Taking a Lesson from Saint George

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(Excerpts from the excellent book Saint George and the Dragon, that I’ve mentioned before.)

After the tremendous battle to slay the dragon, the king says to George (not yet Saint):

“Never did living man sail through such a sea of deadly dangers. Since you are now safely come to shore, stay here and live happily ever after. You have earned your rest.”

How many times a day do we hear– or think– that? You’ve earned it!

Usually we hear it from people who want something from us. Mostly advertisers. Isn’t is sad we desire that “truth” so much we’ll even take it from those we know are seeking to manipulate us?

Do we ever stop to ask ourselves what we have done that’s so exceptional? Worked hard? Made some sacrifice (by which we usually mean we did something unpleasant, not that we gave our best)? Did more than someone else?

I always feel convicted when I read this bit in Luke 17, that ends with Jesus saying,

“So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ “

What others are or are not doing should make no difference to us and our rating of our work. That depends on my assignment– which will be different from anyone else’s. So what if I’m sometimes more hospitable, my husband more generous, than someone else? This makes us merely obedient, not exceptional or worthy of notice.

George could not, indeed had no reason to, deny the magnitude of what he’d done by freeing a kingdom. But even he would not accept the fairytale ending, because he knew his life was not his own.

“No, my lord, [he told the king] I have sworn to give knight’s service to the Fairy Queen for six years. Until then, I cannot rest.”

Any deed, no matter how great, will not change who we’ve bound ourselves to.

In the same way that there is nothing I can do to earn God’s love, there is nothing I can do to pay back my debt. Once I surrendered to Christ he doubly owns my life: not only by creating it, but by buying it back from where I sold myself to sin.

My time of service is my whole life– not measured just by the six years, or my parenting years, or my “office” years. Our lives are meant to be full of work. We’ve been given work, and somehow we are even offered the chance to joy in it.

(The concept of retirement— especially of retirement in the way we use it in America– doesn’t have much foundation in scripture. The ending of this season of work should merely mark the shift to a new season, and a different work.)

I pray we have the perseverance to get past merely what we want to hear, or do, and live our lives as they are: bound in the service of the one who gave his life for ours.

For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

The Fly– a Tuesday Tale

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In Vietnam there was a rich man who shrewdly increased his wealth through loans with usurious interest.

One day, intending to take anything of value he could from a poor, hard-working man who’s payment was due, the rich usurer walked to the poor man’s hut. No one was home but a boy, entertaining himself with spinning sticks and stones.

“Where are your parents, Boy?” the man asked.

“Father is cutting living trees and planting dead ones,” the boy said, his voice solemn. “Mother is selling the wind to buy the moon.”

Of course the rich man recognized a riddle when he heard one, but he could not think of the answer.

Being who he was, he expected the boy to answer when asked, but the boy went on playing as if he’d heard nothing. Finally the usurer was so angry he promised to cancel the family’s debts if the boy would only speak the answer to his riddle.

This interested the boy.

“Do you really mean it? Would you really cancel the whole debt?”

“I swear by Heaven and Earth,” said the usurer, thinking how easily he could get out of the swearing.

“No,” said the boy. “Heaven and earth cannot speak. We must have a living witness.”

Just then a fly buzzed past, then returned to light upon the usurer’s staff.

“Will this living creature suffice?” asked the man.

“Yes, ” said the boy. “I will agree to the witness. For the price of our debt:

“My father has gone to cut bamboo to make a fence for the man who hired him. My father is quite sensible for planting dead trees. It is good, honest work.

My mother has gone to the village to sell fans in order to buy lamp oil. Surely you must agree that is selling the wind to buy the moon.”

The usurer chuckled to himself, figuring he had bought the answer to a hard riddle for nothing more than a lie.

The next time he returned both parents were home, and the usurer demanded payment. The frightened peasants begged for more time, and the commotion woke the boy. He quickly told his parents of the riddle and the bargain he’d made. When the usurer denied it the case was brought before the local mandarin where the usurer insisted he had never spoken to the boy.

The mandarin was a fair, kind man, but when faced with the word of a man against the word of a boy, he could only say he was sorry, but word to word he could not forgive the debt.

“It is too bad, child, that you did not take the precaution of having a witness.”

“But we did, honorable one. There was a fly. He landed on the face of this man!”

“Little liar! He was no closer than my staff.” The usurer clapped his hand over his mouth, but the damage had been done: The mandarin was convinced the two had spoken.

Having found one lie in the usurer’s mouth already, the official ruled in favor of the boy and his family, and the usurer was forced to forgive the entire debt.

How do we see past *now*?

