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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

LBY: What's your worry language?

I'm not the kind of person who worries a whole lot about genuinely hard situations. I've got plenty of faith for those. It's the little daily stuff that I have to constantly remind myself to turn over to God: the messy house and my lack of desire to clean it and the fact that people will just mess it up again as soon as I'm done and I'm just expected to smile and clean it up again, that's a biggie. The little stresses of interpersonal friction that turn into big stresses of whole-family friction, that's another. Or, say, if I'm using the riding lawnmower for the first time, mentally composing a go-girl-power blog post about the experience until I get stuck on a rise of dirt, and the blade's still going and it's like banging into the ground causing the thing to try to buck me off and I can't get the darn blade turned off and I'm screaming like, well, like a girl... that's maybe another example. (Can you tell that I maybe didn't have the best day today?)

T, though -- T is a bit different. He's unruffled by daily stuff, even (which wasn't always the case) things like car trouble, as long as there's no underlying long-term thing causing him stress that he's repressing like a classic textbook case of a, um, stress-repressing person. Big stuff, though -- he's taken an few days off his life stressing about big stuff. Things like the fact that his commute is going to be three hours each way for six months to a year once he goes back to work (he's off till the end of June with his back injury) -- that one was preying on him a lot last night. Whereas I'm inclined to shrug and realize that stuff like that is lame but it's never as bad in reality as it is when we're anticipating it, so why bother stressing out in advance? I have no problem passing THAT kind of issue on to God, for him to deal with. I guess that makes me a cup-half-full person. I think T secretly thinks it makes me a burying-my-head-in-the-sand person but I disagree. :)

So anyway. Here's where the the Session 8 lessons and video come into this: As Beth said, God has something for us at the end of this. Even at the end of a year of six-hours-and-$40-each-day commutes. Even at the end of the lawnmower ride from... well. From there. We've been through worse than this. He has, for sure, for us, and He is faithful.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Exodus 19 thoughts

A year or so ago I did a post on the chapter summaries that our family does for our weekly Bible study. This is mine for tonight, which I actually did last week. In typing it up just now, I felt led to share it. It's no Amazing New Revelation and it's not mind-blowing exegesis, but the "meaning" section was more, uh, meaningful than it sometimes is for me. :)

Theme: Extensive Preparations
Key Verse(s): 10-11

Teaching:
v. 1-8: God prepares His people to receive His ordinances
v. 9-15: The people must prepare for the nearness of God
v. 16-25: Moses and Aaron are prepared to receive the Law

Meaning:
It is interesting to note all the extensive life-or-death preparations and precautions that were required when God was to be near His people in the Old Testament. It struck me as I read that many modern people, believers and unbelievers both, seem to apply this chapter and others like it to their attempts (or lack thereof) to draw near to God, in two areas in particular:

Exclusivity. In this chapter, only Aaron and Moses could actually approach God or speak to Him. Everyone else had to stand off at a distance and watch. Sound like modern pew-warming-at-best Christianity to anyone? Many people still rely on "ministers", "pastors", and priests to go before God on their behalf, to study on their behalf, to provide them with a sense of God's acceptance.

Preparation: The people had to be "clean" (no consorting with us lowly unclean women, for example), even to stand back and watch while Moses and Aaron went up the mountain. You had to have all your ducks in a row before you could even think about approaching God, as an Old Testament Jew. This too is a common mindset today, often used as an excuse for putting off a relationship with God: "I'll start going to church when I get my life together." "I'm not good enough for God to take me the way I am now; I'm hoping I can get rid of this sin problem I have and then I'll go to Him."

