until he comes with you. Stay with him no matter what. Remind him of his promises to you: that he said he’ll never leave you or forsake, that he said he’d be with you in the flood and the fire, that he’ll make dead bodies alive, not in this life, but the one to come. He hasn’t forgotten those promises. He will not go back on them, because he is faithful to his Name and his Word. He really does love us.

I don’t know what became of the Shunammite’s son. I don’t know if when he was brought to life he was restored to perfect, pristine health or if he had lingering effects of the ordeal in the form of a disability. I don’t know if he trusted Yahweh in his gray hairs. I’m glad the Bible doesn’t tell us that. It simply says he was restored to life. But he did die eventually, as his mom did, as Elisha did, as we all will.

Sometimes everything isn’t fine down here. Sometimes it’s a big mess and cry-fest. But we have the seeds of heaven deep inside. We have a glimpse of the end–of dead bodies restored to life, of all things made new. We have the God of Elisha, the God of the Shunammite woman, with us now. We have Jesus Christ, the one who came to save all the people who are willing to say, “I’m not fine,” I’m a sinner in need of a Savior. I need you, Jesus, to die for my sin. I need you to be raised from the dead and raise me with your resurrection power on the last day. I need you to put hope in my hopeless heart. And I need you to do right by my son–to be the God of the weak and lowly that you say you are.

May God be glorified in us, even when everything isn’t fine. Someday we will say in truth, “All is well.” Physically, spiritually, relationally–well. Hold fast to Christ until that day. He’s got you.

 

What Does a Happy Ending Mean?

About a year ago, I was spending a lot of time making peace with a sad ending. I was asking what a sad ending means and wondering how anyone comes through the devastation of one.

The Lord was faithful to answer that question. In a word, he answered it with: resurrection. When a sad ending feels like the final chapter, our hope of resurrection tells us otherwise. It constantly reminds us that there is hope on the other side of the grave. We look back at our resurrected Jesus, at our once dead, risen King and we look forward to His life in us and His life in our loved ones after death has had its way.

Now, a year later, a different question has been nagging me. What does a happy ending mean? What if death is postponed, what if that fear that we carried around in our chest like someone was tightening a noose on our heart, intent on taking us to the brink, has subsided.

What does it mean when we’ve begged God to make something untrue, and by some measures, that has happened? Is this the moment when we claim victory and sermonize on the power of prayer to do just exactly what we wanted it to? Do we march triumphant, laughing at the death that we’ve defied? What does it mean that Titus survived that awful seizure and time on life support? What does it mean that he’s doing better than we expected and is progressing forward rather than regressing?

There is a devilish temptation to give glory to God for seeing the wisdom of our perfect plan. How godly we can look when we give glory to God for answering our prayers, even if the prayers say, “My will be done,” rather than, “Thy will be done.” The truth is, many of my prayers have been selfish and nothing more than a desperate mom’s clinging to a life that doesn’t belong to her. I know I have to be careful how I say this. It isn’t wrong to pray for God to heal your child, or ask for our loved one to live and not die. It’s right and good. But do we end with, “Not my will, but yours, God.” Are our hands lifted and open?

And is it right to claim Titus’s progression as an answer to our prayers? Isn’t it self-aggrandizing to assume that I understand the reason God has granted Titus to be where he’s at right now? What I can know for sure is that Titus is where He is because of the kind providence of God. It’s not that my prayers don’t matter, but praying simply to get what I want, is not the point of prayer. If prayer doesn’t align my will with his, what is it, but wishing upon a star?

One thing I’ve learned is that God’s will isn’t simple. He is not indebted to give His children yeses to their prayers. He told his own perfect Son, no.

Sometimes we have really special things planned for our kids. We plan vacations or get togethers with friends and they often don’t know about it until the plans are underway. Then, on occasion, they will ask for the very thing we’ve already planned. They’ll ask to get together with someone and it just so happens that we are planning on heading to their house later that day. It was part of the plan before they asked. They might think that we’re going because they asked, but we’re not, it was in the plan.

