1987 September/October issue Part 1

The Gospel According to Sloat

Psychologist Donald Sloat, author of The Dangers of Growing Up in a Christian Home, made some breathtaking assertions in an interview for InterVarsity magazine last spring. I scurried to my typewriter to protest to the powers that be, but I can't leave it at that. I met a couple who were badly confused by Sloat's statements, which they had studied earnestly, hoping to find some light for a dark time they are having with a defiant fifteen-year-old.

  God has promised that for the upright (those whose lives are characterized by obedience) light will arise out of darkness. The world, however, is continually coming at us with notions utterly at variance with God's light. We must test every notion by the straightedge of Scripture.

  I think I know what Dr. Sloat meant, and I am terribly aware of the great gulfs fixed between what one believes, what one actually says, and what an interviewer may record (not to mention what the reader or hearer may think was said). I can only take the words of the interview as it appeared.

  Sloat's remarks confuse the nature of the true Christian home with its sad imitations, true Christian faith with a vague and often Pharisaical travesty. He has discarded the baby with the bathwater. This is a serious mistake for one who is taken for a godly counselor. False premises lead to false conclusions in diagnosis and false prescriptions. Note the following:

1987 July/August issue Part 5

Another Way

Following a women's meeting in Florida I was sitting at a table out under the trees autographing books. A young woman waited politely until I was free, then, with a shining face, told me this story. She had been working, but came to the conviction that she ought to be at home with her children. This, it seemed, was quite impossible. Her husband insisted she work because they needed the money. "Last week," she said, "he was away for three days. I set asidethose days to fast and pray, asking God to change my husband's mind and to show us another way." A day or two later, without preliminary, her husband said, "Honey, we must find a way to enable you to quit working."  Within one week they had sold their house and found another with equal floor space at a much lower price.

  May her testimony spur others to ask God if He might show them another way. "Your Heavenly Father knows that you need these things."

Those Mighty Feathers

My friend and spiritual mother Katherine Morgan, who, though pushing eighty, is still a missionary in Colombia, writes: "Many of you are concerned with our safety here in Bogota where people are shot every day in the streets. A magistrate of the Supreme Court was assassinated about five blocks from us the other morning But I can say I have never felt safer anywhere than each day as I go about my duties. Mr. George Schultz came down from Washington to the inauguration of our new president and had about twenty bodyguards with him. But according to Psalm 91 we have a greater body-guard which is the shadow of the Almighty and His 'feathers.' Shadow and feathers are mightier than human arms. Some time ago a missionary friend of mine was coming home from the store carrying one baby and leading the other by the hand when a man approached her with a long knife pointed right at her. He demanded her purse. She shouted at him, 'Leave me alone. I am covered with feathers!' Giving her one terrified look, he fled."

1987 July/August issue Part 4

Homeschooling

My daughter Valerie Shepard homeschools three of her five children (the other two are pre-school age). Her son Walter, the oldest, attended kindergarten and first grade before the decision was made to homeschool. Some of you have asked what advantages homeschooling offers, so I asked Val what she has discovered. Here is her answer:

1987 July/August issue Part 3

Nothing is lost

A pastor's wife once asked, "When one witnesses a work he has poured his life into 'go up in flames' (especially if he is not culpable), is it the work of Satan or the hand of God?"

  Often it is the former, always it is under the control of the latter. In the biographies of the Bible we find men whose work for God seemed to be a flop at the time- Moses' repeated efforts to persuade Pharaoh, Jeremiah's pleas for repentance, the good king Josiah's reforms, rewarded in the end by his being slain by a pagan king. Sin had plenty to do with the seeming failures, but God was then, as He is now, the "Blessed Controller of All Things" (1 Tm 6:15, J.B. Phillips). He has granted to us human beings responsibility to make choices and to live with the consequences. This means that everybody suffers- sometimes for his own sins, sometimes for those of others.

