Lynn's Happenings

This week has found me driving back and forth to and fro Charlotte house hunting.  After looking at a dozen different properties, I have found one that I really, really love.  I honestly thought that it would be a long time before I found something that felt like "home" and had those lists of characteristics that we wanted.  Ken and I sat down and compiled a list of things that we wanted in a house and this house fits almost all of them.  We didn't want one that was new, it isn't new, it's about 18 years old.  It is exactly what we wanted to pay for a home, when does that ever happen?  We wanted it to be one we would want to entertain in, it is.  It has a large fenced in back yard for the dogs, and it is tucked away across from the Lake, but not Lake priced.  It is split levels, with four levels, contemporary.  Odd for me, but I fell in love with it.  It has windows everywhere, two gas fireplaces, a deck all around the back, with a rec. room downstairs, just waiting for small groups, and teen-agers!  Now, I have to show it to Ken.  Pray that if it doesn't work out that I will know that God has an even better one for us.  'Cause I can get my heart wrapped up pretty quick.  

I also went to visit a Christian School associated with a PCA church in Rock Hill SC.  It is only fifteen minutes from this house, probably twenty with traffic.  It has 655 students, k-12, and I was very impressed.  Does God answer prayer or what?  

Serving while waiting on Him.......................Lynn

Farewell

I wrote this about a month before moving was inevitable.  At the time, I thought we would live in our Southern Pines home till retirement.  Now, our home of fifteen years is officially under contract and we are looking for a new home in Charlotte.  Mixed feelings, ambivalence reigns.  I do look forward to the many memories that God will give us in the new home.  Sunday nights Ken has been leading an evangelistic Bible Study in Charlotte at one of the members of the core groups homes.  One of the couples now want to host one for their friends.  I am looking forward to the time when we can host unbelievers in our own home just as we did at Windsor Lane.  

I won't always live where I live now. Some day we will pack it all up and move to a different house, with different neighbors, different yards, rooms, and memories. Lately, now that I am almost fifty, I have caught myself thinking more backward than I do forward. I also have been given to sitting on the front porch looking out over my yard. Nothing is permanent. Nothing will last forever.

As I sit here, I recall the time that Karen broke both of her arms when she was 10, while riding the neighbor's scooter. I can see all of our five children playing football, playing tag, or capture the flag with innumerable amounts of other kids from the neighborhood, from backyard Bible Clubs, or birthday parties. I can also see girls dressed up in prom gowns taking pictures with their dates. Smiling the smiles of dreams of knights in shining armor coming to sweep them off their feet. Visions of others packing up as they go off to see what they are made of at the university. At that point they are completely grown up (in their minds) and of course they know that they will change the world. As we look on, wondering in how the falleness of reality will set into their souls, and they will then realize that He who holds the world in His hands will use them in ways that they have never dreamed of, and they will be humbled in the process, but He alone will gain the glory.

On my front porch I see across the street to our neighbor's house. About thirteen years ago my husband led the Dad that lives there to Christ, and life for them and us has never been the same. Our daughters became best friends, our sons became best buddies, and we gained a family that will last for eternity. Oh I know, we may very well loose them along the way. Distance could very well come between us, but eternity will always bring us back together. How many meals have we shared, how many tears, how many feuds, how many forgivenesses. I can no longer count. It doesn't really matter anymore. For the past thirteen years they have been knitted to our hearts in ways that we can not describe. I can also look down the street and see other friends that have graced our lives. Children that I love, that I have seen grow, change, develop, accept Jesus and be spiritually renewed. All from my front porch. My blessings are as numerous as the pine cones that dot my pine straw.

In my mind I can see the hundreds of people that have passed through my door to come to dinner, a small group, a chat, or a crisis situation. The talks of life, priorities, laughs, Christ. I see many, many people opening the Word seeing what God has for them and their lives, and their families lives. I also see and feel the betrayals, the sting of hurts unmentioned, the anger, the annoyance of sin when it is confronted, as the messenger is shot, vomited on, and gossiped about. That is when we sense in a very small, shallow way how our own sin caused the God of the Universe to say; "forgive them for they know not what they do." All from my front porch. I can only surmise, dream, or contemplate the ways in the future in which God will once again dot my memories like pine cones at Raisin Cakes Estates, where the pine straw is sprinkled with pine cones, memories, tears, and laughter. What more could you ask out of life?

