1989 January/February issue Part 4

A Child Learns Self-Denial - Part 2

Does this training seem hard on the child, impossible for the mother? I don’t think it is. The earlier the parents begin to make the laws of order and beauty and quietness comprehensible to their children, the sooner they will acquire good, strong notions of what is so basic to real godliness: self-denial. A Christian home should be a place of peace, and there can be no peace where there is no self-denial.

  Christian parents are seeking to fit their children for their inheritance in Christ. A sense of the presence of God in the home is instilled by the simple way He is spoken of, by prayer not only at meals but in family devotions and perhaps as each child is tucked into bed. The Bible has a prominent place, and it is a greatly blessed child who grows up, as I did, in a hymn-singing family. Sam and Judy Palpant of Spokane have such a home. “Each of our children had his or her own lullaby which I sing before prayer time and the final tucking into bed,” Judy wrote. “That lullaby is a special part of our bedtime ritual. Whenever we have other children spend the night we sing ‘Jesus loves me’ as their lullaby. What a joy it was on the most recent overnighter to have the three Edminster children announce, ‘We have our own lullabies now!’ Mat, who is twelve and who can be swayed by the world said, ‘Mine is “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross.”’

  The task of parents is to show by love and by the way they live that they belong to another Kingdom and another Master, and thus to turn their children’s thoughts toward that Kingdom and that Master. The “raw material” with which they begin is thoroughly selfish. They must gently lay the yoke of respect and consideration for others on those little children, for it is their earnest desire to make of them good and faithful servants and, as Janet Erskine Stuart expressed it, “to give saints to God.”

1989 January/February issue Part 3

A Child Learns Self-Denial - Part 1

One of the countless blessings of my life is having a daughter who actually asks for my prayers and my advice (and heeds the latter). She phoned from California this morning, describing the difficulties of home-schooling three children in grade six, four, and one, when you also have a four-year-old who is doing nursery school and a two-year-old who, Colleen, who wants to do everything. And on November 19, Evangeline Mary was born, so a nursing baby now claims attention as well. How to give Colleen proper attention and teach her also to occupy herself quietly for what seems to her long periods? Valerie was deeply concerned over whether she was doing all she should for that little one.

I reminded her of the women of the Bible times- while probably not homeschooling her children, an ordinary village women would have been working very hard most of the time, carrying heavy water jars, grinding grain, sweeping, planting, and cooking while tending children. This was true also of the Indians with whom Val grew up. An Indian mother never interrupted her days’ work to sit down with a small child and play or read a story, yet the children were always more or less with her, watching her work, imitating her, learning informally. They had a strong and secure home base, “and so have yours,” I told her. “Don’t worry! You are not doing Colleen an injustice. Quite the contrary. You are giving her wonderful things: a stable home, your presence in that home, a priceless education just in the things she observes.”

1989 January/February issue Part 2

Prayer
Dear Lord, help me to live this day
quietly; easily;
To lean upon Thy great strength
trustfully; restfully;
To meet others
peacfully; joyously;
To face tomorrow
confidently; courageously.

1989 January/February issue Part 1

He sufficeth thee: apart from Him nothing sufficeth thee.

- St. Augustine

1988 November/December issue Part 5

If You Can't Do What You Like, Like What You Do.

A young man working at a resort hotel for the summer: "For about four weeks i was in a total daze as i tried to relate the complex details of the hotel to each other. One day, at the end of my patience, i said, 'This is a waste of time' i sat down and read Ecclesiastes - 'Vanity, vanity...' I realised, like Solomon, that if we fail to recognize God's complete sovereignty over all things, life is just endless, meaningless cycles. After that, i realized that no matter how hard, dirty, or apparently useless my immediate job is, God has a purpose in it and i am to do my work 'heartily as unto the Lord.' So i do, and what peace it has brought me! I now love my job!"

1988 November/December issue Part 4

The Sweet Running of Household Wheels

"If i am inconsiderate about the comfort

of others,

or their feelings,

or even their little weaknesses; if i am careless about little

hurts and miss opportunities to

smooth their way;

if i make the sweet running of

household wheels more difficult

to accomplish,

then i know nothing of Calvary love."

(Amy Carmichael: If, London, SPCK, 1949, p.40)

1988 November/December issue Part 3

Christmas is a thing too wonderful.

  Some things are simply too wonderful for explanation- the navigational system of the Arctic tern, for example. How does it find its way 12,000 miles of ocean from its nesting grounds in the Arctic to its wintering grounds in the Antarctic? Ornithologists have conducted all sorts of tests without finding the answer. Instinct is the best they can offer- no explanation at all, merely a way of saying they really have no idea. A Laysan Albatross was once released 3,200 miles away from its nest in the Midway Islands. It was back home in ten days.

  The migration of birds is a thing too wonderful.

  When the angel Gabriel told Mary, “You will be with child and give birth to a son,” she had a simple question about the natural: How can this be, since I am a virgin?

  The answer had to do not with the natural but with something far more mysterious than the tern’s navigation- something, in fact, entirely supernatural: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35; NIV). That was too wonderful and Mary was silent. She had no question about the supernatural. She was satisfied with God’s answer.