Vanity

The girls came in from class Monday night. High and bubbling with understanding. Please help, me my Father, to rejoice with those who rejoice. Please help me not to envy them the education they are getting. Thank you, after all, that You are providing for them the education that I had, but can not pass on to them. But you are giving them greater than I had. And for which I praise You. They are our arrows. They will go farther. Isn't this the way it is to be? Please, the thrill in my heart is alloyed with envy, jealousy, fear that they will leave me behind.

Susan claimed "Dr. G has reshaped my mind". That was putting it a little too strongly, I thought. I don't think the girls know how much their minds have been shaped to hold what he is now giving them. Nor do they know how large is what they know or don't know. They are just now learning. And oh, I am so thankful for it. I couldn't have given them what they are getting. After all, though my education was good (but not as good as theirs, nowhere near as good, what I learned were just seeds that needed to germinate. I always longed for more that connected dots. My intuitive gifts were keen to see the poetry of knowledge), I was a lazy student. So much more I could have learned, but didn't. For I didn't always see the point, which is exactly what we all do now, Kilby, Susan, Cal, and I. The point. I thank God for the education that He is providing the children. Through the Word, through the preachers and teachers of the Word, through the teachers who have been shaped by the Word, whatever their discipline.

I had a conversation with Dr. G this afternoon when I arrived. We talked about the Joseph and Judah book. He gave me four extra copies (to send Laurie, Dave, Jon, and Kevin/Dana). We talked about the story of the Bible, about his aged mother and the similarities to my father, about my daughters and his daughter, about some of the things I have just written. About how our children will go farther than we, how our children will live in a more chaotic world than we (that's another post I could write--which world are we talking about?) I believe that I revealed at the end of the conversation my current weakness when I admitted to a sense of competition that I don't want to have.

We heard a sermon on the Prodigal Son coming in to work. Not by a Sonship proponent this time, but by beloved Kevin Skogen. The main point of which was that our God is a Father Who kisses and runs to meet us when we are repentant. The son is humbled to the point that all he wants is to serve in his father's house. And that is where we should be. And that is where I am. So why this muddy spirit of competition that rises? Self-righteousness? Oh, my daughters, forgive my selfishness, my vanity, my example of not trusting God. May He be pleased to make me as Grandma Douglas, as Pastor Fisher, as Simeon and Anna. How come it is that so many of the Bible's characters did not finish well? What has happened to my sure knowledge and delight in God's sovereign purposes in our lives? I need to reread the life of Amy Carmichael. I need to stop worrying about how I will finish and just get back to service. Right now that means no more blogging, but reading a book for Cal.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Call not your burden sad

From "To honour God":The spirituality of Oliver Cromwell, edited and introduced by Michael A. G. Haykin, Douglas, Ontario: Joshua Press.

"Dear Robin, ...Thou desirest to hear of my experiences. I can tell thee. I am such a one as thou didst formerly know, having a body of sin and death, but I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord there is no condemnation, though much infirmity, and I wait for the redemption. And in this poor condition I obtain mercy, and sweet consolation through the Spirit, and find abundant cause every day to exalt the Lord, and abase flesh, and herein I have some exercise.

"As to outward dispensations, if we may so call them, we have not been without our share of beholding some remarkable providences, and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been amongst us, and by the light of his countenance we have prevailed. We are sure the good-will of him who dwelt in the bush has shined upon us, and we can humbly say, We know in whom we have believed, who is able and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is well-pleasing in his eyesight.

"I find some trouble in your spirit; occasioned first, not only by the continuance of your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, upon you, but by the dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you love with your heart...

"To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your Father laid it upon you, he intended neither. He is the Father of lights, from whom comes every good and perfect gift, who of his own will begot us, and bade us count it all joy when such things befall us, they being for the exercise of faith and patience, whereby in the end we shall be made perfect (James 1)."...