That’s how I feel about Titus. God has a plan. Our job is to submit to his will and allow him to bend us in ways we’ve never been bent before. Does God answer prayer? Yes. But claiming to understand how or why certain prayers get answered is risky when those prayers are not part of God’s revealed Biblical will. There are some prayers that I know God will answer with YES! When I confess my sins, repent and ask him for forgiveness, he ALWAYS says yes. When I ask for patience or self-control He always provides opportunities and the Spirit’s help to follow through with it. But it’s harder to correlate his answers to prayers outside of His revealed will for us. And when we do presume that He has answered our prayers for circumstantial good things on the basis of our asking (not necessarily in accordance with His will), it can also lead to a puffed up, inflated self-importance–the kind of view that believes our will has the power to bend his will, when it is exactly the opposite. Prayer is about bending our will to His.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Wouldn’t it be good to give glory to God for healing Titus, whether we know for sure if he did or not? I’m not so sure. It doesn’t glorify him or honor him to misinterpret or presume upon the storyline. Titus’s brain is still the same. He’s developing, yet disabled. He’s doing better than we expected and all of the praise for that goes to God.

Without glorifying our prayers, we can glorify Him by trusting His sovereign, wise plan when He takes and when He gives. We glorify Him with faith that He will give us the exact number of hardships that are good for us. We glorify Him by continuing to pour out our hearts and ask without hesitation in accordance with His will. We glorify Him with faith that He loves our son more than we do. And with faith that He loves us, too.

Have you talked to someone who believes that God has answered their prayers favorably regarding an earthly circumstance and is triumphant about it? Have you been pressured to just believe that God would give healing? Have you been made to feel like God’s answers to your prayers hinged on the amount of faith you could muster (not faith in God, mind you, but faith in a favorable outcome)? Is He glorified by pride about our faith?

A happy ending doesn’t mean I get credit for earning a yes from God.

Another thing it doesn’t mean is that all the sad chapters are over. It would be silly to call Titus’s story a happy ending when he’s nineteen months old. But it’s tempting to do so. How badly we want to be done with the pain! I can’t claim a happy ending for any of my children.. or myself.. or anyone! We can be thankful for the kind providence of what he’s granting us right now, without clutching at tomorrow. This life doesn’t end happily for anyone, because it ends in death for everyone. Death is our enemy.

It is on the other side of our enemy, death, that we get our happy ending. Knowing this means we can say, “Where is your victory Death?” We can mock death, “Where is your sting?” We can live in peace and contentment, because our ultimate destination is happy forever.

So what does a happy ending mean? For a Christian, it means the same thing that a sad ending means. The story isn’t over. This life isn’t our ending. We bank it all on the resurrection hope that we have because of Jesus Christ’s bloody death on a cross. He swallowed death on that cross and we will be raised with him. The perishable putting on the imperishable; the mortal, immortality.

What Does a Sad Ending Mean?

Trials are kind of like being jerked out of a sunny day and being thrown down into a well. It seems that all there is down there is dirt, no light, close air and claustrophobia. It can seem more like a pit than a well. But I’m reminding myself that God only ever puts his children in places where water will eventually flow. It may be a desert or a dark night, but he never leaves us alone.

How do we weather these times? How does a family who’s lost a dad, or a parent who’s buried a baby, or a woman who’s been betrayed, or couple longing for a child, weather the pain, the loss, and the fear?

I’ve asked myself that quite a bit as we’ve watched others walk these roads and tasted our own grief over an abnormal baby brain and an unknown future.

The other day the kids and I were heading home in the van and Eliza was finishing up a book in the back seat. Seth was reading the last chapter along with her, not having read the rest of the book. He commented to her, “It looks like it’s going to be a happy ending.” She responded, “Oh, I don’t like happy endings. That means the book is over.” Then she gave this insight, “But when things are scary or sad at the end, you know there will be another chapter or book coming.”

