1988 January/February issue Part 4

A Small Section of the Visible Course.

... All of the past, i believe, is a part of God's story of each child of His- a mystery of love and sovereignty, written before the foundation of the world, never a hindrance to the task He has designed for us, but rather the very preparation suited to our particular personality's need.
   "How can that be?" ask those whose heritage has not been a godly one as mine was, whose lives have not been peaceful. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing" (Proverbs 52:2). God conceals much that we do not need to know, yet we do not know that He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. When does that begin? Does the Shepherd overlook anything that the sheep need?
  William Kay's note on Psalm 73:22 is this: "Though i was supported by Thee and living 'with Thee' as thy guest, yet i was insensible to Thy presence;- intent only on a small section of the visible course of things;- like the irrational animals that are ever looking down at the ground they are grazing."
  "Yet i am perpetually with Thee, Thou hast laid hold on my right hand," wrote the psalmist. "Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel and afterwards receive me in glory... And as for me, nearness to God is my good; i have put my trust in the Lord God." (Psalm73:22, 23, 24, 28)

1988 January/February issue Part 3

The Most Creative Job in the World
It involves:

taste                                               fashion

decorating                                     recreation

education                                      transportation

psychology                                    romance

cuisine                                           designing

literature                                        medicine

hanidcraft                                      art

horticulture                                    economics

government                                   community relations

pediatrics                                       geriatrics

entertainment                                maintenance

purchasing                                     direct mail

law                                                 accounting

religion                                           energy

... and managment.
Anyone who can handle all those must be somebody special.
She is.
She's a homemaker.

(Message published in the Wall Street Journal by United Technologies Corp., Hartfor CT 06101; reprinted by permission.)

1988 January/February issue Part 2

Why is God doing this to me?

An article appeared in the National Geographic fourteen years ago which has affected my thinking ever since. "The Incredible Universe," by Jenneth F. Weaver and James P. Blair, included this pargraph:

  "How can the human mind deal with the knoweledge that the farthest object we can see in the universe is perhaps ten billion light years away? Imagine that the thickness of this page represents the distance from the earth to the sun (93,000,000 miles, or about eight light minutes). Then the distance to the nearest star (4-1/3 light years) is a 310-mile stack, while the edge of the known universe is not reached until the pile of paper is 31,000,000 miles high, a third of the way to the sun."

  Thirty-one million miles. That's a very big stack of paper. By the time i get to the thirty-one-and-a-half million i'm lost- aren't you? I read somewhere that our galaxy is one (only one) of perhaps ten billion.

1988 January/February issue Part 1

Prayer

O Lord my God, make me obedient without argument, poor without embarrassment, chaste without prudishness, patient without complaint, humble without hypocrisy, joyful without silliness, mature without grouchiness, eager without thoughtlessness, reverent without servility, truthful without guile, forceful without presumption, willing to correct my brother without superiority, and to help him by word and deed without pretence.

(St. Thomas Aquinas)

1987 November/December issue Part 2

A New Thanksgiving

Those who call Thanksgiving "Turkey Day," I suppose, take some such view as this:

  Unless we have Someone to thank and something to thank Him for, what's the point of using a name that calls up pictures of religious people in funny hats and Indians bringing corn and squash? Christians, I hope, focus on something other than a roasted bird. We do have Someone to thank and a long list of things to thank Him for, but sometimes we limit our thanksgiving merely to things that look good to us. As our faith in the character of God grows deeper we see that heavenly light is shed on everything- even on suffering- so that we are enabled to thank Him for things we would never have thought of before. The apostle Paul, for example, saw even suffering itself as a happiness (Col 1:24, NEB).

  I have been thinking of something that stifles thanksgiving. It is the spirit of greed- the greed of doing, being, and having.

1987 November/December issue Part 1

Splendor in the Ordinary

For the encouragement of those whose work seems humdrum, here is what St. Francis DeSales said: "The King of Glory rewards His servants not according to the dignity of their office, but according to the love and humility with which they carry it out."

