such small hands

Whose Calling? Yours.

This is the talk I shared at the St. Paul Women's Retreat yesterday. 

“For consider your calling, sisters: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” -- 1 Corinthians 1:26-30

As we consider the many different aspects of our calling as Christian women, I want to focus on how a Christian’s daily work is a holy calling and a priestly work because of God’s gift of faith.

So let’s look at a passage in the first chapter of Exodus. Exodus is so dominated by the strong personality of Moses and the wonders God performed in freeing His people from Egypt, it is easy to overlook two brave and faithful women who played an important part in God’s story of redemption.

Perhaps this is why Moses mentioned these women by name — Shiphrah and Puah — and told their story. God used their faithful obedience to make Israel the strong and numerous people that Moses led out of Egypt many years after their story.

Exodus 1:15-21

Remember that the faithful women in the Bible weren’t all that different from you and me. They were real, human women who trusted a great God. I’ve heard other Bible teachers say that we can gain a lot of insight from Scripture by putting ourselves in the place of the characters. Shiphrah might have told her story this way:

 

I am Shiphrah, midwife to the Hebrew slaves of the Egyptians. My friend and partner, Puah, is home taking care of her newborn son — her sixth child. I have five of my own. Yes, the Lord God has greatly blessed us! And here’s the story of how that came to be … I knew the stories of my ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and how our people came to be in Egypt through God’s providence for them. I have wanted to be a midwife since I was a little girl. I have always loved babies and thought there could be nothing greater than to help bring new lives into the world. My friend Puah and I came to be the chief midwives for the Hebrew people — assisting the older midwives when we were still young women. That one day when Pharaoh called us to the palace — we were terrified — and he told us that from now on we were to kill every baby boy and let the girls live. We were horrified by his command, but said nothing at the time. This was a very great evil that Pharaoh was telling us to do. So we did not obey his command. We didn’t know what would happen to us, but we couldn’t disobey the Lord God in this way. Then Pharaoh called us to come back to the palace. We thought that this would be the end of us. We didn’t know what to tell him — it was obvious that we were not following his command. Puah and I prayed together that God would be with us, just as He was with our father Joseph in prison. We asked God to give us the right words to answer Pharaoh. When he asked us why we let the little boys live, we just seemed to know what to say. Hebrew women are stronger than Egyptian women, we said. By the time we get to the home, they have already given birth. This was not a lie to save our skins. We had seen it happen many times. It seemed to us that the hand of God was with the Hebrew women as they labored and they brought forth strong, healthy babies. For some reason, our answer seemed to satisfy Pharaoh. For the time being, our people were safe. Maybe what we did was not such a big thing. It is just what any of us should do, no matter what job we are doing. We were faithful to God and obedient to Him in our calling. He used our obedience in a mighty way, making Israel a large and strong nation.

 

By worldly standards, Shiphrah and Puah weren’t wise — but they knew that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. They weren’t powerful — but in God’s strength, they defied Pharaoh. They weren’t of noble birth — but their names are written in the Book of Life.

We can never tell how God might want to use us to do great things in another person’s life. Not all of us are called to acts of civil disobedience like Shiphrah and Puah. But all of us are called to be faithful and obedient right where we are.

God has placed each of us in unique situations — families, the church, our workplaces. We interact with people as we shop, go to doctor’s appointments, take our kids to school or day care.

As we finish our time together today, and when we return home, let’s spend some time thinking of ways God might use us to glorify Him in our callings.

I Need a Little Christmas, Right This Very Minute

Psalm 100

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into His presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, He is God!
It is He who made us, and we are His;
we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise!
Give thanks to Him; bless His name!
For the Lord is good;
His steadfast love endures forever,
And His faithfulness to all generations.

I put on some Christmas music last night while I was making dinner. I don’t care that the First Sunday of Advent is still more than a week away, and Christmas itself a month off. World events of recent weeks have left me wrung out and sorely in need of Joy.

Taking a cursory glance at my Facebook feed, it seems to me that we Christians have been an especially joyless, thin-skinned passel of sourpusses lately. From the annual boo-hooing about store clerks saying “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” to the tempest in a Starbucks coffee cup — it just wears me out. I need Hope. I need tidings of comfort and joy.