I can’t tell you the relief I felt as I remembered that a tragic ending means one thing: there’s another chapter coming. No matter how pit-like the well we’ve been tossed into, we’ll be at the King’s right hand someday, just like Joseph went from thrown in a hole, sold down the road, and ended up as Pharaoh’s right hand man, we too, have a future that’s beyond any we could dream up from the bottom of a well.

I’m also realizing that the wells of suffering are a place where we get to drink more deeply of his grace than we ever have before, a place where our thirst for him is drowned in knowing him more deeply. This doesn’t mean that we want the suffering, but rather that what gets us through is his presence. When suffering comes our way, we can recognize that there’s more going on here than just the universe dealing us a bad hand. God has a story He’s writing and we’re meant to be transformed in the telling.

This passage has always been a favorite, more so now.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 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. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ” (Romans 5:1-8 ESV)

Jesus’ sorrows were deeper than any other human being. He bore our sin. He is the picture of perfect suffering, which is such a comfort because he wasn’t giddy about it and we’re not meant to be either. Rejoicing in our suffering isn’t gleeful, trite, happy-go-lucky suffering. It’s a kind of suffering that has hope and the way it gets to that hope is first by enduring, or getting through it. Jesus endured the cross. He got through it. From endurance comes character, then hope. And hope is able to rejoice. Why? Because it’s had love poured right into its heart because of Christ’s grace toward us on the grounds of His death for us.

Also, this rejoicing can’t and doesn’t undo the pain. Jesus didn’t suffer any less, because of the hope He had. He still suffered every bit of the suffering God ordained for him and it still was the full dose of God’s wrath. His pain wasn’t mitigated by His foreknowledge. This is such an important thing to keep in mind when either you or someone you know is walking a hard path. Knowing Jesus gives us hope, but it doesn’t take away the pain. It isn’t meant to. The pain is actually God-ordained to produce things in us that would not be able to be produced any other way. Knowing Jesus is meant to give us reasons to rejoice alongside the pain. They walk hand-in-hand, one doesn’t cancel the other out.

We’ve had some good weeks at our house. It feels like an upswing. I suppose that’s why I want to write about suffering and pain, because writing about it in the worst of it is pretty difficult. But, I’m hoping that by getting my thoughts down now, they’ll be here for me when I can’t see my way through the trials as clearly. And I hope they’ll be a help to anyone reading too, by God’s grace.

He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers. (Psalm 78:15-16 ESV)
He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers. (Psalm 78:15-16 ESV)

what are you reading?

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

1) Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will OR How to Make a Decision without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc. by Kevin DeYoung

I finished this about a 2 months ago and thought it was great.  What a breath of fresh air to the frivolous, often ridiculous ways we try to figure out our future before it happens.

2) Middlemarch by George Eliot

I’ve always loved Eliot’s Adam Bede and never took the time to read Middlemarch.  I’m glad I did.  She has an insight into the workings of the mind and heart of her characters that is enlightening and convicting to the reader who identifies with them.  Plus, it was the first book I read on my iPhone via Kindle and just finished.  Very handy.

3) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

I just started this and am only a few chapters in, also being read on my iphone.  So far, it has all the charming markings of an Austen novel.  It was her first book, published after many of her other works.

4) Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

Sowell is one of my favorite minds on politics and culture.  I’ve just started this book and it examines the influence of intellectuals on society and the often disastrous effects thereof.  Thanks, Tom, for surprising me with it!

5) Home Comforts : The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson

I pulled this one off my bookshelf a month ago and got sucked into re-reading quite a bit.  I use it as reference book and disagree largely with her take on why it’s important to keep house, but nonetheless, you will not find a more thorough book covering every aspect of home management.

6) A Sweet & Bitter Providence: Sex, Race and the Sovereignty of God by John Piper

I loved this look at Ruth, Naomi and Boaz.  The book of Ruth has long been a favorite for me and Pastor John offers his usual poignant understanding of the big picture in relation to this story.  Reading it made me love God’s designs more.

