Esther's HoldFast

Status Whoa! 3.9.11

2011-03-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

This week's offerings were somewhat sparse, both for Go and Woe posts. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not: are we, as Christians, as aware as we ought to be of the potential of the platform available to us on FB? I didn't have a lot to choose from on my newsfeed, and no one submitted anything from their own newsfeed...so that makes me wonder if good, conscious use is being made of FB statuses that belong to Christians.

Or perhaps it is that all my friends found out that their status could very well end up on a Woe post, and decided not to post at all for fear of that? But why not? No one is going to make fun. We just want to think carefully about our posts and see if we can increase the quality as well as the quantity of Christ-exalting, gospel-preaching posts.

Just a reminder: you can't submit your own status, but you can submit a friend's. Just email statuswhoa.holdfast@gmail.com. If you think the status is a GO!, then submit the name along with the text of the post. If you think it's a Woe, then don't submit the friend's name, just the text.

This week's Status GO! Post showed up on my newsfeed on 3.6.11, and was posted by my friend Michelle Lee:

"The danger of self-esteem is that it tries to persuade us that we are good enough, capable, and worthy. We need the gospel precisely because we are not good enough, capable, or worthy. Salvation does not give us a righteousness of our own that we can esteem. Salvation gives us Christ’s righteousness that we might worship Him with reverent, grateful awe." Brad Hambrick

Congratulations, Michelle, and keep up the good work!

Status WOE for this week was a quote from a sermon by a person named Allen Hood:

"Jesus hates religion because it keeps people at a distance in their pretend righteousness."

I checked scripture, making as thorough a search as I know how (since I don't know Greek or Aramaic, it's possible I missed something). Jesus never said anything about religion, one way or the other. So isn't it a bit presumptuous in the first place to say He hates it when He didn't state that? I don't know, maybe it's just me.

I did notice, however, that scripture defines pure religion which is undefiled before God. Would Jesus hate something that is undefiled before God? It also defines worthless religion. If, perhaps, "religion" was defined as that which is worthless in the above quote, we might be able to make a case for Jesus hating it.

What about the reason given that Jesus supposedly hates religion? Does religion (all religion, mind you) keep people at a distance? At a distance from what? From each other? From Him?

About the only part of this statement I can appreciate is the "pretend righteousness". Now, Jesus DID hate that, and spoke about it often. But that isn't religion...or at least it isn't ALL religion.

Seems there's "religion", and then there's "religion", dontcha know.

I don't know Allen Hood from beans, but I sure would like to offer him a better idea about what Jesus hates, and what religion is, and whether there's good religion, and what's so awful about pretend righteousness. Can I get some help here?

find the good...and HOLD FAST!

Changes

2011-03-07T05:17:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer-- no Obama jokes are quoted or referenced, nor were any harmed in the making of this post!

It's just that I was thinking about change this week. Things were rocking along quite calmly in my world--just normal stuff. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Do some housework. Enjoy the family. Go to bed. Get up…

But under closer inspection a few changes are noticeable. Nothing big. Just here and there a metamorphosis of some existing habit or repeated event or attitude that makes a small ripple, which in turn creates other small ripples, which in turn eventually end up changing the shape of the waterline on the shore.

I've noticed this before. Years ago when I was much younger and home schooling all four of the children, it was often necessary to change our schooling schedule. Sometimes it was a change just for a day. But sometimes a larger and more permanent adjustment would become necessary: maybe one child was struggling more with math and needed more of my attention just then, or perhaps the baby's nap schedule changed which caused the school schedule to need adjustment.

At first this bothered me. I had set the school schedule, and thought that proper discipline required that it remain the schedule for at least the whole year! But of course, this ability for the schedule to serve the family, rather than the family serving the schedule, is one of the primary beauties of home school. I soon learned to use this to our advantage, and indeed, when school or house work became more drudgery than challenge, would shake up the schedule just to infuse some excitement into it!

My mother loves adages, maxims, truisms and proverbs, and has several of her own of which she frequently reminds us. One of them (I think it's her current favorite!) is:

"You can't be sure of anything in life except change!"

Because I'm a musician, when I pondered this, it seemed to me that change in our lives can be similar to pieces of music. For instance, a great and happy change in our lives might sound like Beethoven's 9th symphony, final movement, also known as Ode To Joy:

Or perhaps a something like this:

And then, of course, a change which seems to us to be a tragedy might sound like:

Or this:

Or perhaps:

(the bad guys get all the good music. Just sayin').

But mostly the changes in our lives are more like this piece from Steve Reich:

Small changes. Over time. Hardly perceptible, but eventually the entire composition is completely different from what it started out to be. It's still your life. It still feels "normal". But it not the same. Nothing really bad happens...and nothing really good. But altogether it's a nice sound.

"Ok", perhaps you say; "That's very nice philosophical thinking, Esther. So what?"

I suppose there does have to be a "so what?" doesn't there? But isn't it obvious? If what my mother says is true, and we can be certain something will change--if not today, tomorrow, and if not then, then next week--we have an advantage or two!

We don't have to be surprised or stressed when change occurs.

We can remain prepared for change, and flexible and adaptable enough to take advantage of opportunities as they occur

We can look for ways to change proactively (like making changes in a schedule just because it brings a spark of newness to the situation)

As Christians, we have wisdom from God on dealing with change. In fact, scripture counsels us to be prepared for change! (Hey...maybe my mother knows what she's talking about, eh?).

‎Do not boast about tomorrow,
‎for you do not know what a day may bring. Proverbs 27:1

‎For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
     ‎2     a time to be born, and a time to die;
          ‎a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
     ‎3     a time to kill, and a time to heal;
          ‎a time to break down, and a time to build up;
     ‎4     a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
          ‎a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
     ‎5     a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
          ‎a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
     ‎6     a time to seek, and a time to lose;
          ‎a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
     ‎7     a time to tear, and a time to sew;
          ‎a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
     ‎8     a time to love, and a time to hate;
          ‎a time for war, and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

‎8 So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. Ecclesiastes 11:8

     ‎13     Consider the work of God:
‎who can make straight what he has made crooked?
‎14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.
‎15 In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. 16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them. Ecclesiastes 7:13-18

          ‎“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
‎to whom belong wisdom and might.
     ‎21     He changes times and seasons;
‎he removes kings and sets up kings;
          ‎he gives wisdom to the wise
‎and knowledge to those who have understanding; Daniel 2:20-21

And providentially, scripture also tells us how (and gives examples of how best) to react to change (huh. Who knew?):

‎17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17

14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other… Ecclesiastes 7:14

     ‎10     Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
‎For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. Ecclesiastes 7:10

‎20 Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. 21 And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” ...10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. Job 1:20, 2:10

‎Blessed is the man
‎who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
          ‎nor stands in the way of sinners,
‎nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
     ‎2     but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
‎and on his law he meditates day and night.
     ‎3     He is like a tree
‎planted by streams of water
          ‎that yields its fruit in its season,
‎and its leaf does not wither.
          ‎In all that he does, he prospers. Psalm 1:1-3

‎Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. James 4:13-16

Thinky Things

What I learn from all this is that yes, change is inevitable, but it is also a gift. And it is not a gift to be taken lightly. A Christian cannot be prepared for change without daily preparation: when the change occurs, it is too late to prepare for it then!

The question is: am I preparing? How do I prepare? Psalm 1 seems a good place to start--'delight in the law of the Lord'--because when the seasons change, the roots will be deep and undisturbed. The music may change...but the Composer and Conductor are still the same.

As changes come in your life, be a tree and...HOLD FAST!

Status Whoa! 3.2.11

2011-03-02T04:54:00.000-08:00

And we have a W-I-N-N-A-H! It was a great joy to keep tabs on the statuses that came across my newsfeed this week, looking for Status Go! Posts--there were more than I imagined there would be!

Status GO! Winner for this week is Timothy Stone, whose quote by Randy Alcorn crossed my newsfeed on 2.25.11. Actually, Timothy had several goodies, but I tried to choose the one that would be the clearest to an unbeliever. The status read:

From Randy Alcorn on FB.

There is an all-inclusiveness in the “all things” of Romans 8:28. “But surely not that horrible event… Not the cancer. Not the car accident. Does Romans 8:28 include suffering?” Actually, that’s exactly what it’s talking about—suffering. “All things” means “all things.” If God could not use something to contri...bute to the ultimate good of his child, then he will not permit it to happen

Congratulations to you Timothy! You get the "Status Whoa! Status GO! Award", for not hiding your light under one. I've posted your award on your FB wall!

Status Woe winner for this week:

God loves you and me!

Well, really? It's funny, because it was a question about who God loves that really put my understanding of the Doctrines of Grace (i.e. Calvinism) into high gear. A rather crusty sort of Calvinist fellow heard me say something similar to the above (it was "I know Jesus loves everybody"), and challenged me on it.

So...how can this be made better? Turn this into a Status Go!

God bless this week to...Hold Fast

My Cottage

2011-02-28T04:41:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago my two younger daughters and I sat at breakfast one morning, and commented on the fact that this particular breakfast was a "cottage" sort of breakfast; hearty and simple, but not without a touch of elegance. Having said that, we took off on an imaginary flight of fancy and "built" our little cottage in the country. Mine had dark wood floors, a sweet (and neatly made-up!) iron bedstead, and a half door which often stood open to catch the airs wafting from the countryside carrying the fragrances of the herb and flower garden just outside.

Now don't get me wrong. We love our house here--in fact, we've often laughed over the fact that having painted it in the way we did when it was built, we love it so much that we cannot imagine it any other colors. I really am blessed to have my dream house! So it's not discontent that caused us to take our moments together at breakfast to fancifully build our cottage.

Probably it was more the idea of the thing--sort of like having your own fairytale, where you are the good and wise prince or princess of your own domain, independently wealthy and able to do many of the things you are really unable to do in reality.

But that little bit of imagination has become a tool in my sanctification toolbox!

Be it known that I am not a good housekeeper. In my mind there are at least forty things that would be better and more enjoyable uses of my time than housekeeping. However, I do like a clean house. Certainly it is good for my family, but it also benefits me: my mind is clearer and less burdened, my attitude happier and more content, and I am freer to do those other things which I would rather do. So I am always looking for ways to "trick" myself into doing a better job of housekeeping.

Even though I love my house, I have been living here for several years now. My human nature has turned what used to be exciting and new into that which I do not appreciate as much simply from familiarity. I don't see the clutter as well, or the dirt (unless someone shows up at the door unexpectedly--isn't it amazing how that will make all the smudges, smears, clutter and dustbunnies jump to attention?). I've learned to live with some of the less efficient and therefore messier ways of doing things that need just a little change.

If you've ever been blessed to have a new house, either by moving or building, you may recognize that for awhile you see it differently than your old living quarters. It is clean and new. Everything seems to sparkle a bit. You notice when a little dust or clutter accumulates, and you are motivated to dust it or pick it up to keep the "new" feeling. But after a time: maybe a few weeks, or months, or even years, the sparkly new feeling kind of wears off. Someone in the family may get the flu or a busy season will hit at work, and a little dust doesn't get dusted and few items don't get picked up. You promise yourself you'll deal with it soon--but "soon" is corrupted by the tyranny of the urgent, and the problem snowballs. Maybe you are a great housekeeper and this never happens to you, but still, you notice that you don't perceive your house or apartment the same way you did when it was new.

That morning at breakfast, the idea of the cottage really took root in my mind. For a few days I enjoyed mentally furnishing it and imagining a different, more earthy and carefree life in it. And then one day shortly afterwards as I was driving home from work, I realized that imagining my house AS that cottage gave me a new perspective on the housekeeping. Again I felt the motivation of keeping it "new " and neat as a pin. And when I arrived home I channeled that energy into just a few moments of extra housekeeping before collapsing from my workday. The next day I did it again. Having my little cottage in order was an idea that gave me a delicious sense of delight and peace.

I haven't kept this up everyday, but the results can be seen in my house and yard. Slowly things are looking better. I don’t promise that it will continue to improve, and I'm fairly certain that my personality will not change completely and turn me into a neatfreak, more's the pity.

Thinky Things

I don't want to over-spiritualize this little mental game I play, but I think it parallels our sanctification close enough that we can learn something from it about ourselves and about God.

So here are some thoughts:

Imagination is often denigrated by Christians, but has such potential for good purpose by God. He created us with imagination, after all!

Cooperating with God in our sanctification means using every tool He offers us. If it is the imagination of a sweet little cottage in the country to encourage us to redeem the time and bless our families with better housekeeping, we should use it, and thank Him for providing it.

The happiest news about sanctification is that it is not all up to us! God says HE will be faithful to complete the work He began in us. So we cannot fail! Who wouldn't be willing to cooperate in a venture if they knew for a fact that they could not fail to have success?!?!

What does YOUR cottage look like? Is it a cottage, or a grand manor? Perhaps it is something entirely different? I'd love to hear your flight of fancy!

Have you some tools in your sanctification toolbox that could benefit others by sharing them here? We'd love to hear them.

To those tools and the good use of imagination...HOLD FAST

Facebook--Status Whoa!

2011-02-20T20:53:00.000-08:00

Recently several Facebook (FB) status quotes have come across my newsfeed over there on which I felt compelled to comment. It wasn't that they were bad, really. These people are my friends, and I know that they meant well by their status quote. But the quotes failed to communicate the full thought, and as a result actually ended up communicating another thought entirely, especially considering that non-Christians also read these quotes we make in such a public forum.

Some of my friends on FB have requested friendship multiple times. Why? Because they join FB, then they cancel their membership. Then they join again, only to cancel again a few days or weeks later. Sometimes they give an explanation, seeming to be confused about whether FB is a godly use of time.

It seems that as Christians, we need to do some careful thinking about Facebook and other social networking options. Many articles and blogs have been written about this subject: at the bottom of this post you can find two links with thoughtful articles to help you understand the pitfalls as well as the potential of social media like FB.

The Big Announcement

There are several aspects to FB, but I want to focus on status posts--and I want to do something to encourage the use of FB status posts as a tool for witnessing and edification. To that end, I've come up with Status Whoa!

Status Whoa! Will be a series of blog posts (hopefully weekly, but we all know how that has worked out for me in the past) highlighting some of the best (Status go!) and worst (Status Woe) Christian status posts to come across the newsfeeds.

Rules and policies for Status Whoa!

All posting and recognition decisions will be made by me--no appeal. It's my blog, we do it my way--but I think it will be fun anyway! My own statuses are, of course, disqualified.

Quotes have to be from statuses of real people--not videos or links, not from ministries or businesses. They can, however, be quotes of quotes--in other words, someone could post a great status quote and acknowledge that it actually originated with Spurgeon, for instance.

Types of status quotes I'm looking for:

Status Woe: Quotes that demonstrate unsound or unclear theology…they'll be posted on the blog along with my commentary and the comment section left open for suggestions of how to improve the status so that it becomes a Status Go!

Status Go!: Quotes that demonstrate sound, clear theology that pointedly communicates truth in a winsome, clever, or humorous way.

Since encouraging Status Go type quotes is the main part of my goal, I'm asking my readers--yes you!--to submit your friends/family statuses to be considered for a Status Go blog post--you cannot submit your own status. Simply message me on FB or email statuswhoa.holdfast@gmail.com. Be sure to include the quote, and the name of the person who posted it so that proper recognition can be made! If chosen, I will post a notice on the blog, and on my facebook profile as well as notifying the person who submitted the status--all in an effort to recognize in public a person who is benefiting the Kingdom of God by their use of social media. If the person is on my friends' list, I'll post a notice on their facebook wall.

Status Woe type quotes may be submitted, but with no names attached. As noted, we'll work here on the blog to turn Status Woe posts into Status Go! Posts.

More people are watching your newsfeed than you think. Are they getting the gospel?

Thinky Things

Here are the links to the articles mentioned above:
http://www.challies.com/christian-living/how-and-how-not-to-use-facebook-for-ministry
http://www.internetevangelismday.com/social-networking.php

Ready? Set? Go! (and don't forget to...

Hold Fast...

Art And All That

2011-02-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

No Part No. because we're done, remember? Because, as you can see below, it's being discussed in the blogosphere. A quote from the article, with the link following:

So let's have pastors who love the arts and do not need a title to tell the world that they do. And let's have pastors who study hard, pray hard and love artists. Let's pray for opportunities to reach those in the arts community.

And let's take in plays like Albee's to remind us of what we were. Let us not do so in a Pharisaical way. Rather, let us weep that plays like this are written simply because they so viscerally capture what lurks in all of us. But let us rise from the theatre and sing for joy because Christ has set us free. Your local pastor, who probably is not a pastor for the arts, can tell you all about it. Pay him a visit.

On Being Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Christian Parent: What Are You Thinking?

2011-02-08T19:11:00.000-08:00

Perhaps a better title might be "Christian Parent: Are You Thinking?", but I'm trying to be nice, here, having come across several mentions in the past week concerning "crusty" Christians who are ever-so-smart and critical and yet not very winsome.

Besides, being a Christian parent...and I mean a Christian parent in the strictest sense of the word: a believer, regularly attending church, studying scripture to inform your life and specifically your parenting, and cooperating with the Holy Spirit to root out the sin in your life...is a difficult thing these days, and mercy ought to be extended. The choices are legion and challenging: preschool or not? Homeschool? Private School? Church-with-age-graded-Sunday-School? Family-integrated-Church? Homemade baby food? Once-a-month-cooking? The list of decisions is enormous and overwhelming.

So adding yet another facet of consideration to the Christian parents' insomnia-inducing list should be carefully weighed against it's potential fruitfulness. Yet I find I must offer this question for meditation: are you training your children for battle?