Aye and therefore be merry. Rejoice and be you merry. Set sorrows aside. Christ Jesus, our Savior was born on this tide. — “A Virgin Most Pure”

Surely human beings from the dawn of time celebrated a winter holiday because they also needed Hope and Joy. The darkness encroaches on shortening days, and we need to be reminded that the sun will come again, that there is still reason to celebrate. For us Christians, that winter holiday is Christmas. I know it pales in theological significance to Easter … and yet there would be no Easter without Christmas — because “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Besides, Christmas has all the best music and food!

Yet with the woes of sin and strife, our world has suffered long. Beneath the angel’s strain have rolled 2,000 years of wrong. And man at war with man hears not the love song which they bring. O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing. — “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”

The Baby in the stable came to set us free from our worst enemies: death, hell and sin. In the midst of cancer, terrorism and injustice — all of the things that weigh down our hearts — there is Hope. So, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, set sorrows aside. Sing the carols, light the tree, frost the cookies. Show all the weary world the tidings of comfort and joy. 

Abiding in the Word

Like most Christians who love the Bible, I have often struggled with having a daily “quiet time,” several minutes a day set aside for Bible reading, study and prayer.

Our fathers and mothers in the faith tell us that early morning is the best time for this, and yet that just hasn’t always worked in every season of my life. Crazy work hours, taking care of young children, etc. often means that alone time with God is postponed until later. But I’ve found that it’s so important that it’s worth making an appointment with God to do it — whenever you can do it. A few other things I’ve learned about myself and my time alone with God:

1. I REALLY need it! Because the Word of God transforms me. The times in my life when I have neglected daily time in Scripture have been times when I have wandered so far away from God, only He could bring me back. I think my own thoughts. I think what’s wrong is right. “I have stored up Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” — Psalm 119: 11The day just seems to go better when I start with absorbing what God has to say, asking Him to order my steps that day, and taking all my stresses and concerns to Him.
2. I need quiet and solitude. No music, no one else in the room.
3. I need to hear from God before I let in the “noise” of e-mail and social media. Until just recently, I spent the first moments of my day checking e-mail and Facebook. Then I’d get to my quiet time after my husband left for work. My reason was that my brain was just too foggy before that first cup of coffee to think about reading the Bible and prayer. Trouble is, my brain would get too cluttered with the stuff going on in the world and what I needed to get done that day before it could rest in God’s word. Starting this summer, I’ve been trying to change this habit.
4. I need structure. I can’t just open my Bible to some random place and start reading. I lose focus, get distracted with other thoughts, and pretty soon I’m falling into old, bad habits. So I have found three resources that help me stay accountable and in the Word:

 

• Small group women’s Bible study at church. We’ve been meeting for several years, these women I trust with my secret heart, on Monday morning. What a great way to start the week! We’ve done several of the Beth Moore studies, and in recent years have been using the LCMS Lifelight materials. We’ve done books of the Bible: Acts, the Gospel of John, Ecclesiates/Song of Solomon … and topics, such as the Christian’s Mission. The workbook has five days of “homework” that help you dig into Scripture, think about it and apply it.
• Love God Greatly. When our women’s group is on recess (usually for Advent, Lent and summer), I turn to the Love God Greatly studies. There’s a reading plan for five days a week that uses the SOAP study method — Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer — plus suggested memory verses and weekly challenges to apply what you’re learning. The summer study was on Psalm 119, which I loved, and they start Galatians after Labor Day. I started doing these with an online group. Lately, not many in the group are still doing the studies, but we keep in touch and pray for one another.
• First5.org smartphone app. This is a recent discovery that I have started using in “between times.” It’s encouragement to spend the first five minutes of your day in the Word. Monday through Friday you get a brief devotional and there’s a video weekend wrap-up with the devotional writers. First 5 just finished John’s gospel and started Genesis today.

I hope that sharing some of my quiet time strategies might encourage you to devote regular time daily to God’s Word. What do you do in your time alone with God?

Truly Amazing

These days, a quick scan of Facebook, Pinterest or TV shows might convince you that the world is full of amazing things. Maybe some of those things really deserve to be called “amazing,” but most of them are not. They may be beautiful, fun, delicious, entertaining, amusing or any number of other colorful adjectives. However, the word “amazing” has been rendered almost meaningless through overuse.

