A Different Kind of Legalism

I love the simplicity of the Christian faith. It has been said that Christianity and simplicity are two sides of the same coin, and I tend to agree. Look at the life of Jesus. Examine the early church with its decided lack of complicated bureaucracy. Consider the doctrinal tenets of your faith, and you will have to admit that they are profoundly deep, yet so simple that even a child can grasp them. Such is the life of the believer...simple, yet absorbingly and richly layered. Not complicated, yet not easy. That sums up the Christian worldview and lifestyle.


The unbeliever complicates everything. God didn't invent the rat race, and He never intended that my life be a perplexing, complex series of pseudo goals to be attained. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after..."

Those words poured from the heart of King David. They are the rich creed of the thinking woman. It requires intellectual vitality to disentagle the knots of modern-day legalism. In the search to "feel better", we've created for ourselves a culture of therapy, where our every emotion is analyzed, our personalities categorized, and the results compared. We can't even enjoy work for the sake of work anymore. We no longer do "whatever our hand finds to do" with a hearty love for the Lord, with all our might, out of conviction alone....our job must match our personality. If not, we have somehow broken the Laws of Happy Living. Locked into a legalism of self improvement, we have sinned against the god of self if we find ourselves not enjoying our job.

Such an apalling lack of imagination. There was a time, when society was more intelligent and more grateful, when every sort of work, if it was hard work and made the lives of others better, was honorable and usually enjoyable.

According to this new legalism, even a simple smile should become an elaborate system of self improvement. Don't believe me? I ran across an article in a section of the magazine "Country Living", entitled "Smiling from the Inside Out - Lilias Folan shares the secrets of a powerful source of healing energy." For your enlightenment (and my utter amusement) I'll recount it for you here, word for word:

Begin by closing your eyes.

Focus attention on your mouth.

Recall someone or something that brings a genuine smile to your lips...

Radiate that smile up into your eyes.

Radiate the energy up into your left ear, then your right one.

Smile into your brain.

Smile into your tongue.

Send the smile down into your voice box.

Smile down into your heart. Feel your heart smiling back at you.

Smile into your left lung, then into your right lung.

Smile into your organs, bones, muscles, and nervous system and feel them all smiling back.

Smile that warm, healing energy to a spot that wants a little extra help today.

Folks, you can't make this stuff up. This is where the legalism of self awareness, and the rules of therapy culture take you.

Give me the simplicity of Christ and an effortless smile and some work for my hands to do. I promise, it will be enough for me.

Rains have come...

Thou waterest the ridges of the earth abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness. Psalm 65: 10, 11

Many consider August to be the "crowning of the year". It is the very fullness of summer - August indeed contains its essence.

But. We've gone the entire month of August, here in East Tennessee, without so much as a trace of rain. Today, finally, the rains have come. We are expecting some good, soaking rains through Wednesday. I went out to my flower gardens last night to create a bouquet while I could linger and choose flowers and not get soaked to the skin - in anticipation of the forecast today.

So...there are glorious clouds outside, and I have a bit of sunshine inside!

Holy Wheat Bread

When God gave His son, He gave me the "finest of the wheat". May I be filled with Him...


Ps 147:14 He maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.

John 12:24...Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

John 6:48 (Jesus said) "I am that bread of life."

A Word Fitly Spoken

I like a good quote. No, I adore a good quote, value it, and store it away for future reference. Savor with me this gem I ran across today:



"God particularizes; the devil generalizes. God plants a garden within which a great variety of plants grow. The devil plants weeds in the garden that look enough like the plants to make you unsure which is which. God paves a narrow lane; the devil broadens the path until it leads nowhere. God prescribes forgiveness for specific sins; the devil blankets permission for anything and everything..."Attending to spiritual detail yields a life of wholeness and hopefulness. Habits of the heart such as worship, prayer, study, Bible reading, care for the body, hospitality and neighborliness detail the diet of dedicated disciples. Vague spirituality sits on the couch and scoffs at practices that ask something of the soul."

~George Mason, Baptist pastor out of Texas~

August's Finery

"Fairest of the months!
Ripe summer's queen.
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear."- R. Combe Miller

Vivid yellow roses - a surprise from my Tim....

Part of our dinner tonight...just-snapped green beans, simmered with plenty of onion and bacon, cherry tomatoes, seasoned with coarse salt, freshly ground pepper, and a splash of olive oil...simple.

The sunflower and zinnia garden, at its peak this week.

More sunflowers!

The finer offerings of August....

....and a hint of what's to come!

Wordless (Almost) Wednesday

A picture (of more than a thousand words) is worth a thousand words....

