wild beauty

I woke up this morning to the creaks and groans of lemon-scented gums bending in the violent gusts. I stepped out on the back verandah, and this is what I saw.

Wild wind like a giant's paintbrush trailing brilliant orange over a purple canvas.

God splashes his colours across a squally sky.

Lest we forget his glory.

the true story of a small miracle

We've been blessed with good neighbours.

On one side, most weekends you can see Paul up on the roof painting, laying guttering, clearing leaves, and dispensing good advice to his less home-maintenance-savvy neighbours. Every now and again his grandson pops his head over the fence, and shares dreams of wild adventure with our kids.

On the other side, in a gingerbread-brown house with white edging, live David and Lisa with their two sons, Alan and Ian, the same age as our middle two boys. Lisa and I have become friends, and I can talk quite openly with her about my faith: we meet for coffee, we chat on the phone, and our younger sons went to play gym together.

David and Lisa's older son Alan is autistic. Although he's at the milder end of the spectrum, he goes to a school for autistic children, and Lisa devotes hours to teaching him. We've invited Alan over to play with Ben - they are both passionate about mathematics, after all - but it's been difficult for them to form a connection.

A month ago Ben was paired up to do maths at school with an autistic boy called Alan. The teacher knew they both loved maths, and wanted to increase Ben's confidence by entrusting him with Alan's care. Knowing that the boy next door doesn't go to our children's school, I was pleased for Ben, but thought nothing of it.

Earlier this year, in a moment of irrational generosity, I agreed to help with the Red Cross Appeal. Two weeks ago we were asking for donations at local houses. When we reached our neighbours' house, I asked if Alan could possibly be going to our children's school. "No, he goes to a school for autistic children," David answered.

We continued our hot and sweaty walk around the court, knocking on doors and receiving no response, when a voice called from behind me: "Jean! Wait! Alan does go to the local school twice a week! Is that the school your children go to?"

You can guess the rest: even though his teacher didn't know they were neighbours, she paired Ben to work with the boy next door.

What happened next was so lovely, it took my breath away. Alan, who finds it difficult to form friendships, came out of his front door and tried to cross the court to get to Ben. Although he struggles to make eye-contact, he was glancing up at Ben, smiling a slight smile.

Our school was the last one David and Lisa tried, since it didn't claim to have an integration program - but it turned out to be the only local school interested in welcoming Alan. He will probably be in Ben's class full-time next year, and his brother Ian may well be in Thomas' prep class.

How wonderful our God is! How he weaves the circumstances of our lives, small happenings as well as large, and links us with other people for their blessing and ours! He knew where we would live, he knew who our neighbours would be, he knew how the details of our lives would mesh together.

How grateful I am for the small miracles which scatter our lives.

Names have been changed in this post.

blackout boredom

Now it may be true that people were "enjoying an hour of quiet darkness" during Earth Hour, as the FAQ page claims. It's not that hard to fill one hour once a year.

But what about when the "hour of quiet darkness" becomes more than an hour? When it fills all the hours of every evening? Where would we be without our evening entertainment?

Martyn Lloyd-Jones' observations about "blackout boredom" during World War II suggest that quiet enjoyment would be the last thing on our minds:

And yet perhaps there was never a time in the history of the world when it was so difficult to learn [contentment in all circumstances] ... as it is today. The whole of life is so organized at the present time as to make it almost impossible to live this self-sufficient Christian life. Even in a natural sense we are all so dependent on the things that are being done for us and to us and around and about us, that it has become most difficult to live our own lives. We switch on the wireless or the television and gradually become dependent upon them, and it is the same with our newspapers, our cinemas, our entertainments. The world has organized life for us in every respect and we are becoming dependent upon it. There was a good illustration of that in the early days of the last war when the blackout regulations were described as the 'boredom of the blackout'. People found it almost impossible to spend a succession of nights in their own homes doing nothing. They had become dependent on the cinema, the theatre and various other forms of entertainment, and when these things were suddenly cut off they did not know what to do with themselves - 'the boredom of the blackout'. That is the very antithesis of what Paul is describing here. But increasingly it is becoming the tendency in the life of man today; increasingly we are becoming dependent upon what others are doing for us. It is the very reverse of what Paul is teaching here.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw constant entertainment as a spiritual issue, for it makes us dependent on outside circumstances for happiness. Who are we when the TV and computer is turned off? When cinemas and cafes are shut? When the constant barrage of stereo and iPod ceases?

