Little gods

Isaiah 40:18-20
  "To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare Him to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it. A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot. He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple."

  Humans tend to have a problem with authority. We like to be in control of our lives. We are also created to worship and glorify God. It we are to truly worship God as we ought to though, it means we must give up our freedom: the control we want. So we reject God and grovel around worshiping idols we make for ourselves. The idols we make are smaller then us. We can control them and they become the slaves of our whim.
  They also require our care and protection. We have to embellish them and hold them up to keep them from toppling. We cling to our idols for protection when in reality we are their protectors. Our gods are too small to be worshiped. Ultimately, we shortchange ourselves when we refuse to give God the authority in our lives He justly deserves.
  God is mind-blowing and we cannot begin to fathom Him. He is the God you deserves our honor and fear. And yet He loves us and calls us to Himself as His children. Yes, He demands our affections, but does He deserve anything less then the full extend of our feeble praise? We must stop settling for fantasies and fall on our faces before God, the only one who deserves our worship.

cookies.

 I have not baked in so long. But today I did and I had some really great (and adorable) assistants.

That time I went to the park and it rained.

  I know how to make it rain: plan a park day. Of course rain never stopped my siblings (or me for that matter) from playing outside. So the rain did not spoil our day out, just our clothes. 

 

At the Abortion Mill

  All my life, I have been pro-life. Well I have been pro-life as long as I have know what abortion is. Saturday I went out to an abortion clinic for the first time and it was one of the most emotionally intense things I have ever done.
  I woke up at 5:30am, and then drove to downtown Houston with my mom and a friend. The clinic had just opened when we got there. People always build walls around that which they are trying to protect. Evidently the abortionists feel they need to protect what they are doing because there is a rather tall fence encircling the clinic. There are also escorts who wait outside the parking lot gate to usher cars in, and keep pro-lifers trying to pass out literature containing the truth about abortion out.
  Standing on the sidewalk out there, you could feel that you were standing on a battle field, that good and evil were at each other's throats. I watched as dozens of girls and women were driven into the parking lot by their boyfriends, husbands, mothers and friends so they could have their babies ripped to pieces and vacuumed out of their wombs. The thought of those children being sacrificed to the whims of their parents angered me. Then it drove me to a sadness that tried to spill out of my eyes.
  We  think we live in a civilized world, but we really do not. Human nature does not change on its own. People sacrificed their children in the days of the Israelites, and people sacrifice their children still upon the altar of self. God destroyed the nation of Israel for disobeying Him and sacrificing their children. I am sure the number of children sacrificed in Israel comes no where close to the fifty million children who have been slaughtered in the United States.
  Our nation needs the gospel desperately, and we who are called by Christ need to do something about it. And the gospel is a hard thing to preach because people do not want to hear. No one wants to know that there are absolutes and that they are answerable to a Holy and Righteous God, even if He loves them and wants to save them. And while I am here, I need to be proclaiming that message, even if it means looking evil straight in the eyes, even if it means people are going to hate me. The God who is with me is greater then all the evil in the world, and by His strength I can share His love.

Some Nights I Babysit

  This is supposed to be a lifestyle blog, but I think more often then not it is my place to rant about theology and philosophy. So here is a post about one of those regular things I do. Tonight I babysat the munchkins who I am privileged to call my siblings. We watched the Lego Movie, ate pizza turnovers and listened to Switchfoot. And everything is awesome.

Externals

I Samuel 16:7
  "But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.""

  Living as the offspring of the marriage of the spiritual and physical is burdensome. On the one hand we are souls that will live into eternity, but on the other hand we are trapped inside the skins that are going to die one day. Our identity comes not from our bodies, but from our spirits.
  The physical side of us takes so much of our time. We have to clothe our bodies and keep them clean. We have to feed them and maintain their health and strength. It is not hard to take care of these things though. We can see our bodies. If they are in need of something it is easy to tell. Often we spend so much time caring about the externals, we forget that they are only temporary.
  We also, as a general rule, see people before we get to know them, and their appearance tends to affect our perception of them. Then, we use our own appearance to manipulate other's opinions of us. Everyone know the girls who overdo it on their makeup or the guys who spend hours in the gym working on the external, but I think Christians spend just as much time on our externals as well. And we usually do it in an attempt to look more spiritual.
  Having grown up both in church and the homeschooled community, I have seen this a lot. At times, I was one of those good little homeschooled kids who dressed the right way. I wore my fair share of long skirts and WWJD bracelets. Though my parents never enforced this belief, I think in some ways the externals of my "more spiritual" peers made me think the way you dressed made you a better or worse Christian. There are plenty of girls who wear plain clothing because, "Appearances do not matter." Oh the irony. When you get a sense of faux-godliness from your apparel, you are missing the point.
  And I am not saying either primping or long skirts are wrong. I admittedly do both. It is just that our identity as Christians does not come from those things. We do not need to worry about putting our best face forward, we need to be Christ to people and forget about ourselves.

An Out of the Ordinary Adventure

  Yesterday was a first for me, as I went rescue my parents who were stranded in a parking lot with a dead car. It started out as a typical Monday night. I was babysitting and reading The Magician's Nephew to my little brothers before bedtime, and then the phone rang. One of my brothers went and got it then brought it to me. My dad was on the other end and he and my mom were stuck a Pet's Mart parking lot where the car's battery had ran out. Dad needed a new battery, some tools to put it in, and he needed my to bring it to him. So I gathered the necessary equipment and a brother then ran to the van. Digory and Polly were left in the Hall of Images and another brother was putting all the little kids in the house to bed.
  When I sat in the driver's seat of the van I rested my head on the wheel for a moment and prayed for speed and safety. Before going to save my parents I had to run by Auto Zone to pick up a new battery for the car. Here now is a testimony to scheming of auto-parts salesmen and my own feminine duplicity. My brother and I walked into the store and I asked for a battery for a 2002 Ford focus. The, uh, male human being asked what the motor size was and I blew then because I said I did not know and then I said was and emergency and really I just needed a battery fast. Do not ever tell someone who is trying to sell you something that it is an emergency and you need it fast.
  Well, I bought the battery he pulled off the rack and $150 later I was driving to Mom and Dad as fast as the law would allow (trust me, nobody wants to speed in a twelve passenger van). After passing Pet's Smart, driving the length of the shopping center it calls home, and doubling back around, I finally found my parents. Dad and my brother replaced the dead battery with the one I had been duped into buying and then we all went home. I got to bed by eleven and may or may not have vowed to studying auto mechanics. And so ended my adventure.

a tree.

 

 

  There used to be a tree. Not one of particular grandeur, but still a tree. Like most tallow trees, it attained a gnarled, useless shape and then was cut down because it was in the way. The stump rose a foot above the ground, a hunk of wood full of life and waiting to burst to forth in the right moment of time.

  So it grew again, sending up a ring of shoots around the edge of the trunk. The roots feeding those little green branches ran deep and the tree grew into a tangled mess, promising to become a piece of shrubbery of ridiculous proportions.

  It was cut down again come fall, but this time the tree was drilled, doused with oil, and burned black. The deep running roots died and the stump was nothing but a charred piece of lumber firmly planted in the ground. Fall passed and the rain of winter tumbled on the blackened earth. But before autumn ended, a seed had fallen at the base of the burnt stump.

  Then spring came: that time of year when the world wakes up again. Flowers that were cocooned the winter long broke out of their prisons. The seed that had been buried  now felt the golden warmth of the sun and sent out a slip of root. Then a little tree pushed up out of the earth. First one and then another set of leaves unfurled themselves. Life was born where a season ago life had died.