A Christian's battle with sin and self lasts until death. So it makes sense, as a parent, to carefully train our children to come to grips and succeed in mortifying these tireless enemies in every possible teaching moment we are granted in their lives. It is vital that you concern yourself with your children's readiness for something besides reading! They must be ready for battle, and you have a responsibility to train them.

A couple of years ago I was speaking with a homeschooling mom who was concerned about her teenage son. She explained that he was starting to engage the world a bit, and she didn't feel he was making good choices. When I questioned her further, the issues she was worried about seemed rather trivial to me: this son was 17-going-on-18, plenty old enough to decide the issues she mentioned on his own. As our conversation continued, she revealed more about the parenting this young man had received, and I realized that yet again a child, although carefully homeschooled, had failed to be trained for battle.

This is not the first instance I have heard of or witnessed of this failure. The parent, attempting to protect the child from [fill in the blank with your choice of the following: "low self-esteem", "sin", "the world", "the flesh", "the devil"] shields the child from every danger, injury, encounter and consequence possible.

Listening to this mom continue explaining her parenting methods I heard a familiar story. "I don't understand why he isn't making good choices. We never let them play with any of the neighbor kids. We carefully controlled their environment so that they didn't develop a taste for "the world". I remain their primary teacher so that they would always have information provided to them through the proper worldview. I never let them sleep over at anyone's house."

These parents, in their diligent desire to protect their children, made every decision FOR them. Instead of building a solid foundation of scriptural principals, then allowing their children to make decisions for themselves while they were still at home in a safe environment where they could learn from their mistakes without life-altering consequences, they prevented them from having to make any major decisions at all or having to rely on any principles of scripture carved in their own hearts. The result is a family of children who are completely unprepared to make scripturally-based decisions as they grow up and leave home.

And when they leave home, they often leave the Church and Christianity. Nancy Pearcey, in her article "How Critical Thinking Saves Faith" summarizes a recent study by Fuller Seminary on teens who become "leavers" in college:

The study indicates that students actually grow more confident in their Christian commitment when the adults in their life -- parents, pastors, teachers -- guide them in grappling with the challenges posed by prevailing secular worldviews. In short, the only way teens become truly “prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks” (1 Pet. 3:15) is by wrestling honestly and personally with the questions.

Do enjoy the whole article.

Recently I treated myself to a good read: I happened to pick up an old (very old!) volume of "Reader's Digest Condensed Books". I noticed the publish date of 1960--and since that is the year I was born, it held a little more interest for me. I chose to read the title "The Lovely Ambition" by Mary Ellen Chase. In it was the following quote concerning the raising of children--and allow me to point out that the book was published in 1960, but it discusses "50 years ago" from the perspective of 1903!

"Fifty years ago people were rarely made aware as they now are of the necessity for adaptation--or "adjustment," perhaps I should say, in the tiresome, shabby terminology of today. They just took things as they came along; and, of course a more stable world was immeasurably helpful in the process. Children took things, too, in part because parents respected their children enough to allow them to learn what life was really like in order that they might assume its obligations with a natural robustness and buoyancy, sadly mistrusted in many families nowadays.

At all events I have always been grateful for that extraordinary summer of 1903. It had its consoling, reassuring features as well as it's alarming ones, and it contributed lavishly to the richness and the mystery of human experience." (emphasis added)

Thinky Things

Christian parent: are your children prepared or being prepared to assume life's obligations with robustness and buoyancy?

Even if they are very young, each time they have an opportunity to make a decision for themselves, it is also a teaching opportunity. Your job as a parent is to allow for as much of that learning to take place as is safe and reasonable: i.e., can you pick up the pieces afterwards? Will they learn a valuable life lesson from the consequences of their decision? Do you respect your children enough to allow them to learn what life is really like while you are there to help them cope with the consequences, and while you are there to structure the tests to their age level and ability, while you are there to provide a scriptural foundation from which they can make decisions? Are you allowing them to grapple with the questions they have about life and spirituality, or are you not sure you, yourself know enough to help them?

This applies whether it is a decision the child makes is one of obedience ("Johnny, you must clean your room. If you do not, then you may not enjoy a movie with the family tonight"--and stick WITH that, because it is training Johnny to mortify his sin so he can face that in a bigger way later on in life: for instance, getting up to go to work to earn money to feed your grandchildren) or one of wisdom ("Jane, do you REALLY want to go outside without your coat on? All right then, it's your decision").

Train your children for the battle against sin and self. Train them for the battle for the Kingdom of God. This training is absolutely vital to their spiritual and emotional health and to their eternity. It's not easy--oh, it's much easier to make every decision for them. But the sacrifice will result in children who can face what life throws them with godliness and equanimity.

Art And All That Part The Last

2011-01-29T18:23:00.000-08:00

Yes, indeed, I think it's quite time we put this subject to bed. More and more I am noticing that it is being dealt with on an extensive level in the blogosphere and in Christian circles: smarter and more spiritually knowledgeable people than I are wrestling with it in a good manner, and I am confident that progress will begin to be made in putting the Arts in their proper place in our worship of God. Yet there is one last caution that I'd like to leave my readers with--as I promised the last time I wrote here:

Coming up next: the not-so-good attitude that is beginning to display itself among us...

By "us" I mean Christian artists.

From last time you may remember that I referenced the article (insert link) Artists Build The Church from (insert link) The Gospel Coalition's blog. Consider the following quotes from that article:

Though successful in his work, Youngren’s real desire was to plant a church in an urban hub that would cherish art as revelation and value artists as spiritual leaders.

Youngren hoped to plant a church that could specifically minister to artists and clear a place at their feet where the entire congregation could sit and learn from them.

In most evangelical churches, many view artistic expression as being merely supplemental to other forms of revelation and understanding. Its centrality to worship is muted.

God is in the sublime, but the sublime is often only accessed by artists. To inadvertently push artists into the margins, then, is to limit a congregation’s experience of God to the finite realm of mediocrity. Artists ought to be central to any church body, because they can reinforce these unseen truths in people’s souls. Guerra is well aware of his responsibilities as an artist and does not hold their power lightly. “It’s a gift to participate in the searing of truth in people’s lives,” he says.

See if you note an underlying message here, as I do:

"cherish art as revelation"
"clear a place at their feet"
"Its centrality to worship"
"sublime is often only accessed by artists"
"artists ought to be central"
"it's a gift to participate in the searing of truth in people's lives"

And hear these words from Mako Fujimura, in his Letter To North American Churches:

"Instead of having quality artists at the core of your worship, we were forced to operate as extras; as in “if-we-can-afford-it-good-but-otherwise-please-volunteer”, Extras."

"Meanwhile, in the institutions called museums, concert halls and academia, we are asked to be gods."

"Artists have skills and power that a dictator is afraid of, or want to use; and you, the church, unwisely neglected them."

These quotes and many others have me quite concerned that the pendulum could easily swing too far in correcting the neglect of True Art in the church, and end up deifying Art and The Artist: indeed, it seems that this is an underlying theme in the work of John Guerra and Mr. Fujimura's thoughts as expressed in the articles referenced. Too easily are our hearts given to idols, and I sense a temptation toward a "priesthood" of artists in the church.

That would be a tragedy. Art belongs in the church in a much more fundamental and acceptable way than it has had heretofore. But to elevate it beyond a scriptural emphasis would only set up another idol for our hearts to gravitate toward. Art is not revelation: Art is based on revelation: the revealed Word of God in Jesus Christ. The only feet we should be sitting at to educate our spirituality are the feet at which Mary sat (Luke 10:39). The sublime is accessible to us all through our relationship with the Father. Artists are not central to our worship: Art is a medium of worship and always will be because the Great Artist gave it as such--but it is the Great Artist Who should be central.

Mr. Fujimura asks the following in his letter:

"Do you not know that the first people known to be filled with the Holy Spirit were not priests, kings or generals, but artists named Bezalel and Oholiab, who built Moses’ Tabernacle?"

Yes, Mr. Fujimura, your facts are correct. However, please note that it was not Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 36:1)who were ordained as priests. In fact, after they built the Tabernacle, they are never mentioned again in scripture. They fulfilled their callings and followed God's instructions to create an atmosphere that allowed people to be pointed toward the One True and Living God.

And that was all. No tabernacle set apart for the worship only by artists. No letters to the people requesting more respect and attention for artists. No special classes taught by artists so that people could truly understand the art they used in the tabernacle.

They just fulfilled their callings faithfully and obediently.

May we all do the same.

Thinky Things

Here is a link to a more balanced Q & A session which, I think, puts Art in it's proper perspective. The host is none other than Shai Lin, Christian rap artist. I encourage you to listen. And then, consider following the following good advice from the Gospel Coalition blog article:

"Anyone can submit to beauty and art by simply learning to appreciate it. Learn how to read a novel or a poem. Learn how to listen to music and experience a painting. Support the artists in your community not just spiritually but also financially. Seek out creative and unsolicited ways to do this. Attend a [Christian Musician] concert or buy their [album]. Purchase a painting or attend a friend’s show."

Follow this advice not because you want to support artists, even Christian artists...but in order to worship more fully The Greatest Artist.

And Hold Fast...

‘But I’m borrred!’

2011-01-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

As a mother, one of the best strategies I learned early on was delegation. So, this week, when things got really busy and I started to feel overwhelmed, I reached into my bag of tricks and came up with that old standby--after which I called my oldest daughter and asked if she had anything she was just itching to tell the world.

Because, you see, I know my children. They all got WORDS...and lots of them. They got it honest...that's all I'm sayin'. So, for the very first guest blog post here on the HoldFast, I present to you a piece written by none other than the one responsible for the name of the blog: my daughter Lacy Burnett. (And thanks, love. You done me proud!)

Recently, my husband and I were watching a show in which a main character is dealing with therapy sessions that just don’t seem to be working. “It will help you to write down everything that happens to you on a blog,” says his therapist, to which he replies hopelessly, “Nothing ever happens to me.”

Of course, this being a TV show, 30 seconds later all sorts of things start happening to him, and he is extremely happy with the change.

Unfortunately, it’s just a show, and while we certainly understand his boredom and rejoice with him when things get exciting, everyone knows life just doesn’t happen like that. Life is routine, and boredom and discontent are a constant temptation.

But I argue this is often worse for Christians. We, after all, are the ones meant to experience exciting, thrilling things, similar to the stories of David, Moses, and Paul in our holy book. We’re the ones who are supposed to have the power of the Holy Spirit after all, and what good is that if it doesn’t make life interesting, right?

Too many Christian authors don’t speak against this notion, or else, they directly endorse it.

One example is in one of the most popular Christian books today, Jesus Calling. Author Sarah Young states in her introduction: “I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more.” The rest of the book consists of messages she believes God gave to her, outside of the Bible, accessorized here and there with verses, and written in first person.

What happened? Why wasn’t the Bible, the book God gave over thousands of years and filled to the brim with more than we could possibly understand about Him, not enough? Why did she feel she needed to put more words into the Creator’s mouth?

She was effectively saying “Nothing ever happens to me in the Bible.”

Of course I can also understand that feeling. When I was little, my siblings and I learned quickly that the words “I’m bored” or “I have nothing to do” were dangerous! Mom or Dad would start to smile and say “Well, we can fix that...” and if we didn’t run to find something to do quickly enough, we’d get stuck with some chore we definitely didn’t want. So we figured out how to entertain ourselves, for the most part, and even thinking of the words “I’m bored” automatically spurred our minds to think of something to do.

That still works, and just this past month I’ve found that God needed to use it with me again.

Until recently I’ve been unemployed, and with all the housework done, the meals experimented with to the limit of my poor husband’s patience, and the dog brushed within an inch of her life, I found myself sitting at the computer thinking “I have nothing to do...” Promptly the wheels started turning, and God brought to mind some Bible chapters that I was far behind on reading. The temptation then was, “But that’s not what I want to do!” and that laid bare my real problem.

See, I’d forgotten something very important: that life isn’t about me, it isn’t here to entertain me. My job is to glorify God, and that means there is always, always, something to do. While God promises us rest, the Bible never condones idleness of mind or body for it’s own sake, and there is so much written in the Word that we can be doing for the one who died for us. Sometimes it’s reading and studying, sometimes it’s working to remember and perform everyday tasks that slip to the bottom of the list because they aren’t “fun.” Sometimes it’s having fun, finding something to laugh about or to learn. Sometimes it’s doing something for someone else, volunteering, or finding a creative way to bless those closest to us.

But sadly, while reading more of Sarah Young’s book, I noticed that “Jesus” tends to be very focused on the reader. Everything is focused on bringing the reader into “My Presence,” which is described as a euphoric sort of experience that Christians ought to be having all the time.

But nowhere in the Bible does Jesus encourage this constant search for a mountaintop experience. Instead, we are told to pray without ceasing, to be thankful, to love one another, “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands” (1 Thess. 4:11). Sometimes it’s those “boring” things, the routine things, that, when done with the right heart, glorify God the most.

Art And All That Part X

2011-01-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know how many more Art And All That posts there will be: I am noticing that more and more blogs, sermons, and Christian Artists are talking about this subject, and doing a much better job than I am. I expect that I will finish up my own work in "stirring the pot" on this subject soon.

Interestingly enough, I recently found out (with the assistance of my son-in-law, who apparently spends time scouring the internet for blog fodder for me, his mother-in-law!), that there is now an evangelical protestant church in Chicago whose target audience is artists. The inspiration for The Line church came from an article by none other than Makoto Fujimura--I told you he was someone to watch!

The Line church is set up a little differently than usual. The result of the vision of Aaron Youngren, former corporate climber at Amazon, with a deep desire to experience a church where artists were spiritual leaders.

Being an artist in his own right—a musician and a writer—Youngren had long struggled to reconcile the seemingly off-kilter role the arts had played in his own church experience, and he hoped to correct that at The Line. Youngren hopes that part of the ministry of The Line will be affirmatively answering the question

"Can the art that is present in the world be redeemed and be a part of the church?” By “redeemed,” Youngren doesn’t just mean hung up on the wall, but fundamentally changed from the core so that, as he said, “everyone can respect it and see it right alongside the rest of art and know that it’s different.”

To accomplish this goal and target artists as a missional "tribe" for the purposes of reaching them with the gospel, Youngren looked for a "mature Christian, theologian, and public artist" to bring onboard as artist-in-residence. The church supports Jon Guerra, a musician with the band Milano, and he receives a modest living from them just to create art, though he does often lead worship on Sunday mornings.

This is a novel approach, and I think a good move toward recognizing the importance of art. Several other points are made in the article which I'd like to point out before I take up the matters that concern me.

Regarding the question concerning redeeming art referenced above, the article states:

Many churches in Youngren’s past had been aware enough to ask this question, but answered it negatively, believing refined art is not appropriate for a church setting. “In other words,” Youngren said, “We can turn the amps up, we can make it sound more modern, but when it comes to things like abstraction, impression, and subtlety, we think they are best left outside the corporate church setting.

This is a failing in our churches and our worship. In my experience, our God expresses Himself as often in abstraction, impression and subtlety as He does in fact, certainty and practicality! Scripture is clear about this, stating that no one has an excuse for ignorance about God because God's Art proclaims it! (Romans 1:20)

Another great point emphasized in the article is contained in the following quote:

The church should foster imaginations, but they must be wise imaginations. At The Line, artistic excellence is always paired with spiritual maturity. Becoming more Christ-like, not just better artists, is its main priority. “If we ‘re not doing the hard work of studying Scripture and taking care of our own spiritual lives, why in the world would people listen to anything we put out?” Guerra asks. “There needs to be a well from which we are drawing, and that well needs to be rich in the truth so that we aren’t given to vagueness or heavy-handedness.”

Well, Mr. Guerra, I can answer your question ("If we're not doing the hard work of studying Scripture and taking care of our own spiritual lives, why in the world would people listen to anything we put out?")--non-Christians are willing to listen to or look at pretty much anything that stimulates their sensuality. Unfortunately, too many Christians don't care enough about the theology behind the art to be properly discerning about it, which is one of the reasons we are in this mess--and that's what leads to the vagueness and heavy-handedness.

So, yes, I agree with the premise in the above quote. Christian Artist...what is your goal? Is it a priority for you to be more Christ-like? Or have you decided that your art is more important than your theology and your prayer life?

And Les Rorick, a 25 year old actor who began to attend The Line, says a most profound thing in the article:

“I always gave worship leaders a huge latitude of grace, thinking that, as an evangelical, the text is more important than how it sounds. But now I’m in a process of finding a balance in that. Finding that the sound is an expression of other attributes that are important, like goodness and beauty.”

And lastly, and encouragement to embrace True Art and support Christian Artists:

Submitting yourself to this tribe is not limited to attendance at The Line, or churches with a similar elevation of artists. Anyone can submit to beauty and art by simply learning to appreciate it. Learn how to read a novel or a poem. Learn how to listen to music and experience a painting. Support the artists in your community not just spiritually but also financially. Seek out creative and unsolicited ways to do this. Attend a Milano concert or buy their new EP. Purchase a painting or attend a friend’s show. By supporting artists, you are co-collaborators with them in creativity and truth-searing. And remember that, as Fujimura pointed out, “the first people known to be filled with the Holy Spirit were not priests, kings, or generals, but artists named Bazelel and Oholiab, who built Moses’ Tabernacle.”

Thinky Things

So far, so good. These are all great ideas and thoughts about True Art as we have defined it. I encourage you to meditate and comment on these.

Coming up next: the not-so-good attitude that is beginning to display itself among us...