The Irony of Death

I am sitting here watching the birds outside my window.  They neither sow nor do they reap, yet their Heavenly Father takes care of them.  He has promised the same to us.  It is amazing to me how God uses everything in our lives to paint a picture of Himself to us.  Little things, like birds, dogs, novels, and walking.  On my walks it seems that during the  time of being all alone with the dogs, observations of the Father abound.  Last week the snow was incredible, bringing to mind the verses about "being whiter than snow."  Everyday observing the instincts of the dogs to hunt, propelled by an inner drive giving them purpose.  Watching their faces, their glee at smelling a prey of some sort, Dallas diving into the water when it is 25 degrees outside paying the cost for fulfilling what he was made to do and to be.  

I have been engrossed this week in the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  He writes of just those things.  Everyday life, seeing how God weaves stories into all of our lives, giving us and those around us purpose.  Families with the same hopes, dreams, goals, and trials that are peculiar to all of mankind.  Tolstoy weaves a tale of "every man."   "Every man" trying to find meaning in his life.  Some of his characters find it ultimately in God, some of them don't, but through all of the comings and goings of these families the author has them think of ultimate issues, just like every one in life does.  It is a myth that modern man does not think in terms of ultimate issues, of life and death, of purpose and meaning.  "Every man" does.  We universally wrestle with the question of whether we will be "the captain of our soul," as the poem Invictus tells us, or whether we will be chained, bound, and die, but be free.  The apostle Paul says we are being led behind the victors procession, we are captive slaves.  No longer bound by the constraints of sin, but captive of another.  One that can truly be our master, one that wrote our purpose for living into our minds and hearts, then we are compelled to be His slaves, joyfully serving a master that takes care of us just as He takes care of the birds of the air.  

The one thing that sets us free though is the one thing that we run from.  Written into the fabric of the mystery of the universe is that death is the way of life.  Satan tempted our first parents and death became a reality.  Christ conquered that death.  He, Christ, knows that the way to real life is death, and that is the object of Satan's worst lies.  He makes us, even as Christians, turn toward "his" definition of life which is in reality death, and away from true life which Christ says is in our dying.  This is the irony of all ironies, written everywhere.  We need only to open our eyes to see it all around us.  Does all of this make it easy, or less of a battle, or something that comes naturally?  No, it is a battle daily.  Paul says he dies daily.  It is not a once in a life time thing, like Hannah Hurnard, or Watch Man Nee says.  It is a daily dying of self.  

 I have developed some resolves, or turn that around and call them red flags for me to test myself on this, questions that I ask myself and ask of God the Holy Spirit, whether He sees this in me or not.  When I am in a crowd, do I feel lost, insignificant?  When I am in a smaller group of people, do I have to be the center of attention, or am I even down cast at not being noticed as I think I should be?  Am I easily offended when people notice others works, but pass mine by?  How do I listen to others, not what do I say to them, do I listen to them?  Can I be quiet and not speak of  my opinions?  Can I be marginalized by others, not needed, even not wanted, and still rejoice in the one that alone gives me significance?  This is just a sample of the thoughts that go through my head.  Calvin says in the first chapter of his Institutes, that in order to know ourselves rightly, we must gaze on Him, and His character.  The more I do this, the more and more I realize His Amazing grace.  I can not even stand in His presence, and yet He gives me dignity, because I am His.  Only that, I am His.  Oh the depths, Oh the riches of His love to me.  Death, life, which will you choose today?  

Mere Christianity; Series Part #3

This is my third part in a three part series on the book Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.  The blog Challies.com has gathered a group to study Christian Classics, and this is the book that we are all reading right now.  You can find his web page by going to my blog roll on the side of this blog.  

