I thank Him for:
1. Being the Lord my God, the only One who could deliver me out of the land of slavery -- and did.
2. Making hard work a source of joy
3. Making the good fight of faith -- using the weapons that God ordains -- another source of joy
4. For new carpet
5. For the clear explanation of the economic crisis given to us by our son after the FEE conference
6. That my husband took Monday off to be with us
7. For conversations with Leah while we are doing other things
8. For repentance
9. For the sweet spirit of many of the evangelicals in the gripping book Columbine by Dave Cullen
10. For love stories
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday Ten
1. That God strengthens His children by the grace that is in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 2:1)
2. For Lawrence Reed and the Foundation for Economic Education and the good work they do there
3. That the prayers of God's people avail much -- He's providing security in His sovereignty as my firstborn travels alone
4. Finding old prayer journals and seeing His faithfulness
5. How inexplicably happy it makes me to sing "More Love to Thee," surrounded by a beautiful range of voices singing different parts, so rich and full
6. Forgiveness
7. Leah's joyful unquenchable spirit
8. That my husband's wants are few and simple
9. For a son who understands what's important and is so much tougher than me
10. For the way God puts families together for mutual sanctification
2. For Lawrence Reed and the Foundation for Economic Education and the good work they do there
3. That the prayers of God's people avail much -- He's providing security in His sovereignty as my firstborn travels alone
4. Finding old prayer journals and seeing His faithfulness
5. How inexplicably happy it makes me to sing "More Love to Thee," surrounded by a beautiful range of voices singing different parts, so rich and full
6. Forgiveness
7. Leah's joyful unquenchable spirit
8. That my husband's wants are few and simple
9. For a son who understands what's important and is so much tougher than me
10. For the way God puts families together for mutual sanctification
Monday, June 15, 2009
Forewarned
Homeschooling seems to be just one of many freedoms likely to come under fire in the U.S. in coming years. Christian homeschoolers rightly persist in teaching that God's Word has implications for every area of study and life. This sets homeschoolers in direct opposition to our state school philosophy: that facts can somehow be neutral and that God is so irrelevant He need never be mentioned.
The U.S. is moving into a new era where the conservative Christian, with our "parallel society" based on moral biblical principles, is increasingly going to be seen as a danger or impediment to the progressive agenda being pushed.
It doesn't seem hard to imagine HSLDA attorney Mike Donnelly's quote about Germany being applied to our own country in a few years' time: "Germany sticks out in the midst of Western Europe for having this harsh repression against parents," Donnelly said. "They have this notion that homeschool creates this parallel society and they deem that as dangerous."
We had better make sure that we really ARE raising up a parallel society, teaching our children to think and reason biblically and morally, to communicate effectively and to understand history (Our children need to know, for example, that the belief in man's inherent "goodness" and efforts to make "utopian" societies have historically yielded only tyranny and mass genocide.) They also need to be ready to defend what is right in a world that so blithely and passionately calls evil good. I'm thankful for all the godly parents -- homeschoolers and otherwise -- who are polishing their knobby arrows into weapons of pointed reason for the Kingdom and who are on their knees daily to the Faithful Lord who goes ahead of us in every battle.
The U.S. is moving into a new era where the conservative Christian, with our "parallel society" based on moral biblical principles, is increasingly going to be seen as a danger or impediment to the progressive agenda being pushed.
It doesn't seem hard to imagine HSLDA attorney Mike Donnelly's quote about Germany being applied to our own country in a few years' time: "Germany sticks out in the midst of Western Europe for having this harsh repression against parents," Donnelly said. "They have this notion that homeschool creates this parallel society and they deem that as dangerous."
We had better make sure that we really ARE raising up a parallel society, teaching our children to think and reason biblically and morally, to communicate effectively and to understand history (Our children need to know, for example, that the belief in man's inherent "goodness" and efforts to make "utopian" societies have historically yielded only tyranny and mass genocide.) They also need to be ready to defend what is right in a world that so blithely and passionately calls evil good. I'm thankful for all the godly parents -- homeschoolers and otherwise -- who are polishing their knobby arrows into weapons of pointed reason for the Kingdom and who are on their knees daily to the Faithful Lord who goes ahead of us in every battle.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Tuesday Ten
I thank God, the Great Physician:
1. For only prescribing spiritual medicine that works -- every Word of God is flawless. (Proverbs 30:5)
2. That God's justice will prevail
3. That I have been forgiven by God, and that is an awesome thing
4. That every trial is for His glory and my good
5. For godly friends who will drop their lives to help me with mine, even when it means being late to lunch or patching and painting walls
6. For the children who chased their runaway dog into my yard today -- who had been at our church VBS Monday
7. For my neighbor Alan Tishman, who brought his car to a dead stop so as not to hit the little dog and who loaned us his vacuum cleaner in our hour of need!
8. For the movie "Up" and that I get to be married to my true love.
9. For how very peaceful the house is when my children are sleeping that special sleep of the exhausted VBS worker
10. That I have a dishwasher that works!
1. For only prescribing spiritual medicine that works -- every Word of God is flawless. (Proverbs 30:5)
2. That God's justice will prevail
3. That I have been forgiven by God, and that is an awesome thing
4. That every trial is for His glory and my good
5. For godly friends who will drop their lives to help me with mine, even when it means being late to lunch or patching and painting walls
6. For the children who chased their runaway dog into my yard today -- who had been at our church VBS Monday
7. For my neighbor Alan Tishman, who brought his car to a dead stop so as not to hit the little dog and who loaned us his vacuum cleaner in our hour of need!
8. For the movie "Up" and that I get to be married to my true love.
9. For how very peaceful the house is when my children are sleeping that special sleep of the exhausted VBS worker
10. That I have a dishwasher that works!
Sunday, June 07, 2009
G.K. Chesterton on Womanhood
The fire need not blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water; its point is that it blazes more than water and warms more than light. The wife is like the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion, the fire is like the wife. Like the fire, the woman is expected to cook; not to excel in cooking, but to cook; to cook better than her husband who is earning [their living] by lecturing on botany or breaking stones. Like the fire, the woman is expected to tell tales to the children, not original and artistic tales, but tales–better tales than would probably be told by a first-class cook. Like the fire, the woman is expected to illuminate and ventilate, not by the most startling revelations or the wildest winds of thought, but better than a man can do after breaking stones or lecturing.
But she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school-mistress, but not a competitive school-mistress; a house-decorator, but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should not have one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has really been aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one of mass narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was able to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman's professions, unlike the child's, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid.
This is the substance of the contention I offer about the historic female position. I do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time. I do not deny that even under the old tradition women had a harder time than men; that is why we take off our hats. I do not deny that all these various female functions were exasperating; but I say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various. I do not pause even to deny that woman was a servant; but at least she was a general servant.
The shortest way of summarising the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomenons which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the centre and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience, and subservience, and even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others. . . .
The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior.
Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist.
Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worthwhile to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless, and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
But she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school-mistress, but not a competitive school-mistress; a house-decorator, but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should not have one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has really been aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one of mass narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was able to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman's professions, unlike the child's, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid.
This is the substance of the contention I offer about the historic female position. I do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time. I do not deny that even under the old tradition women had a harder time than men; that is why we take off our hats. I do not deny that all these various female functions were exasperating; but I say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various. I do not pause even to deny that woman was a servant; but at least she was a general servant.
The shortest way of summarising the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomenons which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the centre and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience, and subservience, and even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others. . . .
The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior.
Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist.
Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worthwhile to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless, and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
