On Shopping

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks – see you then!

I’m a girly girl in many ways, but not when it comes to shopping. I don’t mind window shopping, and I love book shopping (even though my wallet sure doesn’t). I don’t even mind shopping alone, especially when I’m not desperately searching for one much-needed item. But I am never going to be a girl who tries to think of a fun activity and comes up with shopping.

And I usually get most restless when I’m shopping with other girls/women. I think it’s all those long hours I spent in stores with my indecisive female family members when I was growing up. Girls shop so slowly. They wander along, halting every minute or two to look at something, finger it, debate about color and pattern and whether it’s figure-flattering or whether it would look good with the room decor or whether it’s too expensive or unnecessary or completely perfect in every aspect. They don’t seem to have any sense of the passing time, or of how long we’ve spent under the glaring lights of the department store. They can’t leave until they’re perfectly satisfied with their purchases, and they absolutely cannot decide on one single purchase in anything less than half an hour.

And the worst thing about shopping? I always get so dreadfully thirsty. I don’t know what it is. I should learn to bring water with me.

So, with all that being said, I’m off to go shopping with my lovely friends! Oh, the bitter irony.

(originally published September 15th, 2007)

Chasten Yourselves, But Be Not Discouraged

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m taking a leaf from Shannon and re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks – see you then!

Earlier today, I read this entry from the Girl Talk archives. I thought, “Oh, I know someone who that would apply to. I should share it with them.” This evening, there is no one who needs to read it more than I do. I hope it might encourage you too.

Whenever I am tempted to wallow in regret over a mistake, an unwise decision, a sinful comment, I have often found encouragement in these thoughts from Charles Spurgeon:

“What is the use of regret unless we can rise by it to a better future? Sighs, which do not raise us higher, are an ill use of vital breath. Chasten yourselves, but be not discouraged. Gather up the arrows which aforetime fell wide of the mark, not to break them in passionate despair, but to send them to the target with direct aim, and a more concentrated force. Weave victories out of defeats. Learn success from failure, wisdom from blundering.” (Spurgeon on Spiritual Leadership by Steve Miller, p. 93)

Let’s get off our mental couch of despair over past sins and mistakes. Let us not be like the one the apostle Peter describes as ’so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins’ (1 Peter 1:9) By the power of Christ, let’s be all the more diligent to make our calling and election sure (v. 10). Let’s weave victories out of defeat.

(originally posted June 30th, 2007)

Admitting it is the first step

My remaining readers – the few and the faithful - may have noticed a slight drop in my posting frequency over the last couple of weeks. I think I’ve been taking a blog hiatus while telling myself that I’m not really taking one, because there are few things that will kill a blog more than taking an extended, indefinite break. But the truth is that I just haven’t been much in the blogging mood lately, and I think I’m ready for a little break. I hope to return with the pencils of my brain freshly sharpened… or something like that (I guess my metaphorical powers are dwindling rapidly). Enjoy your summer and check back in soon.

“What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me?” (Psalm 116:12)

Doing Small Hard Things

I like The Rebelution and the Harris’ brothers “teenage rebellion against low expectations,” and something I particularly like about their mission is that they focus on the importance of small hard things. In a recent entry, they discuss this issue again with a quotation from young blogger Tim Sweetman:

Many young Christians long for Christian “stardom,” desiring to do “big things” for God, and are often in sin when pride is the catalyst for their desire to be on that stage, literal or figurative.

(Read the rest of Tim’s article here.)

I’ve written about this before also, in my post The Little Faithfuls. I love to think that, were it not for thousands upon thousands of ordinary Christians all around the world doing small hard things every day, so much would be different.

The scribes who painstakingly copied Scripture by dim candlelight…
the white-collar workers who give faithfully to the cause of missions…
the illustrators of Bible storybooks for children…
the janitors who clean church bathrooms…
the missionaries who labor for years with little fruit or recognition…
the secretary who prepares the bulletin every Sunday…
the friend whose exhortation is perfectly timed and needed…
and countless others.

It’s easy to sit safely behind my computer screen and write about the importance of faithfulness in small difficulties. But the truth is, I have to get up and do things I really don’t want to do tomorrow. Small things, hard things. Will I be faithful?

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11-13)

Diary of a (Book)worm

My title for this entry was inspired by the children’s book at left. (Children and books… that’s basically the summary of my life right there. ) If you’ve been reading Hope Road for longer than two minutes, you’ve probably noticed that I like to read – and that would be a slight understatement.

However, I think something happened to me when I moved the tassel from the left side to the right (or was it the right side to the left? I can never be sure). Maybe I did too much reading in those last few crazy months. Maybe I just plain read too much throughout my lifetime! Because this summer, I have read far fewer books than usual.

What’s even stranger is that I keep starting books and then not finishing them. Being the perfectionist that I am, I used to never do that. I felt committed to books when I started them, and I had to see them through, even if I didn’t like them. Part of the change was college, I think – teaching me to read assigned portions of a book instead of the whole thing.

I don’t want to abandon all of my intellectual faculties to a pile of littered, leftover childhood dreams. So I am trying to start reading consistently again – and not just picking up whatever I feel like rereading from my bookshelf, but something valuable that takes a little work to get through.

The point is, I started reading a couple of books recently, and I want to write about them so I will be committed to finishing them!

