52home

10:02 a.m. Chad's Midnight Snack

52home

More Than Dinner

“It helps to imagine an ornate gold frame. Pick it up (don’t worry; it’s only pretend) and place it around the image that appears when you say ‘supper at my house.’ Bet the picture you see is very specific: These are the seats we sit in, the things we discuss. Here is the person who shows up last. That is the bowl we use for the rice…. Sitting down to a meal together draws a line around us. It encloses us and, for a brief time, strengthens the bonds that connect us with the others members of [our family], shutting out the rest of the world.”

I love photography; that is why I love this quote. It tells you to stop for a minute and observe. To pull up the image of your family mealtime. Can you see it? It can seem so trivial: What’s the big deal? You rush around, trying to get everything hot and on the table at the same time. Everyone comes, eats, leaves and you clean up. However this author is challenging us to take a step backwards and take a long, slow look at this seemingly mundane activity. There is something more that happens here.

Mealtime is a gathering. The people you love the most come to the same place at the same time. Conversations happen; memories are made. There is laughter and tears. A strong family bond begins to form—a bond that grows stronger by doing it again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

The mundane has purpose. If it weren’t for the ordinary duties of food preparation and kitchen cleanup, than this moment, this mealtime, this bond, wouldn’t exist.

So the next time you make dinner, hang that “mealtime picture” on the wall of your mind while you grate the cheese and toss the salad. You are making much more than dinner.

--from the archives

52home

August 25, 2010 8:00 p.m.

52home

Power in the Echo

“Sisters, all the advice from Vogue, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan that talks about going after and getting your man, all the blather about how in this day and age it is just as acceptable for you to initiate as for him, is just that—blather. Be confident and trust your feelings on this matter. Be confident that if he is the man you hope and wish him to be, he will play the man. You crackle the leaves a bit when he is in the area and let him know you are there. Then wait for him to initiate, or not. In the long run, you will be well served either way.” Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart, page 94

In his newly converted, youthful zeal, my dad, and a group of his friends decided that God had called them to remain single. Dad was uninterested in the efforts of women to attract his attention. Put off by their forward manner, it was easy to think that God wasn’t leading him to get married.

Until he met my mom.

When he walked into the canteen at the Christian retreat center where Mom was working for the week, she didn’t try to catch his eye. Instead, she told him the canteen was closed. After pleading for a hot dog (because he had been serving and preaching all day and was tired and hungry) she finally relented. But to this day, Dad claims the hot dog was as cold as her demeanor. (She disputes this accusation, of course!)

My dad, who only a day before thought he would remain single, was suddenly smitten. Something in him—something that wanted to initiate, pursue, and win a woman’s heart—was awakened. So he asked my mom to take a walk. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mom used to remind my sisters and me of this story when we were tempted to try to get some guy’s attention. Allow a man to win your heart, she would say. And if he doesn’t want to, then why would you want him?

God created men to initiate and he created women to respond. Or, as John Ensor also puts it, “His power is in the exclamation [of love]. Yours is in the echo.” When we remember this, things will work right in matters of the heart.

--from the archives

52home

3:34 p.m. Go Cougars! Go Chad!

52home

Just Work?

Today I was just going about my work: buying Gatorade (the red kind) and mixing jello (the green kind) for my sick husband; trying to get Tori to eat her peas and carrots (and then cleaning up the peas and carrots she threw on the floor); training Jack to obey “right away, all the way, and with a happy heart” (and “quietly” when we’re in the library, please!) and write this post.

Then Mom sent me this quote by Charles Bridges:

"It is most important habitually to contemplate our work in its proper character as a “work of faith.” As such, it can only be sustained by the active and persevering exercise of this principle. This is what makes it a means of grace to our own souls, as well as a grand medium of exalting our Divine Master.

It is faith that enlivens our work with perpetual cheerfulness. It commits every part of it to God, in the hope, that even mistakes shall be overruled for his glory; and thus relieves us from an oppressive anxiety, often attendant upon a deep sense of our responsibility. The shortest way to peace will be found in casting ourselves upon God for daily pardon of deficiencies and supplies of grace, without looking too eagerly for present fruit."

Faith transforms my work. I can find forgiveness for my impatience with the kids, I can have hope that my training efforts will not be in vain, I can wait patiently for the evidence that what I am doing for my family is doing some good after all, and I can be “enlivened with perpetual cheerfulness.”

Most of all, faith makes the laundry, the dishes, the editing, the diaper changing, the praying, and the care-giving a means of grace to my soul and a means of exalting my Savior.

It isn’t just work anymore. It’s a “work of faith.”