Who are we when we are alone with God?

The quote is from Martyn Lloyd Jones Spiritual Depression pp. 281-2.

lights out

It was earth hour last night, and 24 cities turned off lights and appliances for an hour to reduce climate change.

It's fascinating how many ancient Christian virtues have become trendy again, thanks to environmentalism: self-control (reduce), thrift (re-use), generosity (recycle: where we give old clothes to the poor instead of throwing them away). Although it would be nice if these virtues were practised with a more eternal perspective.

But how odd that turning the lights out has become a moral issue. For this, too, was of concern to Christians half way through last century.

Did you know that Christian moralists were worried about the impact of lights after dark, and constant entertainment, on the spiritual life? Like frogs in water slowly brought to the boil, we have failed to notice how these things affect us, but they were acutely aware of the impact of modernity on the spiritual life.

Here's a satirical poem by Dorothy L. Sayers about the spiritual effects of light after dark:

For an Evening Service

The day that Nature gave is ending,
The hand of Man turns on the light;
We praise thee, Progress, for defending
Our nerves against the dreadful night.

As o'er each continent and island
The switches spread synthetic day,
The noise of mirth is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of toil away.

We thank thee that thy speed incessant
Provides upon this whirling ball
No time to brood on things unpleasant -
No time, in fact, to think at all.

Secure amid the soothing riot
Of crank and sound track, plane and car,
We shall not be condemned to quiet,
Nor left alone with what we are.

By lavish and progressive measures
Our neighbour's wants are all relieved;
We are not called to share his pleasures,
And in his grief we are not grieved.

Thy winged wheels o'erspan the oceans,
Machining out the Standard Man.
Our food, our learning, our emotions
Are processed for us in the can.

All bars of colour, caste and nation
Must yield to movies and the mike;
We need not seek communication,
For thou dost make us all alike.

So be it! let not sleep not slackness
Impede thy Progress, Light sublime;
Nor ever let us glimpse the blackness
That yawns behind the gates of Time.

So here's an idea: let's start a Christian earth hour. Let's turn off the lights and the television, and spend some time praying and meditating on death and eternity.

Outrageous!

The poem is from Dorothy L. Sayers The Whimsical Christian pp.6-7.

boys and their monsters

Douglas Wilson has an interesting take on boys and their guns (well, boys and their giants and monsters, anyway). I love what he says about the importance of stories in a boy's (or girl's) life.

I'm giving you a long section to read, but trust me, you'll enjoy it, especially if you love Narnia as much as I do:

In C.S.Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we are given a good example of a boy who was brought up poorly. Eustace Scrubb had stumbled into a dragon's lair, but he did not know what kind of place it was. "Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons."

It is a standing rebuke for us that there are many Christians who have an open sympathy for the "true" books which Eustace read - full of true facts about governments and drains and exports - and who are suspicious of great works of imagination, like the Narnia stories, or The Lord of the Rings, or Treasure Island, because they are "fictional", and therefore suspected of lying. The Bible requires us to be truthful above all things, they tell us, and so we should not tell our sons about dragon-fighting. Our sons need to be strong on drains and weak on dragons. The irony here is that the Bible, the source of all truth, says a lot about dragons and giants, and very little about drains and exports.

... [I]f our sons are to be prepared for the world God made, then their imaginations must be fed and nourished with tales about the Red Cross Knight, Jim in the apple barrel, Sam Gamgee carrying Frodo up the mountain, Beowulf tearing off Grendel's arm, and Trumpkin fighting for Aslan while still not believing in him. This type of story is not allowed by Scripture; this type of story is required by Scripture. The Bible cannot be read rightly without creating a deep impulse to tell stories which carry the scriptural truth about the kind of war we are in down through the ages. ... [T]he gospel is the story of a dragon-fight. ... [D]ragon-lore is truer than therapy-speak. ...

