Faith That Can Move Molehills

Imagine faith as small as a mustard seed. What does it look like when it moves mountains? Can it move molehills too? Yes, for while nothing is too great for God's power, nothing is too small for His care. He is abundantly gracious. When we make mountains out of molehills, and then almost despair, he is still there to strengthen puny faith.

It's late winter. I've been inside a lot with three children, and being fond of neatness and order, the grand propensity of small ones to destroy all things visible can drive me a little bit batty. That's not a real trial, right? I mean, on my dresser, I have the Smyrna ministries prayer guide, where I'm reminded to pray for families who are without home and job because of their faith, or who are left to mourn their brutally beheaded loved ones. There is heart-wrenching agony going on in God's worldwide family. So I feel that a bit petty becoming downcast over the fact that the kid's bathroom is being systematically broken to pieces, splattered with mud, and water-damaged, and my top-load washing machine seems unendingly filled with wet mess clean up towels. With the crowning event of the six year old crashing down on the toilet tank while standing on the seat to wipe up the toothpaste he just flung on the wall, and acquiring a knot on his head and splitting the tank from top to bottom - meaning that the kids will now have to share our relatively pristine master bathroom (Nooo!) until theirs can be repaired - I became just a little despondent. It wasn't just the mess, it was the money. Every family with kids usually has a back list of extras they'd like to have when they can save up. Shelling out the stash for a new toilet that you didn't really want is deflating. Still, I was making a mountain out of a molehill. It becomes easy to do when you're in a small house with small people most of the time. But God is not limited by that.

I sat down at the desk in a random quiet moment while the children were playing, and flipped open the Bible, like a hungry person hunting in the pantry between meals. The Parable of the Ten Virgins. "...Watch, therefore, for you know nether the day nor the hour" (Matt. 25:13) Here is reality in its final state. Here was truth beyond the broken toilet. I thought about the horror of being told to depart from Jesus, and the joy of entering with him into the marriage feast. Imagine Him coming at any moment, any second. The sky outside the window was the blank white-grey of cheerless winter. But at any moment the Son of God whom we have long loved unseen, could be breaking through those clouds like lightning and changing reality forever. The devastated bathroom, stained carpet and leaky budget wouldn't matter anymore. All that would matter is that we had loved the Christ of God and been faithful to Him. My heart was flooded with joy - a joy that I felt I could not have had if the fretful state of things had not made me previously disillusioned with life. Was the Holy Spirit really filling me with joy in the midst of trials - when my trials were so silly? I knew he would do this for persecuted Christians, for people really suffering great pain, but somehow that he would use the mere disruption of my daily comforts as a step in the journey to fellowship with him was a marvelous surprise. I did not deserve this. I am too petty. But His grace is not like that. We never deserve it.

I return to this. My faith can move mountains because it is a tiny link to the massive, powerful joy that I belong to the returning King. If we don't get the toilet fixed before He comes back, it's okay. Am I silly enough to need reminded of this? Yes. Is He gracious enough to come to me in the remembrance? He is.

Acquainted With the Night

"You were up a lot last night," my husband said to me this morning as I describe my feeling of out-of-it-ness and of having cotton balls in my eyes. His saying made me think of Robert Frost's poem "I have been one acquainted with the night", and despite my head-numbing sleep-deprivation after being much up with a stuffy nosed infant, I felt the need to write my own version of the poem, with matching meter and rhyme scheme. Maybe better than a cup of coffee? The muse was awake if nothing else is.

Here is Frost's poem, and here is mine:

I have been one acquainted with the night

I've learned to change a diaper with the dark

To spare bleared eyes the glare of night time light.

I've loved a hungry baby in the dark,

Though dull with weariness and ache of sleep,

Love's joy in giving kindle's strength's dim spark

I have been often tired enough to weep

Until the sweetness of small velvet life

Cradled to me, a tiny charge to keep --

All this, to be a mother and a wife

And further to be held in Heaven's sight --

I could not ask for any better life

Than what is given to me. It is right

That I have been acquainted with the night.

