Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
It is very sobering indeed to consider that if I do not forgive a person who is mean to me and then sincerely apologizes seven times a day—and if this is my usual spiritually sloppy and self-satisfied habit—then it would be better for me if a millstone were hung around my neck and I were cast into the sea.
Do read the rest of Andrée Seu’s piece over at World magazine: New thoughts on not offending.
Sometimes the wait seems…
…so long.
…and fruitless.
…and pointless.
…and well-deserved.
So I keep on waiting.
What else am I to do?
He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.
He brought me up . . . out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. —You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world. We all had our conversation in times past in the lusts our flesh.
Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed. —Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. —We went through fire and through water: thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.
—PSA. 18:16. —Psa. 40:2. -Eph. 2:1,3.Psa. 61:1,2. -Jon. 2:2,3. -Psa. 66:12.Isa. 43:2.
Source: Daily Light on the Daily Path
Christian parents abandoning their children seems so contrary to logic. At least.
Contrary to God. At most.
Oh, I don’t mean abandoning them in the sense of leaving them derelict and alone to fend for themselves somewhere. Or even abandoning them to the care of someone else.
I mean abandoning them in their own home.
A friend of mine on Facebook (yeah; I know) linked to this article by Rachel Jankovic. Read it to learn what I’m driving at above.
Have you given your life to your children resentfully? Do you tally every thing you do for them like a loan shark tallies debts? Or do you give them life the way God gave it to us—freely?
It isn’t enough to pretend. You might fool a few people. That person in line at the store might believe you when you plaster on a fake smile, but your children won’t. They know exactly where they stand with you. They know the things that you rate above them. They know everything you resent and hold against them. They know that you faked a cheerful answer to that lady, only to whisper threats or bark at them in the car.
[…]
Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.
Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross.
I don’t know much of anything about the author. Nor do I know much of anything about John Piper. But I do think it worth your while (be you mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, or none of the above) to read the entire piece: Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank).
I haven’t tried to figure out my answer.
But I just read (again, after many years) an article by John Coblentz. He begins….
A wounded spirit is one that is hurting, but one in which the hurt has festered into unbearable attitudes and responses. A person with a wounded spirit lives in inner misery that focuses regularly on his injuries.
Then he proceeds to flesh out briefly two short outlines which itemize some characteristics of a wounded spirit and a broken spirit.
According to Coblentz, a wounded spirit lives out:
In contrast to that, he looks in Psalm 51 and finds these characteristics associated with brokenness:
Do read the full article: Wounded or Broken? — it’s relatively short…and beneficial.
I stood at the kitchen sink.
Early this morning — just before (or was it just after?) five.
Carefully slurping hot coffee.
Looking out the window.
Drearily considering the circumstances.
Pleading with God.
Trying to have faith.
(Drearily, God, faith — is something out of place there?!) 😯
When I noticed what I was seeing:
Somewhere down there in the Pudding River bottoms are cows.
In the fog.
They can’t see clearly.
For all they know, the whole world is foggy, bleary, dreary.
But the rising sun will fix that in short order.
Can I believe that God sees me and my fog in remotely similar fashion?
Can I believe that the Risen Son will fix my problems?
Sure.
I’m thankful.
Which do you see as the greater threat to Jesus Christ’s Church: Islam or secularism?
Which do you fear more?
Evangelicals, according to survey research conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, view secularism as a greater threat to Christianity than Islam. It seems, on the surface, like a great question for the cultural curmudgeon, at least from this relatively uncultured curmudgeon’s point of view. Will Christianity rot from the inside, or instead be overrun by the heathen hordes?
[…]
Or maybe what respondents meant, the 71 percent of them who chose “secularism” as the major threat to Christianity, is that what they fear most is a falling away, a slow boiling of the frog. Maybe it’s the gradual relaxation of standards that frightens them, the willingness of more and more self-professed Christians to pick and choose which doctrines they believe, if they care to countenance doctrines at all.
Wouldn’t it be something if the reason for this creeping secularism, if it exists, is the very notion of secularism itself?
[…]
In other words, maybe the greatest threat to Christianity is not that people abandon it for other things, but rather our own tendency—or mine, at least—to imagine that it has a limited domain, that there are the things of Christ and then there is all the rest of it. It’s not that a man goes to pornographic sites, it’s that he forgets every woman he sees is crafted in the image and likeness of God. It’s not that a woman goes cold in the marriage bed, it’s that she believes a Christian union is only a spiritual one. It’s not that our children go to where Christ is not, it’s that they imagine there is such a place.
How often I have imagined myself going to a “Christless corner,” some place in real life where God isn’t.
Such foolishness to attempt so impossible a task!
Let’s banish from our heads and from our living the dangerous notion that life has separate Christian and secular dimensions.
May God’s people be revived to such a degree that every dimension of our experience and environment becomes a living reality of acknowledging God in all our ways.
Well, please read Tony Woodlief’s full article over at World magazine: Christless corners.