1987 January/February issue Part 3

God's Help for God's Assignment
Sometimes a task we have begun takes on seemingly crushing size, and we wonder what ever gave us the notion that we could accomplish it. There is no way out, no way around it, and yet we cannot contemplate actually carrying it through. The rearing of children or the writing of a book are illustrations that come to mind. Let us recall that the task is a divinely appointed one, and divine aid is therefore to be expected. Expect it! Ask for it, wait for it, believe that God gives it. Offer to Him the job itself, along with your fears and misgivings about it. He will not fail or be discouraged. Let his courage encourage you. The day will come when the task will be finished. Trust Him for it.
"For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed" (Is 50:7 AVE.)

Readers Write"Your book A Lamp for My Feet was a big instrument in encouraging my husband this past three weeks or so. Our one and only daughter was married on Saturday, and he was very concerned over walking her down the long aisle (thirty-five seconds, actually, from start to finish, and then of greeting guests of whom he was sure he would forget the names. It was becoming a high anxiety day instead of a joy. He has been reading your book in the mornings, but stopped about two weeks ago on page 67, "God's Help for God's Assignment," and there he stayed. He reread it every day, to remind himself
of the truth in it. And not only was he not confounded or ashamed, but he had one of the happiest days of his life! Lives were touched through the ceremony and all the prayer that surrounded it. It was a 'Victory Day' in every way for us and our God."

1987 January/February issue Part 2

The Gift of Work

The principal cause of boredom is the hatred of work. People are trained from childhood to hate it. Parents often feel guilty about making children do anything but the merest gestures toward work. Perhaps the children are required to make their beds and, in a feeble and half-hearted fashion, tidy up their rooms once a month or so. But take full responsibility to clear the table, load the dishwasher, scrub the pots, wipe the counters? How many have the courage to ask this of a ten-year-old? It would be too much to ask of most ten-year-olds because parents have seriously asked nothing of them when they were two or three. Children quickly pick up the parents' negative attitudes toward work and think of it as something most sedulously to be avoided.

1987 January/February issue Part 1

Prayer Is Conflict

Prayer is no easy pastime. As I grow old I find that I am more conscious than ever of my need to pray, but it seems at the same time to become more of a struggle. It is harder to concentrate, for one thing. I was greatly helped by some private notes Amy Carmichel wrote to her "Family" (hundreds of children and their helpers, both Indian and European) in Dohnavur, South India, to help them prepare for a special day of prayer. She quoted Paul's letter to the Colossians.(2:1): "I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you." He is referring at least in part to the conflict of prayer. The same verse is translated "how greatly I strive" in the Revised Version; "how deep is my anxiety" in J.B. Philips; and, in the Jerusalem Bible, "Yes, I want you to know that I do have to struggle hard for you ... to bind you together in love and to stir your  minds, so that your understanding may come to full development, until you really know God's secret in which all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden."

Here are Amy's notes:

With what do I struggle?

1. With all that says to me, what is the use of your praying? So many others, who know more of prayer than you do, are praying. What difference does it make whether you pray or not? Are you sure that your Lord is listening? Of course He is listening to the other prayers but yours are of such small account, are you really sure He is "bending His ear" to you?

2. With all that suggests that we are asked to give too much time to prayer. There is so much to do. Why set aside so much time just to pray?

3. With all that discourages me personally- perhaps the rememberance of past sin, perhaps spiritual or physical tiredness; with anything and everything that keeps me back from what occupied St. Paul so often-vital prayer.

What will help me most in this wrestle?

1. The certain knowledge that our insignificance does not matter at all, for we do not come to the Father in our own name but in the Name of His beloved Son. His ear is always open to that Name. Of this we can be certain.

2. The certain knowledge that this is Satan's lie; he is much more afraid of our prayer than our work. (This is proved by the immense difficulties we always find when we set ourselves to pray. They are much greater than those we meet when we set ourselves to work.)

3. Isaiah 44:22 and kindred words, with 1 John 1:9, meets all distress about sin. Isaiah 40:29-31 with 2 Corinthians 12:9,10 meets everything that spiritual or physical weariness can do to hinder. Psalm 27:8 with Isaiah 45:19 meets all other difficulties. And the moment we say to our God, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek," His mighty energies come to the rescue. (See Colossians 1:2, 9) Greater, far greater, is He that is in us than He that is against us. Count on the greatness of God. But are we to go on wrestling to the end?

No, there is a point to which we come, when, utterly trusting the promise of our Father, we rest our hearts upon Him. It is then we are given what St. Paul calls access with confidence (Eph 3:12). But don't forget that this access is by faith, not by feeling, faith in Him our living Lord; He who says "Come unto Me" does not push us away when we come. As we go on, led by the Holy Spirit who so kindly helps our infirmities, we find ourselves in 1 John 5:14, 15 and lastly in Philippians 4:6, 7. It is good to remember that immediate answer to prayer is not always something seen, but it is always inward peace.

  And if the day ends otherwise and we are discouraged? Then tell Him so, "nothing ashamed of tears upon His feet" [here she is quoting from F.W.H. Meyers's poem "St. Paul"]. Lord, Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love Thee. "Yes, my child, I know." But don't settle down into an "it will never be different" attitude. It will be different if only in earnest we follow on to know the Lord.

