Here's wishing the best to Bristol Palin

Others have already written about this situation ad naseum. All I have to say is that I'm thankful that Bristol Palin has what looks to be a strong support system through what's probably going to be a very challenging time. Many aren't so lucky. If you've been bothered this week by the politicization of one teenager's story, I'd encourage you to do something about it by helping out another mom who needs it. Buy a couple of packages of diapers and some new pacifiers for your local crisis pregnancy center. Buy a few cans of formula for your local food bank (there's never enough of it). Make sure that the unwed mothers in or connected to your congregation get their baby showers too. The right has taken some justified criticism that they care more for the babies in tough luck situations before they're born than after. Take some steps to make that less true this week. And do it as a tribute to one young woman who looks to be following in her mother's footsteps for doing what she's going to do and not much caring what the rest of the world who doesn't know her thinks about it.

spiritual healing, crash dieting, and four bullet points to a perfect Christian walk

Do we really appreciate, in the Christian community, how long real healing and real growth take? I don't think so . . . It makes me think of the dieting cycle so prevalent in our society. of Gain weight over months or years. Decide to do better. Lose weight via grapefruits, South Beach, the latest new pill . . . okay, so the weight might come off temporarily, but are you really prepared to eat that much grapefruit forever? When things go back to "normal" is the weight going to come back? Usually, real change for a healthier body means starting by adjusting what our idea of normal is . . . what's our goal anyway? To look good? Or to actually be healthy? There is, after all, rather more to health than the ill-thought-out Body Mass Index.

Likewise in our churches. I wonder how much of what's being preached on any given Sunday in the U.S. amounts to the selling of the upside-down diet, or how to count your points . . . bullet points and strategies that might have some good foundational theology under there, but might not . . . are we really looking to know God and have him heal and transform every dark and broken area of our lives with his light and truth? Or are we looking for a bit of a tool kit so we can make ourselves look spiritually good for each other? Are we judging and practicing our theology against the standard of lasting sanctification? Or against measurable-by-next-Sunday results?

extraordinary, unsustainable efforts, for visible short-term reults . . .

shameless plug

my cousin and his family are some of the extras in the background of Brandon Heath's phenomenal new video "Give Me Your Eyes." (The reuniting family).



I've written before about what it would mean for us to deliberately look and try to see each other as Christ sees us. To see the checker at the grocery store as made in the very image of creative God. To see the brand new baby as the one whose sin Christ died for. To see the pain and hurt and frustrations that drive seemingly inexplicable bad decisions. And now, how do I be Jesus for them into their lives? Indeed, give me your eyes, Lord.

Oh, and if you need a first class Christian magician, check out my cousin Curt.

back from the underground

hellooooo, zeeba neighba!

Well, the kids are back in the school and I'm easing back into something that feels like a more normal schedule for the school year. Looking back over the summer . . . and what? Three posts for July and nothing so far for August? Well, it's been a summer of swim lessons, vacations, in-laws, outlaws, relatives, concerts and church business, and finally trying to get into shape. But here's a sampling of the raw material of the posts that might have been this summer. (And might yet be for all that).

Lolcats have provided some good laughs

Erin, Jared, Happy, and others have explored our schizophrenic relationship with devotionals and Bible reading. I will admit to my own viewpoint being somewhat . . . schizophrenic.

Rob pointed me to a really good article on children's ministry in the church. I could write a book around this subject . . .

Tyler, Jennifer, Tara, and others write about the place of fear in our lives. L.M. Montgomery wrote of one of her characters, Walter, "Realites never frightened him--only his imagination could do that." This was a man who was accused of cowardice in the face of World War I because he did not want to face the ugliness of the trenches. Someone who as a boy, learned the truth of Shakespeare's observation that "Fear is more pain than the pain it fears." Which is in turn, I think, all tied up with worry, and fretting, and control issues, and of course real pains and hurt . . . a horrible mess from the pit of hell . . . certainly more than I'll untangle in one blog post.

We've had some great adjectives on Apples Two Apples

Heather did a rant against hymns series this summer. Some of her points I agreed with, and on some of them I thought that she was really off base, or historically ignorant of where these things were coming from, or both. But I'm certainly glad to see people taking what we sing seriously enough to hold it up for examination. I may disagree about specifics, but I agree that what we sing matters.

My toddler is potty training. Third time round, I'm finding the process more tedious than illuminating or spiritually refining. It takes a lot of time.

My husband got me Rome for my birthday. :)

I really liked the North Sea Drainage project . . . it's as off base as many of the ideas I come up with myself.

Yahoo Games put out a deadly-addictive little thing called Marble Lines

And oh, yeah. I've been reading comics. Lots and lots of comics. And occasionally mocking them, too.

further theological adventures with children

Bedtime the other night:

My seven year old: "Why did the snake tell Adam and Eve that they'd be like God?"
(Note: this is completely out of the blue--we've just finished praying a completely standard bedtime prayer along the lines of thank-you-for-a-good-day-and-give-us-good-dreams).
Me: Well, the snake was trying to get them to disobey. He had reasons of his own.
7YO: I don't like him.
Me: Good. You're not supposed to.
7YO: But the Bible says that we're supposed to love our enemies.
Me: Oh. It means our human enemies. The people we think are our enemies. Satan's a different category altogether.
7YO: So we're supposed to . . .
Me: Well, God loves us even though we sin. And those people that we think are our enemies, God loves them, even when they sin, and they're being mean to us, and God wants us to remember to see each other the way he sees us and to love each other.
7YO: (considers) So does God love Satan?
Me: um . . . Rob!

(gotta love being married to the pastor)

I really didn't mean to drop off the face of the earth

I've been busy with a great variety of good summer craziness, and then my computer got this Trojan Horse . . . will be without regular internet (or computer at all--I can't even log in) for the forseeable future . . .

Mongreloid: Happy Birthday, USA!

No, I'm not Dutch, English, Scottish, German or Swedish--though I can trace ancestors back from all those places. I'm not knowingly descending from any former slaves--but I know I wouldn't be the first white girl to be surprised on that score, and I'd be proud to have that stream represented in my blood lines. I can trace my ancestry back to 1640 and New Amsterdam, before it became New York. I need to go at least four generations back in any direction to get a first genration anything; all of my great grandparents were natural born US citizens. I'm married to a man who can trace his descent through a US president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. This is the land of my heritage. I'm proud to be American.

And if our country doesn't get everything right, I'm proud that we get it a long sight better than most anywhere else on the face of the planet. I'm thankful to God that I live in a country that is committed to the principles of freedom and rule of law, however much we may squabble about the best way to carry them out.

I love the Fourth of July. I love bright colors and loud booms. I'm not so fond of the marches of John Philip Sousa, but that probably has more to do with a high school band director who was over fond of them than with the marches themselves.

This is the place I belong to. Me and my children and parents and grandparents and generations dead now. This is the land whose history I know, whose faults and accomplishments I can claim a piece of. This is my family, my country, my ground, my birthright, my responsibility. Happy 232nd birthday, United States. May God bless America.