A Gospel Primer - Received!

I heard Amy recite the Gospel Narrative at the end of January and was so moved by the personal nature of this confession of faith. Hearing the words "My God is immense beyond imagination" to "but this is my salvation, and herein I stand. Thank You, Jesus" spoken so simply and sincerely was beautiful. I think the personal pronouns were what impacted me the most. This was a personal testimony about a personal God, His work for me, His undeserved love for me. I felt like Amy was telling me her own story as the recited, but that her story was my story, too. It was beautiful.

Then I learned that the publishers of A Gospel Primer had given Amy some copies of A Gospel Primer and the pocket version which she was using as a give away on her blog. So I entered. And I was one of the ones chosen to receive the pocket version!

Yesterday I received it in the mail, and I'm so excited. It is as beautiful to read as it is to listen to! I've even had an opportunity to show it to a friend, and she also thinks it's something she'd like to have nearby!

Thank you Amy, for this lovely gift. It will soon become worn!

Welcome Gloria

Sandra Z and her husband Tim are so pleased to have little Gloria Joy Katherine in their arms after months of waiting and questions. While in utero Gloria and Sandra had multiple ultrasounds in order to determine the extent of a structural problem with little Gloria's heart.

Gloria was born by scheduled C-section on Monday morning, February 9. She is strong, but the complications with her heart are what was expected. She has also had a positive test for Down's Syndrome.

Sandra and Tim have begun a blog to track their journey with Gloria, and you are invited to visit there to get a glimpse of their sweet baby as well as to read some of the information about what they are expecting to happen in terms of surgeries, etc. (Prepare yourself: this little girl is too precious for words!)

Welcome, Gloria! Congratulations Sandra and Tim (and Philip, Reuben, and Lydia). We hope to see you at a meeting soon.

::

By the way, if you have an announcement such as a birth, adoption, or other occasion that you'd like to share with the WHHE group, please do! Simply email me (talsma at cyg dot net) and I'll make sure it gets posted.

Flesh and Blood - an article by Art Middlekauff

There is a new post entitled "Flesh and Blood" on the ChildLight USA blog. Art Middlekauff looks at what Charlotte Mason believed about the natural and supernatural process of sanctification. This is something that is foundational to her philosophy of who children are, yet it is often misunderstood because many of us interpret her perspective from her writings about education and not from her writings on the human soul.

My little introduction here is for no other purpose than to encourage you to read Art's post. It is, as is characteristic of Art, thoughtful, respectful, and insightful.

Following a Pattern

Months ago I saw a pattern I liked for an afghan. I looked around for yarn to use for it, but was uninspired, so the pattern sat unused for some time.

After a while, the company that the pattern came from was having a 'free shipping' promotion on online purchases, so I went ahead and bought the yarn that way. When it arrived in the mail, I began to crochet.

That's when things got complicated.

The afghan is made up of 30 units (called 'blocks', which are actually rectangles), using 3 different patterns. That sounds easy enough, and I thought that doing 30 small pieces would be a lot more manageable than doing one huge one.

But I was wrong.

You see, when you do 10 pieces of the same pattern, they should all be the same size. And mine aren't. Some are quite close, others (2 or 3) are almost perfect. But there's a fair bit of variation over the 10 pieces.

AND...

...when you have 3 different patterns to follow, the resulting blocks should be the same size as well. But I've had to do so much fiddling to get my single crochet blocks to be the same as the double crochet blocks, first by making my stitches looser or tighter, then by increasing or decreasing the number of stitches in each row... And still they aren't the same.

It makes me very nervous to try the third pattern which is more complicated, because changing the number of stitches in a row will change the pattern and it'll require a fair bit of figuring to determine what will work. And because I also know that, no matter how perfectly my adjustments work out on paper, when I actually crochet them, they'll be no more consistent than my first two styles have been.

Sigh.

But I'm still trying. I'm crocheting piece after piece. I'm pulling out rows, sometimes too many to count, sometimes a whole block's worth (I'm sure I've actually crocheted enough blocks to make the afghan, even though I only have 12 pieces sitting in front of me now).