7) The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr

I was assigned to read this in college and did a half-read, half-skim.  I was prompted to remember it when Tim Challies reviewed it a while back.  I’m about a quarter in so far and find it riveting and very gritty.  I probably wouldn’t recommend it.

8) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This book was a gift and I completed it a few months ago and thoroughly enjoyed.  It is a book of fictional letters written just after WWII.  The style is enchanting and the content is sober without being sober.

What are you reading?

*Note: The Bible is the most important reading we can do each day.  I hope that’s understood.  I use our church’s Bible reading plan, in case you were curious.  The reading listed here is my “escape” or nighttime reading.

what were you supposed to do?

So often we have what we want to do, then we have what we train to do, and finally we have what we actually do.

It’s great if the first and last match up, regardless of what comes in the middle.

I wanted to do a great many things, but mostly I wanted to be a wife and a mom.  And that’s what I am.  But what was I supposed to do according to my training?  I have degrees in writing and political science.  I worked briefly at a pro-life lobby and education group after I graduated, which fit my training perfectly, as I did writing and research for them (along with any other menial jobs that were around to do).

Then I started having babies and that part of life was done.  At least in the work-for-pay realm of existence.

Lots of people train for one thing and end up doing something entirely unrelated.  Some people long to be something, but feel the need to have a practical degree.  Women who desire to be homemakers often get degrees that they feel will be practical if Mr. Wonderful doesn’t show up.

And for those who do end up with the coveted Mrs. degree, they are sometimes made to feel that their education was a waste, since now all they do is stay home.  I’ve never felt that way.  I think my education has been useful in every way, even if I don’t earn money under the pretense of it.

Mr. TommyD has degrees in computer science and physics, but he really doesn’t use either.  He runs a business, and although it is in the technology industry, he doesn’t work on computers himself.

So, what were you supposed to do?  Does it line up with what you really do?  How do you account for it?  Does it feel like a waste or a kind Providence?

do you have a favorite Bible verse?

James 1: 2-4 have always been favorite verses of mine.  

Also, Lamentations 3: 21-27 are frequently in mind. 

Along with John 10:27-30; those bring continual comfort and rest.

Do you have a favorite passage?  Or, if “favorite” isn’t the right word, how about one that is especially meaningful to you recently?

I found this humorous video about life verses..  enjoy.

And here are the actual texts, for my (and your) benefit:

James 1:2-4

Count it all joy, my brothers, [2] when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Lamentations 3:21-27

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; [2]
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man that he bear
the yoke in his youth.

John 10:27-30

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, [1] is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

 

 

an ipod for a Bible: yea or nay?

Tim Challies (with whom I often agree) wrote this article, “Don’t Take Your iPod to Church.”  

I’m having a hard time agreeing with his reasoning.  

He asserts that,

“the method we use to convey information is inseparable from the content of that information. And even more so, every medium carries with it both content but also a worldview. When we read the Bible electronically, we read the very same words, but in a way that influences us toward a different worldview, a different way of understanding the reality of those words.”

So, to recap, he is saying that reading the Bible electronically influences our worldview and even influences the way we interpret or understand the Bible.  

He sums it all up with this: 

“So where does this leave us?  It leaves us wondering what ideological bias, what predisposition, is carried in the book and in the electronic book.  It causes us to wonder what skill or attitude is amplified in the book and what skill or attitude is amplified in the iPod.”

As much as I love real books, (meaning printed-with-ink, pages-bound-together books) I just can’t agree with him.  At least not yet.  He promises to follow-up this article with another one next week offering (I hope) more logical and foundational reasons as to why the printed Bible is better than the e-Bible.**

The point of the Bible is the message it provides.  Not the medium by which the message is given.  Is the Bible less powerful in oral form?  Does it’s worldview change when read from a scroll?  

The power of the message of the Bible, cannot be in anyway subdued or watered down by the medium it is presented in.  It is the very power of God.  Printed ink on pages holds the precious message, as do spoken words, as do pixels on a screen, as do tablets of stone.  

