Out of the Mouths of Babes

Six-year-olds have a great perspective on life. They're too young to have the inhibitions that have been programmed into the rest of us. There is one particular little six-year-old I especially admire. Rather than publishing her real name on the internet, I'll call her Penelope. Yesterday morning, I was discussing the Christmas story with my Sunday morning group of first-graders in our "Power Cell" session. There are details we adults tend to skim over, forgetting that young ones need a little explanation. I asked the kids if they knew what a "manger" is. In the assortment of guesses and blank looks, I realized they didn't know, so I told them, "It's like a trough for feeding animals...cows and donkeys eat hay out of a manger." Penelope had a sudden epiphany, "Do you mean they laid Baby Jesus in animal spit?" She was outraged! It was a good teaching moment though - to illustrate the humility of His birth.

The previous week when we first started talking about the birth of Jesus, I tried to explain to the kids that He existed before he was born on earth. I told them that Jesus is God and that he chose to come and be born as a man. Penelope, who always asks the best questions, inquired, "When was God born?" To which I responded, "God has no beginning and no end. He made everything there is and He has always existed." Penelope smacked both her palms on her forehead in amazement. "No wonder my friend at school doesn't believe in Him - that's pretty hard to believe!"

Several weeks ago, in the large group session, the teacher was using a recipe as an illustration of how the Body of Christ (the Church) has many members, doing different things, but with a common purpose. Penelope, who was sitting next to me, looked up at me and asked, "What the heck does baking brownies have to do with Jesus?" I promised her I'd explain it when we went to our group session.

Penelope is a young Christian. Not long ago, one of our pastors was visiting her home to talk to her about accepting Christ as her Savior. After he had explained everything, he asked, "Is that something you would like to do?" She was incredulous, "Why wouldn't I?" she asked. Penelope is a smart girl. She knows only a fool would decline such an invitation.

I always get such a kick out of Penelope's comment, I think I'll make them a regular feature on my blog. I would hate to let them go to waste.

Happy Birthday, Rhys!

Happy Birthday, Rhys!

My sweet little grandson is two years old today. I just can't wait to see him on Saturday. He is so cute and so smart and just bubbling over with personality. Rhys has the most beautiful eyes. Everywhere he goes, people notice them. They are a beautiful blue with long dark eyelashes. He has a cute little voice and I love to hear the few words he mispronounces like watie (water) and Hoovie (Hoover). Rhys can say the alphabet and can count to about 20. I think he's a genius, especially in his communication ability. He was able to talk in sign language before he could communicate verbally. Great-Grandpa was very proud of that accomplishment. Rhys is a talker and he loves people. That may be a problem someday when he starts school, but for now he is cute, loveable and outgoing.

Happy birthday, Rhys! See you soon.

Love,

Grandma

The Tallest Man in the World

I think I was in the fifth or sixth grade when Dad picked me up from school one day. He was on his way to the Indiana School for the Deaf where he taught a weekly Religious Education class. Dad had been working in the deaf ministry at our church since I was 8 years old. I didn't usually go with him to the Deaf School, but today was a special occasion. Crammed into the passenger seat of Dad's car was Max Palmer, the tallest man in the world. Max was a Christian who liked to use his physical appearance to get others to listen to his testimony about Christ. Our church loved to have unusual people like Max come and help us attract a crowd. Sometimes it seemed like a circus - 3,000 people coming to see Jesus Freaks. My dad was not above taking the sideshow to the deaf kids.

So here I was, walking out to the curb to get in the car with Dad and Max. I had to get in the seat behind Dad because the seat behind Max was maxed out. We drove the few blocks from School 66 on 38th Street to the Deaf School on 42nd Street. We entered the building and everyone we passed gawked at Max who was about 8 feet tall. Dad smiled and began signing an explanation, "I told the kids I had a BIG surprise for them today..." We went to the room where they had their weekly meeting. It was fun to hear the shrieks of glee from the deaf kids who were about my age or younger. They were so excited to have Max there and to be able to ask him questions. I know it was as memorable for them as it is for me. In the longrun, they realized that Dad cared very much about them. He wanted them to learn about God and have fun in the process. So many of them lived away from family in order to receive an education. I was happy to share my very special dad with them. To me, he was the tallest man in the world.

Happy Birthday, Craig!

Hey, Craig. You are really getting old!

Seriously, folks, let me tell you about my son-in-law, Craig. He's a great guy- very impressive. He is really talented, smart, cute and funny - you know, the total package. That is why I wondered for six years why Darcy just wanted to be "friends." Maybe she thought he was too good to be true. Now they've been married for almost three years and she knows Craig is the real deal.

