A Plea for a Different Sort of Compliment

Today is going to be a bit different.

One small difference is that I'm not going to use pictures. As you read on, perhaps you'll understand why. 

The main difference? 

Usually, I write about things that have a fairly wide range of interest for people rather than writing for parents or musicians or thirty-four-year-old women who love art and logic.

Today, though, I feel as though God is asking me to speak directly to my women friends. To be honest, I've actually been avoiding this essay for a while. I've found, though that it's usually best not to disobey God.
To my men friends: please don't go away. Keep reading if you like and hear some things that could teach you how to better love all of the women in your life.

The impetus for these thoughts was a conversation I overheard at a Hearts at Home conference last month. 

Yes, I was eavesdropping. It's a really bad habit of mine. My darling husband has tried his best to break me of it, but people always have such interesting things to say! I can't help being curious about people I see.

The two women were talking about a marathon that one of them had just completed. My own thought was "Wow! That's impressive. What discipline and what an amazing accomplishment." 

The comment of her companion? "Wow! No wonder you're as skinny as a stick!"

My heart grew just a bit heavy as I glanced back at them.

May I say something here in this space that we don't talk about much, if ever? Something that is a really hard thing because this place in our hearts is so very sore and tender?

All of the women I know, with whom I have spoken about these things, struggle with their body image. 

All.


Small, large, tall, little, plain or stunning by this world's standards...all.

If you do not and never have struggled with this, you are in a blessed minority. I am so grateful that you have not had to hurt over this. Will you keep reading so you can know how to help the rest of us?

Sweet friends. Our world, our culture, screams at us that we should look a certain way, that our bodies should be a certain shape. Most of us (all of us?), at the least, go through periods where we do not like what we see in the mirror. 

Some of us never like what we see.

With our world forcing impossible images in front of our hearts and minds, could we, as sisters in Christ, vow to stop talking to each other in the manner I overheard? Could we stop complimenting each other on how skinny we are and bragging about how little we eat? 

Could we, instead, praise each other for working hard at a difficult task, for doing yet another week's laundry for our family, for working on the fruit of self-control, for spending a little extra time with God yesterday? 

Yes, we should take care of our bodies. Yes, we should encourage each other to eat well and exercise so as to stay healthy and to have enough energy to accomplish the tasks that God sets before us.

But could we please stop reinforcing our culture's obsession with the size of our waists?

We seem to think, and to communicate to each other, that we are made beautiful by what we do or don't do, rather than by the simple fact that God made us. 

To paraphrase James: my sisters, this should not be! We are called to be different, to speak God's truth to each other.

Out of love for each other, out of love for your sister who is struggling to see herself as a beautiful work of God, could we all promise to choose different compliments? 

The words that we use with each other can either reinforce our culture's perspective that we are how we look or our God's view that we are beautiful because He made us.

My beautiful sisters (and you amazing men who stuck with me!), will you choose to be mindful of how you speak? Will you promise to use words that encourage rather than words that make us want to either run into a darkened room to hide God's amazing creation or to take sinful pride in what we have accomplished in our own strength?

If you wish, we could use the comment space as a safe place to talk about this subject. We have only kind words and compassionate hearts here.

Saving the Earth

I've never been a "SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!!!!" sort of girl.

Not because I want to actively destroy our planet or because I am particularly opposed to saving it, but simply because I haven't thought much about it.

I love spending time outdoors, love seeing and being in the beauty that God has given us, but not until recently has my mind made the connection between our earth being created by and loved by God, and my own responsibility to take care of our world.

I know. There are a lot of you who are rolling your eyes right now and thinking, "Wow. You are some kind of dense not to have understood that before now."

Perhaps, though, there are at least one or two of you who are like me and have simply not thought about this idea of being stewards of God's creation. These thoughts, then, are for you.

This idea first started bouncing around in my mind when I read N.T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope.  One of the themes that Wright discusses is the concept that this world is going to be redeemed someday, is going to be made whole and perfect, and we are asked by God to begin now to work towards that redemption. He even suggests that we are part of God's plan to perfect our world, that perhaps He will accomplish this redemption (at least partially) through humanity.

This is a staggering idea, especially in the implication that if we are not working to care for our world then we are delaying the redemption of creation.

My first reaction to this idea was that God would never entrust such an important task to such frail humans. Yet there is, however, that whole "go into the world and teach people to be My disciples" task that He gave us. Perhaps God is just crazy enough to put such big things into our little hands.