Read the whole article on The Line here.

Thinking Poor

2011-01-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Two scenarios:

Scenario ONE

It is 25 years ago, and my husband and I are in the sewing shop surrounded by exciting fabrics and notions. We are speaking to our friend who owns the store as she shows us sewing machine models. The model I have been using is a verified antique bought for me by my mom when she found it on sale and in working condition: we now have two children who are getting older, and we need a more reliable, more modern machine.

We are poor. I cannot tell you how poor. The reason we are in this shop in this town is because my husband just got laid off in the great oil bust of the late 1980s, and we have taken the separation money and have moved to his college town so he can finish his degree. Making clothes is still cheaper (at this time) than buying them, so investing in a sewing machine is a wise purchase.

We look at all the models, even those priced very much higher than we were planning to spend. Finally we decide: not the cheapest model, and not the most expensive. We choose the model from the expensive line that is most likely to be repairable by my husband himself, should it break. Our friend the shop owner comments on how blessed she is by my husband's attitude in laying out so much money for a sewing machine. I remember the warm feeling I had as my husband shared with her that he believed in buying the best you can afford because it would last longer and cost less in the end, AND that since he would have done that in buying tools for his garage, he wanted to make sure I got the best tool we could afford for the house.

(I am fat. She was thin and beautiful. But I will never forget the day she told me she didn't think her husband would stay with her if she gained any weight. That's a story for another day…)

Scenario TWO

I know a couple where there are no children in the home, the husband has a great job which pays well. They are older, and have taken good (maybe too good!) care of their money over the years. They are not hurting, not by any stretch of the imagination.

However, in their pantry you will find stacks and stacks of ramen noodles, bought on sale. On every chair in their home you will find a stack of newspapers containing coupons which the wife will try to go through and diligently cut out every coupon and find every sale. They do not need any more ramen noodles, but they will buy them anyway, if they are on sale--because they are cheap. They each carry cell phones, but they are used, old models which have not been upgraded in years, and which do not work half the time. The husband refuses to upgrade to a phone plan which allows texting: If the wife uses more than twenty texts a month, her husband has words with her--her best friend cannot answer the few texts she receives from her because her friend has asked her not to use up her texts by answering.

In their very nice suburban home, which they bought new and have lived there for 12 or 15 years, there are a few problems: in one case, there are several windows that have become loose and allowed water into the walls, which are now molding and rotting. The wife tried to explain this to her husband several years ago when all that would have been needed was for the windows to be changed out. But the husband could not bring himself to spend the money. Now, however, there is water damage that will cost a lot more than just the replacement windows.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I could go on. There are more than two scenarios to illustrate this principle. Sometimes it seems like I am surrounded by this kind of thinking!

We at our house call this kind of thinking "thinking poor". There's a pun in there, for those who are wise enough to see it. And being poor does not necessitate thinking poor. In fact, in the end, thinking poor causes poverty, I'm convinced of it.

Here's how it works: thinking poor causes the purchase of the cheapest possible option, no matter the construction or condition of the item. If it's a couch, you buy it from WallyWorld because they are supposed to have the cheapest stuff: it says so right there on the t.v. But...in three years that WallyWorld couch is going to be trashed because it was cheaply made. You're going to end up back at WallyWorld for a couch AGAIN.

Let's say that instead you do one of two things: you do without a couch for a time, save up your money, and purchase a little bit better model of couch at the local furniture store down the street. No, it's still not the best, but it's better than what you had, and it's of good construction. OR, perhaps you go to the local flea market or thrift shop, and you invest the time necessary to find a good, used couch which is built really well. In both cases you've invested in more than just a couch. You've invested in your self-discipline, you've invested in local businesses, and you've invested in an item that will be less of a liability. This kind of thinking will clearly not lead to poverty.

Compare the futures of these two options: one will continually be back at WallyWorld purchasing "new" but badly built couches every three years. The other will pay a little more, but the couch will last MUCH longer. In the end, the second option is the one that actually MAKES money!

Over time, I have watched many people fall into the trap of thinking poor and I have pondered what goes on "under the hood" of this process. The best I can come up with is a deep root within the person of a quality you may be surprised to discover: self-pity (which is a branch of pride, by the way). Yes, I really believe that self-pity may be at the bottom of a lot of bad purchasing decisions. Consider this: the person wants something, but resents the fact that they are "poor" (poor being a variable dependent upon the definition of the person themselves, and not on any objective standard) and feels cheated by life because of it. So they purchase a "new" item, which makes them feel good about themselves, but they have to purchase it of the cheapest variety because they don't believe their circumstances would ever be better or that they can do anything about it.

In the case of the couple above, they were too "poor" to replace the windows in the home God gave them, but now they discover that they are actually going to be even MORE poor after having walls torn out and replaced along with the windows! And think about what their decisions concerning cellphones show about them: they may think they are being wise to keep old phones and ask their friends not to contact them. But what price are they paying in their relationships because of this? We may never know: but I know that it feels somewhat offensive when my friend is allowed to text me, but I am not allowed to text her in return. A very tiny investment in better phones and a texting plan would repay them many times in relationship credit. Not only that, but that husband could love his wife by showing how he cares about her friendships--and it would cost so little.

Now, here's a disclaimer: I am not saying that everyone should ignore their bank balance and their living circumstances and just buy the best of everything for themselves because they deserve it!

I've been poor most of my life--or at least poor as compared to American standards. I have yet to really miss a meal or spend a night without a roof over my head. But I have had to watch my money carefully, and there were times in our lives when I would have been taking food out of my children's mouths if I had decided to buy a coke. So I do know what it's like to be living paycheck to paycheck, not able to afford any extras.

The opposite of "thinking poor" is not "thinking rich". It's thinking right! Do the math! Think through the problem using your head, not your self-pitying heart. Delay your gratification long enough to purchase an item that will last for awhile and will in that way actually help you get your feet under you--rather than buying an item that is instead going to be a liability and keep knocking your feet out from under you at the worst times. Buy some ramen if you must, but save some of that money for vegetables: you can never replace your health, and eating ramen all the time will rather destroy that precious commodity.

Here's another example: don't shop at the Dollar Store, or any of it's many permutations. Or if you feel you must, go in there and compare prices. Just once, look at the price of what you buy in there and then head out to the local grocery store or WallyWorld. Check the price on the same item. Dollar Stores are not cheap! People tend to shop there because it seems like a good concept: everything is a dollar, right? Except that what is stocked there is often of the cheapest, most worthless quality, and the price can actually be higher than in other stores in the area. If you must shop there, be very sure that you have done the math and are buying the best you can afford at a reasonable price.

Another point to be made, and at which I've already hinted, is that thinking poor is not limited to money. In fact, what I find is that people who think poor about money invariably think poor about just about everything. Take, for example, the couple and the issue with the phones: they are not thinking at all about what a cellphone is really for. They are only thinking about how much the cellphone costs--which is not what cellphones are about. And what about the coupons? They are not thinking at all about the items they really need and will use, but rather about their cost. The wife will use hours of time going through some of those papers and cutting out coupons for things which they will buy but never use, simply because they are on sale. Her investment of time is not benefiting the Kingdom of God or her family, but rather the opposite. Consider also their home: in every chair is a pile of these papers. Taking the risk of tossing a few coupons that could save them a few cents would make their home so much more pleasant to live in: would allow them to use their home more often for godly hospitality. What price are they paying?

Think through purchasing and other decisions without self-pity

Consider ALL the "costs" involved--not just the money. Time, stress, relationships, ministry, replacement/repair; all these are costs!
Do the math--all of it.

Apply this to coupon shopping, for instance. First of all, make sure that shopping with coupons is not a way of saying "poor me, I'm so poor, I can only afford what I want if I shop with coupons." Be careful also that it is not a way of being prideful; "I am a good shopper because I save money by shopping with coupons".

Then, consider all the costs involved: yes, that coupon may allow you to purchase 6 cans of minestrone soup for a dollar: 12 if you can borrow the newspaper from your neighbor who never uses coupons, and take it to a second store to get another deal. But your family HATES minestrone soup! And what about the time it took you to cut out all those coupons? Is it possible there was a better use of your time? If not, then fine. But be sure. And what about the gas involved in going to BigLots for bread and cooking oil, WallyWorld for Hamburger Helper, and Kroger for hamburger?

This is one reason I do not shop using coupons on a regular basis. I have shopped around my area, found the establishment which generally has the best prices on most items which I normally buy at the best quality, and I restrict myself to shopping there. It does not cost me precious time searching for or cutting out coupons (time which I could be spending with my kids), gas and travel time (driving from one establishment to another to get the best deals on all the different items I use), nor stress and frustration. It's a good deal in more than just cents!

Thinky Things

So far I have yet to mention scripture at all concerning this subject. Allow me to just list several below that I think are applicable. If you don't agree or you can't see how one applies, leave a comment saying so and I'll try to explain.

Lastly: ask yourself this: what if God thought about His sacrifice for your salvation the way you are thinking about your money or time expenditures?

Proverbs 6:10–11

Proverbs 26:12

Proverbs 26:16

Ecclesiastes 5:10

Isaiah 55:2

Matthew 6:24–34

Matthew 10:16

Matthew 25:24–29

Matthew 26:6–13

1 Timothy 6:10–11

Hebrews 13:5

Art And All That

2010-12-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

This post hasn't been given a "Part" number because it isn't a meditation on the subject, but rather a demonstration of True Art.

In rap.

Yep. Believe it. Dig it.

HoldFast...

Starting Over...Or Again

2010-12-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

Well, when I began this blog I promised myself to blog each week. Typically, I did well at first in keeping that commitment to myself, evening disciplining myself to blog when I had nothing I felt was important to say.
And then Nutcracker weekend happened.
And then Thanksgiving weekend happened.
And then my computer crashed. (Don't buy from Toshiba. Don't trust Toshiba Online Backup--I promised Toshiba I would share this information with you. And they still owe me $60).
And then graduation/Christmas-family-celebration weekend happened.

Is this what those bumper stickers that say "stuff happens" are referring to?

And so at least three weeks have passed without a post here at the HoldFast. Life can get crazy, after all, and it's important to keep priorities in order. Real life trumps blog life every time. Hold fast to what is good...

Speaking of priorities, one of my first posts after the new year will deal with the correct priority of art and artists in the church; another will deal with financial/monetary priorities and a concept we at our house call "thinking poor".

Now we will pause the regularly scheduled pointless blogging for a moment of shameless self-aggrandizement:

Yes, folks, you'd think I wouldn't brag about the fact that it took me 30 years to get this degree, but anybody who sticks to it that long ought to get a moment or two to crow about it.

Seriously: I gave the following advice to my children about a year into the final sprint to finish this degree

"Go to school now and get your degree while you're young--don't be stupid like I was and give that up to become a domestic engineer too soon. But when you are 40 go back. Go back to school. It is so much more fun, so much more interesting, and so much easier to make good grades. It will be a highlight of your life!"

I am so grateful for all that God did in my life during the last three years. Partly, I now know, He sent me to school to keep me out of His business in getting a couple of children married off and my mind working on something so it didn't have time to worry about the future, which He already has planned out and secure. But I am so grateful that He made the school part, the academic part, so fun and engaging. Yes, it was hard, and some of it was downright scary (try going into college algebra 25 years after you took high school algebra--and failed!). I met some awesome educators, had my faith in the younger generation restored (exclusive of my children: I know they are great already!), was humbled by the willingness of the administration to help me achieve my goal and by the willingness of my children and family to make the sacrifices necessary. God's grace was everywhere abundant, even during the darkest days of this journey when I questioned whether I should even be alive.

Presently I'm wondering; if it took 30 years for me to get my BA, how long will it take for me to get a Masters? Hmmm...I don't think my newly acquired algebraic skills are up to this computation! I also think I might be addicted to school.

And now back to our regularly scheduled pointless blogging.

Meh. Nevermind. God helping me, I'll try to make at least one good point for us to ponder until I can get organized and put up next week's post. Family Christmas being over, and all, and being on Christmas break from teaching, I should be able to manage it.

One of the reasons I picked the name of this blog is because it has so many, many applications. Not only the scriptures use the phrase repeatedly, but it is used in many other contexts as well. Just now on Wikipedia I found that "hold fast" will bring up a definition as follows:

A hold fast is an accessory used on a woodworking workbench to fix a workpiece to the top or side of the bench while it is being worked.
A hold fast is shaped like a shepherd's hook. In use, the shank fits loosely into a hole in the top or side of the bench and the tip of the hook is pressed against the work. The hold fast is set by rapping the top with a mallet, which causes the shaft to wedge against the sides of the hole. It is released by hitting the back side. A good holdfast works remarkably well, and is inexpensive and easy to install.

Now isn't that interesting? That is precisely what I reported above that God was doing in part while I went to school during the last three years: He was holding me down, in one place, too busy with school to meddle in His business. All around me His work was being done, and He was molding me and shaping me, too, of course: yet mostly from my perspective He was keeping me out of the way but held secure. I find it significant that the hold fast is shaped like a shepherd's hook, don't you?

Maybe sometimes I felt like the workbench was unstable; life did quite a bit of re-adjusting during these three years--but the Shepherd held me fast.

Sometimes I felt like the entire work had been ruined by a bad decision on my part. At least once it was caused by too much red tape: an item I had no control over (note to self and others: if you give a bureaucracy $740 to hold your place in a class, but the original bill was $750, they WILL drop from the course for that matter of $10. And they will NOT tell you that they dropped you from it)! Yet here I am at the finish line, and the work is not flawed.

Often I felt a LOT of pressure! But that pressure was only the security of being held fast by the Shepherd in precisely the position necessary to finish the work.

Let's just say that in the matter of that diploma, there's a lot more education behind it than the transcript reveals. Maybe we'll talk about some of the courses that should show on the transcript in future posts, who knows?

Thinky Things

Has there been a time in your life when you felt God holding you in place? When the pressure of his Shepherd's crook was holding you still?

Betty Stam, missionary and martyr to China along with her husband John wrote the following poem during a difficult time in her life before she even went to China. In my mind it relates to the woodworking holdfast. Copied from my own copy of Elizabeth Elliot's Quest For Love, I offer it for your meditation and enjoyment:

Stand Still and See

I'm standing, Lord:
There is a mist that blinds my sight.
Steep, jagged rocks, front, left and right,
Lower, dim, gigantic, in the night.
Where is the way?

I'm standing, Lord:
The black rock hems me in behind,
Above my head a moaning wind
Chills and oppresses heart and mind.
I am afraid!

I'm standing, Lord:
The rock is hard beneath my feet;
I nearly slipped, Lord, on the sleet.
So weary, Lord! And where a seat?
Still must I stand?

He answered me, and on His face
A look ineffable of grace,
Of perfect, understanding love,
Which all my murmuring did remove.

I'm standing, Lord:
Since Thou hast spoken, Lord I see
Thou has beset--these rocks are Thee!
And since Thy love encloses me,

I stand and sing.

Until next time:
Hold Fast...

Art And All That + Heaven + Radical

2010-11-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

I apologize ahead of time that this post is somewhat stream-of-consciousness. That’s the way God works sometimes, though, have you noticed? You read a book, then you hear a sermon. Perhaps you pick up a tract, or something in your Bible study time jumps out at you and “click”…it all links together like a huge train engine that just backed up and latched onto a 40 car train. A few chugs from the engine and suddenly you’re full steam ahead on a whole new perspective about life.

Well, that’s what happened to me last Saturday. I’ll try to keep it simple for you, but HOLD FAST…’cause it may be a bumpy ride.

I tried to sort out the chronology of all the different facets of my thought process that morning. Here’s how I remember it.

First, I read the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn—at least I think that was first. If it wasn’t first, it was first concurrent with number 2 below. This amazing book is summarized in part by the following paragraph from its description over at Barnes & Noble’s website:

In the most comprehensive and definitive book on Heaven to date, Randy invites you to picture Heaven the way Scripture describes it—a bright, vibrant, and physical New Earth, free from sin, suffering, and death, and brimming with Christ's presence, wondrous natural beauty, and the richness of human culture as God intended it.

Read it. It will ramp your passion for evangelism at least 3 notches while at the same time flattening your complaining attitude by at least a figure of 6 decibels. You’ll never look at life or read the Bible the same again.

Second (or perhaps concurrently with number 1 above), I listened to an entire quarter’s worth of teachings from over at Discover The Word, a radio/podcast program that I have found to be not only very biblically solid, but also enjoyable to listen to (and not just because the lead teacher, Haddon Robinson, sounds like my maternal grandfather). The programs aired from January of this year through March. The programs are in the archives over there—I encourage you to listen to them.

These programs were on the theology of work.

Later in the year my son-in-law started reading, and eventually reviewed, a book by David Platt entitled Radical. Disclaimer: I have not read the book. I have only watched the video and discussed the premises of the book with my daughter and son-in-law. The video summarizes the point of the book by stating:

“Church, we are Plan A…and there IS NO PLAN B”

And a paragraph at the official website for the book reads as follows:

It’s easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily…But who do you know who lives like that? Do you?

However, the problem is perhaps stated well by the review my son-in-law wrote for his church’s website:

No one should object to reminders of neglected foreign mission fields, or reiterating the Gospel call. But for many readers who already struggle with basic needs, who aren’t in Platt’s main audience of consumer-driven Christians, and who want to support a local church, what does the call to radical faith look like? One answer: very often it looks like being faithful in small ways, living a quiet life and working with one’s hands (1 Thess. 4:11). Very often Christians who have not devoted more time to Ministry are already being radical in their homes, churches and jobs.

