The older kids had already run out the door to catch the school bus. She was in her jammies, her hair matted in a wad of fine blonde fuzz at the back of her head and a greying blankie hanging like a loose toga over her shoulder. Her voice, crackling with the residue of sleep was hard to hear.
“What would you like, honey?” her Mommy asked, as she added raisins to my little granddaughter’s oatmeal.
“Can you put on worship?” she asked again, a little louder this time.
“Sure. I can do that. Which one?”
“Kids worship, please.”
Mommy started a video on the computer on the kitchen desk.
“She asks for music every morning,” she told me. “This is the way she likes to start her day.”
The song played and my little three-year old granddaughter grinned at me.
Your goodness never stops Your mercy follows me Your kindness fills my life Your love amazes me
I sing because You are good And I dance because You are good And I shout because You are good You are good to me!*
Yes, my beautiful young one. You continue to teach me. This is how to start the day.
I bought my granddaughter a jewellery-making kit with 25,000 colourful beads. When I took it out to wrap for her birthday, I thought a while, then put it back in the closet and bought her something else. I was pretty sure she would like it, that was not the problem. The problem? A little sister who got into everything and sometimes put those things in her mouth. Depending on a child’s age this box contained either 25,000 pieces of potential pretty jewelry or 25,000 potential choking hazards.
I was also an eldest child. I know what it’s like to have younger kids’ needs veto mine, but I looked at my granddaughter’s harried mother and her incredibly curious toddler sister and decided to choose safety this time.
But it bugged me. It wasn’t just the memories of having to forego activities because of offendable siblings (because as a mother and grandmother I’ve done this many times without complaint); this time it triggered something else. I realized it represented another problem I am struggling with – when potential choking hazards limit older believers’ spiritual growth, when topics are kept simple to avoid offending people who are still toddlers in their spiritual growth (and I do love toddlers).
Many years ago I volunteered to help a large family. I assumed the mother must really like kids to have so many.
“Actually it’s the babies that I love,” she told me. “When they start getting independent my arms feel empty. I just adore cuddling babies. I can’t imagine home without little ones. They are so much easier to manage than teenagers. If they don’t want to move you just pick them up and move them yourself.”
I looked around. This home was completely centered on the needs of the youngest children. No potentially dangerous toys or tools and definitely no boxes of beads or junior chemistry sets. The older children were expected to look after the younger. Some of them were remarkably responsible. But some of the teenagers were unhappy and rebellious. No one had time to encourage their individual interests and talents or listen patiently to questions that would lead to long that-depends kinds of conversations. They were set adrift to learn on their own. Some of the older kids did not fare well. They left home as soon as they could, but lacked preparation for life outside the nursery.
I realized that some church communities I have been part of could be a bit like this. When the emphasis is on producing new Christians and teaching them only to the point where they can turn around and serve the needs of the less mature, a kind of stunted growth becomes the norm for some and restlessness begins to emerge in others. Often those who fit into the niche of evangelism and service giftings are happy. Often those who tend to pose hard questions are not.
Service is a very worthwhile undertaking. The problem arises when older “children” in the family lack the opportunity to go beyond the basics, to learn about and explore everything Jesus said and the apostles taught, when they are expected to be satisfied with milk because meat is a choking hazard. They don’t develop discernment because the messy stuff and complicated stuff is kept on a high shelf in the back of the closet, or out of the house completely. The result is often apathy, vulnerability to the world’s philosophy, learned helplessness, and a whole bunch of people dependent on an overworked pastor/parent figure who is just trying to maintain a safe environment where everyone can play nicely.
The writer of Hebrews expresses it this way when trying to explain a deeper understanding of Christ-centered faith: We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity… (Hebrew 5:11-14; 6:1 NIV)
Some of the “elementary teachings” mentioned later in this chapter are not even taught as basics in a lot of church family circles these days. More complex concepts can’t be packaged in a Sunday morning twenty-minute sermon or a week day Bible study with accompanying fill-in-the-blank, tell-me-what-the-author-thinks-verse-six-means study guides. Some questions have answers that require years-long conversations and don’t fit into blanks designed for one sentence. Not even close.
Research shows that a large category of people leaving institutional churches are the ones who have served for years. They are actually looking for more God. (A.B. Simpson called it “The Deeper Life” and in his day had to leave the established church in which he was ordained to pursue it.) These folks are not saying “I’m done with faith.” They love the Church – the body of Christ, the family of God. They are just saying, “Hey, wait a minute. Is this the glorious church, or is there more, Lord?” They often feel torn between love for family and a drive to pursue more.
If you’re looking for an answer to the question of how to be considerate of people yearning to learn and grow to maturity as well as nurturing new believers vulnerable to choking on hazards or frightened by voices who don’t agree, I don’t have one – only more questions: What is love? What does grace look like in a household of faith? When do we emphasize security and when do we exemplify freedom? How does honour build everyone up to become God’s temple of living stones?