Thank you, Craig, for loving my daughter. You are a wonderful man and exemplary Christian. We are proud and often amazed at your accomplishments. Happy birthday and may God bless you with many more!

Darcy's Birthday

Twenty-nine years ago, she was a 5-pound, 13-ounce preemie. Today, Darcy is a creative, sensitive and loving young woman.

"Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." -Proverbs 31:30

Darcy is and always has been a beauty, and I think there have been times when she, like most girls, dreamed of being a model . She could be one, but she heard a different and stronger call. "This life is transient" she told me just yesterday. Darcy has often chosen to ignore the temporal and focus on the eternal. Though the two are often intertwined for all of us and the temporal plays a louder song, Darcy has listened for the drumbeat of Heaven.

As her mother, I'm very pleased that Darcy has traveled to many countries to tell others about Jesus. She has looked for opportunities near and far to further the cause of Christ. She writes and sings deep and meaningful song lyrics to communicate the Christian journey to others. She is an encourager.

Happy birthday, Darcy. I'm so blessed to be your mother.

Style Over Substance

People in general and especially Americans seem to prefer style over substance. I hope my stream-of-consciousness blather on the subject won't come across as too negative. I like to be entertained as much as anyone. Perhaps my favorite form of "entertainment" - Christian music - comes from an "industry" that is the worst offender in the style-over-substance problem.

One time when our family went on vacation to Orlando, we took our kids to two different theme venues on a Sunday. In the morning we went to the House of Blues for their Gospel Brunch. It was very entertaining and my family loved it. The singers were talented and they really put on a show. There was just one thing I found disturbing. As we were sitting there eating and being entertained with gospel songs (they even mentioned Jesus by name) I looked up high above the stage to see symbols from all the religions of the world surrounding the phrase, "All are one." A feeling of dread came over me. It seemed as though the whole program was designed to mimic a church worship service but the Holy Spirit was missing. Something else was substituted. Maybe the substitute ingredient was human talent - lots of it. It's difficult to verbalize exactly what I felt and still feel about that experience.

Later that day, we visited the Holy Land Experience. It is sort of a theme park in Orlando built around the idea of experiencing the Bible in a live, hands-on setting. We went into one of the auditoriums where a musical group was singing Christian songs. It wasn't very entertaining and didn't have the wow-factor talent that we had seen that morning at the House of Blues. I knew, though, that the people on the stage genuinely had the Spirit in their hearts. In a way, it made me sad that it's so hard to find style AND substance. As we sat there listening (and nearly falling asleep from the long day), I looked up above the stage. There were no religious symbols, only a verse, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me."

Somehow, true spirituality is found in some sort of Bizarro world. The first will be last; the last will be first. To be the greatest, you must be a servant. Love your enemies... It is a world of opposites.

How could I express my thoughts any better than Paul, who wrote this in 1 Corinthians 1:17-31 speaking of the irony of God's wisdom? (as translated in The Message)

"God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.

"The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written,

I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

"So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

"While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's 'weakness.'

"Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the 'somebodies'? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, 'If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.'"

Another favorite passage on the subject is 1 Kings 19:11-12:

"Then [Elijah] was told, 'Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by.'

"A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn't to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn't in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn't in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper."

For the small audience reading my blog, I hope your takeaway from this is that you'll start exercising your spiritual radar. Learn to ignore the hurricanes, earthquakes and fires when God is trying to whisper something in your ear. Given a choice between style and substance, choose substance.

2 Corinthians 4:3-4 "If our Message is obscure to anyone, it's not because we're holding back in any way. No, it's because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention. All they have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness. They think he can give them what they want, and that they won't have to bother believing a Truth they can't see. They're stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we'll ever get. "

Mom's High Heels

Do you ever have random memories pop in your head and then you have to figure out what triggered them? The other day I was thinking about how much I loved playing with my mom's high heels when I was 4 years old. She had long, skinny feet - size 10 quadruple A. My little feet would fit into the toe section, so it was a very dangerous proposition to walk in them as the heels flapped behind me. I had practiced and become coordinated with the technique, but maybe got a little over-confident. One night, Mom and Dad arrived home from the grocery store. Along with all the bulging brown paper bags, they carried in a carton of Mason's root beer. What a treat. Back then we always got soft drinks in 16-ounce bottles in a cardboard carton that held eight. We returned the empty bottles to the store for a deposit refund.

As soon as they had carried in all the groceries, they paused to fix me a glass of root beer. It was a pleasant summer night in Indianapolis, so I decided to carry my drink out to the back yard. This would have been a much easier task if I weren't wearing my mother's high heels down a flight of four concrete steps. No one was paying attention, probably because I was the youngest of five children. I took a nose dive from the second step from the top. The glass shattered on the concrete and my face went right into it.