  There are paradoxes here which we cannot plumb. But we can always look at the experiences of our own lives in the light of the life of our Lord Jesus. How shall we learn to "abide" (live our lives) in Christ, enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, let Him transform our own? There is only one way. It is by living each event, including having things "go up in flames," as Christ lived: in the peace of the Father's will. Did His earthly work appear to be a thundering success? He met with argument, unbelief, scorn in Pharisees and others. Crowds followed Him- not because they wanted His Truth, but because they liked handouts such as bread and fish and physical healing. His own disciples were "fools and slow of heart to believe." (why didn't Jesus make them believe? For the reason given above.) These men who had lived intimately with Him, heard His teaching for three years, watched His life and miracles, still has little idea what He was talking about, on the evening before His death. Judas betrayed Him. The rest of them went to sleep when He asked them to stay awake. In the end they all forsook Him and fled. Peter repented with tears, and later saw clearly what had taken place. In his sermon to the Jews of Jerusalem (Acts 2:23, JBP) he said, "This man, who was put into your power by the pre-determined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed up and murdered But God would not allow the bitter pains of death to touch him. He raised him to life again-and there was nothing by which death could hold such a man."

  There is nothing by which death can hold any of His faithful servants, either. Settle it, once for all-you CAN NEVER LOSE WHAT YOU HAVE OFFERED TO CHRIST. It's the man who tries to save himself (or his reputation or his work or his dreams of success or fulfillment) who loses. Jesus gave us His word that if we'd lose our lives for His sake, we'd find them.

1987 July/August issue Part 2

A Dozen Ways to Make Yourself and Quite a Few others Miserable

1. Count your troubles, name them one by one-at the breakfast table, if anybody will listen, or as soon as possible thereafter.

2. Worry every day about something. Don't let yourself get out of practice. It won't add a cubit to your stature but it might burn a few calories.

3. Pity yourself. If you do enough of this, nobody else will have to do it for you.

4. Devise clever but decent ways to serve God and mammon. After all, a man's gotta live.

5. Make it your business to find out what the Joneses are buying this year and where they're going. Try to do them at least one better even if you have to take out another loan to do it.

6. Stay away from absolutes. It's what's right for you that matters. Be your own person and don't allow yourself to get hung up on what others expect of you.

7. Make sure you get your rights. Never mind other people's. You have your life to live, they have theirs.

8. Don't fall into any compassion traps-the sort of situation where people can walk all over you. If you get too involved in other people's troubles, you may neglect your own.

9. Don't let Bible reading and prayer get in the way of what's really relevant-things like TV and newspapers. Invisible things are eternal. You want to stick with the visible ones-they're where it's at now.

10. Be right, and be sure to let folks know it. If you catch yourself in the wrong, don't breathe it to a soul.

11. Review daily the names of people who have hurt, wronged, or insulted you. Keep those lists up to date, and think of ways to get even without being thought of as unreasonable, uncivilized, or unchristian.

12. Never forgive a wrong. Clutch it forever, and you'll never be unemployed. Resentment is a full-time job.

1987 July/August issue Part 1

Draw Near That Fire
The following was written by my mother, Katherine Gillingham Howard, found in her little prayer notebook after her death.

How cold the heart and stony-like one dead-

On which the beams of God's own Word,

In daily meditation, fail to shed their warmth.

If through neglect, we draw not near that fire,

At first, unnoticed, creeps a shivering chill.

But when, neglected, lies the Book for days,

That chill takes hold, till the whole soul is ill.

And yet when once again we seek God's Word,

With empty heart and soul and deep despair,

In faithfulness He meets us. Praise the Lord!

And pours in oil and wine on all our care. .

1987 May/June issue Part 3

Prayers

The following suggestions for intercession are abridged from Lancelot Andrewes' Private Devotions:

for those who have a claim on me

from kinship,-for brothers and sisters, that God's blessing may be on them and on their children;

or from benefits conferred,-that Thy recompence may be on all who have benefitted me, who have ministered to me in spiritual, material, or physical things;

or from trust placed in me,- those whom I have educated, employed, served, influenced;

or from natural kindness,-for all who love me, though I know them not;

or from Christian love,-for those who hate me without cause, or even on account of truth and righteosuness;

or from neighbourhood,-those who dwell near me;

or from promise,-for all whom I have promised to remember in prayers;

or from mutual office,-for all who remember me in their prayers and ask of me the same;

or from stress of engagements,-for all who for any sufficient cause fail to call upon Thee.