  In the same spirit are these paragraphs from the book Splendor in the Ordinary (out of print, alas), by Thomas Howard (who has taught me many things, even though he is my brother): "[In households] the idea is that in our daily routines we are playing out the Drama of Charity, which eludes politics and its calculations. The commonplaces of household life are parts of the rite in which we celebrate the mystery of Charity-and it is indeed a mystery, full of outrageous absurdities like obedience being a form of liberty, and self-denial a form of self-discovery, and giving a form of receiving, and service a form of exaltation. Politics boggles at mysteries like this; but in Christian house-holds the hunch is that they are all clues to what the Real Drama is about.
  "For when the Drama of Charity was played out on the stage of our history, we saw these absurdities disclosed in their true colors. Here we saw Love incarnate in the form of a servant; here we heard the disquieting doctrine of exchanged life proclaimed all over the hills of Judaea; here we witnessed the humility of the virgin mother exalted high above the station of patriarchs and prophets, and the heroic silence of her spouse lauded for all time. Here we saw a gibbet transfigured into a throne, defeat into victory, death into life, and submission into sovereignty. And here we learned of the Holy Ghost himself whose service is to glorify, not himself, dread and mighty as he is, but this incarnate Love humbled below the meanest of men. A riot of self-giving and glory, humiliation and exaltation, service and majesty. Nonsense by any political calculating; but the mystery of Charity before our eyes.

  "It is this nonsense that we come upon in our kitchens. For the service in this room is either pointless thralldom, or it is as close to the center of the Real Drama as any rite in the whole household. For it is, precisely, service; and service, occurring as it does always for the sake of something else, is a form of humility and self-giving; and humility and self-giving have been disclosed in the Christian Drama as being at the heart of the matter."

1987 September/October issue Part 4

Prayer

Loving Lord and Heavenly Father, I offer up today all that I am, all that I have, all that I do, to be Yours today and Yours forever. Give me grace, Lord, to do all that I know of Your holy will. Purify my heart, sanctify my thinking, correct my desires. Teach me, in all of today's work and trouble and joy, to respond with honest praise, simple trust, and instant obedience, that my life may be in truth a living sacrifice, by the power of Your Holy Spirit and in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ, my Master and my all. Amen.

1987 September/October issue Part 3

Gratitude-Even in Death

Eileen Longo, of Warren, New Jersey, writes of her marriage to a man with leukemia who was given two years to live. For ten healthy years after that prognosis "he lived for God radically- there couldn't be a shadow of grasping this life, since it was all so obviously a daily gift from the Lord." When their daughters were five, three, and nine months, the leukemia returned. On the evening of the fourth day Eileen left the hospital, "full of joy and excitement, caught up in a work of God. I knew either he would be healed or taken to Glory, either one a tremendous miracle. So I wasn't shocked when I got the call at 1 A.M. Bill was gone. I simply threw myself into the arms of my Father in Heaven, in gratitude for all the years and the rich life He had given us, so undeserved. God's mercy and love have filled me from that moment. It is nearly one and a half years, and there still is no room for anything but gratitude because of how good God is. To Him be the glory!"

  Sometimes we puzzle over how on earth we are supposed to obey the command, "In everything give thanks." Eileen's testimony may show the answer. She wasn't thankful for leukemia- that's the work of the enemy-but she found far greater things to thank God for.

1987 September/October issue Part 2

What to Do When Your Children Grow Up

Thoughts from my mother's little red Quiet Time notebook: "Job 1:5-'When a round of feasts was finished, job sent for his children and sanctified them, rising early in the morning and sacrificing a whole-offering for each of them; for he thought that they might . . . have . . . committed blasphemy in their hearts. This he always did.'

  "When one's children are adults, what is the role of the parent? "They seldom come to us for help or advice. It is wonderful if they do. Then, out of our experience and perhaps the spiritual wisdom God may give us, we may be able to give wise counsel. Seldom, if ever, do they ask advice concerning the training of children. It is a blessing when they ask for prayer for themselves or their children, and this is usually the sole recourse of the grandparent, except for one tremendous duty: we can do as job did. We have the One great Sacrifice to plead-the blood of Jesus Christ! May we be faithful in this duty and privilege for those we love!!"