So I haven’t posted in quite a while. Weeks. Make it months. Today, consider me back in action. I have a few different things to catch up on with you, too. First off…
One of my closest friends, Lezlie, had her first baby last October. And about 8 months before she had him, we decided to make a quilt together so I could share the process of her pregnancy with her. (She lives an hour away, so without good planning, we don’t see each other at all!) Great idea. Trouble is, we still haven’t finished the quilt and I’m leaving the country in 11 short days. So last week, I traveled up to the old stomping ground to finish the quilt. Or so I thought. We only have the binding left to do, and how hard can that be? Pretty hard, or at least time consuming when you DON’T HAVE A SEWING MACHINE! I think Lezlie planned it, though there’s no proof. We ended up borrowing a very old and somewhat persnickety Singer. And we had almost no luck. There is proof of that. And here are the pictures. We’ve got one last chance to finish it, as we only overlap being in the same state and without prior commitments for 1 day! Good luck, girls.
the culprit machine and the crumpled quilt
going to town
old friends
I’ll be back later today with more good stuff. Just you wait…
Ange and I are reading a book called Red Moon Rising. It’s about the 24-7prayer movement and it’s really interesting. This passage really struck us and, strangely, gives me a lot of hope:
J. Edwin Orr, a widely respected historian, in a message called “Prayer & Revival,” described the situation in America in the 1780s. Drunkeness was epidemic, and the streets were not judged to be safe after dark. What about the churches?
“The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samual Shepherd of Lennos, Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning; he confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment.
“The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church ‘was too far gone ever to be redeemed.’ The great philosopher Voltaire averred and the author Tom Paine echoed, ‘Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”
The spiritual state of America’s universities at the time concurred with such gloomy predictions, giving little or no hope for the future of the faith in that land:
“Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had discovered not one believer in the whole student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place, where they discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to the filthy speech movement of the day. Students rioted. They held mock communion at Williams College, and they put on anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey and burnt it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.”
It’s hard to believe that this was taking place in America 200 years ago but then, Orr continues, God intervened, and He did so by mobilizing His people to pray.
“A prayer movement started in Britain through William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliffe, and other leaders who began what the British called the Union of Prayer. Hence, the year after John Wesley died (1791), the second great awakening began and swept Great Britain [and eventually America].
…
“Out of that second great awakening came the modern missionary movement and its societies. Out of it came the abolition of slavery, popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, and many social benefits.”
We are not too far gone.
Mark
We’re in Arkansas right now visiting my parents before we leave. It’s always great to see my folks, but this time it’s even more great because they just moved into a new (and by new I mean 100-year-old…) house that is really beautiful. It has this huge, open kitchen that makes me happy to be in and a huge oak tree in the yard. If you’ve ever seen the movie Dan in Real Life, it kind of feels like coming home to that house.
Plus, last night we got to go to a minor league baseball game – the Northwest Arkansas Naturals. Always a good time.
Mark
I can’t think of a single time when Jesus said to someone “You should be praying more” or “You should be giving more” or “You should want to go to church instead of watch the Colts play” or “You Pharisees should really be nicer to folks”, etc. It’s just not the way he related to them. I can think of three ways he does address those kinds of issues:
- He cuts straight to the heart and revealed the root issue – “You love your traditions more that God”, “You can’t believe me because you fear what men think”, etc. It seems like this is the primary way he dealt with pretense and religion.
- He gently woos us. He shows us a better way. He reveals that he is the most beautiful, loving person ever to exist and that his way is simply more desirable than the way we’re living. He opens our eyes and hearts so that we want what he wants. Like you might say he writes his law on our hearts or something…
- He speaks and things change. Jesus was the voice that created the universe. When he says “go and sin no more,” it not only commands but also brings into being. Jesus doesn’t say “Be a good boy, Johnny”, he shows up and John falls on his face like a dead man.
Of course, there are commands in scripture. One could say that the 10 commandments are “shoulds.” I would argue that the spirit there is more like “here is life if you want to choose it” than “you should be different than you are”, though. See “should” presents an area that needs change, but leaves you on your own to make that change. It communicates “come back and talk to me when you’ve got it together.” I think most people learn “should” from their families or religious upbringing or both. That’s just not how Jesus works. It’s not how he’s worked in my life and it’s not how I see him work in Scripture.
What do you think? Can you think of other ways he related to people?
Mark