With this said, let's turn to a few particular suggestions. As we do, we will perhaps be accused of recommending escapist literature. This is quite right: we should want our sons to escape from all arrogant Enlightenment conceits. Left alone, they will grow up in a modernist dungeon, well-lit with pale green flourescent light. If someone comes along and hands them a key that will get them out, someone will warn them, in dire tones. "Careful. Keys are escapist."

And I do not see how I can finish this chapter without being autobiographical. I grew up in Narnia and Archenland and as a boy, considered myself as much an Archenlander as an American. All my sympathies and sentiments were there, and I still cannot read about Shasta's run toward his unknown home without being affected by it. It does no good to tell me that Narnia does not actually exist, because Puddleglum speaks for me here. He would rather live as a free Narnian, even if there is no Narnia, than to acquiesce in the belief that a dank cave was all there was to the world. This was deep loyalty, loyalty in the bones, not neo-orthodoxy. A boy could do far worse than have an allegiance to a nonexistant king. He might grow up, as kids today do, without any loyalties at all. This was not frivolous daydreaming; it was hardheaded realism, and by leading me into these books my father equipped me for things as they really are in this world.

I did not get to Middle Earth until high school, but I saw to it that my children were introduced to The Lord of the Rings much earlier than I had been. ...

Virtues were made lovely to me through these stories. Trumpkin did not believe in Aslan, but volunteered to go on a mission that made sense only if Aslan existed. He went because he knew the difference between giving advice and taking orders. "You've had my advice, and now it's the time for orders." And I have known what true faithfulness and loyalty were since then. Too often Christian parents simply seek to make the rightness of virtue apparent to their sons. But that is the easy part. The difficulty lies in making virtue altogether lovely, which is what happens in the right kind of story. ...

In this kind of literature, nobility was stirred up in the small things and was exalted in the great things. When the time came for great deeds, whether the enemy was Smaug, or Sauron, or the Witch, or Long John Silver, or the dragon that St. George killed, these stories were ready to do what Scripture commands us to do. "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things" (Phil. 4:8).

Christians are a race of dragon-fighters. Our sons are born to this. Someone ought to tell them.

Highlights mine; Douglas Wilson Future Men pp.101-2, 104-7.

boys and their guns

There are many views on boys and their guns. Should we allow our boys to play with toy guns? Or, if not guns, should we allow them to play with pretend swords? What about water pistols (they are a kind of gun, after all)?

I probably wouldn't buy my child a toy gun. But I'm happy to allow Thomas to pretend to destroy the world. For in a modern, Western world where there are few opportunities for boys to express their aggression and high spirits, Steve and I are not going to stop them using their imaginations to act out stories, even if they involve imaginary violence. And perhaps they will confront some imaginary fears, and practise some qualities like courage, along the way.

We would change this if real violence was a problem for our sons. And maybe living in certain parts of the world would make us re-think our position. But our boys are generally gentle, and even our 4-year-old can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. We just make sure they're gentle with other children, and perhaps don't point their toy guns at other people.

Besides, have you ever tried to stop a boy playing with guns? One of the mothers I know outlawed toy guns (and fair enough, toy guns are absent from my to-buy list, too, although we do have a very small plastic one and some pretend swords in our dress-up box) and they discovered that their curved wooden train-track pieces made perfect guns.

And if you do outlaw toy guns, don't forget about chameleons. Thomas once told me he was going to "kill the whole house" with one of those.

boys destroy

Thomas is playing at his friend Jack's house.

Thomas - We're going to destroy the whole world!
Jack - Yes, let's play that! Let's kill the whole world!

Thomas and Jack run outside, screaming.

5 minutes later Jenny and I go outside to check on our boys. We find them rolling lemons (which they're not supposed to pick) under the gate and onto the road.