The third event that formed a car in this thought train was the beginning of this blog, and the main focus it has providentially assumed so far: Art And All That. This is a subject close to my heart and upon which I meditate quite frequently.

So now we come finally to last Saturday morning, when I was doing something as prosaic as cooking breakfast: just standing there not-so-innocently in my jammies, non-chalantly frying up some delicious home made sourdough French toast for the family. And Ka-CHINK, BOOM, CLANK, ClanK, Clank, clank…the engine linked up and began moving ahead, all cars attached.

I thought “This meal is totally unhealthy, but otherwise it is going to be so exquisite that it will be like giving my family a little taste of heaven” (clank clank). That's when I realized that this was exactly what we should all be doing, every day. Giving everyone around us a little taste of heaven by doing whatever it is that we do as excellently as we can with as good an attitude as we can in as much love and compassion as we can because they need to have their appetites whetted for Heaven. It’s the Gospel…or at least a large part of it.

And that is Art. And. All. That.

This makes it so that everything we do is a work of Art. Cleaning a toilet excellently, with a good attitude, so that your family enjoys a taste of the cleanliness and comfort we will experience in Heaven. Closing an account, accurate to the penny, with an attitude of joy so that your client will get a taste of the faithfulness and justice they can experience in Heaven. Cooking a delicious meal…you get the idea.

One of the stories used during the Discover the Word program to illustrate such a situation was told by Haddon Robinson. I’ve summarized it.

A man works in a union job in a factory, in an area where there's a lot of steam. Two coworkers know he is a Christian, and to torment him, they open the window, letting in the cold air and jeapordizing the health of the Christian worker each day. The Christian prays for God to help him continually react in a kind manner each day. Eventually one of the coworkers is saved, not because the Christian did anything radical or witnessed to him, but because he remembered his endurance and kindness. He heard the gospel preached in a church, not one he was invited to by this coworker, just one he happened to attend; but when he heard the Gospel, he remembered that coworker's patience, and that made up his mind for him to come to Christ.

Clank clank.

Then I thought “what I do for my family is the same day in and day out. I clean the toilets, do the laundry, cook the breakfast. Every day. It gets old. It gets tiresome, and boring. But let’s say I decide to follow Mr. Platt’s call to be Radical, sell all I have, put my kids in boarding school, and head off into the deep dark pagan mists.”

Well, what happens then?

I still have the goal of attempting to give the pagans a little taste of heaven in all that I do, whether it's preaching the gospel or drilling a water well. I will still have to do it excellently, and with a good attitude that shows I know that there are more important things--eternal things--that dwarf our little frustrations here. And I'll have to do it every day, all the time. I’ll still be cleaning toilets, doing laundry, and cooking.

It’s going to get old. It’s going to get tiresome, and boring. And after awhile, it’s not going to seem so radical anymore.

Clank, clank. Chug, chug.

So, here’s my question for Mr. Platt, and for all the gifted Christian computer programmers and CPAs who’ve quit their perfectly good jobs which supported their families to become a seminary wonk and go to school to become a…whatever: something in “ministry” so they can be radical, something which may or may not actually fit the gifts God has given them.

If you can't do that (Giving everyone around you a little taste of heaven by doing whatever it is that you do as excellently as you can with as good an attitude as you can in as much love and compassion as you can because they need to have their appetites whetted for Heaven) in the here and now, in your very UN-radical life, what makes you think you could do it in a third-world, pagan country, or in the inner city?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that if you answer that question with “I don’t think I can”, that lets you off the hook for going on mission.

Nosirree. What it does is call you to begin living your radically UN-radical life where God has you now in a decidedly RADICAL way.

In a way that communicates the Gospel in a True Art way. In a way that shows you know what is eternal and what is not. In a way that shows you know you own NOTHING (does your living room couch belong to Christ? Can He use it any way He wants? How about your computer? Your big screen t.v.--or even more radical, the t.v. controls?), and you owe EVERYTHING to Christ (your life. your giftings--does He have your permission to use them anyway He wants? your children. your time). In a way that creates a hunger for Heaven in everyone with whom you come into contact.

Every. Single. Day.

Dayindayoutbuythegroceriesgotoworkcomehomefromworkplaywiththekidshugthewifedothedishesloveyourneighbor
keepthespeedlimitvoteconscientiouslypatientlyendurethestupidcoworkeranonymouslyheroicallycreateahungerfore
Heavenineveryonearoundyou.

You live like that, God says He’ll give you even more (Matt 25:21). He’ll see to it you live radically, oh yes. You may find yourself in the inner city or a pagan third world country preaching the gospel...but it won't be because you did something different--it will be because you were already living radically in your every day life, and God led you there step by providential step. And while you're there you won't face the temptation of thinking you might be more useful, more radical somewhere else.

Begin today. What you are doing TODAY is PLAN A…BE RADICAL in it.

Oh. And here’s the toilet brush.

HOLD FAST

Art And All That Part IX

2010-11-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned this fellow before--his was the article I based Part IV on. Here is a video detailing his newest project, interviewing him, and explaining some of his approach to art and the struggles that go with being a Christian artist.

Makoto Fujimura’s Illuminated Gospel Book Project: “The Four Holy Gospels”

Please watch it, and ponder. And then...

Hold Fast

Art And All That Part VIII

2010-11-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

As they say, it never rains but it pours! The last couple of weeks I have struggled to come up with any kind of a blog post at all, finally resorting to posting someone else’s thoughts, and then to being grateful for the troll who started spamming the comments thread with Catholic dogma just so that I could make a post about posting rules.

True to Murphy’s Law (or one of its many corollaries), this week I have material for 3 different posts! I decided to go with the more contiguous opportunity, and here we are at Part 8 of Art and All That. Today my friend C. L. Dyck wrote a guest post over at the Speculative Faith blog on a subject closely related to that of the Part 7 post—how should Christian artists do what they do, and why?

We’ve all heard the term “senseless evil”. In fact, through the magic of television, we’ve probably all witnessed the results of acts of senseless evil. The term is bandied about by politicos, moralists, and anyone who wants to sensationally sling mud, and has become somewhat dumbed-down as a result. C. L. Dyck mentions this example:

Wherever there’s a moral podium involved, we sure can make a lot of noise about senseless evil, as I witnessed recently when a young reader posted her (Christian) opinions on the manufactured inclusion of same-sex characters in YA books. Apparently her opinions were considered by some to be an act of senseless violence in writing. (Why yes. That dripping sound is the sarcasm tank leaking. I’ll have to fix that someday. In the meantime, don’t worry, it’s not too combustible.)

CathyLyn goes on to note that we all agree that senseless evil exists, even if we can’t agree on a definition for it.

Over the years I have had the experience of being taught that reading or watching stories containing acts of senseless evil was bad. It sounded so right when someone suggested that it would be wrong to be entertained by something that was evil in the sight of the Lord, even if it wasn’t a true story. These teachers use several scriptures to support their teaching. Scriptures such as:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8

22 Abstain from all appearance of evil. I Thessalonians 5:22 KJV

These teachers are forgetting, as I forgot when listening to them, that the Bible includes all kinds of stories containing acts of senseless evil, and that not only the Old Testament, but Jesus Himself used stories containing acts of senseless evil to illustrate principles He was teaching (see these, for example: 2 Samuel 12:1-4; Matthew 18:23-35).

Can we just all agree here that it is generally a bad idea to try to be holier than God? Thanks for that, then. Now we can move on.

We love to focus on that evil thing, whether we are enjoying it or whether we are sensationalizing it and opposing it. We Christians specialize in being against things. But what are we for?

But CathyLyn brings forward the arresting argument of senseless beauty:

In the kerfuffle, we forget that so does senseless beauty. Some things are inarguably beautiful, for no explicable reason. Argue with a sunset, if you will. That insensate phenomenon, without a word of reply, will make you look the fool.
Evil, we can wrangle. We can invent rationalizations. We can build boxes, however poorly we manage to stuff the vagaries of evil into them. But senseless beauty? Its only defensible, rational explanation lies in a personal, infinite and good Creator God.

Indeed. In fact, I’m tempted to depart from the subject matter at hand to comment on the irrationality of an atheist or an evolutionist who holds their beliefs in the face of a sunset, or the complexity of a snowflake, or the symmetry and brilliancy of a dying leaf. That is why Christians ought to do Art—though it is not senseless beauty, but rather sensible, it is modeled on that beauty God built into the world, and also is an expression of loving God with all our minds.

But I digress. We’re talking about writing, specifically writing about senseless evil. CathyLyn next makes a profound statement:

True beauty doesn’t shy from the wretched facts any more than it indulges them; rather, it transforms their context.

Isn’t that just what God does? Isn’t that very God-like? Consider the following:

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Romans 5:10

For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity. Isaiah 59:3

Who is a God like You, Pardoning iniquity And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in mercy. Micah 7:18

God doesn’t indulge us in our wretchedness. Neither does He shy away from our wretched selves, but rather transforms the context: we are made lovely because of Him and His Son’s finished work on the cross (a senseless evil if there ever was one—except that it wasn’t senseless. It was planned by God Himself).

CathyLyn concludes this way:

Think about that every time you question what it is to write.
Two things, then, are necessary: to know God deeply, and to unabashedly refine your craftsmanship. Faithfulness and fluency. This is the transformation of an artist—a creature of darkness and fumbling ugliness—within a new context. (2 Cor. 5:17) God does not shy away from our wretched persons, nor our wretched facts.
When your writing of evil is a prayer of senseless beauty, you have defeated it. The pen is mightier than the sword.

THINKY THINGS

Wowza. The only thing I would add would actually be to broaden the scope of what she said by allowing you to fill in the blank with your own choice of artistry where she has specified “write” and “writing”. Thusly:

Think about that every time you question what it is to ___________. When your ______________of evil is a prayer of senseless beauty, you have defeated it.

Do you know God deeply? Are you unabashedly refining your craftsmanship? What potential does your art have to become a prayer of senseless beauty, victorious over the evil?

HOLD FAST!
(P.S., you can read the entire article HERE . C.L. Dyck has her own blog, well worth reading, which you can find HERE)

LET IT BEGIN, LET IT BEGIN!!!

2010-11-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to force me to make rules. And we have a winnah!!!

Comment Number 2 on the "Submission To Future Pain" post has won the award, dingdingdingdingding!

I was about to put the following in a reply to his comment, but decided that since it contains information vital to all comments here, bumped it up to Post status, instead.

The Rules

Well, hello there, Mike. Thanks for commenting.

Copied that right off your favorite Roman Catholic website, eh?

I’m actually grateful for your post, because it gives me a chance to start delineating the rules for this blog. So far, no one yet has broken them. But you came along and poof…we got rules! So thanks for that.

Rule #1

READ THE SIDEBAR BEFORE POSTING.

If you had read the sidebar “about me” on this blog, you would be well aware that I am a 5 point (is there any other kind?) Calvinist. Therefore your quotations from the Catholic Catechism I admit of no authority nor scriptural validity, and your Lumen Gentium is extra-canonical and therefore inadmissible as evidence as well.

Now, if you have honest questions about canon, scriptural defense of predestination, or Calvinism, come on in, sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll fix you a big ol’ glass of Texas sweet iced-tea (is there any other kind?) and we’ll have a friendly, if deep, discussion.

Or if you want to proselyte, that’s legal as well, long as you keep your manners. Just remember turnabout’s fair play. You proselyte us, we get to proselyte you, and it's all in good fun, dontcha know.

Disagreeing with me or other comments here is also allowed, even encouraged, as long as you mind your manners. One ad hominem attack, one insult, one pointless post, and you’re out. Keep to the subject, defend your point intelligently and humbly.

Rule #2

EVERYONE GETS ONE FREE TROLL PASS

First offense merits a warning and an invitation to state your question or point more clearly and relationally so that we can engage with it in a civil manner.

Anyone who shows up at the blog and knocks on the door with their troll suit on a second time will find themselves kicked under the gate and the dogs set on them to chase them back under the bridge where trolls belong. And their comment will be deleted without warning along with all subsequent comments by them.

You just used up your Free Pass, Mike. So if you come back, you’ll have to 1) use evidence that is admissible in a Calvinist court (that would be the Bible…Protestant Canon if it makes a difference) and 2) make your point in such a way that it’s obvious you’re in the discussion for the long haul, planning to mind your manners, able and willing to learn, and ready to engage relationally with the posters and commenters as persons and not just infidels.

I do really hate to seem so inhospitable on a first visit like this, but you just happened to trip the wire, Mike. No hard feelings, ok? Just abide by the rules and we’ll all have a good ol’ time.

Now that we have rules…LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

HOLD FAST

Cheating...

2010-11-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

I'm cheating a bit on this post: last week was rather challenging as well as busy and I didn't get a post made on Friday or Saturday.

We had a great Reformation celebration at our house on Sunday night, too, which was so fun. A fire in the grill allowed us to roast marshmallows and hotdogs while gabbing with our church family and neighbors under the stars. It's still quite warm here, so no one even needed jackets. That made the hot apple cider and hot cocoa a little less popular, but it was fun all the same.

Anyway, busy. But I just came across this excerpt on my Logos 4 and it was so good I thought I'd post it here as a way of keeping my promise to myself to post at least once a week--so I am cheating in a way. Perhaps in a few days I will have pictures of the celebration to post along with some commentary as well. For now, allow this to sink into your heart:

In the prison prayers of Paul (Eph. 1:15–23; 3:14–21; Phil. 1:9–11; Col. 1:9–12), we discover the blessings he wanted his converts to enjoy. In none of these prayers does Paul request material things. His emphasis is on spiritual perception and real Christian character. He does not ask God to give them what they do not have, but rather prays that God will reveal to them what they already have.Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Eph 1:13). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.

A goodly thing for us to learn about praying for ourselves, and for others.

HOLD FAST

Submission to Future Pain

2010-10-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Recently a pastor’s sermon challenged the congregation to reflect on their lives as they were 5 years ago, and compare it with their lives today to see the progress God has built into their lives. I was in that congregation, and I have been meditating on that challenge ever since.

My first thought was that yes, I had grown—but not in the ways I wanted to grow! There are several pet sins in my life that I have begged God to purge for years, yet I see little or no improvement. If I focused on those evidences, I would certainly despair of my salvation. But the unavoidable conclusion was that there were differences in my life compared to five years ago, and on the whole, they were evidence of growth: they just weren’t in the areas that I think must be important to God!

Behold my arrogance: as if I know what is most important to Him.

Instead of targeting what I DO, the changes targeted what I believe and how I react in attitude to my circumstances. This was somewhat disappointing: after all, I want to glorify God by becoming such a great Christian on the outside that people will look at me and notice how well I glorify Him…oh, wait. That’s not glorifying God. That’s glorifying me. Well, then, I want to glorify God by doing awesome, difficult things for Him so that people will be amazed at the things I have accomplished for…oops. That’s not glorifying God, either.

Well, then, at the very least I just don’t want to hurt anymore. Recently, though, I’ve realized that not even that will best glorify God. Instead, God has been enabling me to pray that He would make me able to submit to the pain that is in His plan for my future.

You see, I have been through a lot in the last 12 years of my life. God took my husband Home instantaneously through a hit-and-run accident when our children were 15, 12, 5, and 15 months. I was left to raise them on my own, while grieving the loss of my best friend and lover.

A few years afterward we moved and joined a local church which, at first, felt like “home”. During this time I developed a serious crush on a single fellow in our congregation: only to discover that he was secretly a child pornography addict when he was arrested by the FBI. This hurt so bad, mostly because I had exposed my children to danger through my undisciplined emotions, though I had worked very hard to control them both before the children and in public.

Not long after that it was revealed that the pastor of the church where we were serving was not a pastor at all: rather he was a manipulative, power hungry tyrant. Our family had invested heavily in this church both with service and with finances. As far as I could tell, I was following God as hard as I could when we joined there. So to discover this and go through the pain of trying to reconcile, being rejected and having all our service rejected, and then having to separate from the congregation without anyone truly understanding why was extremely painful and something I determined to avoid at all costs for both myself and my children’s sake in the future.

We fled to a small, uber-denominational church which my parents attended and which we judged to be at least safe from megalomaniacal leadership due to its governmental structure. And four years later we left, having discovered that obedience to the scriptures was not considered an imperative for the members of this “church”.

During that time other difficulties arose within our own family which caused deep fear and distress and even depression (in retrospect). These months were so painful that I literally cried almost every day, often spent days with my stomach in knots, unable to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. I was trying so hard to follow God, and yet these painful things were happening to me!

I share all this so that you will know, when reading what comes after, that I am not speaking out of a lack of experience of deep emotional and spiritual pain. Because it’s possible that it may seem crazy for me to pray that God would make me able to submit to the pain He has planned for my future. I am highly motivated to avoid a repeat of intense pain of any kind!

However, after serious reflection and meditation on these experiences and comparing them to scripture and what I know of the God of the bible, I have come to conclude that there is no way I could have avoided those painful experiences.

In America especially, but probably in human experience generally, pain and suffering are something we think we should avoid at all costs. A gospel of pain-avoidance has been preached…from prosperity preachers to the stolid fundamentalist teacher, if-you-would-just-live-this-way-do-this-follow-this-set-of-rules has been proclaimed as the gospel of pain avoidance. “Those terrible things wouldn’t have happened to you if you had only done [fill in the blank]”.

But a serious study of scripture will show this to be no gospel at all. If we could save ourselves, we would.

