From My Commonplace: On Ash Wednesday (a little late)

So…I know I'm a week late for Ash Wednesday.  But last week…well last week blogging just wasn't gonna happen.  However, since Lent is a season, I think these thoughts are still applicable…I know I'm still chewing on them!...so I'm still going to share them, even a week late.   

 

A little bit of context, for those who may never have attended an Ash Wednesday service (I hadn't until this year!): part of that service involves the pastor or priest marking a cross made of ashes on the forehead with these words "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  This is a good article on what Ash Wednesday is all about.   

 

A reflection on receiving the ashes:

 

"For the truth is that, considering the larger scheme of things, we live only a very short time.  And the reminder of that reality can serve to put our present situation into clear perspective.  It is not uncommon to read in the human interest section of the newspaper a story about a woman or man whose diagnosis of a terminal or life-threatening illness has brought about a radical change of heart. Suddenly, he or she examines priorities, sees superficial concerns for what they are, casts them aside, and determines to live each day with gratitude and fearlessness.  Ash Wednesday is such a diagnostic moment for all of us." (p.19)

 

~Wendy Wright, The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost

 

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: The Daily Office Lectionary Readings and Prayers from The Trinity Mission

 The Cloud of Witness (Gell)

 A Sacrifice of Praise (poetry anthology, edited by Trott)

 The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost (Wright)

Theological: The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)

AO Book Discussion Group: Paradise Lost (Milton)

Personal Choice: The Scent of Water (Goudge)

With my Hubby: Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

Family Read-Aloud Literature: The Wouldbegoods (Nesbit)

 

*I am also reading Scouting the Divine (Feinburg) with a women's group at church and Charlotte Mason's Volume 6 for a local CM book club, but these meetings are infrequent and so I just read the brief section assigned as our meetings come up.  They aren't really part of my regular reading rotation as the rest of these are.

 

** Yes.  My hubby is actually reading Pride and Prejudice with me.  And enjoying it....

 

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From My Commonplace: Chief, Saviour, Friend, King

Today I will share one last quote from Charlotte Mason's Ourselves.  This from the final chapter:

 

"One thing we must hold fast – a clear conception of what is meant by Christianity.  It is not 'being good' or serving our fellows: many who do not own the sovereignty of Christ are better than we who do.  But the Christian is aware of Jesus as an ever-present Saviour, at hand in all dangers and necessities; of Christ as the King whose he is and whom he serves, who rules his destinies and apportions his duties.  It is a great thing to be owned, and Jesus Christ owns us.  He is our Chief, whom we delight to honor and serve; and He is our Saviour, who delivers us, our Friend who cherishes us, our King who blesses us with His dominion.  Christianity would only appear to be possible when there is a full recognition of the divinity of Christ.   Let us cry with St. Augustine: 'Take my heart! For I cannot give it Thee: Keep it! For I cannot keep it for Thee.'"

 

~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

 

Oh, how I wish I had realized this truth earlier in my life.  I grew up with the impression that being a Christian meant asking Jesus into your heart and being good girl, and it is only just in the past five years or so that I have realized that there is far more to it than that.  I am learning to be dazzled by His beauty and His love and His grace and mercy towards such a one as me, and delight to honor and serve Him rather than do so out of a sense of obligation or because it was what I thought was expected of me.  It is my fervent prayer that my children will come to realize this truth while they are still young. 

 

I can't wait to read and discuss this book with them when they are teenagers.

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Revelation, with a commentary The Final Word (Wilmshurst)

Theological or Christian Living: Age of Opportunity (Tripp)

Book Discussion Group Titles: Idylls of the King (Tennyson), Watership Down (Adams)

Great Book: Inferno (Dante)

On Education: How to Read a Book (Adler), Beauty for Truth's Sake (Caldecott)

Topics of Special Interest: The New World (Churchill)

Novel/Biography/Memoir: Nicholas Nickelby (Dickens)

Read-Alouds with the Children: On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder), The Silver Chair (Lewis), Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold (Benge), The Milly Molly Mandy Story Book (Brisley)

 

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An Advent Reflection

This year's Advent season has been kind of different – unique – mostly in a good way.

