1991 March/April Issue Part 3

i am sorry for the messy article- new to using 'print screen' so think it'll improve with practice. Time (and patience!) will not allow me to type this out and didn't want to skip an article either because of it's length. 

1991 March/April issue Part 2

Women: The Road Ahead

That was the theme of Time's special issue last fall. There were pictures of women with babies in prison, an inconsolable “crack” baby with a tangle of tubes connected to machines, crying his little heart out, a mother charged with a felony: delivery of drugs to her newborn child, women in politics “sharing real rather than cosmetic power,” a veiled Muslim woman, ten tough-minded women who “create individual rules for success,” e.g. a police chief, a bishop, a rock climber, a baseball club owner, a rap artist, a fashion tycoon, an Indian chief and others (not much femininity showed in their pictures). There were single mothers, lesbian mothers, divorced mothers, working (outside the home) mothers. There was a twelve-year-old who fixes supper for her sisters when Mom works late and there was a man who is a house husband. But there was not one picture of a father and mother and their children. Not one.

1991 March/April issue Part 1

Small Things

When i want to do only great things for You, 

Make me willing to do small, unnoticed things, too. 

When i want to do what the world will acclaim, 

Make me willing to do what will lift up your name. 

B.J. Hoff

"Well done, my good and trusty servant!" said the master. "You have proved trustworthy in a small way; i will now put you in charge of somethings big. Come and share your master's delight" (Matthew 25:23, NEB). 

1991 January/February issue Part 2

The Angel in the Cell

My brother David Howard does a lot of travelling and comes back with wonderful stories. Last June when the six of us Howards with our spouses got together for a reunion Dave told us this one, heard from the son of the man in the story.

   A man we’ll call Ivan, prisoner in an unnamed country, was taken from his cell, interrogated, tortured and beaten nearly to a pulp. The one comfort in his life was a blanket. As he staggered back to his cell, ready to collapse into that meager comfort, he saw to his dismay that somebody was wrapped up in it- an informer, he supposed. He fell on the filthy floor, crying out, “I can’t take it any more!” whereupon a voice came from the blanket, “Ivan, what do you mean you can’t take it any more?” Thinking the man was trying to get information to be used against him, he didn’t explain. He merely repeated what he had said.

   “Ivan,” came the voice, “have you forgotten that Jesus is with you?”

   Then the figure in the blanket was gone. Ivan, unable to walk a minute ago, now leaped to his feat danced round the cell praising the Lord. In the morning the guard who had starved and beaten him asked who had given him food. No one, said Ivan.

   “But why do you look so different?”
   “Because my Lord was with me last night.”

   “Oh, is that so? And where is your Lord now?”

   Ivan opened his shirt, pointed to his heart- “Here.”

   “O.K. I’m going to shoot you and your Lord right now,” said the guard, pointing a pistol at Ivan’s chest.

   “Shoot me if you wish. I’ll go to be with the Lord.”

   The guard returned his pistol to his holster, shaking his head in bewilderment.

Later Ivan learned that his wife and children had been praying for him on that same night as they read Isaiah 15:14, “the cowering prisoner will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread.”
   Ivan was released shortly thereafter, and continued faithfully to preach the Gospel until he died in his eighties. 

1991 January/February issue Part 1

The childless man or woman      

  
Children, God tells us, are a heritage from the Him. Is the man or woman to whom He gives no children therefore disinherited? Surely not. the Lord gave portions of land to each tribe of Israel except one. “The tribe of Levi... received no holding; the Lord God of Israel is their portion, as He promised them” (Joshua 3:14, REB). Withholding what He granted to the rest, He gave to Levi a higher privilege. May we not see childlessness in the same light? I believe there is a special gift for those to whom God does not give the gift of physical fatherhood or motherhood.

1990 November/December issue Part 3

Men, Women and Biblical Equality. Part 3

   Men have disobeyed by misusing their authority, and women have disobeyed by refusing it. We are not therefore at liberty to drain the word headship of its oblivious hierarchical meaning. Let’s be careful not to overlook the all-important word as: “Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph 5:22, 23). In what sense is Christ the head of the church? It’s a physical metaphor Paul is using. Is it not the head of the human body the part from which all other parts take orders? Yes, iv’e read pages and pages of arguments about that Greek word Kephale. Some would insist that it means only source, and carries no thought of authority. But I insist that metaphors are metaphors and they mean more, not less, than the mere words could mean in another context. One wonders if these humourless, nearsighted, nit-picking, theological pendants have ever read a book in their lives!

1990 November/December issue Part 2

Men, Women, and Biblical Equality. Part 2

   Most of what the MWBE’s advertisements say I think most Christians would accept. It is what they have chosen not to say that disturbs me deeply. The section on Community deals with the Holy Spirit's coming on both men and women; both have spiritual gifts. True enough, but were there not certain restrictions (for both men and women) placed on the use of these gifts? Is there no such thing as church order which manifests a church hierarchy?