--from the archives

52home

2:04-2:16 p.m.

52home

He Goes With You

For many of you reading this blog, “Back to School” is where you are going in the next few weeks. Whether a private or public school, high school, college or university, you may find yourself surrounded by those who do not believe in or love the Savior.

You may be tempted to join the party scene (rebelliously indulge your sinful desires, James 1:14-15), to downplay your faith (hide it under a basket, Matt. 5:14-16), to keep an open mind (question the only eternal truth, 1 John 1:1-4), or to chase your dreams (pursue selfish ambitions, James 3:13-18) instead of running after God’s commands.

As you consider these potential temptations, you may feel weak, unable to stand, desperate for God’s help. Good. If so, may the words of the Lord to Joshua encourage you today: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).

--from the archives

52home

July 28, 2010 9:51 a.m.

52home

Friday Funnies

We leave you this week with a woman whose age caught up with her. Have a good one! Nicole for the girltalkers

A woman was sitting in the waiting room for her first appointment with a new dentist. She noticed his DDS diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly, she remembered that a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in her high school class so many years ago. Could this be the same guy I had a crush on way back then? she wondered.

She quickly discarded any such thought when she met the balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face. He’s way too old to have been my classmate, she thought to herself.

Still, after he examined her teeth, she asked, “Did you happen to attend Morgan Park High School?”

“Yes! I’m a Mustang,” he gleamed with pride.

“When did you graduate?” she asked.

“1959,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

“You were in my class!” she exclaimed.

“Really?” he said, looking at her closely. “What did you teach?”

--from the archives

52home

July 25, 2010 6:50 p.m.

52home

Your Dream House

Speaking of dream houses, do you (like me) find yourself desiring what you do not have?

You may be longing for the day when you can move away from your parents or get rid of your roommates in exchange for a husband and home. Or maybe you can’t wait until you and your husband can finally afford to purchase a house rather than pay rent on an apartment. Or possibly you resent being stuffed into a small house with a large family. What you wouldn’t do for a larger dwelling place!

Do you (like me) find yourself tempted to be discontent with your home?

If so, then this counsel author Randy Alcorn once gave a discontent couple is for you (and me) today:

“When I was a pastor, a couple came to my office and told me they wanted to be able to give more money to the church and to missions. “But we’ve always had this dream for a beautiful home in the country,” they added, “and we can’t seem to shake it.  Is that wrong?”
          No it isn’t.  In fact, the dream of a perfect home is from God.  It’s just that such a dream cannot and will not be fulfilled in this life.  Our dream house is coming; we don’t have to build it here.  In fact, we can’t. (In Light of Eternity, pp. 155-156.)

We may never have that perfect home we desire here on earth. But “our dream house is coming!” It’s in heaven, waiting there for us, as Jesus promised: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2)

Dear Lord, may my mind and affections be set, not on the things of this earth, but on my eternal home in heaven where I will one day be with you. This is my ultimate dream house—and not just a dream, it is a certain hope! Thank you for the work of your Son on the cross, which brought me into your family, and, one day, will bring me into your home forever!

--from the archives

52home

July 21, 2010 11:41 a.m.

52home

Talking to Your Tears

After reading Friday’s post, girltalk reader Andrea encouraged us to check out an essay from John Piper’s A Godward Life entitled “Talking to Your Tears.” We’re quoting a small excerpt here, but you’re really going to want to read the rest; so go ahead and buy the book!

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” Psalm 126:5-6

“This psalm teaches the tough truth that there is work to be done whether I am emotionally up for it or not, and it is good for me to do it. Suppose you are in a season of heartache and discouragement, and it is time to sow seed. Do you say, ‘I can’t sow the field this spring, because I am brokenhearted and discouraged’? If you do that, you will not eat in the winter. Suppose you say instead, ‘I am heartsick and discouraged. I cry if the milk spills at breakfast. I cry if the phone and doorbell ring at the same time. I cry for no reason at all, but the field needs to be sowed. That is the way life is. I do not feel like it, but I will take my bag of seeds and go out in the fields and do my crying while I do my duty. I will sow in tears.’

If you do that, the promise of this psalm is that you will ‘reap with shouts of joy.’ You will ‘come home with shouts of joy, bringing your sheaves with you,’ not because the tears of sowing produce the joy of reaping, but because the sheer sowing produces the reaping. We need to remember this even when our tears tempt us to give up sowing.”  A Godward Life, pp. 89-90

So what fields in your life need to be sowed today? Even if you cry while you do your duty, you will, one day reap with joy.

--from the archives

52home

July 21, 2010 9:24 a.m.

52home