 

Part of it is borne out of the fact that I decided to wait for most of the 'celebratory' aspects of Christmas – the decorating, the baking, the gift wrapping, the music, the guests -  until…well…Christmas. We are all off of work and school that week between Christmas and New Years and will actually have time to savor and enjoy those activities.   I find that now I'm actually looking forward it rather than dreading one (or two, or three, or four) more thing to cram in around my husband's busy work schedule, the kids' swimming lessons, and moving house (which is how we spent the first three weeks of December).

 

Part of it has been seeing the kids embrace our Advent devotional traditions as their own.  They asked for weeks ahead of time if we were going to listen to the Messiah again this year.  They are active participators in our nightly Jesse Tree readings.  They listen.  They ask questions.  All those years of trying to establish these traditions when they were all little and it seemed to be a waste of time because they were too wiggly and squirmy to get anything out of it?  That's totally paying off now that they are a little bit older.

 

Part of it has been that I have been taking the time to do my own personal reflections on Advent, using the devotional guide portion of Bobby Gross' book Living the Christian Year, meditations that have seamlessly tied together with my regular through-the-New-Testament readings, my personal literary reading, and what we've been reading with the children.  Those twin themes of Advent - waiting and patience -have been particularly meaningful to me this year.  This has been true both on a personal level in my daily battle against discouragement and on a grander level when one starts to think about all the hard, hard things going on all over the world – those things that sometimes make you start to wonder at times if God is still there.

 

Consider this from Isaiah 35:3-4, 10:

 

"Encourage the exhausted and strengthen the feeble.  Say to those with anxious heart, 'Take courage, fear not.  Behold your God will come with vengeance; the recompense of God will come, But He will save you…The ransomed of the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads.  They will find gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing with flee away." (NASB)

 

On the same day that I read that in the Advent devotional, my regularly-scheduled Bible reading was from 2 Peter 2.  The very same theme was echoed – waiting and hoping for the Savior who will mete out vengeance on the unrighteous and salvation to those who belong to Him.  The day is coming when all will be made right.   We've started reading the Narnia books out loud to the children, and even that story has tied right in to my reflections:

 

"Wrong will be right when Aslan comes in sight,

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,

And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again."

(CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe)

 

The following day, I came to the story of the birth of John the Baptist in my Advent reflections.  The thought occurred to me about how very amazing these events must have been to Zechariah and Elizabeth and those around them after 400 years of "silence" - to see God stirring and working again…to see prophecies being fulfilled, to know that they were not forgotten.  This birth of John the Baptist was like that first thaw of spring after endless winter in Narnia....Aslan was on the move!  The promised Messiah was coming to rescue and to redeem and to save: "Because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." (Luke 1:78-79, NASB).

 

I saw the Advent theme again as I read the final few books of Homer's Odyssey this past weekend.  Penelope, Odysseus' wife, has been waiting for 20 long years for Odysseus to return home from the Trojan War - never knowing if he was dead or alive.  Talk about waiting - longing - hoping - hardly daring to believe that it might be true - and then the joy when she finally recognizes that it is him, alive and well and home again:

 

"Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel when they catch sight of land - Poseidon has struck their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds and crushing walls of  waves, and only a few escape swimming, struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore, their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy as they plant their feet on solid ground again, spared a deadly fate..."

(Homer, trans. Fagles, The Odyssey , Book 23 Lines 262-269

 

 

Waiting and patience…and the joy that comes when that long waiting is over and the thing sought for has come at last. He HAS come to save us, and WILL come again to take us home.  We can have hope in the waiting because we know that the joy will come.  It is sure and it is certain.

 

E'en so Lord Jesus, quickly come!

How We...Celebrate the Season of Easter

In the comments to this post, I said I would write a post to share some of our traditions for the seasons of Lent and Easter.  That post turned out to be rather long.  You can find Part One – things we do in the weeks leading up to Easter – here.  This is part 2 – what we do for Easter Sunday and beyond.

 

On Easter Sunday morning, we re-light all the candles and read the final Lenten Lights devotional about how Jesus has risen from the dead.  We don’t do Easter baskets or candy or egg hunts, but we do present the children with one of RC Sproul’s allegorical picture books.  Have you seen these?  We really like them.  They explain complex theological concepts, like the atonement, in the form of a story.  We already have The Lightlings and The Prince’s Poison Cup and this year gave them The Donkey who Carried a King.   