1987 May/June issue Part 2

My Mother

She was Kath to her close frinds, Dearie to my father, and always Mother (never Mom) to her six children. She held us on her lap when we were small and rocked us, sang to us, and told us stories. We begged for the ones about "when you were a little girl." Katharine Gillingham was born June 21, 1899 in Philadelphia. We loved hearing about the butler who did tricks for her behind her parents' backs and about the alarmed postman who rushed to rescue the screaming child with her arm down a dog's throat until he heard what she was saying: "He's got my peanut!" In 1922 she married Philip E. Howard Jr., a man who, because he had lost an eye in an accident, felt sure no woman would have him. They worked for five years with the Belgian Gospel Mission, then returned to the States when he became associate editor (later editor) of The Sunday School Times. Mother's course was finished on February 7. She was up and dressed as usual in the morning at the Quarryville Presbyterian Home in Pennsylvania, made it to lunch with the help of her walker, lay down afterwards, having remarked rather matter-of-factly to someone that she knew she was dying, and wondered where her husband was. Later in the afternoon cardiac arrest took her, very quietly.

  Each of us (in chronological order) took a few minutes at the funeral to speak of some aspect of Mother's character. Phil spoke of her consistency and unfailing availability as a mother; of her love for Dad, ("He was always my lover," she said). I recalled how she used to mop her eyes at the table, laughing till she cried at some of my father's bizarre descriptions, or even at his oft-told jokes; how she was obedient to the New Testament pattern of godly womanhood, including hospitality. Dave talked about her unreserved surrender to the Lord, first of herself (at Stony Brook conference in New York), and then (painfully, years later at Prairie Bible Institute in Canada) of her children; of how, when we left home, she followed us not only with prayer but, for forty years with hardly a break, with a weekly letter. Ginny told how Mother's example taught her what it means to be a lady; how to discipline herself, her children, her home. Tom remembered the books she read to us (A.A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Sir Knight of the Splendid Way, for example), and the songs she sang as she rocked each of us little children ("Safe in the Arms of Jesus," "Go Tell Aunt Nancy") shaping our vision of life. Jim pictured her sitting in her small cane rocker in the bay window of her bedroom after the breakfast dishes were done, sitting quietly before the Lord with the Bible, Daily Light, and notebook.

  The last three years were sorrowful ones for all of us. Arteriosclerosis had done its work in her mind and she was confused and lonely ("Why hasn't Dad been to see me?" "He's been with the Lord for 23 years, Mother." "Nobody told me!"). Still a lady, she tried to be neatly groomed, always offered a chair to those who came. She had not lost her humor, her almost unbeatable skill at Scrabble, her ability to play the piano, sing hymns, and remember her children. But she wanted us to pray that the Lord would let her go Home, so we did.

  The funeral ended with the six of us singing "The Strife is O'er," then all family members, including our beloved aunts Alice and Anne Howard, sang "To God be the Glory." The graveside service closed with the doxology (the one with Alleluias). We think of her now, loving us with an even greater love, her poor frail mortality left behind, her eyes beholding the King in His beauty. "If you knew what God knows about death," wrote George MacDonald, "you would clap your listless hands."

1987 May/June issue Part 1

Serious Play, Careless Work

When I was a kid we rushed home every afternoon from school, burst into the house to make sure Mother was there where we wanted her to be (she was), and then collected the kids on the block to play Kick the Can or to build playhouses out of wooden greenhouse boxes. Equipment didn't cost us a cent. Adults didn't have to supervise us or drive us anywhere or coach us. We just played. We were kids, and we knew that after-school time was playtime-until it was time to work (practice the piano, set the table, clear the table, do homework).

  Something has gone badly awry. Educators have gotten terribly serious about play and terribly casual

1987 March/April issue Part 3

The Government Is on His Shoulders

The Orthodox Morning Prayer includes this petition: Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all.

  I had thought of "all that comes to me" as coming from outside, that is, from the action of others. Today what came to me was the sudden sickening realization that I had. forgotten a speaking engagement last night. It was on my calendar but not in my engagement book. I had looked only at the latter.

  I did not treat this with peace of soul. The pastor was very gracious when I called. "God is in control," was his word of comfort. 

  Yes. He is still there in spite of my in-excusable failures. What destroyed my peace was not only the thought of those I had sinned against-their inconvenience, disappointment, offense but the thought of my reputation for faithfulness. I had to confess that subtle form of pride.

