I Got Pregnant. I Chose to Keep My Baby. And My Christian School Humiliated Me. “My school could have made an example of how to treat a student who made a mistake, owned up to it, accepted the consequences, and is now being supported in her decision to choose life. But they didn’t.” This is a difficult situation. I understand Christian schools not wanting to appear to be condoning certain behaviors, but I think a girl in this situation needs to be affirmed for doing the right thing in having her baby rather than having an abortion.
Advance in Favor. Sometimes an “I don’t care what people think” attitude helps when standing for right and truth when others are not. But the Bible says Jesus increased in favor with God and man. I appreciated this article on what that means.
Killed For Christ in the Amazon. This is a very short (a little over 4 minutes) retelling of Jim Elliot and his five missionary coworkers who were killed by the people then know as Aucas, told by his daughter Valerie Shepard. At such a short telling, there is so much left out, but it’s a good intro for people who might not be familiar with the story, and it was on the BBC web site.
A Just Silence, HT again to Challies. “We’ve all felt the pressure to speak out about things that we know little to nothing about. The increasingly prevalent sentiment is that if Christians-and especially Christian leaders-don’t speak up on the hot button issues of the day, then they are complicit in fueling social injustice.”
As many of you know, I broke and dislocated my little toe about ten days before Christmas. I had never broken any bone before, and this has left me feeling very glad that I hadn’t and hoping that I never will again. Even though it’s just a little toe, the pain, discomfort, and inconvenience have had an impact on me as well as the rest of the family.
The first week I was to stay off of it as much as possible and keep it elevated as much as possible. When I saw the doctor for a follow-up visit a week after the injury, I was hoping for some specific directions for the next weeks. But the doctor was rather vague. He said it should heal in six or so weeks, and if it hurt, that meant I should stay off of it a bit. I was hoping to avoid hurting it.
One thing the doctor did emphasize, though, was protecting the toe. I didn’t have to “buddy wrap” it to the next one like the doctor did the first week, but he gave me adhesive tape to wrap lightly around the foot to keep the toe in place and told me to continue wearing the boot I was given or a good walking shoe. Thankfully we’re coming up on the six week mark, when it should be fully healed.
The emphasis on protecting the broken toe while it heals caused me to think of other injuries or wounds that we don’t really associate with needing protection: spiritual or emotional hurts. The protection for a broken bone involves supporting the broken member so the bone heals correctly. For an open wound, protecting it not only keeps other things from bumping it and causing pain, but covering it keeps it from infection. But we don’t usually think about protecting those who have been wounded in non-physical ways, except perhaps the first few days. And how would we even go about that, anyway?
You might think the answer would be that Christian community should surround and support the wounded member. “Community” seems to be the popular, go-to solution for everything these days. And, yes, we are to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2) and “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Community can do much to help and aid.
But what if community is part of the problem?
When you’re single, longing for someone to love, and there are no prospects on the horizon, but at a wedding people ask, “So when is it going to be your turn?”
When you’ve had four miscarriages, with only the first made public, and someone asks, “So when are you guys going to start a family?”
When you’re mourning on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, and a friend says, “Shouldn’t you be over that by now?”
When years later your family is still suffering the effects of a trauma that, to other eyes, seems to be all over, and someone says, “Shouldn’t you have moved on from that by now?”
When you’re visiting a new church in a new town with some trepidation, and the members of your small group or class aren’t cliquish in the sense that they deliberately keep others out, but they have all been friends for so long that anyone new feels out of the loop. When an observer mentions aside to the leader that perhaps they could take pains to reach out to the new ones, the leader says, “Well, the Bible says if you want to have friends, you should be friendly. They need to extend themselves.”
When people say the wrong things, we need to extend grace and assume they meant well. Thank God for sensitive, Holy Spirit-filled and led people who truly know how to come alongside and help, who know how to comfort as they have been comforted. Lisa shared a wonderful post recently on Invisible Band-aids and the need to be alert and attentive to those wounds which don’t show.
But other people can’t be there all the time, and in a sense it’s true that, as the old hymn says, no one understands like Jesus.
The best protection and support for wounded hearts, minds, and spirits is God’s truth, whether we apply it ourselves or share it with someone else..
When Hannah was childless and her rival provoked her and her husband didn’t understand the full weight of her sorrow, she poured out her heart to the Lord, knowing He was the only one who could meet her need.
When Joseph was betrayed, lied about, and forgotten, he trusted that God was sovereign and meant it for good.
When David’s men blamed him when the Amalekites raided their camp and kidnapped their families, to the point that they were going to stone him, David encouraged himself in the Lord.
When the psalmists brought problems and trials and anguish before the Lord, they eventually reminded themselves of His character, power, and love.