The first is a fiction book, The Old Helmet by Susan Warner. (I reviewed Queechy by the same author.) Although it’s a simplistic and stereotyped explanation, Susan Warner is kind of like a Christian Jane Austen. She wrote a couple of decades later, but her books have the same interest and insight into human character as Austen’s (with less romance), and the additions of Puritan-influenced theology and religious life. I have eight or ten of her books, and I love them. I haven’t read The Old Helmet for a few years, so I am looking forward to rereading it. It’s 434 pages long in very small type, and I’m not used to reading for long periods of time anymore, so it will take some discipline to get through!

The second is a nonfiction book, The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever. I’ve been reading this for a few weeks now. I got it back in April, I think, and have had it on my list to read since then. I’ve only read about a chapter and a half so far, but it’s really good, and it’s refreshing my perspective on this central element of the Christian faith. Mark Dever has such a mixture of brilliance and relatability (is that a word?); it’s a privilege to read what he writes.

So I really want to finish these books… I don’t know how fast, but I need to stay committed to reading them! I hope to have reviews posted by Christmas.

The princess who rescued the prince…

At work (daycare), today was library day. I went with the school-agers and another teacher. A librarian read the kids a couple of stories. Both of them were about fairy tales, and both were a little… non-traditional.

During the battle scene in the second book, the princess saved the prince by sweeping him up into her arms and taking him to safety. How very forward-thinking of this medieval young lady.

Then I heard one of the boys say, “Pshh… it should’ve been the other way around.”

Perhaps all is not lost for the youth of America…

small words [shouting]

I wrote most of this a few weeks ago during naptime for the kids. I was wanting to escape into the safety of the Word, yet feeling how small my little Bible was compared to the overwhelming environment surrounding me. But that was only an illusion – really, these words convey the truth of the universe, and I wanted to express that a little in writing.

the world surrounds me, tangible and attention-grabbing, filling my every sense.

i bend over my little bible, reading the tiny print carefully in the dim light.

these words seem so fragile, ethereal even, insubstantial, whispering and fleeting.

but though i cannot hear it, these words are shouting.

filling the universe.

truthful and endlessly real in every crack and crevice of this mortal soil.

flying, trumpeting, reigning supreme over every human heart and all creatures great and small.

no one can escape; nowhere is the truth of the words changed.

i have seen faraway places, broken and evil faces.

but not one is exempt from what i read here.

between these covers. they are small words. but they shout. i am not alone.

“The heavens are Yours; the earth also is Yours; the world and all that is in it, You have founded them.” (Psalm 89:11-12)

In whom we are safe

I was reading Psalm 94 recently. I especially love these verses:

“For the Lord will not forsake His people; He will not abandon His heritage… If the Lord had not been my help, my soul soon would have lived in the land of silence. When I thought, ‘My foot slips,’ Your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, Your consolations cheer my soul… the Lord has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” (vv. 14, 18-19, 22)

And I really appreciate Matthew Henry’s commentary:

“He that sends the trouble, will send the rest. The psalmist found succour and relief only in the Lord, when all earthly friends failed.

We are beholden, not only to God’s power, but to His pity, for spiritual supports; and if we have been kept from falling into sin, or shrinking from our duty, we should give Him the glory, and encourage our brethren.

The psalmist had many troubled thoughts concerning the case he was in, concerning the course he should take, and what was likely to be the end of it. The indulgence of such contrivances and fears, adds to care and distrust, and renders our view more gloomy and confused. Good men sometimes have perplexed and distressed thoughts concerning God. But let them look to the great and precious promises of the gospel.

The world’s comforts give little delight to the soul, when hurried with melancholy thoughts; but God’s comforts bring that peace and pleasure which the smiles of the world cannot give, and which the frowns of the world cannot take away. God is His people’s Refuge, to whom they may flee, in whom they are safe, and may be secure.”

The Kingdom

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21).

I look forward to the day when the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay – when clean things won’t get dirty, when order won’t become disorder, when beauty won’t fade, when what is alive will never die, when what is whole will never break, when what is happy will never be sad, and when beginnings will never end.

Hints of that day are here - “already but not yet.” I see Him at work all the time, cleansing the dirt, ordering the chaos, renewing the beauty, resurrecting the dead, mending the broken, giving joy to the sorrowful, and writing new beginnings. This is the Kingdom, the one we are only beginning to glimpse, the mystery of redemption and sanctification. It is not won through worldly prosperity, but through the weak, the low, and the despised. Outwardly, the battles seem small, the failures overwhelming, the victories insignificant. But He is changing us, His children, and turning our faces towards Him as our beautiful Light and glory.

What a mystery, that I can exist in the mundane minutiae of everyday life, with such invisible and miraculous realities residing in my heart. If only I may grasp onto the powerful gospel with every fiber of my being, for it is not fragile or small. It is the reality which explodes over every other truth in my existence.

Save it for now…

I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a post on food before. However, this post on 22 Words cracked me up because I relate to it so much. In college, I’d make mac and cheese or Ramen noodles (when I wasn’t making my gourmet dish of pitas and hummus ). I always saved the leftovers, but I never really believed I’d eat them later. I don’t think anything got moldy though. Saving leftovers for awhile just seemed better than throwing them out right away. Anyone else relate?