Starting Over...Or Again

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...