1986 November/December issue Part 2

The Incarnation
That the Great Angel-blinding light should shrink
His blaze to shine in a poor Shepherd's eye;
That the unmeasur d God so lowe should sinke,
As Pris'ner in a few poor rags to lye,
That from his Mother's Breast he milke should drinke,
Who feeds with Nectar Heaven's faire family,
That a vile Manger his low Bed should prove,
Who in a Throne of stars Thunders above;
That he whom the Sun serves, should faintly peepe
Through clouds of Infant Flesh! That He, the old
Eternall Word should be a Childe, and weep;
that He who made the fire, should fear the cold,
That heaven's high Majesty His Court should Keepe
In a clay cottage, by each blast control'd;
That Glories self should serve our Griefs and feares,
And free Eternity submit to years,
Let our overwhelming wonder be.
(Richard Crashaw, 1613?-1649)

1986 November/December issue Part 1

The Mother of the Lord

We see her first, that little Mary (may I say little? I think she was a teenager), as a simple village girl in a poor home in an out-of-the-way place. She is bending over her work when suddenly the light changes. She raises her eyes. A dazzling stranger stands before her with a puzzling greeting. He calls her "most favored one" and tells her the Lord is with her. She is stunned. I don't believe her thought is of herself (Who am I? or Am I ever lucky!) Mary is troubled. She discerns at once that this has to do with things infinitely larger than herself, far beyond her understanding. What can it mean?

  The angel does not weigh in immediately with the stupendous message he has been sent to deliver. He first comforts her. "Don't be afraid, Mary." Mary. She is not a stranger to him. He is assuring her that he has the right person. He explains what she has been chosen for-to be the mother of the Son of the Most High, a king whose reign will be forever. She has one question now-not about the Most High, not about an eternal king-those are things too high for her-but motherhood is another matter. She understands motherhood, has been looking forward to it with great happiness. Her question is about that: "How can this be? I am still a virgin." He does not really explain. He simply states a mystery: "The power of the Most High will overshadow you." He goes on to tell her of another miraculous pregnancy, that of her old cousin Elisabeth, well past child-bearing age. "God's promises can never fail," he says. They won't fail for you, Mary. Rest assured.

1986 September/October issue Part 4

Readers Write:

Home Schooling

"We began home schooling this year and we love it," writes the mother of seven, ages three to fifteen. "It is helping us become a strong family as we work and learn together. My children are working harder, learning more, and developing good study habits. I need a lot of self-discipline in order to keep up with housework and do justice to the schooling, but it's an area I'm weak in and I appreciate the challenge." I have a hunch the lady is like the rest of us-not "born disciplined," just willing to ask for and receive the Lord's help.

Committed to Staying Home

"I am a seminary faculty wife and we live on almost poverty-level income, but no matter how great the sacrifice, I am committed 100% to being in the home. I can affirm that God honors this. We have few material possessions and have moved every year of our oldest child's life (seven. I've seen that we Christians can do many strange and unusual things (that the world and many Christians say cannot be done without the children's suffering-e.g. lack of possessions, permanent home, but with the family as #1 priority, a mother and father devoted to teaching the children sensitivity to life with God as center, God will bless and honor."

Wedding Rings

An elderly jeweler who had spent his life selling wedding rings in New York City to people in all walks of life was asked by a radio interviewer, "Do you see any difference between those who are buying rings now, and in the past?

  "Yes," was his prompt answer. "They are not so happy now. They live together first, and you do not see the happiness couples used to have when they came looking for a ring." He also noted that a large number of homosexuals are buying wedding rings.

  As Aristotle noted millenia ago, all men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. The difference between people is their definition. What's yours? How do you get there? John 13:17 (J.B. Phillips) has a good starter: "Once you have realised these things [the things the Master does], you will find your happiness in doing them." It seems that not many folks swallow that nowadays.

1986 September/October issue Part 3

What's Out There?

Last May Time magazine reported the discovery of the most massive object ever detected in the universe. The odd thing is nobody knows what it is. The Kitt Peak telescope picked up two quasars ("intensely bright bodies so far away that the light they emit travels for billions of years before reaching the earth") which seemed to be identical, an occurrence astronomers consider about as likely as finding two people with identical fingerprints. Something called a "gravitational lens" seemed to be bending the light (get that!) from a single quasar in such a way as to produce two identical images. Nothing astonishing about that- Einstein predicted it more than seventy years ago, and Arthur Eddington confirmed it a few years later.

  The great question is just exactly what is acting as a gravitational lens. Whatever it is, it has to have the mass of a thousand ( 1,000) galaxies. If it's a black hole, it is "at least a thousand times as large as the Milky Way (which consists of hundreds of billions of stars, including the sun)." Got that? I was bemused by the statement, "Astrophysicists find it difficult to explain how so tremendous a black hole could have formed." I guess they do. They're turning over a third possibility, much too arcane for me to peer into at all, but it has to do with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

  The most numbing of the facts of this story for me is that people go to such elaborate lengths to avoid mentioning one vastly prior fundamental possibility that (surely?) stares them in the face: creation. How much faith does it take to believe in God? Less, I venture to say-a great deal less-than to believe in the Unconscious generating the Conscious, Mindlessness creating Mind, Nothing giving birth to Something.

  What we know of God we have seen in His Son. He in whom we are asked to trust is Love, creative Love, thinking of us, I suppose, before He thought of gravitational lenses, giving Himself in sacrificial love long before He gave us His own breath of life-for the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.

 My Lord and my God. Forgive my faithlessness.