Paul was “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).
All throughout the Bible, you see people in various troubles or problematic situations reminding themselves of what they knew to be true of God, staking their souls on what He said, no matter how things looked or felt at the time.
A few other parallels between physical and internal wounds came to mind. You often don’t realize what muscles are used where until something is injured. I didn’t realized my toes dug in to keep balance when I picked up something on the floor, or that I pushed off with my toes when reaching for something from a cabinet, or moved my toes when I stretched in bed, and I got some rude awakenings when I did those things. Years ago, recovering from an old-fashioned gallbladder surgery before they started doing them laparascopically, one of the things I had been told to hold off doing was vacuuming. I thought that was odd – vacuuming didn’t seem strenuous to me. But the first time I tried it, I discovered, wow, you do use abdominal muscles when you vacuum! Similarly, after the deaths of my parents, I was unprepared for being blindsided by waves of grief set off by the most innocent things.
Both of them passed away at Christmas time, so for the first few years, though we celebrated, rejoiced, and even laughed, we just weren’t into what a friend called the “froth” of the season. I remember thinking that I wished sometimes that we still wore mourning clothes for a season after the death of a loved one to let others know to be sensitive. With my “boot” now, or when I used a walker or cane after transverse myelitis, I’ve been glad that I had some way of conveying to others that there was a reason I was walking a little more slowly, and hoped those devices signaled them to be careful and not to jostle me. We don’t have any such signalers after a trauma or loss or heartbreak.
Even though the intensity lessens over time, that spot still may be tender for a very long time. One friend whose husband was in prison for several years is very sensitive to jokes about prisoners, or condescending stereotypical remarks about them, or things like baby onesies made to look like prison uniforms, and after her experience, I’m more sensitive to them, too.
We need to take appropriate measure to promote healing – setting a bone, resting, taking medicine for physical wounds; for spiritual ones, we might need to confront an offender, confess any wrong on our parts, forgive, and seek reconciliation. Both health and spiritual ills usually get worse when they are not dealt with. We do have to be careful that we’re not preventing healing or making things worse by nursing our wounds.
But we can no more tell someone with a broken spirit to “get over it” any more than we could someone with a broken limb. Healing takes time. Community can and should help. But ultimately we need to splint our souls to God’s truth, to prevent the infection of bitterness by resting in His love and care, to protect our broken hearts and spirits by trusting in His grace.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. Psalm 147:3
Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life. Psalm 119:49-50
Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant. Psalm 119:76
Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction. I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me. Psalm 119:92-93
The hymn “Still, My Soul, Be Still” has ministered to me since I first heard it, and the last couple of stanzas especially bring out the need to stake ourselves on God’s truth:
Still my soul be still Do not be moved By lesser lights and fleeting shadows Hold onto His ways With shield of faith Against temptations flaming arrows
Still my soul be still Do not forsake The Truth you learned in the beginning Wait upon the Lord And hope will rise As stars appear when day is dimming
God You are my God And I will trust in You and not be shaken Lord of peace renew A steadfast spirit within me To rest in You alone
~ Words and Music by Keith & Kristyn Getty & Stuart Townend
It’s a busy time of year, but I’ve discovered several thought-provoking reads online the last couple of weeks. Perhaps some of them will pique your interest as well.
Even If He Doesn’t. “When the bad things come, when the kind of rescue we think we need just isn’t part of our story, will we be able to testify before a watching world that God can do it, that He will do it, but even if He doesn’t, we won’t turn away.”
Immanuel. From a friend’s whose 25 year old daughter is fighting yet another setback in her cancer battle. God is with us, even in the hard places, even in bad news.
Jesus Isn’t Threatened by Your Christmas Gifts. Loved the practicality and balance in this. “The implicit messaging is that Christmas is a kind of either/or proposition in which we can either emphasize Jesus or emphasize gifts. But one always threatens to displace the other. I disagree with this.”
It’s Time to Take Your Medicine. “As we read the letters of Paul we find he always frames things this way: ‘God has done this for you in Christ, therefore you should respond in the following ways.’ ‘Thus the motivation, energy, and drive for holiness are all found in the reality and power of God’s grace in Christ.'”
Words That Shimmer. “For Christians, isn’t it amazing that our gracious God chose something as powerful as words to communicate to us His glorious truth? Everything pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). What a gift! What a treasure! Collectors of words take heart:”
(Re)Remembering What We Mean. “Fairy tales employ the tool of the fantastic to jar us back to a truer vision that sees that all things are fantastic. Wonder is an appropriate response to all things because all things are wonderfully made.”
On parenting:
Should Parents Lay Down The Law Or Give Grace? “Grace is not rejecting authority. Grace is not walking away from the need of my children to have boundaries in their life—grace is about the way that I do that.”