Let me be sure to clarify something before continuing: what I am not saying here is that I am perfect and blameless in each of these circumstances. What I AM saying is that even if I had been perfect and blameless in each of them, there would still have been pain—I still would have encountered painful situations in my life. Living blamelessly is no panacea. Being perfect and sinless doesn’t lead to painlessness. (If you think I'm wrong, just meditate for a moment on our Lord: sinless, but not painless!)

Following each of these experiences I found myself afflicted with the “what if” syndrome. The motivation to avoid any future pain of that type and intensity drove me to frantically consider what I could have done to avoid these experiences. I blamed myself, mostly, and sought to pinpoint the exact moment when I deviated from the “path”, causing so much agony for my children and myself, so much disillusionment. But eventually I came to realize that I couldn’t have, wouldn’t have done anything different. The “what if” syndrome extends to the future, also: constantly fearing what might happen, what bad decisions I might make, what evil people might inflict upon us, what mess an incomplete understanding of God’s instructions might lead to. If I couldn’t have avoided it in the past, then I logically come to the conclusion that neither can I do anything to avoid future pain.

Recently someone expressed to me their belief that the doctrines of Calvinism seemed to them the most hopeless of gospel understandings. These painful experiences have emphatically taught me differently: God’s Sovereignty, His ordination of everything that I have been through, is the most hopeful thing I can imagine. I cannot save myself—not for eternal life, and not in this life. I cannot even behave in such a way as to avoid pain. But God has ordained that only that pain which will best benefit me and ultimately best glorify Him, and not a smidgen more or less, will be allowed in my life.

And that is why my prayer for myself now is that I may jettison the “what if” syndrome, cease to try to figure out what I can do to avoid future pain, and instead concentrate on Christ and Him crucified: To seek His kingdom zealously, to love unreservedly, to be involved generously, to live graciously and joyfully, not in fearful expectation but in glorious hope of the redemption of ALL things. These scriptures inform my prayers:

who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Pe 1:5–7

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 2 Co 1:9–10

Oswald Chambers has this to say on the subject in the devotional for October 23 (God’s Sovereignty at work again!):

Our Lord never nurses our prejudices, He mortifies them, runs clean athwart them…. It is part of our moral education to have our prejudices run straight across by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him; there is only one thing He wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender….How are we going to get the life that has no lust, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to pokes, the love that is not provoked, that thinketh no evil, that is always kind? The only way is by allowing not a bit of the old life to be left, but only simple perfect trust in God, such trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want Himself. Have we come to the place where God can withdraw His blessings and it does not affect our trust in Him? When once we see God at work, we will never bother our heads about things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in Heaven Whom the world cannot see.

In the devotional Thoughts for the Quiet Hour, the meditation for today is on I Kings 2:38; “As my lord the king hath said, so will thy servant do”:

There is something infinitely better than doing a great thing for God, and the infinitely better thing is to be where God wants us to be, to do what God wants us to do, and to have no will apart from His. • G. Campbell Morgan

And our hope in this was simply and profoundly stated by my daughter in an answering text as we discussed giving in to the realization that we can only learn from what is coming, not avoid it:

"Amen, and no matter what happens, God is in control and there is a time coming when everyone will be completely trustworthy!"

Thinky Things

If you’ve made it to the end of this lengthy post, I thank you for persevering, and by way of thanks this once I will not impose distracting thoughts of my own on your meditation. The following scripture references may be of assistance: 1 Sam 2:9, Job 23:20, Psalm 66:10, Isa 48:10, Rom 8:18, 2 Cor 4:17, 2 Thess 1:7-12, James 1:2-3, I Pet 4:12-13. As you ponder, remember to…

HOLD FAST

Art And All That, Part VII

2010-10-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking that I will blog on another subject, but then God ordains that something comes up during the week that seems relevant to this topic, and so here we are at Part VII.

Although we’ll be talking about Art, it’s been the “week of technology” at our house. My parents have gifted me with a laptop (thanks, Mom and Dad, and thanks God!) which arrived Friday evening sans some of its basic software (boo, Toshiba) but otherwise in working order, making me giddy and keeping me from posting this as usual on Friday night. Earlier in the week the girls and I were delighted to receive our Christmas Present To Ourselves. This is a new tradition at our house which began when the nestlings commenced moving out and off and starting their own families. Those who are still at home all contribute to a larger gift that will benefit everyone instead of purchasing separate gifts for one another. This year we were blessed to be able to purchase a fairly nice telescope to add to our binoculars from last year. We ordered it early so that we could catch a few fall night-sky events before it gets too cold for us girls. As we opened it, we were singing Christmas songs.

Next year, we’ve promised ourselves new linens throughout the house!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My precious son-in-law sent me a link to a blog this week that produced plenty of fodder for my own blog.

Does anyone else find it interesting to discover the ways God used art in scripture?

In this case we will be looking at visual arts, drama, and dance.

Thinky Things (this week they come first as well as last!)

As you attended church today (if you did), did you look at your surroundings? Were there visual reminders of the gospel other than a cross? Stained glass windows? Paintings?

During the service: was there a drama or skit today or within the last month at your church?

Lastly, when was the most recent time you experienced a liturgical dance at church?

You see, music is not the only art God created for worship. All genres of art find their most glorious heights of artistry when used to point us to the glories of Him Who Created Art. Yet for long and long the church has shunned certain genres of art and banned them from the worship services of the gathered church. As a result, many of these genres have been given over entirely to humanists and pagans.

In looking through scripture, however, we find that God has not shunned any type of art in communicating His message to us! Visual arts (the heavens declare…) drama (Prophecies of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Agabus) Dance (Miriam, David).

Consider Ezekiel. Below is a rather lengthy passage in which God commands Ezekiel to represent by visual and dramatic arts the punishment He is about to inflict upon Israel for their disobedience. To some phrases I have added highlights to point out the art.

    “And you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem. 2     And put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it. Set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3     And you, take an iron griddle, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; and set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel.
4     “Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. 5     For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6     And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year. 7     And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city. 8     And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege.
9     “And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it. 10     And your food that you eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day; from day to day you shall eat it. 11     And water you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hin; from day to day you shall drink. 12     And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.” 13     And the LORD said, “Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.” 14     Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth up till now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has tainted meat come into my mouth.” 15     Then he said to me, “See, I assign to you cow’s dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread.” 16     Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay. 17     I will do this that they may lack bread and water, and look at one another in dismay, and rot away because of their punishment.

5:1     “And you, O son of man, take a sharp sword. Use it as a barber’s razor and pass it over your head and your beard. Then take balances for weighing and divide the hair. 2     A third part you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. And a third part you shall take and strike with the sword all around the city. And a third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. 3     And you shall take from these a small number and bind them in the skirts of your robe. 4     And of these again you shall take some and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. From there a fire will come out into all the house of Israel.
5     “Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. 6     And she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her; for they have rejected my rules and have not walked in my statutes. 7     Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you are more turbulent than the nations that are all around you, and have not walked in my statutes or obeyed my rules, and have not even acted according to the rules of the nations that are all around you, 8     therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. ( Ezekiel 4:1–5:8)

I’ll admit, that is not my favorite story in the Bible! It is heavy with guilt and the wrath of God: we all need that reminder more frequently than we get it. If we heard it more often, perhaps we would remember that from which we have been saved, and be less inclined to take salvation for granted.

Zoe is a dancer who is reading through the Bible and blogging her thoughts as she goes through each passage. Here’s a sample of what she has to say concerning this passage:

“The neat thing about this is that God is using something besides just preaching to get a message across. He's using visual representation and physically acting out the prophecy in a symbolic way. Hey, that sounds an awful lot like drama! Ezekiel has become, in a very weird sense, a performing artist prophet.”

She admits that:

This probably isn't the number one thing you're supposed to get out of reading Ezekiel 1-12, but for me, as a performing artist, it really stuck out.

Performing Artist Prophet. Now that’s a different—and interesting-- perspective. It makes me think all kinds of things, like…I wonder if his friends (did he have any friends? He had a wife…) thought “oh, that’s just Ezekiel trying to get attention. Honestly, I wish he’d quit that sort of thing. It takes attention way from God.” Or, “That’s pretty cool…look at all the attention Ezekiel is getting! I can draw, too…I’m going to draw some stuff on clay. My heart is right, so it will be God speaking just like Ezekiel.” Or maybe when Ezekiel heard all this he wished there was a way to resign from being a prophet: just like sometimes I’d like to resign from being a teacher/performer. In fact, as it turns out, Jeremiah did feel that way, but found his call and message stronger than his desire to stop prophesying:

If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.

As a performer, I understand this tension: So many times I am judged for the very gifts that God has given me to use to proclaim His message; at the same time, I know that I must proclaim it somehow, using the gifts He gave me (and not other gifts that He has NOT given me) and I must do so in a very humble yet excellent manner. This makes me glad God promises to accomplish these things in me, because trying to balance all of that for myself is impossible in my own wisdom and strength.

My particular gifting is in the area of music, which is currently and historically an accepted art in the church, even when it is restricted only to the singing of the human voice. But a dancer’s perspective is quite different:

Dancing, though, is probably the most iffy art there is for Christians. For so many centuries it was denounced by the Church or important leaders within the Church, although there were always some who objected to demonizing the art as a whole. A few years ago I read an article that's actually fairly recent arguing that dance, while not inherently evil, probably always leads to bad things - the author claimed that it was the Israelites' dancing that angered Moses and caused him to break the original 10 Commandments, and even blamed Michal's anger at David's behavior on David! As a dancer, I found this incredibly disturbing. Fortunately, I think that with the rise of dance ministries (more than even the rise of Christian dance companies), people in the church are beginning to see dance as simply a visual, physical way of expressing an idea or emotion, and that expression can be worship.

I certainly hope she is right about dance becoming a more accepted art form in the church. I have personally witnessed a few rare instances of liturgical dance that made me catch my breath at the glimpse it gave me into the heart of scripture. It could be a powerful way of communicating the gospel.

Zoe continues:

Anyway, so back to Ezekiel. It's just comforting to see that the things we're just now figuring out, Ezekiel was commanded by God to do. He was using art, as it were, to tell a story or to present a message. That is the purpose of art - not to be worshiped or even to draw attention to itself, but to tell you something about real life. Art has a way of breaking down barriers. A lot of people will not listen to a sermon, or if they hear something that starts to sound like one, they'll just close their ears. The arts have the ability to reach beyond our defenses and speak straight to our hearts, sometimes without us even knowing it at first. That's why they're so powerful, and maybe that's why God had Ezekiel do this.

Or, you know, maybe He was saying it's okay to let your kids play in the dirt.

Well…perhaps letting your kids play in the dirt was a secondary interpretation! Still valid you know, but not the main point *extracts tongue from cheek*.

More Thinky Things

What forms of True Art do you personally prefer? Are there forms of art which are not useful to the Body of Christ and therefore useless for worship or proclamation when the Body gathers (if you argue for this, you MUST provide scriptural support. Ha. For that matter, if you argue the opposite you must also use scriptural support.) The “Worship Wars” continue to be fought in church after church. Why? What’s the big deal about worship that we need to fight over? What’s the big deal about Art And All That for the Body of Christ? And what is the result of the church’s abandonment of certain genres of art over the centuries?

Well…that’s a lot to think about. You can read Zoe's entire post here . Ponder, post and, until next time:

Hold Fast

Art and All That, Part VI

2010-10-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

Here in Central Texas we are having a beautiful fall, one that was sneaking silently and stealthily, like a cat slinking through the brush at the edge of the yard: a few whiffs of fall-ish air late at night or early in the morning were the only hints that autumn was stalking. One day summer seemed still in full force, while fall settled down behind a screen of shrubbery, tail twitching, the victim unaware of its impending demise, making us all think summer would continue forever. And then, as cats will do…

POUNCE!

The next morning the temperature had dropped, the heat-hazy air cleared, the light suddenly came from a different direction, the leaves on the trees which had been a deep late-summer green the day before had an orange tint to them, and the fragrance of fall accosted our summer-stale nostrils into fresh, enervated fascination. Summer expired quickly and painlessly, as hoodies made their long-awaited but hurried exit from mothball-scented closets.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*

Thanks for reading that. I’ve been just itching to write it down ever since it occurred to me. A few of you may have encountered bits of it in things I’ve written here or there, but this is the full version. So…how’d I do? (No, really. Feel free to teach me better writing: in a constructive and gentle manner, of course.)

Now to turn to the subject of True Art as quickly as our summer turned to fall. It was of great encouragement to me to read an article by Rachel Starr Thomson over on the Speculative Faith blog. Here’s someone who gets “True Art”, and has the concept down well enough to apply it to her vocation of writing.

As a reminder, here is the working definition of True Art being employed in this series of posts:

True Art magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit illustrating God’s Word through the artistic medium thereby motivating the gathered Church to proclaim the Gospel, to cherish God’s presence, and to live for God’s glory.

Rachel writes:

As a writer, I grapple with the idea of loving my readers. I don’t write merely for myself. I don’t even write for God alone. He has placed me here, in this world, so I write for readers–to love them in obedience to God.

That paragraph packs quite a punch for me, and may therefore qualify as True Art in its own right: it makes me wonder if I am loving those who partake of my art, or if my focus is too narrow—is my art only there to gratify myself, or even only for God alone, in disobedience to His command that we love? Since this motivates me to proclaim the Gospel, cherish God’s presence, and live for God’s glory, it meets the criteria of True Art in and of itself.

Rachel continues:

Excellence has to be a part of that. Love and excellence go hand in hand. Where we don’t love, we can’t be bothered. When we care passionately, on the other hand, our best hardly seems good enough. If we love our readers, we’ll work at the story, at the sentences, at the themes. If we love our readers, we’ll revise. If we love our readers, we’ll apply ourselves with dogged commitment.

How I wish that a very long list of people (a list that would include me) could acquire this concept. My music students. Any number of unskilled, untrained, unprepared church members who claim their hearts are right and therefore they have the right to sing or play a solo before the congregation. Writers of poorly written “Christian” poetry. Makers of B (or even C!) “Christian” movies. Posters on blogs who do not think that spelling matters...

God have mercy on us all. Give us real love for You, Lord, that pours out in a passion that makes our best seem hardly good enough.

Then she comments:

We write with love, too, when we let our imaginations go and burst forth and make places and characters that inspire, that enervate. Lord of the Rings is a work of imagination, through and through, but it’s imparted real courage to me. Thank you, Master Tolkien, for your love.

Yes, thank you, Master Tolkein. And Master Lewis. And Paul the Apostle. And Ludwig von Beethoven. And Michelangelo. And Rachel Starr Thompson.

Thinky Things

You can read Rachel’s entire article here.

Are there places in your life where your lack of love is obvious? Where your art isn’t True Art? Who are some famous artists you know have loved you because they cared passionately about excellence? How about unsung artists who showed love to you through their excellent art? Why not give them a plug in the comment section ?

HOLD FAST (to what is good and excellent!)…

Young at heart?

2010-09-30T12:49:00.001-07:00

I'm still a little girl in many ways...standing in front of the colored pens, I want one of every color!

Hold Fast!

My Secret Admiring

2010-09-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

I have a secret admiring. No, not a secret admirer—at least not one that I’m aware of. (Hey, dream guy, if you’re out there, it’s way past time to quit keeping it a secret, ok?)

Of course, after this post it will not be quite so secret any more, but that’s ok. I shall be humbled by the revealing of my secret admiring, and perhaps you shall find this amusing. It’s worth it.

Wednesday morning on arising, I looked out the sliding glass doors at the end of our house, across the deck, and because our house is two storied, gazed directly into the eyes of a young…

…Buzzard.

Yes, my secret admiring is buzzards. At least, American Turkey Buzzards. I was gazing into his eyes because he had foolishly decided that the top of our security light pole would be a lovely roost for the night. As I said, he was young.

I know he was young because after inspecting him with the binoculars the girls and I gave ourselves for Christmas last year (for viewing night skies, actually, but they work great for other things, too) dear old Google was brought into service to find out what kind of buzzard he was. Finally this picture popped up, and I knew I had found my bird:

Mature turkey buzzards have red heads, which was why it took a few minutes of searching to discover why this one had a grey head.

Buzzards live in abundance in our area. For some, I am sure they are pests. I know that the electric company has installed special shields of some kind underneath the boom arms of the big standards carrying the large, high-voltage wires along a nearby highway, supposedly for some purpose related to the pestiferousness (it’s my word. Don’t make fun of it unless you’ve never made up a word) of these beasties. The shields don’t seem to keep them from roosting on the booms, so I have no idea what other purpose they serve. Sometimes rows of the birds can be seen on standard after standard, most of them with the outstretched wings typical of the species. This pose is reportedly for the purpose of exposing as much surface area to the sun in order to burn off all the bacteria they encounter during meals.

For buzzards, as you probably know, are one of the Creator’s solutions to garbage disposal. Many a time I have observed one or a group of them (and occasionally swerved to miss them) on the road as they fed on the unfortunate remains of another animal’s encounter with 4,000 plus pounds of steel hurtling at 60 miles an hour. So the first thing that I will mention about my admiration of buzzards is that they willingly clean up the worst possible messes made.

Sort of like your mother.

In addition, they clean up the leftovers from other animals’ meals.

Also sort of like your mother.

An article on the subject comments that turkey buzzards:

have weak, chickenlike feet, which are suitable for running on the ground. These vultures cannot lift or carry food with their feet. They can only step on their food to hold it in place while eating.

I admire this because it would be a very helpful condition for those of us who are mass-challenged. It would be more difficult to increase in mass if they only way we could eat was to tear off pieces of our food while holding it down with our feet, don’t you think? Now…don’t steal my idea. I’m thinking of marketing it on the shopping channel!