 

 

Our food traditions are still a bit of a work in progress.  This year I made Hot Cross Buns for breakfast (although I had some icing issues which is why you can’t see the crosses in this picture!)  We usually eat some of our Easter Eggs too.   For dinner, I make a big meal-salad with chicken and hard-boiled eggs and we have some kind of fruit pie or crumble for dessert.

 

 

This year, for the first time, we’re extending the special Sunday devotionals through the season of Easter until Pentecost.  We will keep a similar format to the Lenten Lights devotional series by lighting the candles each week, reading a Scripture passage related to the theme for the week, and placing a corresponding art print on the easel.  I took the Scripture readings and themes from Bobby Gross’ book Living the Christian Year. 

 

First Sunday after Easter

Doubting Thomas - John 20:19-31

 

Second Sunday after Easter

Emmaus Road - Luke 24:13-23

 

Third Sunday after Easter

The Good Shepherd - John 10:1-30

 

Fourth Sunday after Easter

I Am the Vine - John 15:1-17

 

Fifth Sunday after Easter

Ascension - Luke 24:36-49

Ascension Day itself falls 40 days after Easter, this year it is Thursday, May 29.  That night we will read Acts 1:1-11.

 

Sixth Sunday after Easter

Ascension - Revelation 22

 

Seventh Sunday after Easter (Pentecost)

Pentecost - Acts 2:1-42

 

And there you have it.  Our traditions are always a work in progress, and I always have ideas that I would like to do and yet they haven’t happened yet for one reason or another.  Some of those things include:

 

- Extending our devotional readings to daily, rather than just weekly.  I just haven’t found anything prepared that I like yet and time always slips away from me to organize something myself.

- I’d really love to select some hymns and songs to be sung particularly during this time of year, just as we have Christmas carols in December.  (Anyone have a favorite?)

- My husband would really like to do a Messianic Passover Seder during Holy Week as well.  We did this once with friends a number of years ago and it was a really neat experience.

- I’ve always loved the idea of building an Easter garden like this too, but is one of those things that slips away from me year after year.

 

What traditions does your family have for this Season?

 

How We...Prepare for Easter

In the comments to this post, I promised I would share a few of our family’s traditions for the seasons of Lent and Easter.  I realize that it’s a bit too late for this year, but hey, it gives you plenty of time to think and consider how you may want to approach this in your home for next year. J

 

A couple of caveats: Our goal during Lent is mostly to help our children (and ourselves) understand that this is a special season set aside to reflect on Christ’s coming and work on the cross on our behalf – something that is as significant and important in our family life as our observance of Christmas.  So what I share here are some of the traditions we have adopted as we have endeavored to do that, and therefore don’t necessarily include all of the practices observed in more liturgical churches during the season of Lent.   You will also see that we like to keep things fairly simple.  You aren’t going to see lots of cute crafts or events that are heavy on preparation.   I’m not a crafty-mama in the first place.   We’ve moved a lot in the second place (this year is the first time since 2009 that we have spent two consecutive Easters on the same continent!).  And in our missionary community, March/April tends to be one of the busiest times of the year for community events of all sorts – unfortunate but true.  So our traditions reflect that – simple things that I can still pull off without adding extra stress during a move or an otherwise busy season.   Just so you know where I’m coming from.

 

The mantle on Good Friday

On each Sunday of Lent, we use John Piper’s Lenten Lights devotional.  I like that this is designed sort of as the ‘reverse’ of an advent wreath – rather than lighting a new candle for each Sunday, one is extinguished.  The last candle is extinguished on Good Friday, and then one awakes to all of the candles re-lit to celebrate the resurrection on Easter Sunday.  To go along with each reading of the devotional, I searched for a painting that would illustrate the story.  (I wish I had a nice printable to share with you, but alas I don’t.  This is a useful site for searching for artwork with Biblical themes, however, if you wanted to put together something similar for your family.) 

 

During Holy Week, we use a set of plastic Easter eggs to retell the story of Passion Week.  Each egg is filled with a symbol that represents a part of the story.   You can buy sets of these commercially, but I made ours myself.  Currently, I have each day/symbol keyed to a reading from Catherine Vos’ The Child’s Story Bible, but am thinking that for next year I will key them to the actual Scripture passages.

