"Appraisal"

A friend recently shared with me a radio website that still airs the old Gateway to Joy programs. Today I listened to the first one I'd heard probably since my mother played them on the radio during my childhood. It was sweet to be listening now as a mother, especially while holding the late speaker's tiny namesake, Esther Elisabeth, in my arms. The conversation was so rich, I will surely be going back for more - it was like finding a pearl in the first shell one opens, and the pearl was mostly a poem by Sara Teasdale that was read aloud. The poem spoke of how a husband lives in his wife's heart. I looked it up immediately to save in my lessons blog, but the vivid imagery is already etched into my mind. Is it changing the way I think, or did it only give fresh words to what I do think? Perhaps it was both - poetry is good like that.

"Appraisal" 

by Sara Teasdale.

Never think she loves him wholly,

Never believe her love is blind,

All his faults are locked securely

In a closet of her mind;

All his indecisions folded

Like old flags that time has faded,

Limp and streaked with rain,

And his cautiousness like garments

Frayed and thin, with many a stain -

Let them be, oh, let them be,

There is treasure to outweigh them,

His proud will that sharply stirred,

Climbs as surely as the tide,

Senses strained too taut to sleep,

Gentleness to beast and bird,

Humor flickering hushed and wide

As the moon on moving water,

And a tenderness too deep

To be gathered in a word.

"Bid her be cheerful"

In a collection of Oliver Cromwell's writings, this word to his daughter in a letter to his son-in-law was a word in season for me this afternoon:

" Bid her be cheerful, and rejoice in the Lord once and again: if she knows the covenant thoroughly, she cannot but do [so]. For that transaction is without her, sure and stedfast, between the Father and the Mediator in his blood; therefore, leaning upon the Son, or looking to him, thirsting after him, embracing him, we are his seed and the covenant is sure to all the seed. The compact is for the seed: God is bound in faithfulness to Christ, and in him to us; the covenant is without us, a transaction between God and Christ. Look up to it. God engageth in it to pardon us, to write his law in our heart, to plant his fear [so] that we shall never depart from him. We, under all our sins and infirmities, can daily offer a perfect Christ; and thus we have peace and safety, and apprehension of love, from a Father in covenant, who cannot deny himself. And truly in this is all my salvation, and this helps me to bear my great burdens."

Truly, if we do not know how to give one another, especially those nearest to us, encouragement in the gospel, how shall we be really fortified? No "Keep up the good work, you're a wonderful woman" stuff here. Instead it is an exhortation to an already faithful godly woman to believe the gospel, and thus she is is strengthened to go on from faith to faith. So may I believe, so may I speak, and so may I return with the burden of my daily weakness, failure and sin to the sweetest of truths which can bid the most weary woman be cheerful.

Sweet Subduing

At some time, every wife will find herself facing the divine command to submit to her husband in battle with her desire for mastery. A certain bitterness presents itself to us in surrendering the sweetness of having our own way. But submission is sweeter still. For we have in wifely submission not only the consciousness of harmony with our Maker's design, but a better satisfaction of our desire for mastery.

In submission, we relinquish mastery of a man for the mastery of our own rebellious will, and the sense of control over self that may be ours when we yield control is a more rightful sweetness for our heart. Only our obedience must be by the power of Him who said "Not my will, but Thine be done." He has bowed lower than we ever shall, has overcome all, and is now exalted to bestow on us His Spirit. All that the crucified and exalted Christ calls us to do shall be possible, even now, even today.

"And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, 

giving thanks to God the Father through him. 

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."

- Colossians 3:17-18 ESV

That Masculine Strength

Here's a delightful tidbit of Lewis from the last book in his space trilogy - That Hideous Strength. The Director's words to the doubting, searching Jane gave me a fresh perspective on how my girl's life has been drastically changing as I've married a man and am now preparing to have a boy child. Maleness and femaleness are much deeper than biology and we oughtn't to run from what God intended these realities to do in our lives. 

Here's the Director's response to the unhappily married Jane, who is realizing, with some disturbance, that masculinity is not the primitive and barbarian thing she once thought it to be:

"There is no escape [from being invaded by the masculine]. If it were a virginal rejection of the male, He would allow it. Such souls can bypass the male and go on to meet something far more masculine, higher up, to which they must make a yet deeper surrender.  But your trouble has been what the old poets called Daungier. We call it Pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud, irruptive, possessive thing - the gold lion, the bearded bull - which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness as the dwarfs scattered the carefully made bed. The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level.  But the masculine none of us can escape.  What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it..."