Confusing preference and worldview is a bit dangerous.  The assertion that medium guides and influences worldview I could swallow if it were in regard to anything other than the Bible.  But the Bible contains God Himself, the glorious Gospel.  

It is a message that cannot be bound by medium.  No, it cannot even be influenced by medium.  If it is the unadulterated message and Word of God, medium is of no consequence.  That is the beauty and power of the Word.  

The worldview of the hearer is already in place when he is using an iPod to read God’s Word.  As is the worldview of the person reading it in ink.  

The medium doesn’t shape the worldview, it is an indicator of it.  

And the power of the Word of God reaches through that medium to radically transform both the worldview of the one reading pixels and the one reading ink.  Whether I read it on a screen or a page these words contain the same persuasive swaying power, “God demonstrated His love for us in this: while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

So, as much as I love Challies’ blog, I’ll go ahead and say it: bring your ipod to church and let the Word of God in pixels transform your iPod-loving worldview.  And bring your printed bible to church and let the Word of God in ink transform your ink-loving worldview.  

The Word of God has the power to shape and change our worldview and will not be influenced by or secondary to pixels or paper or preferences.

**I am looking forward to hearing his next article on the topic.  I went ahead and responded to this first one because I had some foundational disagreements.  But I’m willing to listen and be open to his forthcoming arguments for the negatives of an ipod Bible in church.  I could agree that the ipod Bible might be distracting and would entertain not using it for that reason, but that isn’t the premise he’s working with.

What say you?  Do you read the Bible on your ipod or blackberry?  Do you think doing this has influenced your worldview in “understanding of the reality of those words”?

what do you dream for your kids?

We all have hopes for our kids.  

Mine are very big and very small at the same time.

I want big things: that they will know God, love God, serve and worship God and His Son Jesus.

And on the smaller side, I want them just to be better than me.  I want them to master the things I’m not mastering.  I want them to be a better spouse, a better parent, a better person, than I am.  

The hardest and surest way to that happening is for me to be better than I am, by God’s grace.

And probably the majority of my parenting (75%?) is fear-based (mostly God-fearing, but some man-fearing too).  I parent to avoid what I don’t want them to be.  With fear and trembling I realize that without God’s grace and His strong tools of discipline, instruction, and love (ie their parents) my kids will be left to themselves and their sin nature.  

I want to keep parenting in fear (the Godly, right kind).  But I also want to dream great and Godly dreams for my kids.  I want to expect the best and be ready for God’s blessings in their lives.  He is a good God.  He gives good gifts to His children.  

It’s ok to eagerly hope for and expect God’s working in their lives.  And dream big dreams for them.
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What are your fears and dreams for your kids?

what should a pro-life Christian think about abortionist George Tiller's murder?

It’s a sad story.

Late-term abortionist George Tiller was gunned down and killed at his church on Sunday.

It shouldn’t have happened.

But what’s a Christian to think about such an event?  We fight for saving the lives of those George Tiller killed: the unborn.  Now he will kill them no more.  How should we be feeling?  Should we put that all aside and pretend he was a normal guy?

No, Christian, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that he was a baby-killer and feign outrage because you sense that if you don’t, the pro-life movement will be doomed (although you’d be right, it would be doomed if we weren’t truly outraged).  

Christians should be outraged, for many reasons.  And we shouldn’t ignore any of the outrageous parts of this story.

Here’s a look at how things should have gone, or put another way, things to be (rightly) outraged about:

1) George Tiller should have been forced to stop practicing abortion, or killing babies, long ago, by the gov’t., whose primary job it is to protect and defend the people (especially the littlest and weakest ones) of our country.

2) If George Tiller had refused the gov’t’s demands and continued to kill innocent human life, he should have been put in prison or even faced capital punishment, where the law deemed that the correct course.

If that had been done, hundreds (thousands?) of babies would then have been spared his murdering, profit-hungry hand.  