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I figured out why I buy so many books, and why I bring home these ridiculously large piles (or bags) from the Library. And I found it in a Robert Frost poem.

Many People Are familiar with “The Road not Taken,” particularly the last two lines:

I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

What caught my mind more this reading was the end of the third stanza:

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

This is why. This feeling that once you leave something behind you are nearly choosing to be wholly done with it.

Because of this, I will sometimes take hold of more (be they ideas, activities or books,) than I can reasonably consume, just because I feel half panicy that I may never return if I pass it by.

I need to start asking myself what I’d really lose if I never came back. I’ve lived without it until now, right? Right?

I suppose I’m revealing an undisciplined nature here, since, at least in theory, I shouldn’t have to utterly give up anything, just re-time it. But despite my attempts to remember otherwise, I sometimes still get fixated on now.

Jay and I were discussing this, and we decided that the main challenge comes from having no track record. After all, the first two-thirds of our lives were spent understanding and keeping up with short-term goals.

Book Give-away!

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Overwhelmed is sponsoring a monthly book give-away that she said I could add my own spin to.

pay-it-forward.jpgThe original rules have the books being offered the first Monday of the month (so you see I’m already late), and require each winner to offer the book in a give-away in a month or so (assuming it’s been read) to continue to pass the love along.

As a confirmed book…devotee, I resist requirements to part with a book I may grow to love. So here are the Untangling Modifications, and how to enter:

  1. Leave a comment mentioning which set of books you’d love to win (if you have a preference) and write a note about the drawing on your own blog (if you want to).
  2. When you receive your books, pick a date in the next month or so to have your own give-away.
  3. (The challenging part:) Only give away books you would be happy to receive– That “do unto others” bit. It can be the books you just received, one or two of them, or one you bought just for the occasion if you want to keep all three.

The Books:

Set #1

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Versibility: The Poetry Game (Great for you word-types who have friends that are word-types.)

The Perilous Gard If it’s not my all-time favorite, it’s pretty close. I’d love someone else to meet it.

Messie Free a two-books in one guide to de-messifying your life. One of what I call “talisman” books. (The type you buy because now, maybe, things might be different… or a little easier… because we’ve bought the magic.) It’s useful too. Thought-provoking reading, but you still have to do the work. I know. Bummer.

Set #2

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The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook Crazy-Weird. Cool.

Forever my Love A sweet gift-book with scripture and sound-bites from Warren’s Triumphant Marriage

The King’s Chessboard an illustrated folktale. Could be a good discussion-starter for reading with an older child. The concepts are a little beyond my pre-schoolers. The way most math is.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I tried to pick books that related to what I write about here. The Survival Handbook might beg a bit of explanation.

I included it because I think it’s cool, and anybody might enjoy it (I gave one to Jay for our anniversary this year– terrific pastime for avoiding bill-paying ;) ) , and I’ll say it’s related to what I put my novel characters through.

I’m sure they might have appreciated having more of a manual for what they end up going through.

So, there you go. The first giveaway from Untangling Tales. The drawing for two winners will doubtless include my darling children drawing names out of a hat, and will occur in one-week’s time, Monday the 17th.

The timing coincides with my grandmother’s birthday (she would have been 89), so this giveaway is sort of in her honor. Worthy (I hope) of the memory of the most generous woman I’ve ever known.

Further Musing on “Helpmeet”

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To begin, this is not pretended to be researched extensively. It’s merely a comment/thought has grown from the double seed of Debi Pearl and Teri Maxwell in a book (Debi) and talk (Teri) about loving your husbands and being good wives.

Both of them include the beginning in Genesis where the idea of a help meet or “helper” was first introduced. Whenever I have heard this verse discussed I have always noticed the speaker/author adding hastily this isn’t the type of “helper” we call our little ones (that slow us as much as help us).

They point out that the word used to say “helper” here is the same word God uses to describe himself later in the bible. This clarification usually accompanies the point that being this sort of helper is not a lowly position, as it’s the role God himself has, or is in.

Later both Teri and Debi both point out that they are their husbands’ helpmeets, not the other way around. That God has given them the assignment of helping their husband, not of him helping her.

All that said, I was thinking about this yesterday and a new idea entered my mind.

Like these women said, my husband was not given to me as my helpmeet, I was given to him. As the type of helper God it to us (they implied).

So maybe in looking at what my job is, I should be studying what kind of a helper God is, and see what he is doing that I may emulate. That is, I already know it’s not my job to convict, but maybe it is in my role to advise my husband– I may see something more clearly than he. Or I may “make his paths straight” (his way easier or more smooth) by anticipating what he needs and helping with that.