Jean and Jenny - Boys, boys, stop that! Stop rolling lemons onto the road!
Thomas - Jack was the one who told me what to do. And I did it. (shades of Adam and Eve)
Jean - Well, you're not allowed to pick lemons, and you're not allowed to roll them under the gate.
Thomas - But we have to destroy the whole world! We have to destroy the cars!
Jean - We don't mind you pretending to destroy things, but don't roll lemons at the cars. Find something else to destroy. But don't use anything hard, don't pick lemons, don't throw things, and be gentle.

We go back inside.

5 minutes later we go back outside to see Thomas suspiciously carrying a lemon.

Jean - Thomas, why are you carrying a lemon?
Thomas - (indignantly) But we picked the lemons when Aunty Jenny wasn't watching!
Jean - Well, even when we can't see you, you're still not supposed to pick lemons. God can see you even when we can't. (always time for a sententious piece of theology)
Thomas - But we want to kill the whole world! What can we use to destroy things?
Jean - Let's find something soft that you can use to kill things. But not people, only things.
Thomas - Look! A piece of chalk! We'll use that to kill things! Look! (he draws on the concrete, giggling)
Jean - Ok, then, you can use that. But be gentle.

We go back inside.

5 minutes later we go back outside to find Thomas and Jack throwing dirt into the garage.

Thomas and Jack - We're destroying the garage!
Jean and Jenny - But you're not supposed to throw dirt into the garage!

Thomas and Jack are given brooms and helped to sweep up the garage. We go back inside.

5 minutes later we go back outside.

Jean - It's time to go now, Thomas. Did you have fun?
Thomas - (triumphantly) Well, Mummy, we didn't destroy the whole world, but at least we destroyed the garage!
Jean - Yes, very good honey, let's go home now.

You learn to be very unflappable when parenting boys.

to the great writers of the past

"To the memory of JOHN OWEN who has wakened hope for many in the darkness of perfectionistic despair."

Having written a PhD on John Owen, and loving the Puritans as I do, not to mention being a perfectionist to the core, I was delighted to find this dedication in John Piper's When the darkness will not lift, which I picked off the shelf this morning hoping it might help with my ongoing coming-and-froing now-you-see-it-now-you-don't state of discouragement.

Speaking of books, if you look at the right of my blog, you'll see a new book list. Here are the books I'm planning to use this year to explore issues like godly womanhood, discouragement, honouring God with our thoughts and emotions, people-pleasing, self-control, and parenting.

A hint about some of the topics you can expect posts on in the months ahead!!

Right now I'm reading Edward T. Welch's When people are big and God is small and John Piper's When the darkness will not lift (which is based on the last chapter in When I don't desire God, which I might have a look at too). You might like to read them along with me.

resources for teaching children (2): children's Bibles

"Of the making of many children's Bibles there is no end, and much study wearies the body" (Eccles. 12:12, paraphrase). That's pretty much how I feel after investigating lots of children's Bibles for this post.

It's a far cry from my childhood, when the only children's Bible we had was an enormous tome written in old-fashioned prose. (I suspect it might have been The Golden Children's Bible, still a decent choice for a kids' Bible.) Apart from that we read adults' Bibles and discussed them with our parents during family Bible time. I don't think it did us any harm.

That said, modern parents should be very grateful for the huge number of excellent resources available to us. Obviously we want to expose our kids to the Bible. We want them to get to know the Bible stories. We want to read them Bible stories in a format they can understand and relate to.

Here are some good Bibles for different age groups (I've chosen a few key stories to test them out. Do they skip over God's judgement during the flood and the passover? Do they tell the story of Jonah to the end? Do they tackle difficult subjects like the sacrifice of Isaac? How do they handle Jesus' death?).