All I know is that a loving family is concerned about making disciples and equipping all its members to be everything God intended them to be. And we have room to improve.
There are no thoughts in my head. Well, none of any significance anyway. I keep a list of blog ideas for days when nothing floats to the surface of the puddle of potential that is my mind. But nothing on the list grabs my attention.
There are no emotions in my soul today either. I don’t feel good, I don’t feel bad. I’m not particularly up, down or sideways.
My body feels tired, but not sick. I’ll get going eventually. The highway is closed due to a commercial truck spill so there’s no use rushing. I’ll take my camera and my music and probably enjoy the day as I drive to Alberta again, but there’s time for another coffee.
Then it dawns on me. A year ago this week my Daddy died. I’ve done okay this first year as an orphan. My heavenly father has indeed been the perfect father for me. My earthly father was old and tired and in pain. He missed my mom and he wanted to be with Jesus. I wanted him to go.
Our Jewish friend told us they mourn a death with rituals for a week, then again at three months and at a year. Then they are done and get on with living. We tend to plow through until we can’t plow anymore.
Perhaps the Lord is telling me I’m under no obligation to be “on” for myself or anyone else- or even for him. It’s okay to just stop here for a while.
Oh how I love the scent of lilacs. I stuck my nose in a cluster and inhaled deeply.
“Don’t you just love lilac season?” I asked a woman standing near the bus stop.
“Dot so buch,” she said and blew her nose in a tissue.
“Pardon me?”
“I’b allergic to theb,” she answered. “As sood as I sbell theb I can’t sbell adythig else. I’b so stuffed up. I avoid theb like the plague.”
Her wiped her red runny make-upless eyes. I wanted to cry for her. What a tragedy not to enjoy the fragrance of lilacs.
For me the smell of lilacs brings back memories of the introduction to freedom. In Calgary and Edmonton, where I grew up, lilacs bloomed around the time I took my Trinity College of London or Royal Conservatory music examinations. I stood outside a theatre auditorium feeling relieved I had remembered all my words and the sharp in the second run of the fourth song. On either side of the steps huge old lilacs bushes loaded with purple flowers swayed in a warm breeze gently wafting their fragance around my head. The test was over. A new summer vacation season stretched before me like a an open invitation to joy.
They could remind me of studying and exam anxiety, I suppose, but to this day when I smell lilacs I smell freedom.
When the poor lady with allergies smells lilacs she smells dread.
Paul (the man who once hated Christians so much he persecuted them until he met the real Jesus) wrote something interesting about fragrance in his letter to the young believers in Corinth. After chastising them for bad ideas that didn’t leave such a great odor behind he wrote:
Thanks be to God who leads us, wherever we are, on his own triumphant way and makes our knowledge of him spread throughout the world like a lovely perfume! We Christians have the unmistakeable “scent” of Christ, discernible alike to those who are being saved and to those who are heading for death. To the latter it seems like the very smell of doom, to the former it has the fresh fragrance of life itself.
(2 Corinthians 2:14-16 Phillips)
Sometimes people’s reactions to you have nothing to do with you. (Okay, and sometimes they do because everyone has moments of weakness when they don’t smell so good.) My point is we don’t always know why people have negative responses to expressions that other people experience as beauty. Sometimes merely being genuinely joyful irritates a person who has lost hope.
Should the lilacs stop blooming to keep from offending someone who has negative reactions? (Full disclosure: I have some allergies myself so I do understand the limits of this analogy.) Put it this way, should those who carry the fragrance of Jesus’ gift of eternal life hide away to avoid offending those who smell death?
Paul tried to stifle those irritating smelly followers of Jesus for a while. (He condoned the cutting down of Stephen in his prime.) Then he met the One who changes everything – and the scent they carried began to remind him of freedom.
Fall on your knees and grow there. There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it. Prayer means not always talking to Him, but waiting before Him till the dust settles and the stream runs clear.
– F.B. Meyer
“We sometimes come to God, not because we love Him best, but because we love our possessions best; we ask Christ to save Western civilization, without asking ourselves whether it is entirely a civilization that Christ could want to save. We pray, too often, not to do God’s will, but to enlist God’s assistance in maintaining our continually increasing consumption. And yet, though Christ promised that God would feed us, he never promised that God would stuff us to bursting.”
– Joy Davidman
Last night while we were chatting with friends, my husband joked that we have updated the old Ten Commandments package and reissued it as The Ten Commandments Lite. Thou shalt have no other gods before me – as long as you recognize them as gods. Thou shalt not bear false witness – unless it would interfere with business practices or increase your taxable earnings. Thou shalt not kill – unless someone threatens your way of life… or your portion size…
One commandment, he pointed out, we have abandoned almost entirely: Thou shalt not covet.