Dad scooped me up and carried me into the kitchen, quickly grabbing a washcloth to dab the blood off my face. I don't even recall the process of picking out the glass, but I do remember lying on the davenport with an ice pack on my face for the rest of the evening. I even remember the ice pack. It was made of a red rubbery material - like a whoopee cushion. It was used as either a hot water bottle or an ice pack, according to what you put in it.

My parents' friend Ronnie stopped by later that evening. He was always really sweet to me. I still have the mental picture of Ronnie lifting the ice pack to see how I was. He felt sorry for my condition - so he gave me a piece of gum. I laid in the living room, chewing gum with my face covered up and fell asleep. I remember waking up with the gum still in my mouth. It's a wonder I survived to my fifth birthday.

I don't have any permanent scars from the incident - at least physical ones. To this day, I still love root beer and I still wear high heels, but every time I walk down a flight of stairs, I think I'm going to fall and kill myself.

Watermelon

I love watermelon. Some people say experiences affect the way you feel about things - that those experiences translate into likes and dislikes. I believe I had a pure love for watermelon to start with, but my experiences enhanced that feeling.

I was about eight years old, riding with my dad in the car when we spotted a road-side stand selling watermelons. I begged him to stop and get us one and he did. Dad always flicked the melons with his finger. He explained to me that thumping the melons told you whether they were ripe. I imitated the motion, though I never quite knew what a ripe melon would sound like. I tried to talk him into buying the ones that were on ice, but he said those cost more. We could just put one in the ice box when we got home. (Ice box is another word for refrigerator, youngsters.) After meticulously choosing the perfect melon, Dad loaded it into our car and took it home to the fridge.

I could hardly wait to eat it, but after a few hours and after dinner, my brothers and sister and I
prepared to feast on watermelon. There was a ritual involved. It was a warm summer evening, so we spread newspapers on the table on our screened-in front porch. The table was a multi-purpose-former-dining-room table. We often used it for ping pong, but the watermelon ritual was by far my favorite purpose. Once the table was covered, Dad brought out the chilled watermelon and a big butcher knife. After cutting it in half, he carefully sliced off wedges until each of us had a slice, plus a few to spare. Now you may picture us biting into the watermelon and getting it all over our faces, but we were all nerdy little neatniks. We used forks. I remember trying to pick out every little seed before putting a bite in my mouth. We also liked to put salt on the watermelon. We sat around the table talking and laughing and enjoying the sweet treat. I love watermelon.

The Litte Things

Over the weekend, there were two things that made me observe the Master design in nature. On both occasions I was riding in the car with Bob. On Saturday, we were talking about bees. It actually came from driving by a sign that said something about "the birds and the bees." Isn't it amazing that the flowers and bees have a symbiotic relationship? The bees get nectar from the flowers to make honey. (They are so good at making honey - they make enough for us to steal from them.) Then the bees inadvertently pick up pollen from the flowers and carry it to the next flower. I'm no horticulturist, but from what I understand, cross-pollination is an important job for these little guys. Things like that don't just happen. God designed it.

The other "little thing" Bob and I discussed about God's design in nature... I was peeling an orange for him while he was driving us to church. He commented that fruit is such an interesting creation. It comes in packages for us. "Take oranges for example," he said. "After you peel the package off, it divides into bite-sized pieces." We talked about other similar food - apples, bananas, nuts... The nuts are a little harder to open, but they are ideal for squirrels to store for the winter, and God gave the squirrels those teeth that are so good for nut opening. Remarkable.

Controversy is the Best Advertisement

Word of mouth is a powerful thing. It can spread like wildfire. If you're like me, when you heard about the cartoons that are offending the Muslim world, you wanted to see them - to decide for yourself, of course. I haven't seen any, though, because no one wants to print them.

Looking at the NY Times Bestseller List, I see that James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" is No. 2 on the Paperback "Nonfiction" list. Apparently calling it nonfiction is a stretch. The author's poetic license was stretched to its limits. Apparently the truth was stretched beyond recognition. To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe the drugs have fried his brain and altered his reality. That could also explain his choppy, incoherent writing style.

The break that launched Frey's book into popularity in the first place was being named as an Oprah's Book Club selection. That's instant bestseller right there. Even better, though, someone questioned the authenticity of a few of Frey's stories. Then came the Larry King interview and then the face to face confrontation with Oprah. You couldn't plan a publicity stunt better than that.

So if you ever write a book, direct a play or produce a movie, take my advice... start a few rumors about yourself or your production. Make sure they're juicy.