However, those who build their outlook around these ideas are missing the person who fulfilled the Law, who rendered this sort of separation between God and His followers obsolete, who makes our relationship with God so different from what we see depicted in this chapter. That person, of course, is Jesus. Because of His complete atonement for our sin (which was the barrier between the Hebrews and their creator in this chapter and throughout the OT, as it is for unsaved individuals today), we can approach God directly. No priest is needed to go on our behalf; no ritual cleansing or purification is necessary. He is our priest, our cleansing, our purification. Praise the Lord for His perfect atonement, through which we sinners can come to God freely as to a loving Father.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Exodus on worship

Tonight, as is customary on Wednesdays, we had our chapter summary Bible study meeting. The group's in Exodus right now; tonight's study was on Exodus 15. I had a hard time elucidating my thoughts on this chapter before the meeting (in other words, I showed up with a half-done homework assignment, which felt so much like high school that I almost thought I should put on a bubble skirt or some British Knights or something, before I went). During the meeting, however, a few things occurred to me. I still didn't do a great job discussing them. I'll blame the sinus infection I have right now, which makes it difficult to do a good job discussing anything. Anyway. I thought I'd have a try at making them clear here, at least.

The first, what, 21 verses of the chapter consist of this song that the Israelites are singing as they walk away from the Red Sea into the desert. It's a long song in praise to the God who had just delivered them in a pretty spectacularly miraculous way from the Egyptians who'd been enslaving them for over four hundred years. It's energetic, it's heartfelt, and I have this mental image of these hundreds of thousands of people all walking along leading their children and their animals, raising their hands and singing together to God. Logistically I'm not sure how well that would work, but doesn't that seem like it would just be the ideal for corporate worship? Nobody ticked off because the songs are too fast or the drums are too loud or these are old FOGEY hymns, nobody rolling her eyes because of the egregious errors in spelling and punctuation on the overhead screen (*ahem* who me?), nobody even really thinking about him or herself, or what would be good for us as individuals. The focus is all on God and on the wonders He has wrought on behalf of His people. Wow. Bummer that that can't happen on a Sunday morning, eh?

Then, of course, a scant three days after this wonderful worship, the people seem to have forgotten all about how great God is, and they start grumbling again (and there's a lot more of that, and worse, coming). And if that isn't just like humans the world over, I don't know what is.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Romans 7:19 (the story of my life)

Rom 7:19 For the good that I wish, I do not do....

• Read the Bible enthusiastically
• Keep my floors shiny
• Smile at my children as much as humanly possible
• Show my husband in word and deed how much I love him
• Get enough sleep
• Finish one project before starting another
• Be attentive when I should be
• Catch up on laundry
• Keep my room clean
• Stay within a budget
• Pray without ceasing
• Think on these things
• Update this page, which means more to me than I thought it did
• Keep in contact with beloved but distant friends

...but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. (NAS)

• Borrow money from future paydays
• Sit here at this darned machine too much
• Tune out voices and wander in la-la land
• Read junk
• Speak clumsily
• Move clumsily
• Heck, live clumsily
• Gossip
• Complain
• Overeat
• Oversleep
• Overspend
• Loathe myself
• Muddle along in a funk without asking God, my husband, or my friends for help and/or inspiration

So, um, yeah. That's where I've been. :)

Thursday, October 20, 2005

This entry really isn't about Anne Lamott

I recently finished reading Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. My initial impressions were all over the map; a short list would include: great writing, poignant, honest, dark, bleak, uplifting, raw, sweet, heartfelt, real. Theologically (Anne claims to be a Christian and may well be one) my thoughts showed similar conflict. When it comes right down to it, based solely on what I read in this book, I don't know, but I lean toward believing that Lamott does follow Jesus. Not that her personal salvation is for me to judge -- that's Jesus' job -- but that same Jesus tells us that we will know His followers by their fruits:

Matt 7:15-21 (Jesus is speaking)'

15 "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn {bushes,} nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven."

(NAS)

It behooves us to study the beliefs and actions of a person claiming Christianity before we look to them as someone we might follow or learn from. At the very least we must use discernment as we accept input, and separate the wheat from the chaff.