Sleeping Mother with Child by Christian Krog, 1883

Looking Forward

This past winter has been hard in all the ways that winters with little ones (and my own struggle with Lyme disease) are hard. My relief that it is over is so great that I want to hug every tulip and daffodil, drink the air from open windows like wine, and already sigh that the leaves are out because the end of the beginning marks a few days closer to the next winter. I shudder at the memory of the dull skies, illnesses and seeping cold and never want to see it again. The whole earth seems so right. The deadness of winter so wrong - must it ever come again? 

But in the midst of the long, dark winter, God sent us that which that makes the end of this summer a thing to anticipate with hope At first we were overwhelmed in the midst of our weariness, but the hope is growing, and, oh, God-willing, the end of October will bring us new, warm life - a baby. I'm growing hungrier for small fuzzy cheeks and velvet head and a new face with a new name - hungrier than I was for warm skies and violet-studded grass. This is a gift. We never know if a growing baby in the womb will live to see the light of day - all life is in God's hands. But my heart wanted something to anticipate and God granted me a growing belly and sleepless wee hours filled with crazy baby-name conjuring, and midnight snacks and outdoor time with children that leaves me weary to the bone, and the overwhelming reality that a life is in our charge to love and give ourselves to keep. 

In all of this, the Word of God has been near to sustain and teach me. I am learning that when I cannot see the good of life's hard things (and even pregnancy has been a hard thing), their hardness itself is the gift of Him who said "You have need of endurance" to one of his children who would have all things made light and easy. If I could have all things easy here, how would I be kept from the dangerous love of this world? To be weary in the way is to long for the end - final redemption in Jesus' consummated kingdom. Ease does not push me there. "The testing of your faith develops endurance". Whatever motherhood brings, life will not be easy if my God loves me well. He wants me to be as hungry for His kingdom as I have been for spring, as eager to see His face as I am to meet our baby (no, much, much more). He wants me to raise our children to hope in the triumph of King Jesus, and look for redemption outside themselves just as I must daily do. And He is helping me to do want He wants of me.

If none of this makes sense, blame it on my pregnancy brain, but praise the Lord with me, because He does all things well.

On Bringing Up Children - An Extensive Quotation

I dearly love George MacDonald's fiction (despite his sometimes faulty theology, which I have found to be unnoticeable in the best of his good and beautiful children's works) , and within the past several years I have traveled through a lesser-known trilogy of his - Annals of A Quiet Neighborhood, The Seaboard Parish, and The Vicar's Daughter. I was pleasantly surprised to find at the end of the last book, a whole chapter on the bringing up of children. It is written by the fictional vicar's daughter herself, but I am sure reflects G.M.'s own principles of child-rearing quite well. I heartily agreed with just about all of it, even though I had never encountered some of the specific ideas articulated, and wanted to put it somewhere where I could access and share it easily. So here is most of the chapter, hunted up and copied from Gutenberg.org:

I think there can be no harm in mentioning a few general principles laid down by my father. They are such as to commend themselves most to the most practical. 

And first for a few negative ones.

1. Never give in to disobedience; and never threaten what you are not prepared to carry out.

Why?

Our son is in the "Why?" stage of life, between 3 and 4 years old. The questioning seems almost merciless at times, pushing the bounds of infinite regression, as he pries for just one more tidbit to feed his young appetite for knowledge. "Why did you drop that cup? Why does that happen sometimes? Why do you need to use the bathroom? Why don't you want me to put my hands in my mouth? Why is that not good? Why did you do that?...." The answers I have to give him for some of these wearisome wonderings seem quite valueless to me. But sometimes the "Why's" do turn up valuable bits of information. When I begin to talk to him about Scripture truths and he asks questions like, "Why did Jesus die? Why did they kill him? Why did He let them kill him? Why does he love us?" Oh, that one is a why indeed.

Today after reading about the garden of Eden, he asked, "Why did God make a tree like that?" and "Why did the snake lie to them?" As I pondered and articulated answers, I began to realize how, unlike many of the tedious details of my daily life, the story of God offers riches of knowledge ready to supply an infinite hunger to know and be fed in heart and mind.