The Capable Crusader

Samuel Alito was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice yesterday. I'm happy about that decision because I like his viewpoint. Perhaps people like me are pinning their hopes on Alito, Roberts and the other conservative justices to finally declare abortion illegal.

My husband would say the abortion issue is one of my "crusades." My real "crusade" however, is turning the hearts of people toward Christ. He is the ultimate solution to any problem. Though I have a concern about politics and the decision-makers in our country, the real problems lie in the hearts of the people.

When I was a crisis pregnancy counselor, my mentor told me, "If you deal with the client's relationship with God and get that right, the abortion problem will solve itself. If she's right with God, she will choose life." That advice has stuck with me. It applies to all aspects of life. If Christ is in charge of my life, I will make the right decisions because I am in His will. Jim Elliot once said, "God always gives His best to those who leave the choice to Him."

What has happened to Americans that we would choose actions and lifestyles that oppose God? If the hearts of the people are turned away from Him, no legislation will repair it.

The book of Esther is a good example of what I'm trying to say. Mordecai's enemy, Haman, tricked the king into making a law to kill all the Jewish people on a specific day. Once "the law of the Medes and Persians" was written, it could not be reversed. To make a long story short - the Jews avoided being destroyed because the king made a follow-up law saying the Jews could defend themselves. When the people of the land knew the king didn't really want the Jews destroyed, they didn't try to kill them. (This became the Jewish holiday of Purim.)

For us, it doesn't matter what the law of the land is - we should be more concerned about the hearts and minds of the people. It would not matter if abortion is legal or illegal. If the people are following God, they will make the right choice. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the blackmarket abortion business will flourish as the liquor business did during prohibition. Evil makes the most of any situation.
I saw an abortion doctor on Fox News last night. She is one of a handful who perform abortions in South Dakota, a very pro-life state. She has great fervor about her occupation. She is spiritually blind. I pray that she has a Damascus Road experience as did the abortion doctor who did an ultrasound of the procedure. The video of the ultrasound became a movie called The Silent Scream - the baby turned his head and "screamed" before he was destroyed. That doctor never performed another abortion.

Dear Lord, open the eyes of Americans.

The Chronicles of Media

I'm not sure when the feud between Christians and the entertainment industry began, but it has been around for my entire life. I'm not sure if Hollywood banned Christians from making movies of if Christians chose to ban Hollywood. Maybe it was mutual. Either way, most of the movies that have come from the mainstream movie industry have been devoid of two key ingredients: salt and light. When you set out to make anything without these two, you get a result that is dark and tasteless.

There is a revolution taking place on the big screen. Several movies have made a significant impact on the industry. The first to make Christians sit up and take notice was "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The connection for Christians was the author and the allegory. The allegory is the struggle between good and evil. Tolkein, the author, was a Christian who impacted the life of his contemporary C. S. Lewis. Lewis is the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, recently released on the big screen by Disney. The allegory in Lewis' work is more obvious, with "The Lion" representing Jesus Christ. And who could forget Mel Gibson's production, "The Passion of the Christ." Like Jesus Himself, the movie initiated great controversy. Christians sent a message through their patronage. To date, it is the tenth highest grossing movie.

Another important movie is being released January 20th. "End of the Spear" won the Crystal Heart award at the Heartland Film Festival in October. It's ironic that its producer, Mart Green, is not a movie-goer. Mart grew up in a conservative Christian home that tried to avoid the negative influences of the movie industry. He felt God was moving him to use his abundant resources (His father owns Hobby Lobby and is listed among Forbes' 400 Richest Americans.) to make a positive impact. This led him to a connection with Steve Saint, son of Nate Saint.

The story, told from the perspective of the Waodoni people, gives insight to a fifty-year-old mystery. Five men, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Roger Youderian and Ed McCully were bonded in a mission to reach the most violent people group in history. The Waodoni were completely cut off from contact with the outside world. They were killing each other and everyone who came into contact with them. But God had a plan that would focus the attention of the world on this remote tribe in Ecuador. The story lives on even as January 2006 marks the fiftieth anniversary of its climax. Don't miss this significant movie. After you see it, you'll want to see Beyond the Gates of Splendor, the documentary that preceded the movie. For more information, go to www.endofthespear.com.

In contrast, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are pairing up to film The DaVinci Code, an adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel. The only problem is - the novel is an assault on many Christian beliefs, including the divinity of Jesus Christ. I don't think it will benefit to carry protest signs in front of theaters because controversy is sometimes just free advertisement. The best thing to do is know what you believe and be ready to defend it. On the bright side, even a negative movie can generate spiritual conversation - something too often missing from our culture.