Yes, folks, for just 19.95 you too can become the slim, trim person of your dreams! Simply purchase the Amazing Trimmer-Downer and use as directed. You exercise while you eat!

This is not like your mother….but she may need one! Buy one for her for Christmas, and we’ll throw in the Amazing Secret Weapon Tipbook for free!

Haha. Just kidding.

The buzzard’s secret weapon is rather…disgusting. I read the Amazing Secret Weapon Tipbook, btw. I tried it during the first few months of each of my children’s gestations—but it didn’t work. You can’t get good quality help anymore, you know?

The most important thing I admire about buzzards, though, is their flight. The Vulture Society website (yeah, I know…who knew???) gives a few facts about turkey buzzard flight:

Flight
Turkey Vultures fly with their wings in a dihedral (V-shape). They are most graceful in flight, and can soar for hours at high altitudes without ever flapping their wings. Their occasional necessary flaps and takeoffs are quite laborious, however, and the birds often fall victim to predators and cars as a result.
How the Turkey Vulture Flies:
The turkey vulture is one of the most skilled gliders among the North American birds. It migrates across the continents with minimal energy output. Vultures launch themselves from their perches only after the morning air has warmed. Then, they circle upward, searching for pockets of rising warm air, or thermals. Once they have secured a thermal, they allow it to carry them upward in rising circles. When they reach the top of the thermal, they dive across the sky at speeds near 60 miles per hour, losing altitude until they reach another thermal. All this is done without the necessity to flap. In fact, the turkey vulture can glide for over 6 hours at a time without flapping a wing!

Apparently the area of our neighborhood has some seriously great thermals, because hardly a day goes by when we can’t spot a buzzard or two or three soaring effortlessly up and up and up until they are barely a speck in the sky. Often, they zoom directly over our house, casting large, fast-moving shadows on the windows, alerting us to the fact that the buzzards are playing in our sky “yard” again.

I am fascinated by watching them. There is something so joyful, and so amusing, and so…inspiring, I guess, about watching these creatures, whose dirty, thankless, smelly job would seem to make them bitter and gloomy and friendless. They use the energy they acquire from cleaning up messes to soar to giddy heights again and again.

And that makes me think. And smile. God gave them the nastiest, dirtiest job, but also gave them one of the greatest gifts.

Sort of like your mother.

.....HOLDFAST

The "Fear" Book

2010-09-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

Well, you’ve heard about the Star Book. After the last On Hold post, it occurred to me that perhaps you might benefit from knowing about the “fear” book.

'Cause I have one of those, too.

The “fear” book got started because while I try very hard to keep my cargo hold full of good stuff, it is inevitable that some of that which I, as a fallible human, deem worthy to put down there turns out not to be eternal. Last night I received some disappointing news, and as I was pondering it I happened to walk by one of the open cargo hatches, catching a whiff of something putrid. I descended into the hold and found not one, but several items that had begun to rot or mold—thoughts that seemed practical at the time, but have since degenerated into fears.

The best way to clean out these types of messes is not to ignore them. Even praying about them will not deal entirely properly with them and sanitize the surrounding area. No, these particular types of growths and putrefactions must be mercilessly removed and jettisoned. God reminded me of my “fear” book, which I have not used in several months, and I knew right away it would be the perfect method for getting those fears out of my mind.

The “fear” book started in the winter of ’09. I have been a journal writer for many years; particularly after my husband died, and I still felt the need of an evening “debrief” to get stuff off my chest without harming or burdening others. Michael J. used to be that repository for me (yet another of his Christ-like attributes), so without him I felt I had no where to put the stuff, and began writing it down. Mostly, it is just what I call “heart barf”. It’s faithless, fearful, self-pitying anxiety attacks put down on paper. I have charged my children that should they find any of these journals lying around after I die they are sworn under oath NOT to read them, but just to burn them…immediately and without remorse!

But the ”fear” book is somewhat different. In the spring of ’09 I was going through some very tough things—so tough that my kids were worried about my mental state. God graciously showed me that I was not dealing with these fears in a way that glorified him; nor was it effective in truly helping myself! And so began the “fear” book.

In it I committed to record all the fears that were plaguing me, but with a few differences from the heart-barf I habitually wrote. This time, after I recorded the fear that was plaguing me, I would also record the scriptures that would jettison that fear! The Word says “perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18), and I knew that scripture communicates that perfect love that has for us. I also knew that sometimes the fears come because there is some lack of action in an area on my part, so I determined that when I could discern there was action to be taken, I would record that as well as a personal prayer referencing the scriptures and asking for God’s intervention in my heart and life to overcome the fear.

It has been a remarkable journey. I usually hate re-reading through my old journals—but not the “fear” book! I love to re-read through this one and realize how many fears have NOT come true, and see how silly they seem not only in retrospect, but up against the powerful love of my Lord!

You, too, can have a “fear” book. In fact, I highly recommend the practice!

Step one is the most fun: go to the store and buy a spiral notebook or empty journal of some sort. (undated. Dated ones really intimidate me, and besides, I don’t have to deal with fears every day.) Pick a beautiful one, or (for the guys) one that really appeals to you. Then walk over an aisle or two and look through the pens until you find a set of 4 different colored pens that you like. Maybe they even coordinate with your journal, eh?

Step two: You will be recording 4 different things in your journal, if yours turns out like mine (I’m leaving room here for God to tailor the approach to your specific needs).

1. Your fear. One at a time, please! If you have several fears attacking you, then each gets a separate entry.

2. Scriptures you can find that address that fear particularly (see examples below). Copy them right out…don’t just list the reference. It’s part of the therapy to interact physically with the scripture by copying it.

3. A written prayer based not on the fear, but on the scripture. (see examples below).

4. Action points (if necessary)—things that you have realized you need to do to glorify God and take care of that which He has given you.

Each item above gets a different color of pen. This is so that you can easily see the scriptures and prayers without having to read through a bunch of heart barf. I recommend making the scriptures the darkest color you have picked.

I do date my entries, by the way. I think it’s faith-building to look back to what I was going through at a certain time in my life. I just don’t worry about writing in this every day, or even every week if I am coping well with my fear or don’t have any plaguing me at the moment. Last night when I pulled the “fear” book out, I discovered that the last entry had been in January! I will admit that that is probably too long to leave it. I can think of several things I have been through since January that could have benefited from some “fear” book therapy.

Now, for some examples, taken straight from my own “fear” book (though edited in some cases to protect the, uhm, innocent) to show you how this works for me. If you have any suggestions of how it could be done more scripturally, please comment! Coincidentally…ok, not. Providentially it turns out that the first example I found to post uses the phrase “hold fast our confession”. Pretty cool, God.

“6.10.09…I realize again that I don’t know how to be a mom, especially in this new season, having transitioned from a mother, to a mother-of-the-bride and mother-in-law. I try to think very hard how to respond and react, but I do this so unsuccessfully. I don’t even know what I need or how to learn what is important.

Hebrews 4:14-5:9 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses…let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. For every high priest chosen from among men…can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward…in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears…learned obedience through what he suffered.

Prayer: Father God, help me to remember that you deal gently with me, ignorant as I am; You sympathize with me and offer me mercy and grace in time of need. I admit to You my need and ask You to sympathize with my desire to be a good mother and growing Christ-follower and with my ignorance. I ask for mercy and grace as I make mistakes and also ask that You give the kids mercy and grace for me and for themselves to help them with the things I fail to be able to support them in.

Action point: Enable me to remember to ask for help and proper responses at each opportunity.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“9.20.09 I do not know how to face this problem in the church. It looks from my perspective that it is all my fault. Not only that but people who acted like and claimed to love me really were harboring the most awful offenses against me. Am I to take this as suffering for Christ, or the result of my own sin? I honestly don’t know. And some have suggested that it is only my self-focus that makes this about me in my perspective…but I don’t want to fail to see my sin, or to learn better from this. Is that pride or proper piety? There are no answers.

John 16:33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation (suffering). But take heart (be courageous); I have overcome the world.
I John 5:4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

Acts 27:20-44 When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned…take heart for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship…unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved…take some food. It will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you…and so it was that all were brought safely to land.

Prayer: Lord, YOU have overcome the world. You have overcome the world in me as well as everywhere else and in everyone else. If I acted wrong, You have already overcome it with good!
Father, I can’t even imagine going through a day that I don’t lose a hair or many in the normal course of a day…well, here was one very difficult day when none of these lost one hair! Help me, when things are hard and confusing and I feel as if You made a mistake in letting me live…help me to reach for food from You—the food of Your word, the food of doing Your will, the food of Your mercies and grace.

Action points: Remember God didn’t/hasn’t make/made a mistake in letting me live. Take food (spiritual) to strengthen me. Stay with the ship. Jumping ship into another boat will only result in not being saved.”

I hope these examples have encouraged you, and that you can use the idea of a “fear” book to help you in…

HOLDING FAST.

On Hold #4

2010-09-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

In the comment section of the previous post, it was mentioned by Rhiannon that one could do a whole Bible study on the words “hold fast”. Well, Rhiannon, you know what they say…great minds think alike! When I finally decided to open a blog, I promised myself that I would remain faithful to it and post at least once a week. When I chose the name for the blog, I had already done a lot of the research (some of which was posted in last week’s entry), and realized that I would have blog fodder for quite some time even if I found myself only able to write on the thoughts connected with the research on this phrase!

Also in the comment section of On Hold # 3, I mentioned that the “slippery hope” made me think of the scripture in Matthew 11:12. Thinking and researching this connection brings us to another definition of “hold”

(noun) :the area below the deck of a ship in which cargo is carried.

One of my favorite book series is the C. S. Forrester Hornblower series. From these delightful stories and few others I learned many things concerning human nature, but also almost all I know about the cargo hold of a ship, especially a sailing ship. It is important to have cargo, in the first place…a merchant ship without cargo is losing money, and a navy ship without cargo of food, water and ammunition is no good to anybody and certainly not for military pursuits. A ship without cargo must be handled differently than a ship with cargo in its hold. A ship with no cargo floats much lighter and higher in the water—which mostly is not a good thing. A ship can have too much cargo, and then she wallows around in the water and is difficult to handle, putting her crew in danger.

In addition, there must be a record of what is stored in the hold. Not only for the convenience of the crew, but also for the inspectors at the various ports.

Lastly, cargo of any kind must be stored correctly. The load must be balanced between the sides and ends of the ship.

Which is where this post actually begins. Because when studying scripture there are certain rules that have been developed over the years for studying any historical manuscript to ascertain its validity as well as for understanding what the author intended to communicate. And for scripture, there are even more rigorous rules and a few that apply only to scripture itself. Without these rules, the content (ahem, “cargo”) of scripture will not be loaded correctly, and the ship of our faith could be easily sunk. Ignoring these principles of interpretation could lead to jettisoning all the cargo and becoming spiritually bankrupt, or it could lead to overloading or unbalanced loading, causing shipwreck or even sinking of our faith entirely.

These rules are called “hermeneutics”. One of the basic rules of hermeneutics is that scripture must define itself wherever possible. Scripture interprets scripture.

As I meditated upon the concept of hope being “slippery”, i.e., something we are exhorted in scripture to hold fast to, it occurred to me that I needed to understand what scripture means when it uses the word “hope”. If I’m going to be holding onto it, I’d better know what it looks like, don’t you think?

We use the word hope a lot. We hope the Cowboys win, we hope it doesn’t rain on our parade, we hope the new research will offer hope to millions of sufferers, and we hope Mom and Dad change their minds about the curfew. We know what “hope” means when we use it in these contexts. But does it mean the same thing when we encounter it in scripture?

My trusty Logos 4 to the rescue! I began to search. At first I focused on the phrase “the confession of our hope”…that is the phrase in Hebrews 10:24, the scripture after which this blog is named. I wanted to know what “confession” of our “hope” was being referenced. Eventually it became necessary to break the phrase down further, so I focused on “hope”.

If you own a Bible dictionary, you may have discovered that reading it can be a serious devotional practice in its own right. Below is a prime example of this! Vines Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words has this to say about the word translated as “hope” in scripture:

elpis (ἐλπίς, 1680), in the NT, “favorable and confident expectation” (contrast the Sept. in Isa. 28:19, “an evil hope”). It has to do with the unseen and the future, Rom. 8:24, 25. “Hope” describes (a) the happy anticipation of good (the most frequent significance), e.g., Titus 1:2; 1 Pet. 1:21; (b) the ground upon which “hope” is based, Acts 16:19; Col. 1:27, “Christ in you the hope of glory”; (c) the object upon which the “hope” is fixed, e.g., 1 Tim. 1:1.
Various phrases are used with the word “hope,” in Paul’s epistles and speeches: (1) Acts 23:6, “the hope and resurrection of the dead”; this has been regarded as a hendiadys (one by means of two), i.e., the “hope” of the resurrection; but the kai, “and,” is epexegetic, defining the “hope,” namely, the resurrection; (2) Acts 26:6, 7, “the hope of the promise (i.e., the fulfillment of the promise) made unto the fathers”; (3) Gal. 5:5, “the hope of righteousness”; i.e., the believer’s complete conformity to God’s will, at the coming of Christ; (4) Col. 1:23, “the hope of the Gospel,” i.e., the “hope” of the fulfillment of all the promises presented in the gospel; cf. 1:5; (5) Rom. 5:2, “(the) hope of the glory of God,” i.e., as in Titus 2:13, “the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”; cf. Col. 1:27; (6) 1 Thess. 5:8, “the hope of salvation,” i.e., of the rapture of believers, to take place at the opening of the Parousia of Christ; (7) Eph. 1:18, “the hope of His (God’s) calling,” i.e., the prospect before those who respond to His call in the gospel; (8) Eph. 4:4, “the hope of your calling,” the same as (7), but regarded from the point of view of the called; (9) Titus 1:2, and 3:7, “the hope of eternal life,” i.e., the full manifestation and realization of that life which is already the believer’s possession; (10) Acts 28:20, “the hope of Israel,” i.e., the expectation of the coming of the Messiah. See Notes on Galatians by Hogg and Vine, pp. 248, 249.
In Eph. 1:18; 2:12 and 4:4, the “hope” is objective. The objective and subjective use of the word need to be distinguished, in Rom. 15:4, e.g., the use is subjective.
In the NT three adjectives are descriptive of “hope”: “good,” 2 Thess. 2:16; “blessed,” Titus 2:13; “living,” 1 Pet. 1:3. To these may be added Heb. 7:19, “a better hope,” i.e., additional to the commandment, which became disannulled (v. 18), a hope centered in a new priesthood.
In Rom. 15:13 God is spoken of as “the God of hope,” i.e., He is the author, not the subject, of it. “Hope” is a factor in salvation, Rom. 8:24; it finds its expression in endurance under trial, which is the effect of waiting for the coming of Christ, 1 Thess. 1:3; it is “an anchor of the soul,” staying it amidst the storms of this life, Heb. 6:18, 19; it is a purifying power, “every one that hath this hope set on Him (Christ) purifieth himself, even as He is pure,” 1 John 3:3, RV (the apostle John’s one mention of “hope”).
The phrase “fullness of hope,” Heb. 6:11, RV, expresses the completeness of its activity in the soul; cf. “fullness of faith,” 10:22, and “of understanding,” Col. 2:2 (RV, marg.).

I have highlighted the second paragraph as particularly helpful, as well as the reference to something of seaworthy note.

To summarize, then, “hope” as used in scripture is “the favorable and confident expectation of an as-yet-unrealized future of resurrection, conformity to Christ’s righteousness, and eternal dwelling in God’s Presence because of Christ’s work on the cross”.

Stay with me here, now—I’m going to make a bit of a leap. Hang tight! Here we go…

When was the last time you heard a sermon on Heaven and what it is going to be like, Christian? When was the last time you wondered about that future hope and went to scripture to see if it answered your question? How much time do you spend pondering Heaven, or resurrection, or what it will be like to never want to sin again?

I’ve heard many objections to any mention of time spent pondering our future as Christians. The most annoying one being “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good!” And yet we are exhorted by scripture to be very heavenly minded, and that being so will make us fruitful as Christians.

Thinky Things

Christian, have you loaded your hold with a good understanding of the favorable and confident expectation of your as-yet-unrealized future? Is it stacked and balanced properly with good hermeneutics? Are you prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you (I Peter 3:15)? This would be somewhat contiguous to having our “waybill”—the record of what is stored in our cargo hold. Our waybill is the "confession" of the hope that is within us. Are you holding fast to that waybill? Do you know what's in your hold?

A great resource for restocking your “hold” with hope of heaven is the book by Randy Alcorn titled Heaven.
A great resource to understand more about hermeneutics is the dvd titled “Herman Who?” by Todd Friel.

Until next time…HOLD FAST

On Hold #3

2010-09-11T18:25:00.000-07:00

For this post I thought it would be fun to give some interesting facts concerning the phrase “hold fast” in the Bible. One meaning of “hold” is:

“to be enough to satisfy or sustain somebody”.

May these interesting facts give you something to meditate on that will “hold” you—i.e. nourish you spiritually—until the next post.

Fact #1: There are exactly 30 verses that contain the phrase “hold fast” in the English Standard Version of the Bible. Fifteen in the Old Testament, and 15 in the New Testatment.