 

 

Here is my list of symbols and readings from The Child’s Story Bible:

Palm Sunday

Egg #1: Palm Branch (in our case, it’s a foam palm tree sticker)

Reading: Ch. 41 “The King Comes” p.311

 

Monday

Egg #2: Cracker

Reading: Ch. 44 “In the Upper Room” p.314

 

Tuesday

Egg #3: Silver Coins (mine has 3 dimes in it)

Reading: Ch. 46 “The Kiss of Judas” p.317 (In this story Bible, it doesn’t actually mention the 30 pieces of silver that Judas was paid to betray Jesus, so I just add this in at an appropriate part in the story.)

 

Wednesday

Egg #4: Feathers

Reading: Ch. 47 “Why Peter Wept” p.318

 

Maundy Thursday

Egg #5: Whip (mine is made of some strings tied to a toothpick)

Egg #6: Purple Robe

Egg #7: Thorns

Reading: Ch. 50 “Carrying the Cross” p.322

 

Good Friday

Egg #8: Cross and Nails (my cross is made of twigs lashed together)

Egg #9: Vinegar and Sponge (I actually have a cotton ball in ours that I soak in a bit of vinegar so they can smell it)

Reading: Ch. 51 “The Sun Becomes Dark” p. 323

 

Saturday

Egg #10: Burial Cloth and Spices (a scrap of white fabric and some cloves)

Egg #11: Rock

Reading: Ch. 52 “The Stone is Rolled Away” p.325

 

Easter Sunday

Egg #12: Empty!

Reading: Ch.53 “Visitors to the Tomb” p. 326

 

 

On Easter Saturday, we usually dye Easter eggs.  We usually talk about how they can be a symbol of new life.   My 4-year-old asked me as I was preparing the dye this year: "So, first we dye the eggs, and then they come alive again?"  Well, not quite sweetheart....  At least something about the significance of this season is getting into her head, though. :)

 

Brown eggs come out really pretty when you dye them, don't they?  I love how they look.

 

This post is getting kind of long, so I’ll share our traditions that carry us into Easter Sunday and beyond next time.

 

How we are Celebrating Advent This Year

There's been lots of discussions and posts online these days about how people are celebrating Advent.  I thought I'd throw mine into the mix too. =)

For several years now, we've been working towards making our celebrations of Christmas and Easter more Christ-focused.  We did an advent wreath for the first time the year Michelle was 14 months at Christmas time.  This year we don't have an actual wreath, but we still do have 5 candles, lighting one each week.  (Gotta make do with what you can find when you move as much as we do).  We've tried a variety of different devotionals, but until this year hadn't done anything that I particularly LIKED (at least, not well enough to repeat). 

(Side note on our 'display' - I got the cards on the easel online somewhere several years ago...sadly can't remember where now.  They are lovely, though, and small/lightweight enough to move around with us.  The nativity scene is from Peru - a gift from a friend, as I've never been there.  The cards on the wall were done by a Papua New Guinean artist.  Baby Jesus in a bilum - traditional, Papua New Guinean woven string bag, used for carrying anything, including babies!- makes me smile everytime I look at it.)

This year, we are using the symbols from Ann Voskamp's Jesse Tree devotional, but not the devotions that go with them.  The devotional thoughts would be over my kids' heads (and as lovely as they are I sometimes have a hard time with her writing style as well, for what it's worth).   We are simply reading the Scripture reference to go with each symbol - tracing God's plan of salvation from the creation, through the fall, through the promises made to Noah and Abraham and David, the prophecies, arriving finally at the birth of Christ. 

Typically, our family time each evening looks like this:
- We light the candle(s) - depending on the week.
- We use the previous symbols to recount the story so far.
- One child opens the day's envelope that has the new symbol inside (and sometimes a special activity card like 'family movie night' or 'bake cookies together'), and they look at it.  They try to guess what the next part of the story might be.
- We read the story from the Bible (I've written the reference on the back).  We revisit the symbol and explain how the story relates.  Dan or I might add a sentence or 2 about how it points us forward to Jesus (very, very briefly).
- We sing a hymn or carol together (I've chosen one for each week of advent).
And that's it.  Simple.  Sweet.  Meaningful.