One thing I definitely took away from this book of essays is the difference between coming to Christ as a young person, when Biblical beliefs shape the foundation of who you are and will be, and coming to Him later in life, when your life's foundation is already fully formed. This is something I'd been thinking about a lot lately for other reasons as well. Yes, Christ is to come in and be a new foundation, but realistically that's easier said than done. Can a person truly follow Christ, and not have given over every area of thought to Him -- not see every issue the way Jesus would see it? I think so. There's a maturing process that has to go on, and that's one thing that I think happens much more readily to a person who becomes a Christian early on in life than one who's already lived what seem to be several lives, all of them rougher than mine by a long shot, before meeting Jesus and letting Him in. That said, I'll move on to a few specific issues that I did have with Lamott's essays, theologically speaking.

Lamott did have a life-changing "salvation experience." She knew about Jesus, knew who He is, resisted Him for a long time, and finally decided (in a rather non-conventional way ;) to let him into her heart and her life. Many, many of the things she says about her life from that point on are sound and Biblical -- in the aforementioned poignant, honest, dark, bleak, uplifting, raw, sweet, heartfelt, real way. That said, Lamott is a social liberal. She's ardently pro-abortion. Now, personally, that sets my teeth on edge, and makes me angry. Honestly, however, I have never related my anti-abortion stance to my Christian beliefs. Yes, there are verses in Scripture that indicate that God sees unborn people as just that -- people -- and that He made them and is concerned for their well-being (take Jeremiah 1:5 for example), but I have been anti-abortion since I was a child, long before I was a Christian, and hence I don't tend to connect the two nearly as often as other people (on both sides of the issue) do. It's an ordinary issue of morality for me; people in the womb are people, and killing people for the sake of your own convenience or even your own well-being is wrong. Anyway. I digress. So does Anne Lamott's position on abortion mean that I should not see her as a believer in Jesus? I am less inclined to think so than other Christians are, but the possibility definitely exists.

Lamott also describes (in a scene I loved, where two Christians of violently different temperaments, who annoy the hell out of each other, are able to find community simply in the fact that they love the same Jesus -- one of my favorite moments in the book) a well-known series of Christian novels as "homophobic", among other derogatory terms, some of which I definitely agree with. Now, it's entirely possible that Lamott was referring to something in the books (I personally remember nothing like this, but then I didn't find the books particularly memorable and will never re-read them) that treats homosexual people unkindly, and that she believes the Bible where it says that homosexuality itself is wrong (which doesn't mean that we are allowed to treat the people who practice it unkindly, any more than we are allowed to treat any other sinners -- that's everyone -- unkindly merely because they are in fact sinners). Or it could mean that she thinks those of us who believe that part of the Bible are intolerant, backward nutcases, which is generally the case when people are throwing the word "homophobic" around in the context of Christianity. If the latter is the case (and again, without knowing a lot more about Anne Lamott than I do, it's impossible for me to know) then this is where I have to ask myself: Where is the line? How much of Jesus' teaching and the message of the Bible can you disregard and still follow Jesus? Because the Bible is very clear about the practice of homosexuality as a sin. It would be really easy to say, "oh yes, I believe in Jesus and trust him as my savior," if you were then free to define 'Jesus' however you choose. So easy, in fact, that there are entire religious systems based around un-Biblical ideas of Jesus, and innumerable individuals who think of themselves as followers of Jesus, but who disclaim his claimed deity or otherwise don't follow His teachings (which goes back to the verse above: "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord..."). It's less easy to look at the Biblical Jesus and accept Him, knowing everything He teaches and claims to be.

In the end, that's what this entry is really about -- believing in the real Jesus, and what that means in the life of the believer. It's not about Anne Lamott. She was simply a catalyst, who got me thinking about this issue and has had me thinking about it for days. I do recommend her book for discerning readers, for that reason, even if I wouldn't recommend it for any other -- and I do.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

1 Corinthians 13

My dear friend Jenn has been on a bit of a journey. We don't know where it'll end yet, but I'm certainly glad to watch her progress. :) As part of that, today, she studied 1 Corinthians 13. Since I suggested that particular chapter, I figured it would be a good idea for me to look at the same passage today. Even though I'm supposed to be doing my Exodus chapter 1 summary. :) (I'll do that this evening with T.)

