1989 March/April issue Part 1

Why The Newsletter?

 

I began writing the newsletter in 1982 because kind people of the Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, suggested that I write one and offered all their facilities for the carrying out of the idea.

  Now that my radio programme, “Gateway to Joy,” is in its sixth month I have bethought me again the need for or the wisdom of continuing the letter. I have, after all, a new channel of communication with many more people than on our mailing list. Maybe that’s enough, but then, maybe radio listeners will be wanting a newsletter. I’m in a quandary.

  To call it a "newsletter” is a bit misleading, I admit. It’s nothing like a proper one. It doesn’t keep you abreast of much of anything. It isn’t “relevant” in the popular sense. But I take refuge in C.S Lewis’s remark, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date,” and I try always to include things of eternal. I suppose the heart of the matter is a burning desire, amounting to perhaps a compulsion akin to that of the psalmist’s (“My heart is teeming with a good word;/ I utter what I have framed concerning the King” Psalm 45:1; Kay). Often I have some treasure to share which I didn’t frame – treasures from the pens of long dead saints. Because it’s getting harder and harder to find some of the writings which have nourished my soul, I give you tastes so that you can ransack old bookstores and feast on spiritual food much more substantial than many contemporary offerings. I had wanted to give you something for an Easter meditation. Nothing I can frame comes close to this jewel from George Herbert, born in Whales in 1593.

1989 January/February issue Part 6

When Your Children Grow Up

  In response to my question as to what readers would like, one asked “how to look at one’s purpose in life when your children are grown up and gone.”
  If ones supreme ai min life is to glorify God by doing what He wants, I would suggest a careful study of the characteristics of Godly women in the New Testament as set forth in 1 Timothy 5:5-10 and Titus 2:3-5. Nancy Krumreich of Anderson, Indiana, makes a practical suggestion that fits Paul’s advice; “You might write about what you think older women ought to be doing in our world (besides going to retreats!). it seems to me that there is a gaping need for women in this category to do things other than seek careers, things which teach us younger women how to love our husbands and children. And things which we younger ones should not be doing, like being Crisis Pregnancy Center directors, picketers of abortion clinics, spending hours of time volunteering which needs to be spent with our children and/or husbands. Perhaps even things like helping us younger ones with our heavy loads and giving practical guidance and encouragement... Are there churches out there bold enough to teach that older women have this responsibility? It seems to me that the attitude is strong both in church and out of it that once the youngest child is in school, women are freed up to pursue whatever they wish.
  “I’m a young woman in search of a mother-figure, mine having dies three years ago when my middle daughter was newborn.”
  I’m sure Nancy is all for the CPC’s, the protests against abortion, and volunteer work- for those who can be free to participate without neglecting the first God-given duties. But if the young women can’t do those jobs, and older women choose to pursue something called fulfilment, who is available?
  Are there some out there with ears to hear this plea?

1989 January/February issue Part 5

God's Curriculum

"I, Thy servant, will study Thy statutes. / Thy instruction is my continual delight; / I turn to is for counsel. / I will run the course set out in Thy commandments, / For they gladden my heart" (Psalm 119:23, 24, 32; NEB).

One day recently something lit a fuse of anger in someone who then burned me with hot words. I felt sure i didn't deserve this response, but when i ran to God about it, He reminded me of part of a prayer I’d been using lately: “Teach me to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all.”

  Where could that kind of peace come from? Only from God, who gives “not as the world gives.”

  His will that I should be burnt? Not exactly, but His will governs all. In a wrong-filled world we suffer (and cause) many a wrong. God is there to heal and comfort and forgive. He who brought blessing to many out of the sin of the jealous brothers of Joseph means this hurt for my ultimate blessing and, I think, for an increase of love between me and the one who hurt me. Love is very patient, very kind. Love never seeks its own. Love looks to God for His grace to help.

  “It was not you who sent me here but God,” Joseph said to his brothers. “You meant to do me harm; but God meant to bring good out of it” (Genesis 45:8, 50:20; NEB).

  There is a philosophy of secular education which holds that the student ought to be allowed to assemble his own curriculum according to his own preferences. Few students have a strong basis for making these choices, not knowing how little they know. Ideas of what they need to learn are not only greatly limited but greatly distorted. What they need is help- from those who know more than they do.

  Mercifully God does not allow us to choose our own curriculum. His wisdom is perfect, His knowledge braces not only all worlds but the individual hearts and minds of each of His loved children. With intimate understanding of our deepest needs and individual capacities, He chooses our curriculum. We need only ask, “Give us this day our daily bread, our daily lesson, our homework.” An angry retort from someone may be just the occasion we need in which to learn not only longsuffering and forgiveness, but meekness and gentleness, fruits not borne in us but borne by the Holy Spirit. As Amy Carmichael wrote, “A cup brimful of sweetness cannot spill even one drop of bitter water no matter how suddenly jarred.”

  God’s curriculum for all who sincerely want to know Him and do His will will always include lessons we wish we could skip. But the more we apply ourselves, the more honestly we can say what the psalmist said, “I, Thy servant, will study Thy statutes. / Thy instruction is my continual delight; / I turn to it for counsel. / I will run the course set out in Thy commandments, / for they gladden my heart” (Psalm119:23, 24, 32; NEB).

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.