At Palm Sunday service, we sang Chris Tomlin’s “Jesus Messiah.” I was singing, “His body the bread, His blood the wine, broken and poured out all for love. The whole earth trembled and the veil was torn. Love so amazing, love so amazing …”

And it hit me.

THAT’S what’s truly amazing!

It’s not the recipe I tried for dinner; or the movie I saw last week; or the latest episode of “Mad Men.” It’s not even the “blood moon” lunar eclipse, though I understand it was pretty impressive. “Amazing” won’t even describe my daughter’s wedding next year — although I am certain it will be joyous, beautiful and full of love.

The events we remember on Good Friday and Easter, Jesus’ death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins — even MY sins — are truly amazing. That the Lord of heaven and earth would take on flesh and suffer a cruel death, then rise to life again so that I could be alive, not dead. So that I could be a child of God, not an enemy. That, my friends, is a wonder you never will comprehend.

“Amazing love, how can it be that Thou, my God, should die for me?”

Rotting My Socks

I shared in my previous post how a few women from my church have formed a casual book club to read and discuss John Ortberg's "The Life You've Always Wanted," which is subtitled: "Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People." We're in chapters 7 and 8 this week, dealing with servanthood and confession.

So far, I can say truthfully that this book is rotting my socks. That's an old expression from "back in the day," my college days specifically. It was a common phrase among the Christian kids I hung out with, to describe a book, or Scripture, or experience that God was using to bless or convict someone spiritually. For example, "That talk by Dawson Bell on losing your first love really rotted my socks! I really need to get back on track."

I've experienced both blessing and conviction as I've been reading. Best of all, I think I learned something new about God. At least, it is new to me: In the same way that God is love, God is joy. Here's Ortberg:

Joy is at the heart of God's plan for human beings. The reason for this is worth pondering awhile: Joy is at the heart of God himself. We will never understand the significance of joy in human life until we understand its importance to God.

He goes on to observe that God's joy simply permeated the act of creation. When he spoke into being the light, heavenly bodies, land, sea and sky, all the creatures that live in them, and human beings, God said they were delightful. Then Father, Son and Holy Spirit had a little dance party. We may tire of sunrises, take the daily sunset for granted, think every daisy looks the same ... but God never tires of them. He is still delighted because his very nature is joy.

God also knows sorrow. Jesus is remembered, among other things, as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." But the sorrow of God, like the anger of God, is his temporary response to a fallen world. That sorrow will be banished forever from his heart on the day the world is set right. Joy is God's basic character. Joy is his eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe.

And there's been plenty of conviction, too. I can see how I need to let God slow me down, to learn what it really means to pray, to give up my stubborn and defensive attitude when I'm criticized. I have so much to learn. But I am not content staying where I am.

 

Iscariot

"Iscariot" by Tosca Lee

Best-selling novelist Tosca Lee tackles the story of the man who may be the most despised character in the New Testament --- Judas Iscariot. If you are familiar with the Gospels, you think you know Judas, the man who was paid 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus Christ with a kiss. But "Iscariot" will change the way you think about Judas, and in so doing, it changes the way you think about Jesus.

 Lee masterfully weaves together familiar stories from the Gospels, historical events, and extensive research into Jewish life and customs at the time of Jesus. The result is a somewhat speculative  first-person account of the life experiences that could have made Judas the sort of man who followed Jesus, loved him, and yet turned him over to the Jewish authorities.

Christians today, with the benefit of hindsight and the New Testament, can't understand the overwhelming hope for a Messiah that permeated 1st century Jewish culture. The prophets had been silent for 400 years. Rome held its Palestinian provinces in an iron grip, charging exorbitant taxes and crushing any hint of rebellion. More than one Jewish uprising led by a self-styled Messiah had been put down by mass crucifixions --- crosses literally lining the roadsides.

One could imagine how Judas, growing up in this kind of culture, would have certain ideas of what the real Messiah would do, how he would act, what he would teach. Tosca Lee gives us a Judas who has suffered unimaginable suffering and loss at the hands of the Romans:

"I was a boy, missing his brother. I was a child, looking on the broken body of his father. I was a young man, knowing that my new brother existed out of my mother's shame, and only because she had wanted to feed me."