First I'd like to look at the first three verses:

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have {the gift of} prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed {the poor,} and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

What is God saying here? He's taken love, and he's put it up against some pretty seriously important concepts, and actions, and decisions. And love trumps them all. Education, spiritual gifts, intelligence, wisdom, faith, generosity, self-sacrifice -- all these are meaningless to God without love as their basis. And not just any love, either.

Now when this passage says 'love', it's not love like we might think of today (to make things even more confusing, the King James version uses the word 'charity' in this passage). You might know, or you might not, that the Greek language didn't (and probably still doesn't) lump a bunch of different ideas under one word, like we do with the word 'love'. They used the word phileo to denote brotherly love -- the love that we have for our friends and family. Chummy, happy, long-lasting, you-are-important-to-me-and-I-have-fun-with-you love. Eros meant passionate sexual love. Storge is the kind of love you have for a child -- it's frequently translated "natural affection". And then there was agape, which is the word used here. Agape is selfless love -- the kind of love God has for us; the kind He wants us to have for one another. It's love that puts the needs of the other person first. And we're about to get a great description of how that all works, in the next few verses.

4 Love is patient, love is kind, {and} is not jealous; love does not brag {and} is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong {suffered,} 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails; but if {there are gifts of} prophecy, they will be done away; if {there are} tongues, they will cease; if {there is} knowledge, it will be done away.

Wow. What a tall order. Whenever I want to pat myself on the back for being such a loving person (and I am, really, a very loving person) I should come read this passage instead. All these things that love is -- real love, agape love -- does my love look like this?

Patient. People aren't going to be everything we want them to be all the time. To me, patience goes beyond the idea of waiting for everyone to be ready to leave on Sunday mornings without starting to shout and tear my hair; it means letting God work on the people I love at His own pace, and theirs, and not expecting people to be more than they are, or to move through life at my pace.

Kind. Am I kind in word and deed? Am I generous? Am I thoughtful? Not always. Ouch.

Not jealous. Does this mean that if I love someone, I should be able to be happy for their good circumstances without bemoaning my own situation? I should be willing to share their time and affection? I have always had a bit of a problem with this. Not just with what we would call love relationships, but with my friendships. As a teen I wanted to be THE best friend. I ached with jealousy when a friend of mine did things with someone else, loved someone else. And let's not even get into boyfriends, shall we?

Doesn't brag. I was about to type that I don't quite "get" this idea, but I just realized that perhaps God's telling us that when we love people, we won't boast of our accomplishments, possessions, happiness, etc., in a way that would cause jealousy or envy. Interesting inverse of the concept before it, really.

Isn't arrogant. Going through life and relationships with a high idea of our own worth compared to those around us certainly isn't loving. Or agape-ing, to be more precise.

Does not act unbecomingly I wonder what God meant by "unbecoming". It's a word whose meaning seems to change culturally. Maybe it means I shouldn't embarrass the people I love. Sorry, guys.

Does not seek its own. Meaning it isn't selfish. This, for me, is the crux of this whole passage. A love that is selfless -- that seeks to put self on a lower level of priority than others -- will naturally be all of these other things, if you think about it.

Is not provoked. I have a hard time with this one. I get "provoked" easily. It burns off quickly (that's the next phrase, hee hee), but it happens.

Does not take into account a wrong suffered. I love this phrase. Love does not take into account a wrong suffered -- love doesn't hold grudges. LET THINGS GO. Forgive and move on. It's a hard lesson at times, but it's key.

Does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Another interesting concept to relate to the idea of love. Naturally we shouldn't rejoice at unrighteousness, right? We shouldn't get happy about sin, that's pretty easy. But to say that love doesn't get happy about sin -- are we not to get happy about others' sin? Does this mean simply that when we love, we aren't glad when bad things happen to people? We don't get a kick out of people we love getting away with doing wrong? I am confused. Input please. :)

Bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. Also key. Real love doesn't die easily, through trials, over long periods of time, past obstacles, through dry spells -- our love for each other and for God can't die out just because things get tough, or we feel distant.

And in keeping with that:

Love is eternal. There are other very important things in our lives, but when they're all gone, love will still be there. Love for and from God; love for and from each other.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.