Here is what my husband has to deal with, every time he wants to get into his side of the bed....poor guy. And he keeps me, in spite of it. He deserves a medal, for all the years of patience that being married to a bibliophile has required of him.

Dancing With God

For whatever reason, the baby showers I am invited to, almost always take place in the summer. Some years, there has been a veritable rash of summer baby showers. I used the word "rash" carefully, because for me, I enjoy all those little baby shower games about as much as I probably enjoyed diaper rash as an infant. Being the world's worst party...er..."pooper", I am the first to willingly give up my diaper pin, felicitously pinned to my best silk blouse by the mistress of ceremonies. Before I even find my seat, I look around the room and smilingly growl (yes, that is possible to do), "Babybabybaby. Go on, and take the stupid safety pin!"

Then, there usually follows an air of shock and awe, as very few can fathom not wanting desperately to win baby shower games.


There is the inevitable "guess which jar of baby food is what" game. I defy you to tell me the difference between an unlabeled jar of Gerber squash, and an unlabeled jar of peaches. Then, to top it all off, the Olympic Sport of all baby showers: the "guess the circumference of the pregnant mother's belly" games. I grudgingly pull at least three yards from the spool of ribbon, or - for the love of Pete - toilet paper. Happily, the time for opening gifts finally comes.


But somewhere between the diaper pin snatching and the unwrapping of that final gift, I notice "the look" in the expectant mother's eyes. I'd know that look anywhere. It is something akin to mist and awe and fear and an awakening love too powerful to hide. Far greater than a hormone (oh, that some of the extreme emotions relative to womanhood were not obtusely categorized as "hormonal"!) there broods in those eyes a glow of primal celebration. "Unto us a child is born" are words that thrill more than just a Bible reader, they burn in the heart of any woman who has yearned for a baby of her own. When the day arrives that she finds herself opening those gifts of tiny shoes and pajamas and fluffy blankets, something happens. Her heart lurches forward and skips a beat. Her hands may even tremble as they attempt to untie a frosty pink or blue ribbon. She gets "the look" in her eyes - the look that silently betrays her inner longing to hold this baby for the very first time.


Forget the games. They give me hives. I attend baby showers to see that look. I attend baby showers because babies are unspeakable miracles. I show up because babies become the children who dance with God.



Yes, dancing with God is inevitable for children. There will always come an afternoon or morning or night when the Spirit of the Living God "comes out to play", so to speak. That child will experience the presence of God, usually in the absence of the parents - alone on a bed, or outside looking at a flower. It is a very personal thing, quite experiential, and very different from mommy or daddy telling a child that God does, indeed, exist. While almost no one remembers that first awakening awareness of God, we each one were visited by Him in our childhood. We each one danced with God. I stole that phrase from Walter Wangerin, who poingantly describes this supernatural inevitability:



"Who can say when, in any child, the dance with God begins? No one. Not even the child can later look back and remember the beginning of it, because it is as natural an experience (as early and as universally received) as the child's relationship with the sun or with his bedroom. And the beginning, specifically, cannot be remembered because in the beginning there are no words for it. The language to name, contain, and to explain the experience comes afterward. The dance, then, the relationship with God, "faithing", begins in a mist.

..."Faithing", we may say, is not unique to a few people: it is at least initiated in all. It is a universal human experience. We all have danced one round with God. But we danced it in the mists."


Now that I think about it, that is the very mist I see in the eyes of the pregnant mother. How can it be anything but, with the very Spirit of God brooding over her belly? At some point, I believe the point of conception, that baby became a living soul, and the mother manifests the mists of "faithing" in her eyes as she awaits the arrival of this child, of whom the poets said, "Is fresh from God...from beholding the face of God." Pregnancy is when a woman gets to dance another round with her Creator. He takes her in His arms, gently leading her, and together they step and twirl, dip and sway within the mists of His hovering, life giving Spirit, and the mists of emotions too eternal to be put into mere words.

I believe He returns now and again to our lives, when we know Him, to dance. But never will the dance be quite so gentle and so miraculous as when He dances with a pregnant mother, and then a short time later, turns to dance with her child. This is why I try to never miss a baby shower.


But you can still have my diaper pin. I'm just not competitive when it comes to baby shower games.



The dreaded "Diaper the Grown Woman" competition...



"Expectant Sssssssuper Mommy!"

"It's all for Hannah Grace. We didn't eat a bite. Ahem."

....lotta, lotta estrogen in that room!

"AWWWWWWWWWWWW!"


The mommy (and wife-to-our-youth-pastor) Kelly Bailey, and I. Hannah Grace is yet "in the oven".