My next recent encounter with this idea of stewardship (I was starting to feel as though perhaps, just perhaps, God was giving me a little nudge) was when I read Richard T. Wright's book, Biology Through the Eyes of Faith. (I was also starting to feel as though perhaps, just perhaps, I was reading too many books by authors with the last name of Wright.)

When I wrote an essay about the book, about how Christians should not fear what science can do to God, I was struck by something that I quoted from this book at the end:

Over the years, I have realized that even though it is necessary to look at these origins issues and problems, the more important problems are those that are facing us today as we try to learn how to take care of the creation and how best to use its gifts. (If God were to ask us a question about His Creation,) would He ask us what we thought about how He made the world, or would He ask us what we did with it? 

What does God want us to do with this creation He has entrusted to us? I started searching Scripture and was surprised by what I found. Here are just a few:

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. ~ Genesis 1.31

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it...So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. ~ Genesis 2.15, 20

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. ~ Romans 8.19-21

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare ... But in keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth (emphasis mine), the home of righteousness. ~ II Peter 3.10, 13

As I searched the Word for wisdom, I was also reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It is the story of how her family spent one year eating only what they could obtain locally. The book gave me a myriad of ideas about how our family could begin paying attention, how we could be deliberate about how we use this creation that God called "very good".

And so I've started exploring. Perhaps we will start loving our neighbors by purchasing as much as possible from farmers who live nearby, from businesses owned by local people. Perhaps we will start loving this world by eating meat and eggs from animals that have been well cared for and that have been fed foods they were created to eat, by recycling and reusing as much as possible. 

I'm probably still not going to start marching in environmental protests or throwing paint on people who wear fur coats. 

I will, however, begin to pray, to think, to be aware and deliberate about how our family can be responsible stewards of this very good earth that has been graciously loaned to us by God. I will try to understand how to make sacred these choices about food and how we live on this planet.

What do you think about these things? What does your family do to care for our world? Do you have any advice for our family as we begin to explore this: advice about using a co-op or a CSA, recycling, etc.?

Our Sacred Imagination (part one)

"Take a drink, Mommy!"

My eldest daughter offers me a sip from her little tin tea cup.

"Mmmm! Delicious! What is it?"

"Applesauce. I made it myself."

I love watching my eldest's imagination blossom and flourish. Already, her younger sister is joining in the pretend play, offering me a bite from her fork or a sip from her cup.

Our imaginations are a beautiful gift from God.

Imagination helps us to create inviting homes, solve difficult problems, invent new ways of doing things, build beautiful buildings, plan delicious gardens, come up with ways of serving others.

Imagination is what allows us to create...anything.

But does it belong in our God-life? Does imagination belong in our prayer, our Bible reading, our relationship with our Father?

Many would say no. Many would say that using our imagination when it comes to Scripture or to God is dangerous, allowing our own selves to take precedence over what God has spoken.

When God looked at what He had made, His earth and His man, He declared it to be good. Very good.

I presume that He did not mean "it is all very good except for that imagination piece of man's soul". In fact, God asked Adam to use his imagination right away when He asked him to give names to all of the animals.

Our imagination, along with everything else in our lives, is to be made sacred.

How? How can we use our imagination in our God-life in a way that is good and sacred?

In his book, Resounding Truth, Jeremy Begbie says that using imagination is required when thinking through issues of theology. He is quick, of course, to offer the qualification that 

this is not an invitation to uncontrolled fantasy or fiction, as if we should conjure up ideas out of thin air. By imagination here I am speaking of the ability to perceive connections between things that are not spelled out, not immediately apparent on the surface, as well as between what we see now in the present and what we could or will see in the future.

Begbie says that our imagination should be applied to our reading of Scripture:

...trying to perceive broad patterns and unifying threads and to be alert to the themes and counter-themes that crisscross its pages and that together throw into relief guiding convictions about who this Creator God is, what kind of world He has created and relates to, and what our place within this world might be.

He also says that imagination helps us to discern connections between what we perceive in the world and what we perceive in Scripture.

One more aspect of what I wrote about last week!

The third way that Begbie discusses the sacred use of imagination is in living in and living out the connections between Scripture and the world:

The Bible does not spell out the details of Christian behavior for all times, prescribing exact courses of action for every circumstance...Because not all is given to us now, imagination is needed. The church needs to improvise imaginatively - that is, to be so schooled in these texts and scriptural tradition that it can...act in ways that are true to the texts yet engage with the world as it now is, responding in ever fresh and fruitful ways to whatever life throws at us.

What do you think of these ideas? Are these sacred ways of using our imagination or is this too dangerous, having too much potential for abuse?

(photo of the Pulsar is from NASA)