If I would only offer Scripture the ravenous curiosity that my child offers me each day, how much might I discover? There is a point of stopping where "The secret things belong to the Lord our God" (Deut. 29:29), but I think that just as often as we are tempted to pry where we have no business, we are tempted to neglect stores of good things in which we ought to be having a great deal of business.

When I wake with a morning text in my head, maybe a question would bring more good to me from it than the customary thoughts. His mercies are new every morning. Why are His mercies new every morning? Because His faithfulness is great. Why is His faithfulness great? Because He does not change. Why does He not change? Because that is who He is.  At this point there are no more questions, but a great deal of solid assurance.

I think that at the back, or the bottom, or the peak of all our questioning, the ultimate answer will always be the person and nature of God. Because He is who He is, this is. Let's be taking our children's questions there too. For our children it will be a refuge.

Gathering Storm Near Ry by Vilhelm Kyhn

The Wonder of Christmas Love

Nearly every Advent season, I find, with almost incredulous surprise, that there is another layer of wonder, another beam of glory to see in the familiar story of the incarnation. Sometimes there are several lessons of love and beauty to learn in one season. Isn't that why we take more than a day to celebrate?

There was the glimpse I had of Christ's mighty condescension when I lay on the couch, shaking with fever and chills from one of those friendly seasonal flus, feeling as miserable as all get out, and I looked over at the nativity scene on the shelf, nestled under the big, glad banner of "Joy to the world, the Lord has come!" All I could think in my illness was "Why did you come, Jesus?...It is just so bad down here. But you came..." Dirt. Disease. Discomfort. Death. Why did you do it, Jesus? How could you ever bring yourself to come? The answer was a glimpse of love far larger than I have ever felt in my own heart. So in the midst of the misery I saw the depth of his love and adored.

Adoration of the Magi
 Rembrandt

Then there is the story of the three wise men from the east. The line on a Christmas card - "We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him" has been turning over and over in my mind. Why did they do it? Was there a command, an injunction? Mary and Joseph would never have gone to Bethlehem if Caesar had not issued a decree. They were obligated, so they went, and through it prophecy was fulfilled. But these wise men - they are becoming a wonder to me. They heard news, an almost magical announcement of the birth of a King, and for them, the only reasonable option was to pack their bags and go, onward and onward until they could find and worship Him. It was as if to worship the King sent from Heaven was the consummation of all their life's work and all their heart's desire. We take for granted the story that they went. But they went. Not the twenty minute drive to church, but the twenty month march over the desert. They knew, like we forget, that to worship the Divinity is the highest joy and privilege of human existence.

This season, the lessons I have been learning perhaps reflect my weariness as a mother of little ones, longing for peace and quiet, and for those moments when I needn't be bothered. These are riches to me these days, and so I was able to see in the Christmas story, the sacrifice of these things as beautiful. Love is a willingness to be bothered, perhaps infinitely bothered. Jesus loved us, and so He bothered to come and lay down all comfortable things for us. The wise men loved Jesus, and so they bothered to leave home to behold Him and adore. This love makes Christmas beautiful. This love thrills my heart and calls me to run onward in the path of love with Jesus, who has come to us, to never, ever leave.

Let Thy love, my soul’s chief treasure,

Love’s pure flame within me raise;

And, since words can never measure,

Let my life show forth Thy praise.

~ Francis Scott Key

What To Do, What To Do?

If news media reports, television announcements, and social media trending topics could be weighed in a balance, I wonder what the daily tonnage would be? Surely it would be a weight too burdensome to be borne. Even the fraction of the stuff that the average American tends to gather for their sack of daily worries is too heavy for my taste, so I try to accumulate as small a load as possible. But I still end up on many days with a chunk of discouraging information about the state of things...and oh, what to do with it? Especially for mothers, every bit of baddish news adds a weight of care to our concern for our children. What do I do as a mother with another piece of news that reminds me what a dangerous, broken world I will have to send my child to face? I don't have to list the variety of depressing issues available for us to consider - anyone reading this probably knows them all too well. 