Fact #2: This is a list of the things that are to be “held fast” according to the Bible:

a. A man shall leave his mother and father and hold fast to his wife.
b. It is commanded that we hold fast to the Lord our God.
c. Job was commended by God for holding fast to his integrity
d. Hold fast a father’s teaching, when it is godly.
e. Hold fast God’s covenant
f. By the help of God hold fast to love and justice
g. Hold fast to what is good
h. Hold fast to the word Paul preached (the Gospel)
i. Hold fast to the Head (Jesus)
j. Hold fast to the word of life
k. Hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope (of Christ)
l. Hold fast our confession (or the confession of our hope)
m. Hold fast to the hope set before us
n. The church at Pergamum was commended for holding fast the name of the Lord
o. Hold fast what we have until he comes so that no one steals our crowns

Fact #3: Two things are condemned in scripture when they are held fast; evil purpose, and deceit—a refusal to learn.

Fact #4: The Hebrew words translated “hold fast” are: dabaq (cleave, cling to, glue); chazaq (be strong, strengthen, harden, take hold of); shamar (keep, retain, keep watch over, tend); chashaq (to have strong feelings for); and tawmak (uphold, make secure, make a physical attachment to by grasping).

Fact #5: The Greek words translated “hold fast” are: kallao (join fast together, cement, glue); krateo (be strong, mighty, to prevail); katecho (to hold firmly, hold fast); epecho (to direct attention towards).

Fact #6: A whopping 13% of the 30 verses are repetitions of a. above. I think He meant it, folks!

Fact #7: Hope must be pretty slippery—three times the word “hope” is paired in a verse with the phrase “hold fast”.

There are 7 facts—seems like a good number to end with.

Thinky Things

How many of the things in the list of Fact #2 are you being diligent to “hold fast”? In what areas are you holding fast to evil purposes or refusing to learn? What do you think now of the accusation, made by many over the centuries, that Christianity is a religion for wimps and weaklings?

Until next time...Hold Fast

On Hold, #2

2010-09-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Another meaning of the word hold--actually the phrase "on hold" is as follows:

into or in a state of suspension and postponement.

12 years ago today my husband and I celebrated our 18th anniversary. And it was to be our last. I am so thankful to know that our relationship was only put into a state of suspension and postponement on the day he died. We WILL see each other again. Thank God.

Save me seat, babe!

Art And All That, Part V

2010-09-05T04:48:00.000-07:00

Before beginning this post, here is just a short recap of what we’ve covered so far in parts 1-4. First, the initial question, from Stephen:

“My only curiosity is, what have you learned from all those experiences that confirms your beliefs, especially about Art and all that?”

The answers so far have been that my experiences have confirmed the following beliefs I hold about art:

1.    There is True Art and faux art.
2.    God made art powerful.
3.    Art is important to God.
4.    True Art requires great sacrifice.

That’s the short version, anyway. We have also agreed on a definition of True Art, and I’ve made the point that just because one is a true Christian doesn’t mean that one’s art is True Art. Here, then, is the next thing I believe about Art And All That.

Art is like a big wooden spoon.

I realize that that statement may be puzzling and unclear. So let me try to explain. First, I will tell a story.

Years ago my children and I attended a religious family camp. This camp was supported by and based on (what I now know to be) a certain cultic fundamental group. At the time, I was sadly lacking in the knowledge of sound hermeneutics, and did not realize my danger. Nevertheless, the Lord protected us. There was at this particular camp in our dorm a very nice lady and her daughters. They were all very beautiful. They all had long, well-cared-for, uncut hair. They all wore kaki or denim skirts and modest shirts, even in the 108 degree heat at the camp. They wore no make-up.

On the last day of camp, she and I began to converse about music. I forget what brought the subject up, but I distinctly remember her telling me of learning that a “backbeat” in music was bad. She liked rock music at the time, but after having this idea planted in her head, she began to listen to it more carefully. “And sure enough” she said, swaying her denim-draped hips from side to side, “I found it DID make me feel more sensual! So I got rid of all my rock music. We don’t listen to it anymore“ she continued, with a self-satisfied, pious air.

I asked her for biblical support for the idea that a “backbeat” in music was wrong, but she was unable to give any.

As I continued to live my life, God was gracious to bring me to a better understanding of hermeneutics and doctrine, and to my belief in the "spoonishness" of Art.

I am a mom and a cook. I love being both, so I’m sure that is where this “analogy” comes from. I apologize ahead of time for the fact that, like all analogies, it breaks down if you press it too hard.

Think of you and each person in the world as a molded jello salad: you know the kind—that gelatinous, semi-transparent sweet treat is molded in a pleasing shape.

According to scripture, everyone’s jello starts out with a slimy, disgusting, and putrified filling. Nasty stuff, that. And it’s all we have unless and until God saves us. He cleans out the slimy dead stuff, and puts in another filling; clean, healthful and yummy! All jello salads look similar- jiggling and sparkling and performing some amazing tricks as well as some stupid things—but the filling makes all the difference. For those of you familiar with Christian terminology, the jello is what God calls your “flesh”.

Art (and any number of other things you might mention) is only a spoon.

What my pious, denim-wearing friend had done, along with many in the church and the world, was to mistake the spoon for the jello. The spoon might make you act bad, so it must be the spoon that is bad. Get rid of the spoon and you won't act bad anymore. (pssst…it’s just a cover for gnosticism—i.e., all matter is bad, only spirit is good).

She and the monks and nuns of antiquity, and myriads of fundamentalist sects from thousands of years ago to the present, both Christian and non, think that if you get rid of the spoon, the jello will somehow cease to exist. Monks and hermits lock their doors, crawl into their cells, and consume only bread and water in their efforts to eliminate the spoons of life. Denim-skirted ladies are even doing their best to remove the spoons from the men around them who might be tempted by a glimpse of a fashionably dressed figure.

The only problem with that is that the jello is really still there, shining and sparkling. Just let some other spoon come along—oh, let’s choose ambition, this time—or something to jostle the jello—say a life-threatening illness like the common cold, for instance—and the jello will start it’s jiggling circus tricks.

Dear denim lady: it’s not the “backbeat” that is bad. You’ve got you some prone-to-jiggle-jello, there. You can get rid of the “spoon” of the “backbeat”, but soon another spoon will come along (an innocent question by an observer, perhaps?) and your jello will be jostled (that holier-than-thou piety looks awfully pretty from the outside.)

St. Paul said it this way:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:21-24)

What are we to do, if we can’t stop our jello from jiggling by getting rid of the spoons? We are surrounded by spoons! They are bound to stir up something!

First of all, if you find that your jello salad only contains putrified filling, you gotta get that fixed. A spoon can’t stir up anything good if there isn’t any there to stir up. If you need help knowing what to do about this problem, post a question in the comments and leave me your email. I’ll gladly share the good news of the gospel with you in hopes that God’s grace will furnish you with some yummy filling!

Secondly, the writer of Hebrews shared with us some wisdom on the subject:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24)

Suppose that the spoon stirs up the jello quite rigorously? Why, the filling seeps out. In the case of the unsaved, that will be quite a tragedy—smelly and noxious. In the case of the Christian? That yummy filling seeps out, making everything smell better, look better, and taste better.

Now, where have we seen that scripture before? Where have we heard that phrase “stir up”? Wasn’t it in our working definition of True Art? (hint: “motivating” and “stirring up” are two ways of saying the same thing.)

Working definition of True Art: True Art magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit illustrating God’s Word through the artistic medium thereby motivating the gathered Church to proclaim the Gospel, to cherish God’s presence, and to live for God’s glory.

Thinky Things

We might all ponder our jello salad and the spoons that stir it. Have we mistaken the spoons for the jello in any area? Are there “rules” we have set up for ourselves or others that are attempts at getting rid of the spoons? Do these rules go beyond God’s commands?

On Hold, #1

2010-09-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

It’s finally time to talk about how this blog got its name. As perhaps you have guessed, not all of my life has been easy. Most of the hard parts were due to the fact that I took them hard or made them hard for myself by my own attitude. That aside, it is important to acknowledge that I’ve had a lot of help and support along the way.

Years ago a friend of mine and I had a small gesture of sign language that helped us let each other know we were going through a hard time, but that we would be ok (Thanks, Paula, wherever you are. I hope you are so very blessed!). It was Paula, a two-time cancer survivor, who first used it. I had inquired as to how she was doing, and for an answer, she curled her hand into a hard fist and jerked it down in front of her. At my questioning look, she said “that’s the knot at the end of the rope.”

Ah. I got it. No doubt you’ve heard the saying “when you’ve reached the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on!” From then on, we used that sign language to share with one another that life was hard, but we were making it, and we would appreciate hugs and prayers.

This spring I traveled to visit my daughter, who has moved a thousand miles away from me. As soon as I arrived, she presented me with my birthday present, which she had been working on for some time.

Understand, before I tell you what the gift was, that this daughter (as well as my other 3 children) have helped me walk through some of the very toughest of the tough times in my life. We’ve walked through them together, shoulder-to-shoulder. When one man got weak or went down, the others shouldered up under him until he could walk on his own again. Many times that weak or down man was me. At times, I’ve been very, very close to the edge of the darkness.

So the framed cross stitch that I unwrapped there in her living room, fashioned in my favorite colors, quoting my favorite verses, meant a lot to me. It consisted of the pattern of the cross and runes you see above, along with Hebrews 10:23;

“Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Along with another of my favorite verses.

I looked up the definition of “hold” in the dictionary. This word has a plethora of meanings, and we’ll eventually be talking about a lot of these definitions here at the HoldFast, but the very first one is as follows:

“grasp something: to take something firmly and retain it in the hand or arms.”

Yet again today I have learned for the umpteenth time that one cannot hold onto the knot at the end of the rope without letting go of anything else on which one might have a grip. To hold onto the knot, one has to let go of anything less precious than your life (beloved, your life is hid with Christ in God). Not one penny, one flower, one precious box of memories, one single moment of personal glory can be retained in the hands if they are to grasp the knot in the rope firmly enough.

I am reminded of the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King where Frodo has fallen over the ledge; below him, the fires of Mount Doom. Above him, a life carrying the great weight of the loss of the One Ring. He hangs by his one undamaged hand over the abyss. And through the magic of cinema, you can see him decide to choose life. With a huge effort of will and body, he throws his damaged hand up to grab onto Sam’s arm and be pulled to safety, and eventually home to Hobbiton, and thence on, after a time, into the West…a green land of endless happiness and total healing.

Anything he held in that hand would have kept him from grasping the hand of his friend. And the grasp for life itself was painful, using the hand from which he had just lost a finger. Without the emptiness of the hand and willingness to grasp the pain, the happy ending wouldn’t have been.

What is it that you need to let go of in order to hold onto the Knot???

“Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Hold Fast.

Art And All That, Part IV

2010-08-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

Allow me to admit right up front in this post that I am a Westerner. I am Western by birth and culture. I’m partial to Western music and Western language. Having said that, you can perhaps guess the corollary: I am not Eastern. Not by a long shot. So sometimes I have trouble understanding the progression of thoughts of someone who is Eastern.

That is why I must admit that though I have read it 3 times, I have yet to get all of what Makoto Fujimura is trying to say in his article in the most recent Tabletalk magazine. Nevertheless, in The Beautiful Tears I find a principle that helps to support the “why” of true Art and the importance of sacrifice in producing true Art. Mr. Fujimura is a very fine Christian "artist, writer and catalyst" as his website states. Certainly the article we are about to examine is an inspiring example of the art of writing, and I hope it will be a catalyst to your thinking, as well.

Before I begin delving into the article though, I’d like to tell a short story. Recently God enabled me to acquire my Bachelor of Arts degree in Music after three years of intense schedules, neglected family, and hard work. During those years I was privileged to hear the testimony of one of the professors. I will never forget the part of the story in which he tells how he came to play the flute. His main instrument was the clarinet…and he was already quite expert at that instrument. But he decided he wanted to play the flute, also. So he did his research, packed his bags, and moved to be near the greatest flute teacher he could find.

Then he called the teacher. This instructor asked a few questions, and upon learning that my professor had no experience with flute whatsoever, he told him that he would not take him as a student. My professor questioned him as to what it would take for the instructor to accept him as a student, and was told to “spend 10,000 hours practicing, then call me back.”

Did you get that number? Let me spell it in italics for you:

T-E-N T-H-O-U-S-A-N-D HOURS.

In what area of your life have you spent 10,000 hours of training? Be honest, now...

My professor, being the kind of person he is, simply began practicing. He marked off every hour of practice on his apartment wall until he had racked up 10,000 hours.

Then he called the famous teacher back.

Of course he got the lessons. And he’s a fabulous flute player—as fabulous as he is a clarinet player, and saxophone player.

I think the lesson that my professor learned was the necessity of extravagant sacrifice in the production of true Art.

Mr. Fujimura gives us a lesson on the extravagant sacrifice necessary by beginning with the story surrounding the shortest verse in the Bible.

Jesus and the disciples are ministering across the Jordan, near the place John the Baptizer preached. Jesus receives word that his good friend Lazarus is ill, yet the Lord does not go to him. Long-story-short, Lazarus ends up dying, and Jesus finally decides to go to him, even though He knows it means his own death will follow shortly afterward. When Jesus reaches Bethany, the village where Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary live, he is met by first Martha, then Mary. Both are grief stricken. And it is at this point that Jesus does something different than he’s ever done before.

He weeps.

From The Beautiful Tears:

Why did Jesus weep? He delayed coming to Bethany “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”(John 11:4), and, when He arrived, informed Martha that He is “the resurrection and the life”(v. 25). If He came to Bethany to show His power, the fact that He is indeed the Messiah with the power to resurrect the dead, why did He not simply wave His “magic wand” to “solve the problem” of the death and illness of Lazarus? There would have been an immediate celebration, and all the tears would have been unnecessary. Tears are useless, wasteful, if you possess the power to cause miracles.

So, why did Jesus weep? And furthermore, what do His tears have to do with Art? Let’s follow the story on into the next week of Jesus’ life. After Lazarus is raised, the Pharisees are seeking to kill Jesus. He slips away to a little village called Ephraim for a few days rest, and then returns to Bethany to have dinner with Lazarus, Martha and Mary. Lazarus, Jesus, and the guys were all sitting around the table having a meal when Mary

Barged into a closed room of disciples, crushing open her alabaster jar of nard, worth a year’s wages, that she was to keep for her wedding. She intuited in Jesus’ tears that every miracle of Jesus drew Him a step closer to His sacrificial death. She had to respond with a direct, intuitive, but also intentional act of devotion…Jesus’ tears led to Mary’s act of sacrifice, of nard being spread in a closed room in Bethany, where a transgression by a woman opened up a new paradigm the aroma of Christ, of the reality of the gospel breathing into our broken world, filling the cracks of suffering.

Art, like Jesus’ tears and Mary’s nard, spreads in our lives, providing useless beauty for those willing to ponder. Many consider the arts to be the “extra” of our lives, an embellishment that is mere leisure…What many consider extra, and even wasteful, may come to define our humanity….Every act of creativity is, directly or indirectly, an intuitive response to offer to God what He has given to us.

But what about faux art? What about that which is not, by our definition, True Art?

“We twist this intuition and may create something transgressive and injurious, but this creative impulse originates from the Creator. Jesus wept.”

Maybe you’re still asking yourself “what’s the point? I enjoy art, sure, but how is it helpful to the gospel? Isn’t it a waste of time we could be spending witnessing?” Mr. Fujimura continues:

Judas was livid at Mary’s act, and argued that the nard could have been sold and the money given to the poor (Mark 14:5). Pragmatism, legalism and greed cannot comprehend…beauty. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness; the opposite of beauty is legalism….Legalism takes away life by forbidding the nard to be spilled…

As I have stated before, I believe that Art is 1) powerful, 2) important to God, and 3) demands great sacrifice. As a Christian, the greatest sacrifice I can imagine is that of Jesus’ willing death to pay the price for my sin. The article continues:

Christ is the great Artist. Maybe what He saw in Mary was a little artist, emulating and mirroring His great sacrifice….Jesus told the disciples that what Mary had done would be proclaimed “whenever the gospel is told.” Perhaps we need to ponder the logical consequence to this extraordinary affirmation: Is our work for the gospel saturated with the aroma of Mary’s nard? What is our beautiful, extravagant offering that exposes Judas, an offering prepared for the cosmic wedding to come?

What we deemed a waste, Jesus called the most necessary. Jesus wept.

What we deemed a waste…

And with that thought, I leave you for today to your meditation upon Art and all that.

On Being Single--Holding Fast

2010-08-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

One of the roles from the sidebar that I have played in real life is that of weeping widow. My husband was killed 12 years ago next month. God has been faithful, but life has not been easy. The following quote and link I found so explanatory, so encouraging, that I felt it worth posting here. If you are not single and do not suffer the hunger Fabienne and I suffer, then you suffer some other hunger--so this article will be of encouragement to you, too. Just substitute the name of your hunger for the one in the article.

Today, in order to worship God, my body needs to be hungry. Today, He is giving me the blessed pain of hunger because it’s the only way I’m going to make it home, and He is nothing if not faithful to the promise to give me what I need to make it to Him.

Read the full article HERE

Art And All That, Part III

2010-08-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

Housekeeping

My apologies, respected readers. It has been brought to my attention that my tone in previous posts on this subject has been somewhat patronizing. In my effort to engage you and to be cool, and make this blog a fun place where we can kid around and be silly as well as meditate soberly, I erred too far toward the silly. Forgive me, and be assured that you will no longer find a patronizing attitude within the posts here.

That bit of housekeeping done, allow me to continue answering Stephen’s question.

“My only curiosity is, what have you learned from all those experiences that confirms your beliefs, especially about Art and all that?”

Another belief that I have about Art is that it is important to God. Not only is it important because He invented it, and because He uses it, but because He gifted humans with artistic abilities.