I was kind of nervous about using "just the Scripture" and not having some kind of devotional guide to go along with it.  But in actuality, the simplicity has been beautiful.  I never planned that we'd retell the story from the beginning each night...that just sort of happened.  But I think maybe they are starting to see the big picture of redemptive history.  I didn't learn that the Old Testament really had much to do with the New until I was in college, so any glimmer of understanding on their part puts them way ahead of me. =)

And, really, should I have been so surprised that Scripture is enough?  I'm not trying to bash the use of devotionals or anything, but I don't think we've ever finished any of the 'family devotionals' we've tried.  Even if I like them at the beginning (and I'm picky - so much of what is out there for this age group is just silly), we usually end up being disenchanted with them once we get into them.  Scripture - or a well-written Bible storybook for the littlest ones - is enough.  It can speak for itself.

Remember and Celebrate Grace

Last year, I posted a list of goals and intentions for the year.   I kind of chuckle when I look at it now.  Mostly because I didn't accomplish most of it. ;-)  That's not to say that I didn't accomplish things or grow as a person this year...I did!   It just didn't take the shape that I expected it to at the beginning of the year.   And that's OK.   I'm good with it.   I'm not planning to make or publish another list of goals and intentions for this year.   I may still try to chip away at some of those goals and intentions,  I'm just not going to worry myself so much about being able to check things off a nice tidy list.

Rather, I've chosen a broader intention...a theme, if you will...to camp out on this coming year, which has grown out of a number of things I've thought about over the past couple of years already.   Recently, I've seen how those things connect together.  That intersection is something I want to consider and meditate on in this coming year.  That's where my title comes from: 

 

Remember and Celebrate Grace

 

 

Grace

In recent years, it's become apparent to me how much I take the grace of God in my life for granted.  I don't live like someone who has been set free from certain death.  This is apparent to me in my daily life.  I am task focused and more often than not attempting to complete those tasks on my own strengh.  I set legalistic standards for myself to follow (which carries over into my parenting and marriage) and put terrible pressure on myself when I can't perform.  I want to be able to extend grace to those around me (my husband and children first, and then others), but I can't if I don't fully understand how God's grace has been extended to me.

 

Remember

That's why 'remember' is the first idea here.  I want to remember the grace that God has shown me.  I want him to "restore unto me the joy of my salvation".   I want to truly understand the gospel and what it means in my everyday life.  I want it to color my daily life and overflow to those who live around me.  I've started this already by doing a slow, meditative study of the book of Romans...trying to look at it with fresh eyes and letting the truth of it seep into my life.  Other books and resources that have been helpful for influential in this journey so far include Jerry Bridges book The Discipline of Grace and Emily Freeman's Grace for the Good Girl.  I've appreciated Kendra's perspective on grace-full family life over at Preschoolers and Peace too.

 

Celebrate

A couple of the blogs that I like to follow are written by Catholics (especially this one).  One of the things I've noticed as I've followed along with these blogs is the way that they observe the various feasts and festivals of the church year - their year revolves around the rememberence and celebration of what God has done.  So many of their family traditions are wrapped up in these rememberences and celebrations. And they celebrate in ways that even the very littlest ones among them can understand and enter into the celebration too.  This strikes me as a very beautiful thing, and something that we've lost track of in our American Evangelical Protestant tradition (sadly, in my opinion).  In our family, we've attempted to bring a more Christ-centered focus to our Christmas and Easter celebrations, but this is an idea that I'd like to extend even further.  Starting this year - meaning this Church Year, beginning with this season of Advent - I would like to reflect on the various seasons of the Church Year and consider how we - even as evangelical Protestants from a non-liturgical tradition - can celebrate the extravagant grace He has extended to us and how our family traditions and celebrations can reflect His goodness.   I plan to read and reflect on the book Living the Church Year:Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross this year, with an eye to considering how it can apply to our family in the following 'church year' cycle.   Perhaps some of those meditations will spill over into this space too.

What about you?  Is there a theme that God has laid on your heart for the coming year?   Do you have any favorite resources, practices, or traditions that help you Remember and Celebrate Grace?