 Christian Behavior is the next section of his book.  He defines Christian behavior by pointing out its three areas; relationships between man and man, things inside each man, and the relationship between man and the creator. At this point in his discussion he points specifically to Christianity.  He describes the Cardinal virtues; prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude. Being told about these virtues in the Law we then quickly realize that we cannot possess or live out these traits without a change from within. These cardinal virtues deal with how man relates to man, and we fast realize that to relate rightly we must have a change of heart. This in turn quickly makes us realize we need desperately to be rightly related to God, our Creator.   Lewis speaks of forgiveness, sexual morality, Christian marriage, which all begin from rightly being in relationship to God.
His conclusion to this section is excellent. Christianity seems to start and be all about morality, and although it starts there it leads to something beyond morality. He said, “One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things except perhaps as a joke. Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.”  Someone that is not completely immersed in grace could never write these words.  In fact, if someone has a problem with this section, then they have issues in their own heart with pride, arrogance, and "elder brother syndrome."  I think back on these concepts as a red flag for my own heart and soul.  When I have a problem with pride these words sting, and bring me to repent of my pride, arrogance, and my own "elder brother syndrome."  This is the heart of the Gospel.  It is not of me, it is all of His Grace! These last two sections in Lewis are his masterpieces.  They have been used to literally change my life.  
Book Four of Mere Christianity is titled, Beyond Personality: or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity. Lewis likens doctrine to a map, essentially practical. Christ is the very likeness of God. He is not created in the sense that He is the very essence of God as a man “begets". Christ but makes men. This is where the practical comes in; we were made to be taken into the life of God. As a Christian says his prayers to get in touch with God, God is prompting him to pray through Christ, which God the Spirit is prompting him to the goal of being in touch with God. This is the Trinity to Lewis.  This is the essence of personality, personhood, personal.  This is the mystery of the one and the many.  There is so much more to say, so much more to explain, but I will leave that to a different day a different post. He then goes on to explain sin and depravity and ends with the gospel, and the Principle of First and Second things.  This is worth the reading!!  Matthew 6:33 explained in a concise, understandable, and practical way.  I will never forget learning this from Lewis.  
When I was in college I was able to give Mere Christianity to everyone of my secular professors. I think it is a marvelous treatise on Christianity.  It is a marvelous way to sit down with someone you are disciplining and give them their first encounter with a master as he lays down the Gospel.  As you do this, you can bring in the passages of Scripture that are pertinent.  If you have a problem with some of his doctrine (as the Calvinists do in the discussion on Challies) then just glean what you can, be completely anchored in your beliefs, and learn, learn, learn.  I am a Calvinist, and have learned so much.  I am still a Calvinist, and I am not an Anglican nor am I a Roman Catholic.  I have learned so much from this man.
The Church today needs to gain the concept that Lewis brilliantly illustrates, that Christianity is a far superior worldview than any other.  This is a great place for Christians to start thinking in these types of terms. 

Time for Missions

My dear friends The Scotts have just returned to the Philippines for their next leg of the journey in being full time, career missionaries.  We have spent time with them, Lindsey (their daughter), Cheryl, and Sandra when we have gone to Manilla.  Lindsey is now back in the states. My husband has been able to go three times, and I have gone twice.  I really hope and pray I will be able to go back for a visit sometime in 2009.  They are all very dear to my heart.  Please, I know a lot of you know them, so please pray for them as they make the transition, for Lindsey to be separated from her folks, and that Deborah and Steven will soon be into a routine; their blogs are listed in my blog roll.  

All for the Kingdom..............................Lynn

Alexandre Dumas's Works of Fiction

Time out from Mere Christianity for a different kind of book review.  

I have been spending hours, literally hours, reading as many novels by Alexandre Dumas as possible, all unabridged of course!  I can't get enough of this clean (by today's standards), swashbuckling, honor driven Cavalier.  The novels are so romantic, not just in a love between a man and a woman, but romantic in the sense that his characters are motivated by high visions of grandeur, righteousness, and an unbelievable chivalry.  The culture at the time had a clear sense of right and wrong, class distinctions, and majestic honor, that ours doesn't even understand.  It has been fun to sneak a peak at the way in which life was honored, but at the same time how these swashbuckling heroes were willing to die for the right cause, and there is always a sense of the eternal worth laying down one's life for.  

As our young people immerse themselves in novels such as the Twilight Series or The Series of the Traveling Pants in which there is nothing sacred except what one wants at the moment, nothing is sacred besides what it feels like at the time, nothing is worth more than getting what I want now, and there is nothing worth dying for, our young readers would do well to read these novels that place self under the sacred.  If you or someone you know is looking for a good read  point them to Dumas.  I just finished Queen Margot last night, and cried for ten minutes at the end!  