And finally, I loved this video of a deer and rabbit playing. At least the deer is playing – it takes a while for the rabbit. Someone posted this on Facebook with the caption “Bambi and Thumper are real!”
When Adoniram Judson first went to Burma, six long years passed before anyone fully received his message and was converted. A few years later he was arrested and accused of being a spy when his country was at war with Burma. His feet were tied to poles that were then raised so that only his shoulders rested on the ground. Prisoners were executed daily, and no one knew when their time would be next. They were taken on a death march to another prison. Finally he was released after two years. But his brave and faithful wife died from a fever, with their child soon following after – their third child to have died. For a while Adoniram built what he called a hermitage in the woods where he would go off to be alone. He dug an empty grave and spent time looking at it and contemplating death. On the third anniversary of his wife’s death, he wrote, “God is to me the Great Unknown. I believe in Him, but I find Him not.”
After C. S Lewis’s wife died, in his grief he wrote, “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like.'”
In some ways man’s inhumanity to others is understandable in that God gives people free will, and many choose to exercise it away from Him rather than toward Him. It doesn’t explain why a teenager would shoot a child except that it’s an extreme example of exercising self-will to sin against another.
We can even come to terms with death in the big picture view of the result of living in a fallen world.
But a child getting leukemia, adults dying in their prime, death and destruction from storms — that’s a little harder to come to grips with.
He doesn’t always explain why He allows what He does. Sometimes He just wants us to trust Him. But sometimes I think He doesn’t explain because we just wouldn’t understand.
I always told myself that I would never be one of those parents who said something must be done “Because I said so!” But I learned early on that you can’t always explain something to a child. They don’t have the understanding, the context, or the experience to comprehend why certain things are required of them and why others things are denied them. At times they think that the parents who are trying to do what’s best for for the children they dearly love are horribly unfair. Sometimes they just want what they want when they want it and they don’t care about any reasons why they can’t have it.
It helps to remind ourselves there are Scriptural reasons for suffering. It helps even more to go back to what we know of the character of God. He is kind. He is good. He is love. He loves us. Nothing that happens to us negates any of those truths.
Yet listen now, Oh, listen with the wondering olive trees, And the white moon that looked between the leaves, And gentle earth that shuddered as she felt Great drops of blood. All torturing questions find Answer beneath those old grey olive trees. There, only there, we can take heart to hope For all lost lambs – Aye, even for ravening wolves. Oh, there are things done in the world today Would root up faith, but for Gethsemane,
For Calvary interprets human life; No path of pain but there we meet our Lord; And all the strain, the terror and the strife Die down like waves before his peaceful word, And nowhere but beside the awful Cross, And where the olives grow along the hill, Can we accept the unexplained, the loss, The crushing agony – and hold us still.
Children who love their Father know that when He says, “All things work together for good to them that love God,” He must mean the best good, though how that can be they do not know….
What does a child do whose mother or father allows something to be done which it cannot understand? There is only one way of peace. It is the child’s way. The loving child trusts.
I believe that we who know our God, and have proved Him good past telling, will find rest there. The faith of the child rests on the character it knows. So may ours, so shall ours. Our Father does not explain, nor does He assure us as we long to be assured… But we know our Father. We know His character. Somehow, somewhere, the wrong must be put right; how we do not know, only we know that, because He is what He is, anything else is inconceivable. For the word sent to the man whose soul was among lions and who was soon to be done to death, unsuccored, though the Lord of Daniel was so near, is fathomless: “And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”
There is only one place we can receive, not an answer to our questions, but peace — that place is Calvary. An hour at the foot of the Cross steadies the soul as nothing else can. “O Christ beloved, Thy Calvary stills all our questions.” Love that loves like that can be trusted about this.
And when Job, Adoniram Judson, and so many others mentioned come out on the other side of the trial, though they may not have answers to their “whys,” they often testify that they know God better, felt His goodness and grace like never before, found Him good and faithful and trustworthy, found themselves upheld in ways they could not have imagined. Adoniram Judson wrote in a letter, “The love of Christ! The breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ! If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.”
As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you…Isaiah 66:13a
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord;be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:13-14
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:18
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Isaiah 53:4a
The Instagram Bible. “Beware the Instagram Bible, my daughters – those filtered frames festooned with feathered verses, adorned in all manner of loops and tails, bedecked with blossoms, saturated with sunsets, culled and curated just for you. Beware lest it become for you your source of daily bread. It is telling a partial truth.”
And finally, an entertaining ballet number, even if ballet is not your thing. I was thinking that it is probably harder to do it this way that the “right” way.
Or this is even more my style, minus the spa.
Happy Saturday!