Four of my favorite people in scripture are fellows whose names you may not recognize. Bezalel, Jeduthun, Heman and Asaph were especially gifted by God for art! Bezalel was gifted in crafts and artistic pursuits as well as architecture for the building of the tabernacle along with Oholiab. Jeduthun, Heman and Asaph were especially gifted in music and were ordained as part of the Levitical priesthood to serve in that capacity.
Exodus 31:2ff quotes God’s commissioning of Bezalel:

“See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs…to work in every craft.

Now Bezalel is pretty special. Scripture says he was filled with the Spirit of God to work in EVERY craft. Mostly these days we find that artists are truly gifted in one or two mediums, seldom in many. That phrase “devise artistic designs” is an interesting one. I noticed when checking it out that the word “artistic” isn’t actually in the manuscript. I am always suspicious when this happens, wondering if someone has put their own spin on the translation. So I looked up the reason for this word addition. Here is the result:

The expression is לַחְשֹׁב מַחֲשָׁבֹת (lakhshov makhashavot, “to devise devices”). The infinitive emphasizes that Bezalel will be able to design or plan works that are artistic or skillful. He will think thoughts or devise the plans, and then he will execute them in silver or stone or whatever other material he uses. (from notes on the NET Bible)

Art is so important to God that He not only invented it and uses it Himself, but He has endowed his image-bearers with the skills and abilities to perform it.

Yet another belief about art which my experiences have confirmed is the following: Art requires sacrifice. Often it requires great sacrifice—the most beautiful art usually requires the greatest sacrifice. Whether that sacrifice is measured in hours spent in the practice room or ruined canvas or useless pottery cracked in the furnace; whether it consists of great humiliation or cost in materials or time, beautiful art costs something. I am reminded of David's exclamation:

But King David said to Ornan, “No, but I will buy them for the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing. (1 Chron. 21:24)

I confess to a certain amount of annoyance and frustration at that which is termed “Christian” art. Too often it is second rate—since when have you seen a Christian movie, for instance, that had the quality of a Lord of the Rings trilogy, or Up? Think back to the last time you heard someone perform music at church. Was it a performance that required a firm self-reminder that it is the heart that matters and not the skill of the performer? Or was it truly excellent, drawing your thoughts toward God, providing a glimpse of the eternal and space for your spirit to meditate upon the greatness of your Redeemer? Have you recently seen a lot of church buildings where attention was given to artistic sensibilities, or have most of them been of the large, warehouse type?

Something stinks, and I propose that it might be that baby (art) we, the Church, threw out with the bathwater.

I can certainly understand how it happened. Somehow we began to think that art was superfluous to what we do when we meet together as the Body of Christ, and to what we do when we evangelize. Certainly we should never make the sacrifice of proper Godward worship or the salvation of a lost soul to get great art—that would be blasphemous. But have we, in a too-wide swing toward pragmatism, forgotten that the sacrifice required for great art is also a picture of the sacrifice required for God’s greatest work of art—the redemption of a lost world through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ?

Or was it rather legalism that made us fear the power and influence of art? Did we decide that God would give us more points if we got rid of anything that might tempt us to an appreciation of beauty—beauty that He created?

Regardless of the reason for it, Christianity has lost great swathes of ground to secular art. And that brings me to another thing that I have recently begun to ponder concerning what I believe and what my experiences have taught me. But I’ll leave that for next time!

By the way...I borrowed the phrase "thinky things" from the Scita>Scienda blog you see on my blogroll. I hope that's alright with you, Cat!

Thinky Things

Please do comment and let me know your thoughts. In case you need something to spark an idea for a comment, here are some suggestions:

1. What in your experience confirms that art is important to God, powerful, and requires great sacrifice?
2. How did we, the Church, come to throw the art baby out with the bathwater?

Logos 4 for Mac

2010-08-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

Alright...this is a shameless plug for my favorite Bible software. I'm a Windows woman myself, but I drool over an iPad on occasion. Well, the folks at Logos have been slaving away and finally come out with the Mac version.
Do click over there and look at Logos, whether you are a Mac fan or a Windows die hard...it's an awesome program, and it continues to improve all the time.
Logos 4
Oh, and by the way...you could win an iMac, iPad or iPod touch, as well as several other lovely prizes just for sharing this news with your friends Enter to win over at Logos

I did ;P

2010 Perseids Star Party

2010-08-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

After several years of making an effort, our familiy was finally able to make a real star party out of the August 12th meteor shower this year! We have been enjoying "star parties" for many years, though we didn't know that's what they were called. Year after year we have tried to get a good experience of the Perseids, but often only made a stab at it...we'd go to bed, but set the alarm for 2 or 3 a.m. Then we'd get everyone up, wander outside to the drive way, and watch a little while. When the children were younger, the big draw for them was not the meteors or the stars, but the hot cocoa or coffee that they were allowed to sip!

Last Christmas, though, we really started making better preparations for star gazing by purchasing a pair of good binoculars. Parents, don't miss the opportunity of experiencing the declaration of the glory of God in the heavens just because you don't have a telescope. Binoculars will do just fine to start with. My son had also bought me a laser pointer for my birthday a few years ago: honestly, we've had more fun with this silly thing. The entire family was here at my house for my daughter's wedding, and when I got out the laser pointer to show them a few constellations, they couldn't resist beginning to experiment with all that it could do. I think they spent a couple of hours shining it in different places, and then they brought it inside and started seeing what it would do under various conditions. Well, at least it survived.
Here are the binoculars we bought ourselves for Christmas:

Orion Binoculars

And here is the laser pointer we've had so much fun with:

Green Laser Pointer

Finally, we borrowed some camping cots from my dad. Before it got dark, we set out the camping cots in the lot in front of our house. We live in a roomy suburban subdivision, and the only light pollution problem is the security light on our property. That IS a problem, but it doesn’t keep us from having a good view of the sky, and if we’re careful, the light doesn’t spoil the view too much.
During the afternoon we discovered a tip concerning listening to the meteors, so we also got out the stereo system, set it up on the ironing board, and tried to tune it so that we could hear the pings made by the meteors as they entered the atmosphere.
Here is the link that gave us the tip:

See and Hear Meteors

Unfortunately, it didn’t work for us this time. Next time I’ll do a little more research and see if I can pinpoint it. As a musician, I’m interested in all kinds of sounds, and it’s just fascinating to me that one can hear the “music” of the meteors!
It rained that afternoon, and in 101 degree heat, rain is not a blessing. It was miserably hot and muggy out even around 9 o’clock when it got dark. And so we decided to watch a movie and come back out later. As a result, we missed the best meteor of the evening! Apparently a large “grazer” meteor hit the atmosphere right around 10:00 CDST…and we were watching CARS. Go figure. We heard from several people, local and otherwise, that it was spectacular and some of them even heard a “swoosh” with it. Interesting, because meteors hardly ever make noise we can hear.

Here’s a time-lapse video of some of the meteors:

Around 11:30 we ventured out doors to discover that the temperature had dropped significantly, leaving everything wet with dew, and even covering us with dew as we walked out of the house. The night was continually damp, but at least it cooled off! After wiping some of the water off the stereo, we settled down in our camping cots to watch the show. I’m pretty sure we saw over 100 meteors, though we didn’t count. Rosie and I stuck it out until 5:45 that morning, though I took a nap somewhere around 1:30 for about an hour and a half.
While watching for meteors, we of course had to look for constellations and sky objects. We picked out the following constellations:

Sagittarius, Cygnus, Aquila, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Andromeda,

…and several others. Another exciting thing was that I saw a deep-sky object I hadn’t viewed before. I believe it was this one:

Galaxy M31

Once I picked it out with the binoculars, I was also able to spot it with the naked eye. I think we picked out a few other deep-sky objects, ones we had seen before, but I have slept since then, and I wasn’t in particularly good mental shape after staying up all night, so I’ve forgotten which ones we looked at.
Here is a picture of the sky chart for that night at about 2 a.m. We were oriented facing east and very slightly south.

You can get a sky chart like this for your area just by visiting: Heavens-above. Sign up for a free account and give them your zipcode. Then you can sign in any time, and it will give you the whole sky chart for your area at the time you sign in (you have to find the "whole sky chart" in the list of things on the page...it's down nearer the bottom).

The next good meteor shower will be the Leonids, November 17th. There is a meteor shower in October, but it will be blanked out by the full moon. If you observe during the very early morning hours (after 3 a.m.) on November 17th, you'll probably catch a few.

But whether or not you view a meteor shower, do get out in the dark with your children and some binoculars. Even if you don't know what you're looking at, you'll see some amazing sights. The weather should begin cooling off in a few weeks, and as the fall approaches the constellations and sky objects will become clearer as the summer haze settles. The moon is fabulous through binoculars, by the way. It will be a great family time. I promise you will end up with some deep discussion about life, the universe and everything when you and your children behold the glory of God in the heavens!

Art And All That, Part II

2010-08-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

I see that all are in attendance, and there exists some curiosity as to the answers to the Thinky Things in Part I. So let us begin there:

1. Who among humans is the true artist? Which category of humans (choose between the following: Christians or non-Christians) is most like the First Artist?

The category of humans most like the First Artist are Christians.

2. How would you re-word Mr. Kauflin’s definition so that it defines Art instead of the artist?

Working definition of True Art: True Art magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit illustrating God’s Word through the artistic medium thereby motivating the gathered Church to proclaim the Gospel, to cherish God’s presence, and to live for God’s glory.

4. Meditate upon the following verse. What, if anything, does it have to say to us concerning Art?
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

True Art, then, will stir us up to love and good works and encourage us to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.

Let’s dig a little deeper. The very first phrase of our definition of True Art states that it magnifies the greatness of God. True Art acts like a magnifier…you know, one of those lenses designed to make whatever you are looking at through it larger, easier to see.

Does it bother anybody that God is so great, yet scripture enjoins and commands us to “magnify” Him and His greatness over and over again? Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that we are so very blind ? (probably). Or is it that no matter how large God is to us, we can never see to the end of the detail of His greatness? (very definitely!)

Have you ever used a magnifier to look at a photograph? Often you can see more detail as you look closer. But at some point you are going to run out of detail and begin to lose the picture altogether. It will resolve first into more detail, but if it is magnified more, it will resolve only into patterns of colored dots, then into fibers of paper, and at that point you no longer know what the photograph is depicting.

But God is not like that. He is so great that we cannot take Him all in at once, yet no matter how infinitely we magnify him or an aspect of His character, we still see God, we can still see the big picture! (and this is why fractals and chaos theory intrigue me!)

The most recent issue of Tabletalk magazine is entitled “The Good, The True, The Beautiful”. Dr. Sproul states the following:

“God is the source, the fountainhead, and the norm of all that is true…good…beautiful. Just as everything that is true points to God, and everything that is good points to God, so everything that is authentically beautiful also points to the source and fountainhead of that beauty….There is nothing in redemptive history that would make beauty, goodness, or truth suddenly passe’ or insignificant.”

And so we come to the first thing I am able to put a finger on that I have learned through my experiences that confirms my belief about Art.

I believe that God made Art powerful. And my experiences have confirmed that.

If you have not read the “about me” section yet, you might want to take the opportunity to do so now. Unlike many pastors I have known, I will now give you a moment of silence in which to read it. It will be a moment of REAL silence, and not a moment of continual-yapping-encouragement-to-use-the-silence-to-really-do-business-with-God.

*shuts face. Waits for 50 seconds while listening to the sound of people reading.*

You’ll notice that I have played the Mouse Queen in a local version of the Nutcracker, and Mother Abbess in a community theater production of The Sound of Music. Why is it that these two stories are so enduring? They are powerful, I think we can all admit that. The stories themselves are powerful, and the acting out of the stories is also powerful—as the skill of the actor increases, so does the power of the performance.

Thinky Things

1. What would you say is the the most powerful expression of art that you have experienced?
2. What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?

Please do fill in the comment section with your answers…it will be a worship event! In Part III, we’ll look at Jesus’ idea of beauty, and find out another answer to Stephen’s question. Until next time...

...Hold Fast

Art And All That

2010-08-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

Most blogs begin with a great, uplifting and idealistic post describing who the blogger is and why they are starting a blog. I considered that. Then I took a Tylenol and went off to a music clinic. When I returned I had seen the light.

This blog won’t begin with one of those. It will begin right in the middle of what’s going on in my life. A certain special son-in-law was helping me get my blog set up by giving gentle critique and encouragement from his vast store of blogging expertise (check out his blogs in the blog roll on the right). After I submitted the text of the “About Me” section that you see in the bar on the right to him for editing, he responded with a question:

“My only curiosity is, what have you learned from all those experiences that confirms your beliefs, especially about Art and all that?”

Instead of answering him, I grabbed at the offering of blog fodder and told him I’d make the answer part of one of the first posts (pretending, of course, that I had so much to say already that I was making a bit of a sacrifice to bump his question up to ‘one of the first’ posts, when the truth was I was so desperate for a subject for the first post that I grabbed at his question like a drowning man…).

Well, Stephen: thanks to you, here is my first official post on HoldFast.

Let The Feast Begin

I’ll have to start here, with Art, because that is the easiest, and I’m quite the novice at this blogging thing. What have I learned from all the experiences in the “About Me” that confirms my beliefs about Art?

*Waits for readers to ponder*.

Ah, yes! Good question. What ARE my beliefs about Art anyway? That would be important to know, don’t you think?

Not being a person of great intellect, I am grateful for those who are smarter and more erudite than I. Bob Kauflin, author of Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God, lays it out in the chapter headings pretty well, I think:

“A Faithful Worship Leader…
…Magnifies the Greatness of God…
…In Jesus Christ…
…Through the Power of the Holy Spirit…
…Skillfully Combining God’s Word…
…With [fill in your favorite artistic medium here]…
…Thereby Motivating the Gathered Church…
…To Proclaim the Gospel…
…To Cherish God’s Presence…
…And to Live For God’s Glory.”

*Spots hand waving in the the back of the room*. Yes? *listens to question*.

Wow, am I blessed with thinking readers! Great insight: it’s true that the above description doesn’t really define Art so much as it defines an artist. And it does a magnificent job of it. Change the wording just a bit, and you get the following, broader description of any kind of (Christ-following) artist.
i.e.:

“A faithful [painter, dancer, musician, woodcarver, sculptor, potter, etc.] magnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, skillfully combining God’s Word with [artistic medium through which artist expresses his/her art] thereby motivating the gathered church to proclaim the Gospel, to cherish God’s presence, and to live for God’s glory.”

“But wait, Esther. You have only defined a Christian artist. There are a lot of artists who are not Christian!”

True, young grasshoppa. But consider. Who is The First Artist? Who created Art? Who first used Art to communicate the gospel and draw us into His Presence and glorified Himself through it?

Because you have already proved yourself a very smart audience, I will take the risk and make a leap of logic here—but let me know if I get ahead of you:

Who among humans, then, is the true artist? The most like the First Artist?

Thinky Things

So here is your first HoldFastFeast. Think upon the following, and post a comment if you like.

1.   Who among humans is the true artist? Which category of humans (choose between the following: Christians or non-Christians) is most like the First Artist?
2.   How would you re-word Mr. Kauflin’s definition so that it defines Art instead of the artist?
3.   Meditate upon the following verse. What, if anything, does it have to say to us concerning Art?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:23-24)

As I have yet to come up with a good sign off, I’ll plagiarize a bit and borrow from one of my favorite radio program hosts. As Todd Friel of Wretched Radio says:

“And now…Go serve your King!”

Esther

P.S. Don’t worry. Not all the posts here will be this ponderous, nor will they all be about art, I promise. As they say here in Texas, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute”. Well…if you don’t like the thinkiness here, just wait a minute…

The Star Book

2010-08-11T17:57:00.000-07:00

I'm really just testing the email blogging feature here, but thought this was a good subject. The Perseid meteor shower should peak tomorrow night, August 12, during the early morning hours, incidentally.

Oh, and I'll share more about The Star Book later.

Bang bang bang; "oof!"...

2010-08-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

Oh! Hi. Sorry, I didn't see you standing there. I was just nailing that piece of trim up over there. Don't you love the smell of new wood?

I'm still finishing this blog home out, so it may be awhile before I'm ready for company, but thanks for dropping by...I'm looking forward to your visits once I've painted, hung the doors and windows and there is carpet on the floors, furniture suitable for frivolous chatting as well as deep thinking, and the fridge is stocked.

Meanwhile, I don't want you to go away empty handed...so here's a thought to take with you as you leave:

Hebrews 10:23 " Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. "

Now, you have a blessed day, you hear? Mind the sawdust on your way out...

Esther's HoldFast

Status Whoa! 3.9.11

Changes

Status Whoa! 3.2.11

My Cottage

Facebook--Status Whoa!

Art And All That

Christian Parent: What Are You Thinking?

Art And All That Part The Last

‘But I’m borrred!’

Art And All That Part X

Thinking Poor

Art And All That

Starting Over...Or Again

Art And All That + Heaven + Radical

Art And All That Part IX

Art And All That Part VIII

LET IT BEGIN, LET IT BEGIN!!!

Cheating...

Submission to Future Pain

Art And All That, Part VII

Art and All That, Part VI

Young at heart?

My Secret Admiring

The "Fear" Book

On Hold #4

On Hold #3

On Hold, #2

Art And All That, Part V

On Hold, #1

Art And All That, Part IV

On Being Single--Holding Fast

Art And All That, Part III

Logos 4 for Mac

2010 Perseids Star Party

Art And All That, Part II

Art And All That

The Star Book

*Bang bang bang; "oof!"*...

Bang bang bang; "oof!"...