These blocks have taken on a life of their own for me. I want each of them to be perfect, to match the others in size and shape and texture, but they all come out differently. Some are nice, others are filled with flaws. Some I have to pull out and start over.

In the end, though, once each block is pieced together with all the others, the result will have its own beauty, will look like no one else's, and will be completely mine.

Sounds a bit like the days my Lord has given me.

Living Books at ChildLight USA Blog

Carroll Smith has posted a new item on the ChildLight blog, a piece about Living Books. It's thoughtful writing, well worth the visit, and a prelude to more.

Contrasts

Brown-Eyed Boy turned 4 on Friday.
This year he has these things to look forward to:

• being old enough to start Junior Kindergarten, although we'll probably wait for official schooling until SK.


• enjoying 3 meals a day and 2 snacks, all of nutritional food, always with enough that he can, at the end of a meal, say "I'm full" and there will still be food on the table.


• lots of time for exploring outside, playing with his toys and tractors, building creative structures, role playing...


• affirmation from parents who are with him a lot: a father who has a solid job, a mother who has chosen to stay home with him.

Somewhere else in the world, Another Little Boy turned 4 on Friday.
This year he has these things to look forward to:

• being old enough to begin labouring with his family in a rice mill, quarry, or carpet factory.


• being forbidden by his owner to attend school. Ever.


• being provided food by his owner and having the cost taken out of his family's meager pay, food that is inadequate both in nutrition and quantity.


• 12 hour workdays in the locked compound where his family has lived for 3 generations, and beatings if his work is considered under par. Possibly even being chained to his work station.


• seeing his family members beaten for any reason. Or no reason at all.


• the possibility of being removed from his family and never seeing them again.

::

The day that Brown-Eyed Boy turned 4, I was listening to Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave-Trade - And How We Can Fight It and I heard about children whose lives were held in bondage to owners, tyrants, criminals. As I listened, I thought about my own children, The Ones I Love, and my stomach clenched as I imagined our life in those circumstances. I was horrified, angered, and sickened by what I heard. And my heart cried out to the Lord.

What must it be like for a mother to see her children live this way every day? How agonizing to know the feeling of entrapment, of futility. The initial chapters of the book describe several slave situations, both child and adult, and show the work that social justice advocates are doing to change things. But what can I do about it? That's where the book is eventually heading, and I'm eager to find out.

Christian Audio is offering the audio book as a free download this month, and I highly recommend that you pick it up. (Be sure to put in the coupon code FEB2009 when you're checking out to get the credit applied to your total.) It is well worth the time it takes to download, the space on your hard drive, the effort to listen. If you don't want to listen but would rather read, you can purchase the book as well. I'm actually planning to do that, too.

With the audio download there is also a pdf of additional resources - a study guide that can be used individually or as a group as you work through the (audio-)book itself. It looks like a serious study, nothing superficial or sugar coated, but also very personal and applicable.

But be prepared to have things stirred up in you. Prepare yourself to feel angry. Indignant. Horrified. Heart-broken. This is not easy stuff to listen to or read. But it is the reality of the world.

New Features

I've just added two new features along the sidebar of PeaceLedge. Both are to make it easier for you to find out when I've added new posts.

The first one is a subscribe by email tool. If you type your email address into the box, FeedBurner will deliver my new posts directly to your email inbox. That way you don't have to keep hopping over to PeaceLedge only to discover that there is nothing new to read. The email you receive will include a link to the blog to make it easy for you to navigate there when you choose to.

The second one is a subscribe by RSS feed. I personally don't like this one as much, but I know that some people prefer to subscribe this way. Here, the blog is syndicated in your Internet browser feeds. You access the feeds through the 'star' button that also gets you to your bookmarked favourites, but instead of staying in 'favourites' you choose the 'feeds' button.

Both these tools you'll find below the list of topics in the left sidebar. I hope that someone finds it helpful!

A Little Gift

A blogging friend of mine gave me this award. It's for blogs with great attitude/gratitude and I'm honoured that she feels that way about PeaceLedge. Thanks, Christine!