We're not done yet. We don't know everything yet. We're not perfect yet; we're not complete. Nothing around us is perfect or complete, nothing we do is. Not until we are with Jesus in heaven will we know true completeness and perfection, although our goal as Christians is to continually move toward that goal. (What this has to do with the rest of the passage about love is a little bewildering to me. Paul's writing style can do that to me sometimes. :)

(edit: In thinking about this, if you put it next to verse 8, which is really, I suppose, where it belongs, you can see that the contrast is between these things that will pass away and love, which won't. We know a little, but "when the perfect comes" [there are about as many ideas about what "the perfect" is in this phrase as there are Bible commentaries -- the gist seems to indicate "at the end of things, when we get to heaven" to me], these things we know now will be revealed in the full light of God's truth, and since love is the only thing in that long list that won't pass away, maybe -- love provides a lot of that light? I still dunno. Just wanted to add this. T, HELP ME. :)

13 But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Back to the beginning here (reminds me of teaching my kids to write paragraphs with a topic sentence and a closing one) to sum up: There are important things in life, no doubt, but love is the most important.

Love for what? Love for whom? For each other? For our husbands and friends? Beyond a doubt. But it's my opinion, taking the rest of Scripture into account, that our love for God -- agape at its best -- trounces even these.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

ack

Here's a recipe for a minor parenting freak-out:

• a Bible open to Revelation 17
  
• two children who don't know about the mechanics of sex
  
• one mother who would like to keep it that way
  

Of course the first question to come up was, "Mommy, what's a pros-ti-tute?"* I think God gave me special grace, because not only did I not stammer and freak out, I actually managed to give what I thought, considering the circumstances, was a pretty coherent, decent answer. In case you should ever find yourself in the same predicament ;), here's what I said:

There are some things that God says we must ONLY DO with our spouse -- that's a husband or wife. (C: "Like taking showers together?" I: "Yes. That's one thing."). These are very special and private things, and only for married people. But a prostitute is someone who, instead of doing those things with her husband, goes out and does them with other people, if they'll pay her.

This is why, in LT's chapter summary, he notes that "there is a woman who is a simbal for a city and she sells things she is not sopposed to sell." (spelling original, obviously).

*Funnily enough, I asked my mom this question once also, when I was ten or eleven. Except I asked it aloud from my seat in the crowded waiting room of the dental office where she works. (I was reading a joke book, and it had a cartoon depicting a little old lady chasing a minister out of a church, smacking him with her purse, and the wayside pulpit said "ARE WE ALL PROSTITUTES?". The joke book belonged to the other dentist in the practice. It was never there again after that incident. I was bummed.)

And now I'm going to (again) sit back and wait for the really freakish Google hits to pour in. GO AWAY SCARY GOOGLER, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

out of practice

I've had a lot of little thoughts buzzing around in my head, but I'm having a hard time writing about them. So here are a few little tidbits, none of which is worthy of anywhere near an entire journal entry on its own.

• I'm feeling SO MUCH BETTER. Seriously, yesterday was, like, the turnaround day for me. I was able to take not one but TWO (very short) walks yesterday; I am not up to my normal levels of activity yet, but I'm acting a lot less like an invalid and I'm not suffering for it like I did even on Monday when I decided to just live normally. I'm glad T has stayed home, because I am not supposed to so much as lift a gallon of milk, and he's handy for keeping me from OVER-doing it (plus, hey, we've blown our entire vacation budget for the summer on this surgery, so T being at home for these three weeks is pretty much all we're going to get; might as well enjoy it, right?). But he doesn't have to be constantly at my beck and call now, which I think is probably a good thing. And that's hopefully the last time I'll write ANYTHING in this journal about this whole recuperation thing -- I know everyone must be bored with it by now.
  
  
• LT has decided to spend all of his money (that's $110, $50 of which he just got for his birthday) on a Father's Day present for T. He's actually been planning this for quite some time. I would say "there's not a selfish bone in his body" but that's not QUITE true. But there are certainly fewer selfish bones than there were in my body when I was nine.
  