But to make the illustration concrete, here is a piece of something I happened to pick up yesterday from a Washington Post article on Trump attacking someone on Twitter - "Her phone began ringing with callers leaving threatening messages that were often sexual in nature." One thinks, Ah, poor lady! but a mother thinks, How awful that our nation is increasingly full of predators, and I have this sweet baby girl - oh God, help! Mamas know this thought sequence really well. But I paused in my sorrowful prayer and thought What DO I do? What do I want for my children? This world is just going to be nasty until Jesus comes back, and I can't always protect my children. What do I seek for them? What can I give them? and the words came to my mind - "Holding fast to the word of life (Php. 2:16)." Yes. Yes! This is what I want for them. This is what I will labor to give them and pray to see made real in them - the truth about God, the gospel of Jesus, the whole counsel of Scripture, the grand, sweet promises, the unshakable hope, the words that bring life to the soul, that sustain the believer through every trial and carry them onward to Heaven, that nothing on earth can take away from them. Truly, if the bad things on the news happened to my children - and yet, they held fast to the word of life - it would be enough.

Yes, the worst could happen - that a child does not hold to the word of life. But the battle cry of every mother's heart should be, Not if I can help it! Or for the more vigorous among us, Over my dead body! This is done, not simply by force-feeding the tots a pile of memory verses -though that doesn't much hurt! - but pressing into the solid comfort of the Word of God myself. I can't give what I don't have. But when it comes to what to do with 'the stuff out there', I can use those heavy lumps of bad news, and plunk them down on the lever of my determination to hold fast to the word of life before my children - to know and cherish the word of God for myself, and so doing to set it more faithfully before them. To use another metaphor - the colder the thermometer drops outside, the more wood you throw on the fire. Let me be found strengthening my soul with the Word of God, and when my children need strength, it will be the first thing I give them.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
(Philippians 2:13-16 ESV)

Art ~ Munkácsy, Mihály, Woman Carrying Faggot, 1873

Consider the other side of the battle on The Impossible Goal.

Baby's Daily Lesson - 1 minute Bible Overview

Babies, even before they can speak or understand many words, beg with their sweet faces to be spoken to. In addition to the usual, "Aren't-you-just-a-sweet-lil-muffin-darling-baby?", I thought it would be good to incorporate a distinct mini body of truth into the daily chatter. A straight Scripture passage like Psalm 23, Psalm 1 or other texts are wonderful, as well as hymns, but I wanted something that comprised key points of the Bible's story without being a whole catechism, mostly comprised of key verses that I know from memory. Probably a dozen more combinations could be made that are good, but this is the one that I have started using. and it brings such joy and encouragement to my own heart as I get my daily gospel history fly-over.

Who made you, Baby?

God made me!

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Know that the LORD, he is God!

It is he who made us, and we are his; 

we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned - every one - to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold the new has come!

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.

And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold I am making all things new!"

Genesis 1;1

Genesis 1:27

Psalm 100:3

Isaiah 53:6

Romans 3:23

Acts 10:40

John 3:16

2 Cor. 5:17

Revelation 21:1, 5

All Scripture from the English Standard Version

About Parenting

The Scripture truly is sufficient for parenting. That is, if you read your Bible heartily, consistently and prayerfully, you won't really need parenting books. The Bible is the best parenting book ever, and it will take all our lives to mine its riches in just that one area.

You might be saying, "Really? I mean, yeah, there's the fourth commandment, and that Deuteronomy passage about teaching them diligently, and then a bunch of the Proverbs about parenting, and Ephesians 6, and then that passage about Timothy's mother and grandmother...and it's all really good, but that's such a small percentage of the Bible to study when I want more specific answers for how to deal with my children every day." At least, that's kind of how I thought at one time.