As a recipient of the award, I'm supposed to pass it on to other deserving blogs. I'm not able to come up with anything close to 10, but I'm sending it to:


Our Boefekes - a blog which has a positive outlook no matter what's going on. Sarah really enjoys everything about her family and it shows!

Ann Kroeker - a blog which offers encouragement in so many facets of life.

Arroz Con Siempre - a blog which shows the honesty of daily home school life.

To claim your award, you need to: Thank the person who gave the award to you, post the award on your blog or on a post, nominate 10 (I didn't, and I don't expect you to!) blogs which show great attitude/gratitude, link to the people you chose on your post, and comment on their blogs to tell them about the award! Don't forget to click on the image in this post so you can display your award in a sidebar. :)

January is over. February has begun. The days are getting longer. What blessings!

And another blessing is that Dea at For His Glory - By His Grace is challenging us to memorize from 1 Corinthians 13 this month.



There are no special rules for this challenge, but Dea is going to be posting about her word studies as she works through the passage.

I won't be typing this passage into the blog every Monday (you can breathe a sigh of relief now) but I certainly hope to post about how I'm seeing the words of the passage permeate my days. After all, that is the point of memorizing Scripture, isn't it? To have it change us, to have it always at hand to serve whatever purpose God gives it in that moment?

Gospel Primer Giveaway

As I was going through the MMM Celebration posts, I found out that Amy at Lavender Sparkles is offering copies of A Gospel Primer for Christians, from which her memory passage, the Gospel Narrative, was taken. You can enter the draw if you visit her blog.

But, even more importantly, you'll discover a place of peaceful wisdom. She has great insights and ideas, and she shares them beautifully.

Celebration Time

Ann Kroeker initiated Mega Memory Month last fall, and I jumped in with both feet. So when it returned for January, I was ready to try to make a big step toward memorizing the book of Philippians, which I'd begun in 1994-1995. But I wasn't the only one who decided to tackle something Mega. If you visit Ann you'll find links to all the participants in MMM, and you can see the projects they've taken on. Someone went with poetry, someone else went with "Milton Vincent's fantastic little book: A Gospel Primer for Christians". And there were others who chose Scripture, too. You'll find them all through Ann's blog.

Mega Memory Month Celebration Time

January has been filled with Philippians. Anyone who just started visiting PeaceLedge in January might wonder if typing out Philippians over and over is my hobby! It's taken up a lot of blog space this month, that's for sure!

But that means that it has also begun to take up a lot of 'mind space' too, and that's a very good thing.

This month I did my final recitation to my Dear Man. That's how I celebrated! I know that it doesn't sound like much of a celebration, but for me it was. Usually I type it into the computer and check it myself. Sometimes I've had My Girl check it as I recite. So for me this was different.

In fact, one of the neat things about doing it with my Dear Man was that he hasn't heard it over and over the way that My Girl and I have, so it was like sharing something new with him, something that has, to me, become very familiar, special, even personal. I really thought about the meaning of the passage as I recited, because I was thinking about what he'd be hearing as he listened.

And it seems that more and more often I'm seeing applications of different parts of this passage in ordinary things. That's a blessing beyond measure as the Word makes its home in my heart.

So, if you can bear it one more time, here's Philippians 1:1-4:1 for the last time. (At least for a while.) It's all for Him and all through Him!

Green = a word inserted
Red = replaced (by the following word in green)
Blue = omitted
Purple = inverted

Philippians
Chapter 1

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defence of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by (in) life or by (in) death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this (that) will mean fruitful labour for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.

Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on (in) him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Chapter 2

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave (has given) him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in ('of') the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labour for nothing. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you. So you too (also) should be glad and rejoice with me.

I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel. I hope, therefore, to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come soon.

But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs. For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill. Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore I am all the more eager to send him, so that when you see him again you may be glad (cheered) and I may have less anxiety. Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honour men like him, because he almost died for the work (sake) of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me.

Chapter 3

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.

Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is (minds are) on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring (put) everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be (and make them) like his glorious body.

Chapter 4

Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that (this) is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!