  
• Also about LT: doesn't this look... vaguely disturbing? Or at least decidedly uncomfortable? He was just lying like that, all ho-hum, writing in his journal during school this morning. (I remember being a kid and sitting on my bottom with my knees splayed out to the side like an M and hearing similar comments from adults about that. I guess kids are just made of rubber.)
  

• I have a whole post about Hosea 4 written but I set it aside until I can read it with some objectivity because right now I think it seems really scattered and nearly pointless.
  
  
• I haven't done nearly as much reading this month as I had thought I would. I've only read 4 books. I can't even remember finishing anything before I went in for surgery. And everything I've been reading has been rereads, except for one book which I'm not sure I'm going to finish called Theodora's Diary. It's supposed to be a kind of Christian Bridget Jones. Except that it relies a wee bit too heavily on the kind of bland humor that gets passed around via email -- you know, the whole funny-mistakes-in-church-bulletins stuff -- and on caricatures of various Christian fringe-ish sorts of groups. I think the author (and publisher) figured she had a captive audience, consisting of all these Christian women whose consciences won't let them really get into the more vulgar humor on the market today -- and hey, she's British, so that's a plus, right? All I can say about this book is: YAWN. The four books I've finished are two Austens (S&S and P&P; I'm on MP now) and two L.M. Montgomerys (Anne of the Island and Anne of Avonlea. Neither of those last two is doing anything for me this time around either, which is sad. Must be something wrong with me.)
  

• Um, I think that's finally all. Cripes, SHUT UP, Rachel.

--------

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Chapter Summaries

I mentioned chapter summaries a while ago and promised a post about them eventually. Here it is. :) I started this last night, but T needed the computer for a minute, and while he was using it, it froze up. Since I hadn't "saved as draft" before I handed it over to him, I lost what I'd done so far. Clever me. So I'm starting over.

First, why do we do chapter summaries? There are a lot of reasons.

• It's a simple, uniform format, easy to remember.
• It's just you and your Bible, looking into a chapter and finding out what God has to say to you in it; you're not being influenced by someone else's "take" on a passage.
• No matter how many times you've studied the chapter you can always come away with something new.
• It's suitable for virtually any age, since the results can be as long or as short, as complex or simple, as the student is prepared to make them. C, who is a young kindergartener, does one every week, as does LT. T spends hours on his, references various commentaries, and writes sometimes several pages, full of theological (and, especially now as we're doing Revelation, eschatological) insights. The friend of ours who hosts the studies and taught us the format has been doing chapter summaries for thirty-five years, has done the whole Bible more than once, and, as anyone who's read the Bible can attest, hasn't run out of new things to learn.
• Chapter summaries fit in with other study methods. You can use the Bible alone, or look at commentaries and research other scholars' opinions. The format works excellently used alongside the inductive study method taught by Precept Ministries, or without any other method at all.
• If you do it long enough, you end up with basically a simple Bible commentary, written by yourself. We've been doing summaries for eight years, although I took off a few years from mid-week studies when the kids were teeny. T has notebooks containing a summary for every chapter of every book in the New Testament, except Hebrews which I think we're doing next, as well as Genesis and Daniel. It's both a really useful resource, and an interesting look at how he's matured spiritually in that time.
• And lastly, it's the method used in our weekly small group study, and we're conformers. ;-)

Since C has her study done for tonight (Revelation 8), I'll use hers as an example, and maybe occasionally throw in some stuff from mine too. The format, as I mentioned, is simple. It goes like this:

Theme: this is basically a title for the chapter -- the main idea. (C's Rev 8 theme: "The angels and the eagle". Mine: "Only the beginning of the terrible judgments")
Key Verse: Sometimes this is the verse that the student thinks ties in best with his/her theme. Sometimes it's a verse that made you go, WHOA. Sometimes it's a verse the student chooses to memorize. Customize at will. ;-). (C didn't select a key verse this week; she generally doesn't, actually. Mine is verse 13, because it ties in with my theme.)