But consider this: The Bible is a book about all about parenting the way the Bible is a book all about marriage, because both of these relational realities picture aspects of God's relationship to His people. In the Bible, we see God dealing with his children from beginning to end - loving them, directing them, blessing them, punishing them, reasoning with them, rescuing them, helping them, and welcoming them home. He does it perfectly. The more we learn from God as Father, the better we will know how to parent. But it doesn't come off nice and slick like a 20 Steps to Raise a Dandy Kid. God did plant some outstanding parenting sign posts throughout His Word, but the Bible isn't just a handy list. The Bible is a story about God and His ways with men, and we have to spend time in that story, following His ways with our hearts as we read His word over and over, praying to see Him, letting His revealed character transform our vision of what it means to be His, and then what it means to glorify Him in stewarding the children He gives us.

I haven't quite finished the journey I've described - but I've started it, and the glimpses of the road are enough to make me say, "Come on down this way - it's amazing!" That is, the road of reading more Scripture, memorizing, meditating, repeating, reading over. At the beginning of this year, I took a challenge of reading a book of the Bible 20 times. I'll admit, I didn't make it to 20 - I read my book of choice just 10 times, but then I did choose 32-chaptered Deuteronomy, so I don't call it a  goal failure. But I was amazed at what happened during those ten readings. God Himself started to become very familiar, and His methods of dealing with His people started to impress themselves more deeply into my moral sense and thinking patterns. That's what Scripture is supposed to do. (When you find yourself making automatic mental reference to Israel in the wilderness while trying to deal with a complaining child, my premise at the top will start to make sense.)

So read the Bible and pray. Yep. Comes down to that, doesn't it? But more and more. And maybe stop reading all those blogs. Except maybe sometimes read them, because (thank you) you're reading mine and I hope it did you some good.

-- A word to other mamas. I only have one child, so it's easier for me to read the Bible than others, but it's still not easy. Ask God to help you read His word and then keep your Bible(s) handy and look for how He will answer. No complaining that you can't find time if you haven't seriously asked God to provide some for you. Seems to me its one prayer He will be quite willing to answer.

Eagerly Waiting

"Lord, give us much wisdom 

to teach our children your Word, 

so that when you come to them, 

they will be eagerly waiting."

 - Corrie Ten Boom

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, 

but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. 

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 
-John 3:8 ESV

Out of The Mouths of Babes

Husband gone all week and then all weekend;
driving husbandless and distracted to church with baby and receiving my first traffic ticket;
roughly four hours of sleep last night;
persistent health difficulties;
surprisingly large doctor bill's in the mail;
and...a fussy baby...who came onto the kitchen rug to spit up at my feet a piece of paper that had gotten into his tummy.

I found in the next room remains of the paper he had ingested. It was a quotation from Jeremiah Burroughs: "Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, gracious frame of spirit that freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition."

Out of the mouths of babes.

Birth

I thought this description of Dr. Zhivago's wife after she had delivered their first child was a beautiful picture of birth.

"Squirming on the palm of the nurse's hand lay a tender squealing, tiny human creature, stretching and contracting like a dark red piece of rubber....Tonia lay exhausted in the cloud of her spent pain. To Yurii Andreievich she seemed like a barque lying at rest in the middle of a harbor after putting in and being unloaded, a barque that plied between an unknown country and the continent of life across the waters of death with a cargo of immigrant new souls. One such soul had just been landed, and the ship now lay at anchor, relaxed, its flanks unburdened and empty. The whole of her was resting, her strained masts and hull, and her memory washed clean of the image of the other shore, the crossing and landing."

- from Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Baby Walter, 19 November 2013

What I Thought of Harry Potter

I've heard of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling for years, in contexts of widely-varying opinion. Many praised them highly. Many judged them severely. I just ignored them, having better things to do - until I realized that, as they were becoming somewhat of a 'classic', the boy child we are expecting might want to read them someday. I felt a need to see for myself what this much-loved wizard boy story was made of. So I read the first book in the series - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I felt that reading one book entirely was sufficient to form my judgment of the spirit and quality of the series, if not sufficient to make a comprehensive literary judgment of Rowling's plot.