• 1 year olds: the God loves me Bible, probably the only Bible I've seen that has stories short and simple enough for babies. Each page ends with "... and God loves you", which is a pretty good repetitive phrase to get into a 1-year old's head. Ours fell apart we read it so often!
• 2 year olds: The Toddler's Bible. The stories are simple and short enough for tiny attention spans, with clear, colourful pictures. The theology is simple but clear: the story about Jesus' death has an excellent gospel explanation, for example.
• 2-5 year olds: The Rhyme Bible Storybook. This would never be the only Bible you buy, as it's told entirely in rhyme, but it's a great second Bible for a young child, and good fun for reader and listener. This has been read a lot in our family: our kids all adored it.
• 3-5 year olds, great for 3s: The Beginner's Bible. An excellent choice for a very young audience. The sentences are short and clear, and the illustrations simple and cartoon-like. Like most kids' Bibles, it's a little coy about the flood, but tells the full story of God's judgement on Egypt, and explains the cross really well.
• 3-5 year olds, great for 4s: The Lion First Bible. This is particularly fun to read, and the illustrations are well-drawn and appealing. It doesn't come clean on exactly what happened during the flood and the passover, but includes a lot of stories for a kid's Bible, not skipping past uncomfortable bits like the sacrifice of Isaac. The quality of the writing makes it a good choice.
• 4-6 year olds: Read With Me Bible. One of my personal favourites, this uses a simplified text of the NIrV, so it's a great introduction to the language and phrases of an adult's Bible. It's highly readable, tells the full story of the flood and the passover, includes a good range of stories, and has bold comic-book style pictures that appeal to our kids and make me smile.
• 4-7 year olds: First Bible Stories. Well-written, comprehensive and true to the Bible, this is a reliable choice for a kids' Bible. It doesn't avoid the topic of God's judgement, and it takes Jonah's story right to the end (now that's unusual for a children's Bible), but it skips the sacrifice of Isaac. The illustrations are appealing, and my kids especially liked the detailed borders.
• 4-10 year olds: The Lion Day-By-Day Bible. Here's that rare thing: a kids' Bible that is both comprehensive and simply written. It retells much more of the Bible than most kids' Bibles, doesn't miss the scary bits, and actually covers the whole story of Jonah! The readings (one for each day of the year) are short and well-told, and the illustrations are gorgeous. (My friend Deb tells me the Old Testament is much better than the New in this version.)
• 6-12 year olds: The Gospel Story Bible. I'm reading this to our kids at the moment, and we're enjoying it, especially the discussion questions that open each story. The writing is quite dense and the ideas challenging, so it's more suited to older children; but it's highly accurate and detailed, which is refreshing. Each story ends with a paragraph showing how it's fulfilled by Jesus. The pictures are eye-catching.
• 8-12 year olds: The DK Illustrated Family Bible. This accompanies an excerpted version of the NIV 1984 text with lots of geographical, historical and archeological facts. It will appeal to a child with an inquiring mind, and it's a great way to get an older child reading an adult version of the Bible for themselves. 

And (fanfare) here are my favourite children's Bibles. They're not only beautifully told and illustrated, they also show how every story points to Jesus and fits into the big Bible story.* I'd suggest you buy both of these, but since they're quite interpretative, you may also want a more straightforward children's Bible such as the Read With Me Bible, depending on your preferences and the ages of your kids.

• 5-10 year olds: The Jesus Storybook Bible. Every Bible story finishes with a couple of paragraphs explaining how it points to Jesus. The exquisite illustrations are far beyond the normal standard for children's Bibles, and the writing is dynamic and appealing. For good and ill, the repeated idea in this Bible is the "Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love of God".
• 4-8 year olds: The Big Picture Story Bible. Instead of concentrating on individual stories, this Bible gives the overall story of God's saving plan - "God's people in God's place under God's rule" - cleverly using pictures and words to show how it is fulfilled by Jesus. I like the way this Bible subtly hints at some important theological concepts along the way, like the creation of the world by God's word. It's engagingly told, brilliantly illustrated, and big enough to read to a group.

By the time they're reading independently, your kids will need a proper Bible. You may choose to give them an adult's Bible. But if you'd like them to use a simpler Bible for their own reading, some decent choices include:

• the Good News Bible, a simple adult's translation
• the NIrV - a good transition to the NIV, with short, clipped sentences perfect for reading out loud; we use this during our family Bible readings
• the International Children's Bible, the children's edition of the NCV - the only Bible I'm aware of translated specifically for children from the original texts. This version may be preferred by families who read the ESV for its accuracy and thoroughness.