Teaching: This is where you break the chapter down into sections and describe, as briefly as you want, the content of each section. Some people, like T, like to make these very brief little phrases indeed. Some people, like my dad, basically paraphrase the section and write a paragraph.

(C's teaching:
Teaching:
v. 1-5: The angels with the trumpets and the one with the censer
v. 6-7: The first horn blew and made blood mixed with hail.
v. 8-9: The second angel blew its horn and something like a mountain of fire was dropped into the sea.
v. 10-11: The star was called Wormwood.
v. 12: The lights of heaven became dim.
v. 13: The eagle said, "Woe! Woe! Woe!"

Note: Her spelling is not this good. :) She writes things down as best she can figure out, and then I type it up for her so that it's easy for her to read out loud in the group. I do the same for LT, although before long he's going to start doing his own typing. The words they misspell -- and they are many, especially for C -- serve as spelling words until the next Wednesday. Two birds with one homeschooling stone.)

(My teaching:
Teaching:
v. 1-2: Silence in heaven. (What's coming must be really big.)
v. 3-5: An eighth angel offers up incense mingled with prayers, and then uses the censer to smite the earth with a few preliminary rumbles
v. 6-7: The first trumpet sounds; 1/3 of the earth and the trees, and all of the grass, are burned up in a hail of blood and fire.
v. 8-9: The second trumpet sounds; the seas are struck by a "mountain of fire", bringing death to 1/3 of all life in and on the seas
v. 10-11: The third trumpet sounds; wormwood poisons the waters of the earth
v. 12: The fourth trumpet sounds; a third of the heavenly lights go dark
v. 13: The eagle's warning: It's not over yet by a long shot.)

You get the idea on that.

And here's the part that provides the real meat of the discussion on Wednesday nights:
Meaning:

This can be anything and everything. It can be a mention of something in the chapter you'd never noticed before, or something that really moved you. It can be plain old exegetical teaching. It can be questions. It can be a basic overview of what the chapter meant to you. This is where T waxes really long and scholarly; I generally go for the "something that really moved you" -- the kids write a sentence or a paragraph telling what they thought the chapter was about, or what they think God is trying to tell us in the chapter, or, in C's case, what stuck out in the chapter for her to remember.

(C's example: "The eagle says, 'Woe! Woe! Woe! because the earth is going to be destroyed." LT's: "I think it is important that Jesus opened the seventh seal and seven angels came with trumpets, and they blew them, and things happened to the earth." It would take DAYS to type T's, so I won't, and I haven't done mine yet. But again, you get the idea.)

And then the last part, which is the most optional of all of them, since most people cover it in their "Meaning"...
Application. What does God want you specifically to take away from this chapter? How is your life going to change? Some chapters, this is really easy. Some, like these prophetic ones, not so much.

Anyway. Please pardon the long unfunny post, just wanted to share. :)

Monday, March 07, 2005

Well, it could be worse...

So far today I have:

• Been awakened at 7:50 by the sun hitting the wall in my white bedroom. (I love this, it's the best way in the world to wake up)
• Been summoned to LT's room at 7:51 because he had a bloody nose. (again.)
• CLEANED MY ROOM. Big letters because it was a BIG job. With the kids sitting on my bed much of the time, doing schoolwork and/or reading. (and yes, I made a movie)
• Read Matthew 20-22 (including the parable of the vineyard workers, which, if I had to choose ONE, would be the parable which finds the most daily application in my life. What's yours?) while eating peanut butter toast and drinking a glass of milk for breakfast.
• Taken my asterisk-asterisk-asterisk iron pill. And hence, burped several different flavors of rust.
• Listened to LT sob for the past half hour because -- CRUEL mom/teacher that I am -- I told him that I love his story (about, um, a deer that got sick when it ate a mole, hey, he's an eight-year-old boy, what do you expect?), but he needs to rewrite it neatly.

As you can see, the tenor of my day has gone sloooowly downhill. Here's hoping this trend reverses before I reach the run-for-the-hills-waving-my-arms-wildly stage...

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