3) A Kansas man should not have taken the law into his own hands in order to try and right this unspeakable wrong.  George Tiller was a law-abiding citizen, even though I believe he was a murderer.  And Tiller’s wrongs have not been righted by the Kansas man’s murderous act.  

The wrong has simply been added to.

It is a sad story indeed.

So, Christian, don’t pretend that because George Tiller was murdered that he was not a murderer himself.  And don’t think for one second his being a murderer in anyway justifies or mitigates his own unjust death.

 It doesn’t.  

His was a death wrought by a murderer apart from law or sanction.  Laws matter.  Laws matter to Christians.  We obey the law.  There is only one thing that would keep a Christian from obeying the law and that would be a law that would keep us from our worship of the Lord.  

We are not there yet, by God’s grace.

We walk a fine line, Christian pro-lifer.  We must cling to all we know of Christ.  We must do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.  

We must heartily condemn the murdering of George Tiller, even while we acknowledge his murderous ways and pray that those like him will become outlawed in our land.

abortion: complex or painstakingly simple?

Our President recently said at his address to the graduating class at Notre Dame,

“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.  

So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions, let’s reduce unintended pregnancies.  Let’s make adoption more available.  Let’s provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term.”

So let me get this straight.

We’re agreeing that the decision to abort a baby is not one to be made casually.  Why not?  And is a decision that has moral and spiritual dimensions.  What would those be?  I’d really really like to know what the President thinks the moral and spiritual dimensions of abortion are.  

Is part of the “moral dimension” that a woman is making a decision to kill?  Is it that a doctor is complicit and profiting from this decision to kill?  

And is the “spiritual dimension” that an eternal soul is being put to death?  And that there’s no one standing in the gap for this eternal being, created in the image of God?

If there’s nothing wrong with abortion, then why make it rare?  Why not have one casually?

As President Obama acknowledges the “moral and spiritual dimensions” of abortion and asks us to work at making it rare, pro-lifers can take heart.  In his desire to be all things to all voters, he is conceding important ground in the abortion “conversation.” (I really hate don’t like that term.  When it’s babies dying, having a “conversation” is not exactly high on my priority list, but rather, saving babies.  I digress).

After all, there’s nothing conversational or civil or calm or reasoned when a baby is killed.  It’s violent.  It’s brutal.  It’s painful.  It’s very very ugly. 

The new (or old and re-used) M.O. of abortion advocates or “pr0-choicers” as they prefer to be called, is to throw out words like, “complex” or “complicated” when describing the situation surrounding a woman choosing abortion.  As though trying to navigate a difficult (abusive even) relationship with a boyfriend or figuring out career and college and baby make killing understandable and “complex.”

Yes, real life is always complex.  Situations are always multi-faceted.  Abuse is real.  Relationships are hard.  And killing a baby is still always evil.  

Often when discussing the Civil War, someone will throw out the assertion that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery, it was about state’s rights.  As though it was just some crazy coincidence that all the states concerned about state’s rights were also the ones who wanted to keep their slaves.

I support state’s rights, but the truth is that the Southern states were using “state’s rights” as a cover for doing something so wicked and immoral that it dwarfed the issue they were covering it up with.  It couldn’t be covered up.  

Neither can abortion be covered up by saying it is complex or pointing to the sad stories of the women getting them.  The evil being perpetrated so dwarfs the difficult circumstance surrounding it to make it null.  And I fear for and pity those who so strongly advocate for the “rights” of these women.  I do not speak with winsome softness towards them.  To do that would be to dishonor those sacrificed on the hard altar of convenience.

The cop-out, “I call myself pro-life, but I’m not comfortable with making abortion illegal,” just doesn’t work for me.  Slavery didn’t end because of people saying, “I’m anti-slavery, but I’m just not comfortable making it illegal.  Let’s just work to make slavery rare.”

One day, history will look at pro-choicers with the same disdainful wonderment that it now gazes at those who fought for slavery.  And to them I say, it’s not too late to change your mind.  And I pray that you will.  For your own sake and the sake of those dying.