This is a neat (and to me a new) way at looking at my job as a helper to my husband.

But, also because of this way of looking, I think it’s a mistake to imagine I was designed as his helper and not the reverse. Because God doesn’t (as some people seem to think) just sit, taking notes as we pray, then jump to work. He has a plan, and he somehow uses us little humans to accomplish that plan.

(I don’t mean to imply the reverse– that really the woman should be in a God-like position of control– just that if our role looks a little like God’s, it’s definitely not all our husband’s ideas and our following blandly along.)

I’m just beginning to question and think this through, so if anyone else can articulate this better I welcome your thoughts. I still agree that God did not give man as a helpmeet. That is simply plain in scripture– it’s the woman’s title.

But I don’t think the woman’s assignment having that title must exclude the man from also being a helper. It is not a lowly position for the woman, because it is way God describes himself, and is no more lowly for the man.

It’s not scripture, but I believe it was accurate when Diane Sawyer said:

A good marriage is a contest of generosity.

Encouraging?

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Jay is one of those people who will usually say nothing negative unless asked his opinion about something he dislikes. Then he’ll be entirely frank.

This (that he dislikes something) has surprised me several times. The latest was this morning.

God seems to have taken the training wheels off (I think I mentioned earlier how smoothly the transition to early-waking was going, and giving God credit for that). All in the same week (the same night, really) E started teething again, is resisting medicine he didn’t before, and his sisters have started night-waking more.

Combine that with one of my (thankfully!) infrequent migraines and *mounting* duties and pressures at work for Jay, and you have a long explanation for why I was up half the night with the Boy. (That’s just one of his nicknames, btw, not an attempt at anonymity ;) )

Anyway, I’ve been thinking for a while of making a more interesting header-image, and had this idea of superimposing my former picture of tangled roots in my current row of books (cool idea, right?). Unfortunately it just made both images look messy.

Then “on a whim” I layered a picture of a Japanese garden with my current header and the match was uncanny– Waterfall over blond rocks matched with the single blond book spine, and the little bridge was in the same place all the books went horizontal. So I played with till I got what you see now. It’s not professional or polished, but it’s fun, so I saved it to ask Jay’s opinion this morning.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” he said. “But I never really liked the books.”

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Oh. Well, I wasn’t enamored with them either.

Makes switching to something new pretty easy. :)

But I guess what I forgot to say is I’m still trying to decide if this type of discretion is encouraging or not.

I mean, what is more useful: to have the person whose opinion you value the most to reserve criticism, or for him to tell you what he’s really thinking?

Clearing My Desk

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This Works-for-me Wednesday is a bit cluttered, but also offers useful reminders.  But then, I guess there’s no way for piles not to appear cluttered…

I make notes all the time, and periodically clean out the used pages in my notebooks. If I still want to remember what I wrote, it goes in the pile on my desk.

One I found today:

It’s as if we think Jesus included, “Blessed are the uncomfortable, because I’ll feel sorry for them.”

Discomfort is not a prerequisite to godliness, and, unless properly handled, will do nothing to draw us closer to Him.

Another is the start of a list I wrote as Grandma was in the hospital. When the ordeal began I was driven to distraction by my writer’s-mind. By the end I realized there was more I wanted to remember.

  • Smile at sick people.
  • Busy lives can hold back even people who care.
  • Affirm people for (even just) presence, if it’s encouraging.

I suppose any of these four thoughts could feed a whole post, but this is all I want to say for now. I’m sure you may find additional meaning if you wish.

Current Reading Material

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Borrowing the idea from Georgiana and sharing my reading shelf today.

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I read in a way that would have made me crazy ten years ago. And, you can see for yourself, I am woefully short on fiction. As in, none. I think this explains why my mind more naturally gravitates to blogging than to fiction-writing these days. It’s the stuff I’m spending all my print-time with.

Non-fiction.

You see, as “gifted” and articulate and meaningful as any of this content may be, I have not yet found any of it so magical that it is hard to set down or pick up in any given chunk. Yes, it benefits from continuity, but I benefit (more ?) from training my brain to make sense of the new bits, whatever order they come in.

It frequently causes me to see things in a new way because of the new context, and that is exciting to me.

My reading shelf currently consists of books that I have started, and have read enough of to know I want to keep reading. Probably to finish.