  Nothing that comes to me is devoid of divine  purpose. In seeking to see the whole with God's eyes, we can find the peace which human events so often destroy. He is the God who is able even to "restore ... the years which the swarming locust has eaten," (Joel 2:25, RSV) and to turn "the Vale of Trouble into the Gate of Hope"  (Hosea 2:15, NEB).

A Working Mother

"A few years ago,' writes a friend, "when faced with some rather large debts, Elaine wanted to earn a little money to help get the family out of the hole. She didn't want to leave the children, so even though her past work experience had been as a high school math teacher and computer programmer for IBM and Sylvania, she opted instead for a paper route! That meant that she had to leave at 3:30 each morning, seven days a week, for a couple of years, to deliver her papers. She was home again before breakfast and before Ed had to leave for work." Bravissima, Elaine!

1987 March/April issue Part 2

Matthew Henry on Child Training

When I was the newly widowed mother of a fourteen-month-old daughter, my mother sent me this quotation from Matthew Henry, an eighteenth century commentator whom my father had been reading aloud to her that morning in April, 1956:

"Proverbs 19:18, 'Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.'  Parents are here cautioned against a foolish indulgence of their children, that are untoward and viciously inclined, and that discover such an ill temper of mind as is not likely to be cured but by severity.

 

"1. Do not say that it is all in good time to correct them, no, as soon as ever there appears a corrupt disposition in them, check it immediately, before it takes root and is hardened into a habit. Chasten thy son while there is hope, for perhaps if he be let alone awhile, he will be past hope, and a much greater chastening will not do that which now a less would effect. It is easier plucking up weeds as soon as they spring up, and the bullock that is designed for the yoke should be betimes [before it is too late] accustomed to it

 

"2. Do not say that it is a pity to correct them, and, because they cry and beg to be forgiven, you cannot find it in your heart to do it. If the point will be gained without correction, well and good; but it often proves that your forgiving them once, upon a dissembled [pretended] repentance and promise of amendment, does but embolden them to offend again, especially if it be a thing in itself sinful, as lying, swearing, ribaldry, stealing or the like. In such a case put on resolution, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. It is better that he should cry under thy rod than under the sword of the magistrate or, which is more fearful, than under divine vengeance.

  The language of the eighteenth century sounds a bit stern. We rarely call our children "untoward and viciously inclined," but we see other people's children-in the supermarket, in church, in our own newly decorated living room-who fit that description exactly. Children need a rod, and they need it early. Not a big stick. My parents found that a thin eighteen-inch switch did the trick so long as it was applied at an early age, and immediately following the offense. It is important to note Henry's specifying "a thing sinful in itself." Punishment for such things should be different from correction for childish mistakes-spilled milk (have him clean it up if he's old enough), a forgotten chore (have him do that one plus another he doesn't usually have to do). One grandmother recently told my daughter a method of persuading children to eat what was put before them. When others had finished and a child was dawdling over his plate, she set a timer for five minutes. If the plate was not cleaned it went into the refrigerator to be presented at the beginning of the next meal. "Worked like a charm," she said.

1987 March/April issue Part 1

My Life for Yours

Ten years ago a young Canadian woman sat in the assembly hall at the University of Illinois in Urbana, along with 17,000 other students attending Inter-Varsity's missionary convention. She thrilled to the singing of the great hymns, led by Bernie Smith. She heard the speakers, "and I remember the incredible excitement and desire to know and serve God that I experienced at that time. Now I have walked through some deep waters, and I feel compelled to write to you," her letter to me said. She had

read two of my books just before the convention, and I happened to be among the speakers. Another was Helen Roseveare, author of Give Me This Mountain and other books. Barbara was especially moved by the thought of the cost of declaring God's glory. Her letter told me this story:

Three years after Urbana she married Gerry Fuller, "a wonderful man who demonstrated zeal for Christ, a passion for souls, a beautiful compassion for hurting, broken people who needed to know the healing love of Jesus Christ." Following seminary and student pastorates, he became a prison chaplain and an inner-city missionary. Then he married Barbara and together they worked in Saint John, New Brunswick, with street kids, ex-convicts, and glue-sniffers.

  The time came when Barbara saw Gerry seeking the Lord with such great intensity it made her question her own commitment to Christ. Was she prepared to die to self as he was? What was it that drove him to pray as he did-at least once until four in the morning? Was her own love for the Lord as deep as his, or was it perhaps shadowed by her love for her husband?