Humility
For Christmas I got myself a book on humility, because I figured it was something I really needed. It will be a slow and difficult read, but a good one. Here is the opening paragraph: “In Paradise there are many Saints who never gave alms on earth; their poverty justified them. There are many Saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting or wearing hair shirts; their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many Saints too who were not virgins; their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no Saint who was not Humble.” (from Humility of Hear by Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo Whether or not I learn much from the rest of this book, I suppose I would do well to reflect on this paragraph every little while.
Dear Heavenly Father
I was only fourteen years old when the man who fathered me walked out the front door of our house, never to return as “dad” again. By the time I was 18 years old I was pretty sure I’d never go to church again, and if I ever did, it would only be to make my kids go because back then I just felt “church is for kids” and there wasn’t anything about the Bible anyone could teach me that I didn’t already know. Today, I am married with two children, and God is a greater part of my life than He has ever been before, yet still the past haunted me. My father was verbally and physically abusive, and for years I have asked the questions many people ask about how God could allow such things to happen. Sometimes I come across some truth that...
What fruit?
I read this today: Luke 3 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (ESV) As I was reading this parable a couple of things occurred to me. The first is that the tree isn’t expected to bear fruit without the work of the vinedresser. The second is that there seems to be a limit to how long the master...
A Hope-full Future
I heard last night on the news that 2012 brings with it a lot of hope, if only because it isn’t 2011. It was a reminder of what the future always seems to represent – hope. Hope for what exactly though? Hope for change? Most people don’t like change. Hope for something better? We’d do well to be careful in what we wish for. No, the kind of new hope I’m talking about comes from an understanding of who you are as a born again warrior of God. My wife and I have been having some very serious discussions about some die-hard beliefs we have held to for a long time without any real understanding about why we feel that way. For some of those long-held beliefs, we have discarded them simply because they were not Biblical and...
Two Learning Experiences In One Day
In our house, we have slowly begun to raise Alabama fans. We do not sit down and educate our daughters about how important it is to root for Alabama, but they pick it up. They see us watch the football games, see me cheer when one team does something I like, and hear me groan when the other team does something I do not like. “Which team are we cheering for,” my daughter will ask, “the red one or the orange one?” She is learning to love what I love not because I am sitting down trying to teach her to love a thing, she naturally tends to gravitate toward areas of my life that occupy my time. What we want to teach our children about life is not something they learn, what we actually practice in life is what teaches our children whether...
Tradition! Tradition!
Every Christmas, my husband and I pick up the mantle of Charlie Brown and decry the misplaced and wrongheaded materialism of the season. One year we struggled with whether to put up a Christmas tree or to build a creche that would take the tree’s place in our house – we decided in favor of the tree. We’ve taught our daughter that Santa is pretend, which goes over really well at daycare, where she has learned not to talk about it because, as she puts it, “some of their parents don’t know.” We don’t spend a lot on presents. We’re not humbugs – I love the celebrations of Christmas, and we play Christmas music all December, put up lights, decorate, and throw parties. We just want the celebrations to come from joy...
The best gift
I was thinking today about the best Christmas gift I ever received (other than Jesus, cuz of course He is the real answer.) When the subject of best gift ever comes up, I am sure most of us have a memory or a story of what our favorite gift would be. I harder question for me to answer is “What is the favorite gift you have ever given?” I had to think a bit on that one. This is supposed to be the season of giving, and yet so often I think more fondly on what I have received than on what I gave. So what do you think? Is it just me or are we all just a bit too selfish? Not to sound to hokey, but I think the best gifts I have ever given are the ones I made. One year, my wife and I made photo frames for a bunch of our family. Another...