more from Job

When tempted to ask God an accounting of his deeds to you - why things have happened to you as they have -

He says to Job,
Did you create the Heavens?
Can you control the weather?
Can you make it rain, or direct the wind where to go?
Can you make it cold or hot?
Can you direct the lightning where to strike, and cause the thunder to roar after it?
Can you keep the stars in their courses?

Therefore do not question the God who created all things, and who upholds and sustains them all by the word of His power. He orchestrates every moment of your life; and He always does all things well. He may never tell you the "why"s of your life. But surrender to your status as creature, and be content with your place.

Your goal in life - if you are His - is not first, to have perfect health, or a great retirement, or a job with no trials. Your goal is to glorify God here, now, where He has put you. To live your life unto Him. And by His grace, that is an achievable goal!

lessons from Job

Sometimes it seems hard for me to read the book of Job and know what to think of the different characters and what they say. But some things we learn for certain:

God is the sovereign controller of all things. He does as He pleases in Heaven and earth. We as creatures have no right to demand of God an explanation for His actions, and He might never disclose to us why He has put us through deep waters.

Circumstances cannot tell us if God loves us; we cannot read God's mind toward us by our circumstances. Job's friends read his circumstances to mean that Job had brought on his trials by sin (which was untrue); Job read his circumstances to mean that God was unjust (which was also untrue).

But we can always know who God is: that God is always wise, always just, always loving, no matter what the circumstances seem to say otherwise. We may not understand God's ways in this life. But He will always in the end be proven to be the unchanging, faithful God, who does all things well.

Kid News - February 2008

It's been awhile since a Kids Update. Discretionary time with both kids in bed and me not too tired seems in short supply. Where to start...

Katherine is now 3 years, 8 months old. She continues to be her fun personality. One day a couple months ago she saw a squirrel flicking its tail nervously, and David told her it was worrying about something, like a cat or dog nearby. So for awhile, she would "worry" - bounce up and down as if she were flicking her tail like a squirrel, and find something silly to "worry" about. It became another game with her and Daddy - "I'm worrying about... the birds! What are you worrying about, Daddy?"

She had been looking forward to Christmas time and having the tree up and lights on it (she loves Christmas lights!) since probably last Christmas. I had told her we wouldn't put up the tree until December. We were doing stuff with a calendar, so she ended up learning the months of the year, and we would say all the names of the months till December. Once it got close, she was almost counting down the days, so I made sure we got the tree up on Dec.1. Well, it's an artificial tree, so we at least got it out of the attic and assembled. Dec.1 being Saturday, the lights didn't go on till Monday the 3rd, and the ornaments the next day. But after the tree was up (before anything else was on the tree), Katherine took some decorating into her own hands:

Duplos make good ornaments, apparently

For probably 2 weeks after that, one of her favorite things to do was to rearrange the ornaments on the tree, which she called "shaping up ornaments." She has liked Christmas lights from the time she was old enough to notice them (2 Christmases ago, around 18 months old). She has always liked colors, and knew the names of her colors by that time, and would point out the "blu" lights and "yelo" and whatever other colors she saw.

It's amazing how quickly you forget things though. If I hadn't made notes to myself about the above, I would have forgotten about her "worrying" game. Anyway...

She is learning to read using a "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book, which I finally bought my own copy of. And we are slowly working our way through a math book. She loves to do both of those (whether for the sake of learning, or just having Mommy's somewhat undivided attention, or both, I'm not sure). But Mommy doesn't always get to those. We're doing well to get to it 2-3 times / week. But for now, doing anything is a good thing.

Bouncing with Daddy

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Emily. She's now 18 months old. She seems to be able to do physical things easily or intuitively (in contrast to her Mommy and her sister, who both find it not very intuitive). At 14 months old she could climb up on Katherine's single bed, and climb into her booster chair at the table. At 15 months she was stepping up steps (while holding onto something) rather than crawling up them, and at 16 months she was learning to step down as well.

She can feed herself with a spoon quite well now.