Since the Harry Potter books are frequently lumped with the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis as well-crafted magic literature for children, I found myself comparing and contrasting Harry Potter's world with Lewis's Narnia as I read. The differences were striking, especially at points where the story elements seemed most similar. While my critique is not a thorough comparison/contrast between the two series (I haven't read the one entirely, after all), I have made a few comparisons throughout. My critique is mainly a criticism, since I was largely displeased with the spirit of the book, but I think each of the criticisms are significant.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was not a chore to read. Rowling knows how to craft a good story. The plot skeleton of the first book is actually similar to many classic kid's adventure/ mystery stories, but the clever layers of fantastical elements - goblins, flying brooms, wands, spells, etc. -  over the classic plot make it uniquely fascinating. Harry Potter himself is very ordinary, human and likable for being so extraordinary, and in my opinion, his boyish, courageous character is the chief appeal of the book.

Rowling seems to have attempted to portray in Harry Potter the classic battle between good and evil that parents and educators love to find in children's books. However, I believe the book is a marked failure in this respect. There is a definite evil - referred to as the 'dark side', but the good opposing is not defined biblically, as is Lewis's good against evil in the Narnia series. Narnia's 'good magic' is a holy power, used in submission to authority, and is made of entirely different 'stuff' than the 'bad magic' of the evil side.  The 'good guys' use of magic in Harry Potter is sometimes just as self-directed and unsubmissive to authority as that of the 'dark side'.  Characters repeatedly take supernatural matters into their own hands and use magic to do what they want -which is specifically what Scripture condemns when it forbids witchcraft and sorcery. (1 Chron 10:13, 1 Sam 15:23)  The Pevensie children in the Narnia series learned to love and submit to Aslan's magic - it was not given to them to use as they pleased, but only worked rightly when they obeyed him.  Harry Potter's magic skills are his own and echo every sinful child's desire to be able to do what they please and be their own authority. Potter's lovable, courageous character does not atone for this flaw to make him a hero I would set before my children. "To obey is better than sacrifice" seems to be the last lesson on Rowling's mind.

Hogwarts, the school where Potter learns wizardry is populated not only by students and professors (some of whom are witches), but by ghosts (are they good or evil?) and a demonic creature called Peeves who is simply allowed to exist there. I was impressed by a sense of the unholy as I followed Harry Potter and his friends through the halls of Hogwarts. Imaginary beings that children are taught to regard as evil are portrayed as tolerable, sensible authority figures, or normal (though irritating) companions. I couldn't help but think that the old hag killed by the brave Narnians in the mound of Prince Caspian would have probably been a respected professor at Hogwarts.  In the Narnia books, witches, ghosts and other ugly/demonic spirit-like creatures are always on the dark side, but the lines between holy and unholy in Harry Potter are muddy. Defining good vs. evil as 'brave and generous vs. selfish and cruel' is nice, but not sufficient if there is no  'pure and obedient vs. impure and disobedient'. It is the good and evil of humanism, but not of Scripture.

Another major flaw I found in the characters of Harry Potter was their un-rebuked sinful attitudes. Obviously, no children's book is good with polly-plum-perfect characters, but the hero's flaws need to be seen as flaws and not as acceptable qualities. Lying to authorities to get out of trouble, repeatedly breaking rules for one's own ends, and maintaining hateful, vengeful attitudes towards troublesome people are sins Potter and his friends commit in their heroic adventures, but these are all seen as normal young people's behavior, atoned for by the good they end up achieving in the end. Again, Harry Potter's version of "To obey is better than sacrifice" is "To sacrifice is better than to obey", and the story is constructed in such a way that it works. There is no sober, holy Aslan to confront Harry with his heart at the end, but only the prospect of Harry's summer holiday, rich with opportunities to torment his beastly cousin with newly-learned magic skills.