At least one industry, advertising and marketing, exploits our tendency to want what what someone else has. Our entire economy depends on consumerism that labels products as “dated” and in need of replacement by the latest variation on the market. Instead of saying, “Wow! These shoes have lasted ten years!” we say, “I can’t wear these shoes. They’ve been out of style for two years!”
There is an open-sided shed at our waste disposal and recycling center. People can leave items there if they don’t want to make the effort to drop them off at one of the thrift shops a few blocks away. I was dismayed to learn that if no one takes them within a day or two they go into the pile of uneaten food and packaging and construction material destined for the landfill. Trucks carry away a lot of items doomed to dumping for the crime of being “dated.” A great deal of the stuff we toss in the landfill are things we absolutely had to have five years ago – like plastic and synthetic objects made from limited resources.
I suddenly realized that sometimes we are willing to take children’s daddies away for months or years, then document their return (with PTSD) in tear-jerking surprise reunion videos just to protect “our way of life.”
Joy Davidman’s statement shook me. Have I ever actually asked the Lord if this way of life with its increasing consumption model is something he wants to assist us to maintain? He has said he will prosper us, but does he agree with our definition of prosperity?
We were just goofing around last evening when my husband talked about The Ten Commandments Lite, but this morning this passage in scripture came to my attention:
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49 ESV)
If a wave of God’s kind of blessing hits us, will we recognize it for what it is?
“Grandma! Come play with us! Come on! There’s room!” said my little grandson.
“What are you playing?”
“Super guys!” said his cousin. “Look! We climb up onto the roof like this then we jump to the other building like this.” He demonstrated by jumping from the bed to an upholstered bench against the wall.
“Grandma doesn’t jump from roof tops as well as she used to, honey.”
“You can do it, Grandma!” shouted the oldest. He could gain remarkable height jumping on that bed.
“No, sweetie. I’ll just watch you.”
“You can do it!” chimed in the younger one, the cape on his superman jammies flying behind him as he too leapt across the gorge.
“Here. We’ll help you.”
Apparently superhero powers are transferable. My two adorable progeny jumped off the bench, put their hands on my arm and my tummy and imparted the super-anointing so I could join them on the top of the building. Who knew it was that easy?
“Okay, now you’re Supergrandma!!”
They climbed back up on the king sized bed, pulled me up with them, and helped me stand there above the city streets on the top of the building. I felt their mighty little steadying hands on my butt, encouraging it to rise higher as well. I didn’t try to leap to the next building when they next took flight, but I did do a a couple of knee bend warm-up bounces as my contribution to saving the world. Give me a minute. I’ll get there.
Later that day my mentors took me on a stealth mission through the dormant lilac grove in the park. We were a dynamic trio, we were. I felt tremendously honoured to be included.
Now as I understand it, the common standard for superhero status requires that one must have a unique super power, something extremely rare instigated by a highly unusual accident or spontaneous mutation of DNA in the hopeful monster sense. I have always assumed superheros are, for that reason, lone stars.
Nay, not so, according to my grandsons. Give them time for a ten second impartation service and you can receive the same abilities they have received and join them in the fight against the evil foe.
I’ve met and read about some people who I consider to be heroes of the faith. Some of them have followed the same path as the disciples of Jesus when he told them, “As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”
My grandmother used to take me to revival meetings where a traveling evangelist (often dressed with flare) stood on a stage and told astonishing stories about how God used him in Africa or Asia or South America or a town in the southern States we had never heard of. The deaf heard, the bent straightened and angels with swords of fire stood guard outside their guest hut. Sometimes these men gave us ample opportunity to support their “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show” ministries, but you know, I can’t recall any one of those guys offering to support the missions or giftedness of lovers of Jesus in the audience.
Since I was merely a girl no one ever suggested that Jesus would call me to do anything special. (Although one did suggest I should aspire to becoming a pastor’s wife someday. He actually told me which seminaries he thought provided the best hunting grounds for women seeking that position. Apparently job competition details are not usually announced in Christian Classifieds.)
I’ve noticed a change lately. In the past few years I have met a few people who remind me of my little grandsons’ demonstration of encouragement. You won’t find this new breed in TV studios or on platforms or making available slick promotional pamphlets with detachable donation envelopes. You will find them in the check-out line at Walmart, in the seat beside you on the plane, in the ice cream shop, on a beach in California, working in the back of an ambulance, or walking anonymously down main street. They are obeying the Lord with both boldness and stealth.
The reason they remind me of my grandsons is because not only are they using the gifts God gave them to tell people about God’s love and to make new disciples, they encourage others in the Body of Christ to come on up and leap tall buildings with them.
Making disciples -it’s not just for professionals anymore.
Neither is being one.
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:6,7)
There must be, in any complete revelation of God’s mind and will and character and being, things hard for the beginner to understand; and the wisest and best of us are but beginners.
– R. A. Torrey
Charis: Subject to Change 