A word of warning, he has long descriptions, all the kings and queens can get ever so confusing, and he tends to jump around a great deal.  I bought all of these novels on CD (unabridged) and listened to them.  The recordings are marvelous, and everyone that I listened to uses different voices for all the characters.  The Musketeer Novels are as clean as the driven snow.  Queen Margot tells of the realities of the monarchy all married to figure heads instead of the love of your life, but there is never anything that would even come close to making you blush.  There is political intrigue, romance, danger, espionage, and lots of great humor too.  

Dumas was a marvel.  He wrote and published 650 novels, and I don't know how many plays.  His imagination was unlimited.  Most of the Musketeer series were just that, series or serials.  I hope you over look the length and attempt one, or get it on CD and listen to it as a family on a long vacation.  That is how we listened to The Count of Monte Cristo (the first time).  Margaret, Karen, and Bekah and I traveled all the way to Oklahoma to visit a friend, and we listened to the Count then.  

Happy Reading, more on Mere Christianity tomorrow...........................Lynn

Time for Family

We went to Montreat College this weekend to watch Margaret play b-ball!  Had a ball.  Just wanted you to see a couple of pictures.  Thanks to Callie (Oliver's girl friend) for taking the pictures.  Unfortunately, the one she was in did not come out.

Mere Christianity; Series Part #2

More on the first part of the book.  I am trying to make it short in order to keep your attention, and hopefully you will actually read it!

Lewis believed that the moral laws are innate and people naturally perceived them.  When we examine the moral laws of the other major religions, and of ancient peoples, the similarities far out weigh the differences. He uses the example of someone saying that there is no such thing as objective right and wrong. This person cannot live in the way in which his philosophy tells him.  All men have a standard, even if it is just self-interest.
Lewis goes on to say we have knowledge of right and wrong, but we do not keep this objective standard.  We feel the law of nature squeezing us into it's mold, but deep down we know we do not conform. These laws are different from mere instincts, because one does not usually have to decide between two different impulses. If the choice is to save a man that is drowning or be safe, then the moral law tells you deep inside to help him at the sacrifice of yourself. This moral law is stronger than the other impulses, and often supersedes it. If no set of moral laws were better than any others then what would be the difference between the Nazis and the United States society? Of course that is actually where the debate taken us, it is called multiculturalism.  Which is a natural path from relativism.  
CS Lewis then says that to get someone to this point will lead you to get them then to ask the question of where, if there is any objective standard, where does it come from?  Who is the power behind the law? He is not yet speaking of Christianity, but just getting his readers to find out what the something is that is directing the universe. Today we call this pre-evangelism.  He wants to direct his readers to a good, an absolute goodness, and if there is absolute goodness then this absolute goodness must hate what we do. He says God (absolute goodness) is the only comfort. He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.  Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger – according to the way you react to it.  He said we start with dismay, and end in unspeakable comfort.
The next part of Mere Christianity is explaining what Christians believe.  Now he switches gears. He takes the idea of atheism and turns it quickly to theism by showing its absurdity. Atheists have to prove that they are right, and all others are wrong. Atheists have to prove that in a world without meaning (to them) why is it we are always grasping for it? Dualism comes close to truth, but we have to rule it out too, because evil is a parasite of good (which Augustine said before Lewis). If this was not the case then we would have two competing gods and our choice of one over the other would not be good or bad or only our own personal preference. This rules out Dualism.
Christians believe that God created all things good, but evil was chosen. God made man with free-will which makes evil “possible," it also makes love, goodness and joy worth having. We then freely had the choice to love and unite to God out of that free will.  The moment God made the self then there became a “possibility” of placing that self before God, and wanting to be like God as Satan said before our fall. This Satan put into the first creatures minds – to be like gods, find happiness apart from God. This is an impossibility.  As Augustine said, “You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.” (Confessions, p.21) What do we do then with the moral filth in our lives in order to find peace with a good God?There had to be a God sized answer to that.  God, in Christ, became man so that He could take upon Himself the wrong that we all know that we have done. He suffered and died in humiliation taking the wrath of God upon Himself.  In order to redeem a people for Himself.   He could do this as the God-Man, being the perfect sacrifice. Christ became our peace, so we would be united to God (Ephesians 2:14-18). 