I’ve been feeling more of a desire to add to my toolbox, and time interacting with my children. That has started:

The desire to build my interactive life with God has started:

  • Devotional Classics (one of my top ten on my 100-things about me list)
  • Intercessory Prayer (Fascinating first couple of chapters! I’m so glad I was driving with Jay as I read them. *Had* to talk about what I was reading.)
  • Mark for Everyone (A book the men have been using in Sunday school– The women just rejoined for the first time in a year) A commentary that is only the *starting* place for discussion in class. I am very impressed by the amount of thought and planning Nate is putting into the class. He is doing a fabulous job leading.

Mark‘s taken over Nehemiah for now. At least until I’ve caught-up in the book to where the men are. It’s good reading. Aptly titled, For Everyone.

Then there’s just the stuff that’s just for my own absorption and personal edification:

  • The Angel and the Ants (The only thing on this table I’ve actually finished, but I’m wanting to revisit several parts).
  • Orthodoxy (a lower priority, but intriguing enough to keep me going)
  • Life Management (ETA: swapped this out for the one on the bottom)
  • The Read-Aloud Handbook (from 1995. He sites stats in here that really make me want the current edition. Can’t it be better by now?! But what has changed in ten years? I have to say I don’t know one way or the other.) This is on my personal list because I’m trying to train myself that this sort of thing is about me and my habits.
  • Becoming a Writer (Written in 1934, this is one of those serendipitous finds I’ve absolutely loved.) In contrast to another book I have, this one very plainly says if you find yourself unable to do the {two main recommended/suggested} exercises, or that they are too hard, you are probably not a writer. Give up quietly and go enjoy your life.

I love that. A practical litmus test.

So, there, the third reading list I’ve mentioned on this blog. Not that I ever finished the first two– my needs and priorities shifted. I can’t help that. I probably write them more as my own milestones or because of what they reveal about me at this point in time.

I’m not the sort of person who will stick with a book when it has lost its usefulness. After all (to coin another paraphrase):

Books were created for man, not man for books.

ETA:

book-cover.jpgThis will replace Life Management on my shelf.

I mention this for two reasons (neither of which that you need to care):

    • It’s an intriguing book I hadn’t heard of before I saw it on the “used” shelf, which may be the case for others.
    • I’m making a real effort this list to read quality, useful stuff, and limiting myself to what will fit on my narrow shelf-top, so if I wanted to add this one, I had to ditch another. There was only one I was currently waffling on, so there ya go.

      Discovered a new Character!

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      So I’m working my way through Nehemiah, and find myself pulling storytelling and character-building/revealing principles from it as I go along.

      Some stuff about Nehemiah combined with an edge character that I knew needed something more to do. A whole subplot developed between naming him a few weeks ago and Bible study a few days ago.

      I love how a whole character stepped out of a name (though at this point I think the name– Tyko– will have to go). The bit from Nehemiah didn’t change him, just brought his basic nature–perceptive but humble– into sharper focus.

      He’s got quite a dashing role now, and even a sweetheart.

      It’s fun to be able to include a new POV, and he’s useful too. He is both sympathetic to the main character (without being romantically involved) and staying behind when she journeys, so we can still see what happens after she leaves.

      Seven Happy Years

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      Friends
      Elizabeth Jennings

      I fear it’s very wrong of me
      And yet I must admit
      When someone offers friendship
      I want the whole of it.
      I don’t want everybody else
      To share my friends with me.
      At least, I want one special one,
      Who, indisputably
      Likes me much more than all the rest,
      Who’s always on my side.
      Who never cares what others say,
      Who lets me come and hide
      Within his shadow, in his house —
      It doesn’t matter where —
      Who lets me simply be myself,
      Who’s always always there.

      I have been so thankful for the refining journey God is taking me on through marriage. Over and over I’m reminded we were created for fellowship (with one another, as well as with God) and marriage is the lovely way He provides for that basic need to be met.

      I used to be offended (almost) at the insistence that marriage is hard work. It sounded too much like complaining, and complaining seemed nearly blasphemous, or, at least, to be begging for trouble (Oh, you think that’s hard, huh?).

      My image has shifted slightly since then. Now it’s more like comparing marriage to a garden. A garden takes work to prepare and maintain, but that’s no shame; that’s what distinguishes it from the wilderness.

      I have become a different (and better) person because of Jay, and that’s in God’s plan. For every believer our ultimate goal is to become more Christ-like, and knowing our good God, he is going to assist that process in the way most effective for each of us.

      The sentiment in that poem is reflective of my (basically) selfish nature. It wasn’t until I was married, though, that God let me know a part of it was okay. He designed us this way, and uses it (as he does so many things) to reveal another aspect of himself.

      This reminder of God’s jealous nature for his people (including me!) should be very sobering, and even encouraging (if that’s the right word). It shows me a different type– or maybe it’s just a different side– of the love that died for me.