I love these words - not only for how they give me a healthy perspective on my own life, but also for how they fly like a fresh wind in the face of current reasoning about the legitimacy of homosexuality. I'm not like Jane in that I'm quite happy to be married to a real masculine person. But words that can pull one person from disapproval to appreciation, can also move another person from vague appreciation to hearty appreciation, and that's what they did for me.

The conversation continues:

"...You had better agree with your adversary quickly."
"You mean I shall have to become a Christian?" said Jane.
"It looks like it," said the Director.

Where the Heart Is - Exhortation to the Christian Sisterhood

Picture this scenario. I invented it to illustrate some thoughts about love and where the heart is. Though a bit silly, I hope it gives the intended color to my thought:

You are at a day event and sit down to lunch with two other ladies (assuming my readers are also ladies).

The woman to your right is a believer - a sister in Christ who is generous and kind, and the woman to your left is an unbeliever who is nice enough but does not share fellowship in Christ.
So much for the characters. It's time to eat.  Hummus-olive lettuce wraps, fermented vegetable sticks and a mason jar of kombucha are your highly sensible lunch. Eating healthy is important to you and you have been expanding your crunchy creativity in the kitchen. The dear sister to your right is eating a PB and J on white bread and gives you a friendly smile as she opens her small bag of chips. The lady to your left opens her organic salad and looking over at your lunch says, "Are those fermented carrots? How do you make them?"

Now for the question: To which of these ladies does your heart feel drawn out in a sense of unity? (Not to ask whom you end up talking to - varying good motives could lead you to spend most of your lunch conversation with either one of them, and talking to the unbeliever might be exactly what God would have you do.) With whom do you feel like a true 'bosom buddy' because you have similar identities? With whom can you most easily fellowship? The person with whom you will share eternity?  Or the person who shares your style of living? Eating habits are just one of many lifestyle choices that could define a scenario like this. Child-rearing practices among moms, clothing styles, sports teams and many other things invisibly snip and paste groups of ladies into snug, but sometimes un-Christ-like cliques. Life-style commonalities can be a great means of reaching out to others, but exalting these preferences over love for Christ as a basis for our dearest form of fellowship is dishonoring to Him. I'm sure I've done it before, and will have to repent of it again before I breathe my last. But whatever form it may take, it's not okay to love our style of life more than our Savior from death. It's falling short of the glory of God, losing the flavor of HIM in our lives.

"So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.  Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation - if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good." - 1 Peter 2:1-3, ESV

Have you tasted that the Lord is good? 

"Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul." - 1 Peter 2:11, ESV

We are strangers here. The world with its hobbies, styles, information, toys and habits is passing away and my friendships must rise above these things to a sharing in "pure spiritual milk" with those who have "tasted that the Lord is good" - even if their life style is different from mine. (You there, in the Giant's sweatshirt, feeding cheese curls to your child, I see Christ in your loving attitude and I love you!)

There Never Was Such Another - Repost

Last year, Kevin DeYoung posted on his blog a brief excerpt from the life of Charles Hodge. I read it before marrying my dear husband, bookmarked it, and keep thinking back to it as standing among the sweetest words I ever read on marriage. After reading it again today, I wanted to record it here.

Here is DeYoung's post:

I was moved by this touching description of Charles Hodge with his fifty-one year-old dying wife Sarah.

The next death that visited Hodge was infinitely dearer to him. On Christmas Day 1849, just four months after her return to Princeton with her daughter and grandchild, Sarah “softly & sweetly fell asleep in Jesus.” She most probably fell victim to uterine cancer.

Sarah’s health had begun to deteriorate soon after her return, and by December her condition was such that Hodge had lost all hope of recovery. In her final weeks, he personally nursed Sarah, spending countless hours simply lying next to her. During these times, he held her hand, and conversed with her when she had the strength. The depth of their love remained so intense that Hodge later commented that “to the last she was like a girl in love.” During her final weeks, Sarah asked Hodge to tell her in detail “how much you love me,” and they spent time recounting the high points of their life together.

Hodge’s last hours with his wife were particularly poignant. As her life ebbed away, Sarah looked at her children gathered around her bed and quietly murmured “I give them to God.” Hodge then asked her if she had thought him a devoted husband to which she replied as “she sweetly passed her hand over” his face: “There never was such another.” (Charles Hodge, 258)

Married couples, if you imagine that your final moments together will be like this, rejoice and again I say rejoice. Let the thought of such bittersweet sorrow put your present troubles and conflicts in perspective. But if this scene feels like an impossible dream, what must you change now so you and your spouse can die like this later?