More tomorrow.........Lord willing..........Lynn

Mere Christianity; Series Part #1

 

In this book review I will endeavor to explain the content of the book, and will hold my commentary to the end of the series.  Please refer to Challies.com for other pertinent commentary on Lewis and this his most well known book.  
Mere Christianity was written in order to set down what all Christians agreed on, not what we argue about. Lewis wrote it as an apologetic for the death, resurrection and incarnation of Christ. This is the testimony of Christ.  Lewis says in the Introduction that, “Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.” This goal was the premise of Mere Christianity.
Lewis had not been a Christian most of his life, and therefore had an affinity for skeptics. He felt that by explaining Christianity in this most basic way he could win some of them over to his way of thinking.  He sets out to show the superiority of the Christian worldview over the naturalistic and pantheistic worldviews.  He wanted Mere Christianity not necessarily to be a theological treatise nor a dogmatic, but rather a way of living and thinking.
He sets out to prove his thesis, that Christianity is a far superior world-view, by separating his material into four different sections. The first book is titled, “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” The second book is titled “What Christians Believe.” The third book is titled "Christian Behavior”, and the last book is titled “Beyond Personality: or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity.”
The first part begins by showing that all humans by nature have some sort of agreement as to what is right and wrong. Lewis calls this the Law of Nature and this law governs all humans. Moderns have come to believe that the laws of nature are the scientific laws such as gravitation or the laws of physics. However, the laws of nature, according to Lewis, are the moral laws that govern human behavior. The difference between the two is that humans do not choose gravity or scientific laws, but can choose to either obey or disobey the moral laws that govern everyone.

More to come..................Lynn

Sometimes

Sometimes,
I think of you as a genie in an Aladdin's lamp, all I have to do is rub the side and my wish is granted.
Sometimes,
I treat You as though You were a gumball machine, put the coin in and out pops what tastes good.
Sometimes,
I think of You as a Santa Claus, all I have to do is be good in my own eyes, and all that I want is given to me because of my goodness.
Sometimes,
I picture myself as a rhetorician that has only to speak the right words and all will be right.
Sometimes,
I see You as a drive-through window, out of a list of things I see, all I have to do is tell You which I want and it is given.
Sometimes,
after not even giving You the time of day, I ask You for protection for my family as if You were secret service agent promised to protect and defend.
You have condescended to me to be my friend. The God who created all things.
The God who gave His only Son on my behalf.
I always want more.
Give me a good life, a successful ministry, friends, children who love You, protection from all ills.
Instead,
Give me grace to adore You when You say no.
Give me grace to worship You when things are withheld.
Give me grace to praise You even when life is unraveling,
for all to see that You are worth living for

because

You alone are worthy, and allow me to call You Father, Friend, Savior, and Redeemer.

Sometimes.......

Founder's Quote

"Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws. He is obliged, consequently, to contribute his share to the expense of this protection; and to give his personal service, or an equivalent, when necessary. But no part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent."

--John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

In the Between Time or Under Construction

In the between time, somewhere between worrying and trusting,  give me the grace to carry on toward faith.

In the between time, when my mind likes to awaken my heart to anxieties, dangers and fears, give me the grace to move even a little at a time, towards trust.  

In the between time, when people, circumstances, and situations are not solved, not ended, or not re-solved, give me the grace to wait for Your solutions of peace, not my "get it over with so I don't have to deal with it mindset."

In the between time when loneliness strangles my soul, when I look up to Heaven and all I see or here is "silence," when I turn to the left or the right and see no one, give me the grace to make the choice of trusting in the unseen.  

In the between time when Your saints are holding on to You before the trumpet sounds, give us the grace to know You are here, You are for us and You will call us Home.....

 after the between time.  

I'm BACK!

Christmas is always a busy time for everyone.  This Christmas and New Year's was no different from most of yours; busy, family, friends, games, shopping, and lots of fun.  I did not blog, and was ready to get back into the swing of things when, our internet went down.  Since last week I have been dealing with our wireless company and finally ten minutes ago the worker dude came to tell me it was all their fault, and that it was up and going again!!!   Yea.   

Happy New Year Everyone.  I sure hope you have not given up on me.  This year figures to be a great and happy one.  I hope it is for you all too.  

Awaiting the Bridegroom that takes precious care of His Bride...............Lynn