* The potential theological pitfalls and advantages of these two Bibles are explored in detail here.

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as children's Bibles are concerned. You may have a completely different favourite that you use in your family. If so, share it with us in the comments, and tell us what you like about it!

In coming posts on this topic we'll be looking at resources for Sunday School, teaching kids Biblical theology, Christian biography for kids, and ... you'll have to wait and see.

Follow the thread on resources for teaching children here.

dieting and gluttony (5c) Richard Gibson on gluttony

Richard Gibson gives helpful suggestions about how to speak against gluttony in an age obsessed equally with food and weight-loss (apologies to those who read this before I rearranged my blog).
Make sure you check out the italicised quote from Anthony Compollo below: it's a fantastic reminder not to demonise obesity when we speak against gluttony.

Food is the new sex ... Just a case of dressing up glutton as glam ...? Or are we in the midst of a culinary revolution ...? Just think, with the eroticisation of the humble meal, we can look forward to a new era of food-abuse, people eating but never being satisfied, families shattered by addictions, and more lonely men, eating alone in front of flickering computers. An era where gluttony will come into its own. ...

Intriguingly, in a culture that increasingly refuses to disapprove of people's sexual preferences and behaviour, diet and body-shape has become a moral issue. Barkow observes: 'Food is a class marker because being overweight shows that you are immoral, you're overindulging, you lack willpower, you lack self-control.'

It could be that our culture already regards, at least implicitly, gluttony as the most sinful and deadliest of the traditional seven. ... Reality programs with chillingly ironic titles, like Biggest Loser, thrive. In our culture, there are few bigger losers than the obese, those who lack the will-power to change. ...

Ordinarily, this would be too good an opportunity for Christian commentators to pass up. Rarely do traditional categories of sin and such widely recognised social epidemics pass so closely to each other in their orbits. ... Here, surely, is the opportunity to dust off traditional discussions of gluttony ... in order to offer a searching critique of a sin, a sin finally being recognised as deadly and sinful.

This would represent a revolution for 'gluttony'; a significant tarting up of what is, traditionally, the dowdiest and least convincing of the moral failures. ...

[But there] continue to be a number of biblical and practical reasons that should discourage Christian commentators from rushing to eagerly to join the rising contemporary chorus against overeating and obesity. ...[Jesus enjoyed food; food can't render us unclean; the created order is good; the feast is a biblical image for the kingdom.]

Too often in the past, attacks on the glutton have glibly assumed that the corollary of gluttony is excessive weight. In this sense, the glutton has been the most visible of the seven deadly sinners. Sadly, Christian speakers and writers, who should be more aware of the consequences of the fallen world for such neat correlation, have fallen into this trap. To his credit, Anthony Campolo records his shame after preaching against gluttony:

Of the sermons I wish I had never preached, none elicits more regret than a sermon on gluttony ... The cruelty was not apparent to me at the time. When I preached the sermon, I was convinced that the obesity of those in the congregation was due to a lack of willpower on their part and a decision to let themselves go physically ... I had no understanding of the complex factors contributing to a problem which afflicts so many.

Conversely, Christians must guard against conspiring with one of the false gods of our age, and inflicting harm on another group: ... [those with] eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Tragically, Christian preachers and authors ... unwittingly feed these terrible disorders with titles like Pray Your Weight Away, More of Jesus Less of Me, Help Lord - the Devil Wants Me Fat! and Thin, Trim and Triumphant. No-one can afford to write on the dangers of gluttony without taking into account the horrors of anorexia and bulimia, lest careless comments add to the difficulty of dealing with them. If it seems to be irresponsible not to target overeating in a culture that is eating itself to death, it needs to be remembered that many are also dieting themselves to death.

Highlights mine; Richard Gibson "Clement on Gluttony" in Still deadly: ancient cures for the seven sins pp.67-73.