It is my fervent prayer, which I trust God in His kindness will give me, that my husband and I may be together when the first of us passes from earth to glory, and that the send-off may be such a one as gives unspeakable comfort to the one left behind. How wonderful is the capacity of the human heart - made in God's image and renewed by God's Spirit -  to love. It is a gift worth cultivating above all other things.  Nothing is closer to heaven.

The Sweetest Calling

It is sweet to submit to a man you trust
       when both of you rest securely under the wings of a sovereign Lord.

"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior." (Ephesians 5:22-23 ESV)

"Indeed, none who wait for You shall be put to shame..."

(Psalm 25:3 ESV)

Unspoken Thoughts on Womanliness

And...
...that's all I have to say.

I've just finished a lovely book - James Good's Famous Women of the Reformed Church. The final chapter - the only one about an American woman, was on Mrs. Thomas Doremus, a woman who gave herself to constant industry for the advancement of God's kingdom.

There were two secrets to her wonderful life, personal consecration and untiring activity. Thus when the Woman's Missionary Society met at her house and she was asked if this or that could be done, her reply was "All I have is the Lord's" For her to live was Christ.

Her activity was as great as her consecration. Her favorite text was, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." As her health was generally delicate and she suffered for many years from pulmonary troubles, she often said "I do today for fear tomorrow will never come."

"Well, here is her epitaph, written 1800 years ago by St. Paul, 'Well reported of for good works, she hath brought up children, she hath lodged strangers, she hath washed the saints' feet, she hath relieved the afflicted, she hath diligently followed every good work.'"

Reading about such zealous lives inspires me to more diligent and faithful service in the kingdom. I want this to be said of me! Soli Deo gloria!

Part of Something Beautiful

The Castle of Alcalá de Guadaira by David Roberts

"let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." - 1 Peter 3:4

The beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit is dreadfully underrated. It doesn't look like much. Humanity's eyes are so dazzled and their ears so dulled by the flash and noise of loud-spirited women, that they can hardly see the pure beauty of harmony. Momentary sensations seem more attractive than the enduring wonder of a life increasingly submitted to God. Striking every key on a piano, or pouring all the paints in the box onto a canvas might attract people's attention with noise and color, but it is not beauty, because it has no harmony. A beautiful and lasting piece of art comes from careful attention to order and design.

A woman living in cheerful acquiescence to the Creator's design is beautiful because she has been brought into a place of harmony. Living as God designed her to live, she stands where she was meant to be. Like one true note in a great symphony, or one true stroke in a great painting, she is beautiful because she has become a willing part of a greater beauty. By so doing, she becomes both less (because she has given up herself) and more (because she is part of something greater). Those who know and love that something greater can see the true beauty of her life, and the greater thing to which it points - the redemptive purpose of an all-wise God. She may be disdained by those who cannot see that something greater. Those who cannot see are often the majority, and those who love the Creator are all too few. But only for now...

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints."

- Revelation 19:6-8, ESV

Is Titus 2:4-5 only for married women?

Some scraps of my thoughts on women's roles.

Let's see... It commands young woman to be 'philandros' and 'philoteknos' - that is "man lovers" and "children lovers" This can be applied to loving father, brothers, and siblings, as well as mothers (who can be the "older women" previously mentioned). Certainly a tender-hearted love for parents and siblings is an adornment to the gospel in a single woman...
When it speaks of subjection to husbands (Gr: 'aner', as opposed to above 'andros', though English translations put "husband" in both cases) it probably applies to marriage. But I think it is foolish for a young woman to skip over the one passage in the entire New Testament which speaks specifically to young women, because she is unmarried and it mentions elements of married life. If I cannot follow this, what else do I follow? What the world tells me to do? If I decide to put this passage in the 'married' box, and look elsewhere for a guide to my single years, I'll miss out big time.

Here's a thought - I'm picturing two garments - one a lovely dress that doesn't quite fit yet (Titus 2 womanhood), and the other a rather mud-stained one-size fits all uniform (what the world does). When a Christian young lady wants to know what to wear into God's kingdom, isn't the lovely garment of Titus 2 womanhood - perhaps a little baggy in some places, but overall beautiful, better than the mud-stained uniform? By the time she grows into it, she will have learned to wear it with ease...