I am beginning to think that the solution to this sort of problem is an increase in the general sort of piety that we are usually to cynical to stand. If the Gospel, particularly my own awareness of my own sin and my own need for a redeemer, happens to get mentioned in most every conversation, everything that follows in the way of evangelism is completely natural. CJ Mahaney, for instance, manages to lay the whole thing open simply by answering “Better than I deserve” whenever somebody asks how he’s doing.
Month: December 2008
Exhortation
This fallen world affects all creatures,
Saint and sinner, with the bread
Of hard affliction—mournful soul-ache,
Unjust judgment, creeping dread.
But the God of all creation
Has engineered a hidden path
Wherein the sweetest, purest pleasures
In affliction may be had.
The wise are found in those dark mine shafts
Sifting ore from worthless slag,
While the torrents of life’s hardships
Fall like oil upon their heads.
And the key into this pathway
Where God’s favorites know to hide
Is the simple abjuration
Of any form of human pride. Continue reading “Exhortation”
God’s Provision
As most of you know, I have been looking for full time employment since I graduated with my Masters in Public Health January of 2007. Since that time I have been a teacher, a CNA, an office assistant and most importantly a mom for my baby Bug. We have moved states twice searching for employment for both myself and for KB. We have prayed, discussed educational options, and continued seeking the Lord’s will for our lives.
Back in August, when we were moving to TN, I had put in an application for state employment as a child case manager. A couple of weeks later, the state’s application website was taken offline for upgrades and I was unable to apply for any other state jobs. Thinking that that door had been closed, I looked elsewhere for employment. About two weeks ago, I received a letter in the mail from the state requesting an interview for the case manager position. I interviewed and began a wait that would either end in a phone call offering the position or a letter declining my application. I was under the impression that if I was to be offered a position that I would receive a phone call within a week and the letter by Christmas. Needless to say, I was looking for the letter by this point, but God apparently had other plans.
I received the phone call this morning and accepted. My start date for orientation and the beginning of my training will be January 16th. I know that this will be a difficult job, but I’m really excited to be able to served the Lord and the families that I will be coming in contact with. Thank you all so much for your faithful prayers this whole time. We still have several decisions to make, especially in the realm of KB’s interest in going back to school for a Master’s in Accounting and childcare for D. We have some childcare options available, I just have to hash things out still.
May you all have a blessings filled Christmas and always remember that even though Christ came as a baby, he became a man to reconcile us to the Father. His gift of grace is always sufficient but he is also a God who loves to take care of His children’s needs and He is always faithful.
Thought to Ponder
From my reading this morning:
God’s people tend to suffer a lot of false guilt over sins they have already confessed and received forgiveness for. The big ones and the minor ones. Even attitudes. We long to live lives that are beyond reproach. We want to be perfect parents, perfect children, perfect friends, perfect Christians, perfect people. But we are not always empathetic and forgiving. We have trouble demonstrating unconditional love. We are not always kind. Sometimes we even have temper tantrums. And sometimes we are blanketed by depression.
Why do we have all the struggle? Why is it so difficult to see ourselves as God sees us — on the one hand, sinners who cannot be good enough to please him; on the other hand, his beloved children, forgiven and restored? Once reason, as we’ve discovered, is that we’re often preoccupied with the opinions of other people rather than with God’s. We’ve adopted this world’s standards. We judge ourselves and others by those standards, forgetting all that the Father has to say about us.
But as we begin to recognize and accept our standing in God’s value system, we can be free from the struggle for self esteem, the maneuvers to bolster our egos, the fight for our place in the pecking order. Freedom will come when our views of ourselves don’t depend on the looks, physique, or intelligence we inherited, the family we were born into, the size of our bank account, or even how others treat us. A general principle is: When you feel comfortable about yourself, about who you are and what you have, you can direct your focus away from yourself and toward others.
Norma Kvindlog and Ester Lindgren Anderson (From Beyond Me)
Emasculate the course
To survive against competition every university and every college has to pretend that it gives something modern, advanced and immediately marketable. But is it possible to give advanced courses to students who are ignorant in elementary mathematics? Of course not. What to do? Very simple! Emasculate the course by excluding everything non-trivial, reduce the students’ task to applying ready-made recipes without understanding—and you will survive and succeed. Your pretensions that you teach something advanced will allow the students to pretend that they are educated, and this will allow the firms and departments that hire them to pretend that they hire educated people. But at some point this chain of pretensions will have to break.
Toom is talking here about his frustrations in teaching “Business Calculus” to college students, but the curious thing is that his remarks could just as easily be said about teaching grammar to middle school students.
Other articles by Andrei Toom can be found here.
neumatikos 