A last criticism of Harry Potter is one that seems less important, but is still weighty - that is the emphasis on ugliness rather than beauty. Humorous, droll, awe-inspiring or creepy descriptions of ugliness or weirdness fill the pages, but descriptions of genuine beauty are sparse and mostly limited to descriptions of the wizard's grand buildings or meals. Glimpses of appreciation for natural beauty, which are usually sprinkled throughout good children's books, are remarkably absent in the first volume of the Harry Potter series. This is merely a reflection of the growing focus on ugliness in children's literature as a whole, and the accompanying avoidance of real, heart-touching beauty. Ugliness can be funny or exciting or scary. It doesn't demand the observer to grow up. Real beauty demands our sobriety It makes one mindful of God and holiness. Lewis knew how to express beauty to children in his Narnia series. Rowling seems to write for children who don't care about that stuff anymore. Power, thrills and action, humor and horror - yes, but beauty and holiness - no. We're more comfortable with ghosts and goblins, actually.

So why is this book popular? My prudish-sounding answer is that it appeals to sinful human nature, especially that of young people. We all desire to be better than other people, to have special powers that others don't have, to be admired and intelligent, and to do what we want and be heroes in the end, without needing to repent of our sinful desires. Harry Potter lets us live in a world with a boy like that, and watch him succeed despite great opposition. It's a fun escape, but unlike better book-journeys, it is not an exalting one. It left me just as base, greedy and earthy as when I picked it up, but with just enough inspiration to heroism to feel good.

I did reap one benefit from this book though. I was able to critically compare myself throughout the book to Hermione, Potter's annoyingly task-driven, nosy, mothery and overbearing fellow student. The evening after finishing it, I stopped myself mid-nag in a conversation with my husband (who has also read Harry Potter) and apologized for being Hermione. It made him laugh and I was glad I read the book.

That evening, however, our Bible reading was Psalm 101. That finalized my decision that I wouldn't choose to read any more Harry Potter books or recommend them to my children. Read it. Holiness is more important than entertainment. I won't deny I was entertained by Harry Potter, but I need holiness more, and thankfully there are other places (like Narnia) to find a bit of both.

Oh Luther, How Good of You

I have determined to finish reading Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will before the arrival of firstborn son - mostly because 'It's now or never' (kind of), but also because I believe that somehow it will make me a better mama. Good theology is good for most things. So in those rare moments when mental clarity and need for couch-time collide, I pick it up. This morning, I lighted on a section that was worth the whole book to me. Luther was explaining what it means that all men "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

"Now, he who glories in God is he who knows for sure that God looks on him with favour, and deigns to regard him kindly, so that what he does is pleasing in God's sight, and what does not please God is borne with and pardoned....This is the glory of those who have faith in God. To those that are without it belongs confusion of face, rather than glory, in God's presence. But Paul here says that men are wholly devoid of this glory. And experience proves that they are."

"And if this glory is wanting, so that a man's conscience dare not say with sure confidence: 'this pleases God,', it is certain that he does not please God! For as he believes, so is he... For it is precisely the sin of unbelief to doubt the favour of God, inasmuch as God would have His favour believed in with the fullest certainty of faith."

The difference between a believer and an unbeliever is that that the one has a Mediator - Christ Jesus - by which he is confident of God's constant loving favour, and the other does not. If I believe that Jesus Christ is a sufficient Mediator and yet do not believe that  I am entirely within the favour of God because of Him, I have not yet believed savingly. I start giving God glory when I believe that because Christ has died, He may be pleased with me, and because He has declared Himself ready to be so, He is.

I guess that's the gospel, isn't it? Sometimes it's most awesome when it kind of creeps up on you in a drawn-out theological argument and then explodes in your face like a pinata full of better things than candy.

Thanks for beating the pinata till the candy came out, Martin Luther. God gave you one of the best hammers. I can't wait to give some of this stuff to baby.

(Also, thank you J.I. Packer and O.R. Robertson for translating this stupendous book into English.)

That They May Come

"Ah ! it is such a thrice blessed thing to have a praying mother; a mother who does not merely say in set form 'and speech. " Go to Christ, my child," but in her daily life, full of sweet experience of all that is involved in it, says, " Come to Him !"" 

-  The Percys by Elizabeth Prentiss, 

Let it be so with me.

(Read the little-known gem, The Percys by Elizabeth Prentiss here . Both parents and children will gain riches from this delightful and edifying family story by the author of Stepping Heavenward.)