Judas has every reason to be skeptical of Jesus, to doubt whether he is the Messiah. But Judas is drawn to him, not by the miraculous healings so much as by Jesus' love for him.

Through Judas, we get a sense of how Jesus continually surprised, scandalized and provoked the very people who wanted to support him. How he turned the accepted understanding of the Messiah inside out. Devout observers of the Law wondered, reasonably, "Would the real Messiah break the Sabbath, touch the unclean, associate with sinners?"

It's a question that Christians grapple with today: What is the nature of the kingdom of God? What does it look like in real life? This passage expresses it eloquently:

"My master had dirtied his hands on the leper and the paralytic both. Now he dirtied them in public with the tax collector. I began to wonder if that was the way it was, that one must dirty his hands to heal. It was as though the world was backward with him, and that purity was the truest contagion."

The first gift that "Iscariot" gave me was being able to see Judas through new eyes, and to wonder, "Would I have done the same, in that time and place? Have I not made decisions that seemed right at the time and turned into disaster?"

Seeing Jesus in a new light is the second great gift that "Iscariot" gave to me. Everything about Jesus was unsettling to the devout 1st century Jew: He healed on the Sabbath; instead of ritual purification he spoke of defilement coming from within; he claimed to forgive sins; he called himself the Bread of Life and said people were to eat his flesh and drink his blood! The message of the cross is still provocative, scandalous and --- to some --- foolishness. As Christians, we lose something if we forget how the Gospel is meant to turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6). 

 

 

Ash Wednesday

Today marks the beginning of the Lenten season for many Christian traditions. In my own LCMS church, we'll begin this season of repentance with special midweek services and tonight there will be ashes on my forehead. The Scripture readings for today are all about repentance. Here are some key verses:

"Yet even now," declares the Lord,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments."
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.
--- Joel 2:12-13

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of my salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
--- Psalm 51:10-12

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. --- 2 Corinthians 5:20b-21

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." --- Matthew 6:19-20

There is a tradition of "giving up" something for Lent, a spiritual discipline that is intended to focus attention more on the things of God. This year, I am intending to take at least a partial fast from playing my favorite Facebook game, Mafia Wars. Seriously, I could waste hours a day on this game --- and I have. But between now and Easter, I want to use that time to read Scripture, pray, write for this blog, and read other books. 

Travails of a Christian News Anchor

Do the principles of journalism ethics conflict with a journalist’s personal First Amendment rights? The question is being debated in a conflict between Detroit TV station WXYZ and longtime anchor Frank Turner. Turner makes no secret of his Christian faith, as I noted here in an earlier post. He contends the TV station is discriminating against him because he wants to do a radio show on a local Christian station.

Does it just have to do with his faith? After all, Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom is also a talk-radio-show host. Does that compromise Mitch’s objectivity?

The Gospel of Judas

So the media are all going gaga over this “new” gospel recently translated that makes Judas the hero because he betrayed Christ at his own request, to free him from his body.

Pardon me while I yawn.

Come on, people, why do we have to keep going over this? The Gospel of Judas has all the hallmarks of the other Gnostic gospels that came out of the 2nd-3rd centuries. Secret knowledge required for salvation? Check. Spirit = good, body = bad? Check. It’s cast from the same mold as the Gnostic gospels we all know thanks to Dan Brown’s little best-seller, the gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary Magdalene.

It’s an old, old heresy. You’d think it would have been enough for the church fathers to slap it down in the 3rd 2nd century (Irenaeus in "Against All Heresies" about 180 A.D.). But I guess not. We’re so illiterate about the Bible and church history, we’ll fall for just about anything.

Even some of our ancient foe’s oldest lies.

Jesus Walked on an Ice Floe

Secret Agent Man comments:

When I wasn't a Christian, I knew lots of people who relegated Christianity to a light and flimsy place in human thought. Eventually it struck me that they behaved like people who live with a terrifying secret. They were ready, even eager, to accept any explanation so long as it kept them from opening that dreaded door. I found that "anti-witness" very intriguing.

You know, if Christianity is all a bunch of fabrications, why do people spend so much time and money trying to debunk it? Why not go after any of the other world religions? Could it be that accepting the reality of a God who can intervene in human affairs might require people to change their lives?