She has her stuffed puppy and her blanket which she wants to have when she sleeps, and other times as well. For awhile, though not recently, she wanted to always be wearing a jacket and shoes. Shoes would be one of the first things she asked for in the morning.

She is more interested in computer things than Katherine is - as in, the parts and the plugs and the buttons. Katherine liked those too, but Emily looks like one that might follow Daddy around in his computer work and put parts together.

She's also more of a "dolly" girl than Katherine is. She likes having a dolly to play with. She tries to make the dollhouse dollies sit in their chairs, so that the whole family is sitting on something. But she gets frustrated that she often can't make them sit in something without falling out (doesn't quite get the hang of bending the legs properly, etc. yet).

Playing peek-a-boo with her dolly, which she has covered with a blanket and then would peek under the blanket and say "peek-a-boo". Actually, she has been saying "peek-boo" for awhile, and just today it was coming out as "pee-bo-koo" which was cute.

Both of the girls enjoy Legos. Katherine can build things now. Emily tried to build occasionally, but can't quite line up the bumps right to make pieces stick together. Her favorite thing to do is to find Lego people and take them apart, and occasionally put them back together. Interestingly, like Katherine at that age, she doesn't want them to have hats or hair on their heads, or anything unusual on their bodies either (e.g. life jackets). So she comes for help to get things off of her Lego men's heads, or to get me to help her put one in a Lego horse for her. Maybe it's a dolly equivalent of Legos - instead of dressing and undressing dollies, she's rearranging Lego man body parts to have different shirts and pants together. Katherine still likes to do that too sometimes, though she mostly will build things instead.

Emily can communicate well now. I don't think she's quite as verbal as Katherine at that age, but not far behind. But she can say many words and make herself understood, or take you to what she wants.

She also seems to have a good short-term memory of where something is (in contrast to Katherine at that age). So if you ask her, "where's your dolly?" she will generally know exactly where she left it and go look for it.

Katherine, on the other hand, doesn't remember as well where she put (or dropped) something, but she has an extremely good memory for anything she hears, sees, or experiences. She loves music, and has learned bunches of songs. We've gotten a lot of "educational" (and Scripture) songs, and most of them have a good beat and tune. She likes to bounce on the Vitalizer to her music.

Bouncing vigorously to one of her songs

Katherine also has extremely good vision. I wouldn't be surprised if it's 20/20 or thereabouts. She can see clearly without glasses (with either eye, as best I can tell) what I can only see clearly with my glasses on. We haven't had her eyes checked yet, but I don't think she'll need glasses any time soon. Emily appears to have good vision too, though I'm not sure yet how good. Probably better than mine.

Playing with Mommy's boots

Playing in the clean laundry

She's quite a "ham" and loves to do things for the purpose of being funny.

Like Katherine, she loves Grandma's cats, and kitties of all sorts (live or in pictures)

I guess that's all for now. Except to mention that little brother is due to be born in early May, Lord willing. I'm excited!

Kept Promises

God always keeps His promises. Even when all the evidence seems to point otherwise.

2 Chronicles 22 tells of a wretched time in Judah when, to all appearances, it seemed that all the royal line of the king had been wiped out, and a daughter of Ahab was ruling. For six years she ruled. It would have been hard as a follower of Jehovah to keep the faith; to believe that somehow, in some way, God was still keeping His promise that David's line would continue to have a king to rule God's people.

Yet God was not silent, nor inactive, nor caught off-guard by events. He was orchestrating everything, even in the silence. He still had a son of David waiting to become king, at the right time.

Years later when exile would come, it would be even harder to believe that the promises were being kept. The kingdom was destroyed and its people taken captive. The temple was torn down, and the worship of God had ceased. Where was the line of David now? Where was Messiah to come? Yet God was working even in the darkness. Perhaps that is how He works best sometimes: in ways we cannot see nor fathom. One day the kingdom of Israel would be restored, for a while. One day Messiah would come - not as they expected, but in God's wiser ways. One day the true King would reign forever.

And so God's promises never fail! Even when we can see nothing because of the darkness; when our human minds cannot come up with any way for God to be keeping His promises in the midst of the present situation; when there is no light for our way. Yet believe and do not falter. God has promised. He will fulfill His word!

His record

How long I have lived with the basic mentality that when we are saved, God "wipes the slate clean" and therefore can love us, looking at a "forgiven" person. Yet every day, I keep sinning, and feeling that "now God is angry with me because my slate is no longer clean." I know in my head that this isn't theologically correct, but my heart still lived by it.

But God has finally made my heart see! When I am saved, it is not so much as if He wipes my slate clean, then loves me based on how well I keep it clean. It is more as if I come to the throne room of God, and the agents at the door say, "let's look at this person's record to see if they can be admitted." And when they look, they see a notation that says, "see Jesus' record." And looking there, they see a perfect, spotless record; and so in Jesus I am admitted to the presence and love and smile of God.

This is what makes a heart free! This is what causes me to love my God. To live out from under the perpetual burden of guilt. To learn what it is to be "[cleansed] from dead works to serve the living God" (Heb.9:14).

It is not that sin no longer matters; that would be like saying I can offend you and act as though nothing is wrong in our relationship.

But it means that my sin, my perpetual failure to be perfectly what God commands - my sin does not turn away His love from me or close His arms to me. He does not wear a perpetual frown and have a mentality of "I cannot love you at this moment because you are not measuring up." On my own two feet, yes. But not in Christ. In Christ, His record is what matters, though mine keeps getting defiled. Jesus' record is what God looks at, as it were, to see if He can love me at this moment. And that record always passes the test.

Praise be to God!

worry

Worry is the fear that God will not do you good (in a given situation).

No wonder then that worry is an affront to Him; we are disbelieving His goodness toward those whom He paid so much to redeem! "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Rom.8:32). If you really believe He is good, and is always good toward His beloved children through Christ - then you will be at peace, believing that whatever He works out in your life, it will prove to be an expression of His goodness.

Worry is fearing that God will not do what you want Him to do. We believe that He loves us, but we want to define what that love will look like. We think we know best what is best for us. We are a child who says to his mother, "if you loved me, you would let me ______ " (eat ice cream all day. play in the busy street. have a gorilla for a pet. not go to school. not give me unpleasant consequences for disobeying.) And we tell God, "If You really loved me, You would do what I wanted!" (Not allow me to be sick. Give me a pleasant life with no uncomfortable circumstances. Not allow people I loved die or move away.)

Believe His wisdom. Believe His goodness. And having taken all your concerns to Him, rest your heart.

Kids update - December 4, 2007

It's been a long time since I've "blogged." Mostly because I'm a perfectionist and think I need to be all comprehensive every time, and there never seems to be spare "time" with nothing else to do in which to write things.

Anyway, here's a recent picture of the girls, wearing dresses that came from my sister Elizabeth after her girls outgrew them. (Ok, so maybe black pants don't match... tights just seem too much trouble.)


Emily is hitting that verbal explosion that I remember Katherine coming to, where she has the ability to attempt to imitate any word you say (if she wants to). She still uses hand motions for "please" and "thank you", though they occasionally come out verbally too. She can communicate what she wants (as long as Mommy remembers that "poooo" (spoon) is not the same as "poo" (food) or any other similar "word" of hers).

She also has a great sense of humor, and likes to do things for the purpose of being funny (as opposed to, kid things that she does being innately funny to adults). E.g., she put part of her cheese sandwich on her head for a hat, and yes, it was funny. (who thinks of making food be a hat??)

Katherine is learning to read with a book called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" - thanks to Jolene, who was using the book with Anna when we visited them in July. It's nice because pretty quickly they add a little "story" to each lesson (which at the beginning might be all of 3 words), and she looks forward to that.

We try to do some math too, but really dropped the ball on that during November. Maybe we can do better in December. She really likes to do it, it's just a matter of Mommy making time for it. Now that I'm not so exhausted all the time, maybe we can make it a priority again.

Anyway, more to write, but Katherine's waiting for the books I promised to read before bed.