Labor Day

“Satisfy us in the morning with Your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” - Ps. 90:14

The fight for joy necessitates intentionality and perseverance.

Sunny mornings and traipsing about a grassy yard with small children walking on brown, bare tiptoes, making fresh lemonade and fairy houses out of leaves and bright flower petals in the shady corner under a bush…delight. The worlds of imagination have not closed to me yet, even if little girls who forget my name call me “the mom,” and I don’t feel so wistful anymore about being in the last year of my teens. The whimsy of fairyland is not as dependent on age as Pan told us.

The breeze on my face in the slanting gold of fall sunlight, the nascent, moist grass whispering under my toes, the shade of a stately elm soothing the baked pavement…this is Labor Day in Grove City, and the studious hordes of my peers cover the campus lawns in a patchwork of books and blankets and frisbees.

And I’m off to join them with Jane Eyre and a borrowed iPod.

This Is My Song on Ungrind

Middlemarch quotes

“Brothers are so unpleasant.”

“Oh, my dear, you must allow for young men. Be thankful if they have good hearts. A woman must learn  to put up with little things. You will be married someday.”

“Not to anyone who is like Fred.”

“Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?”

“I should never have thought she was a girl to fall in love with.”

“How do you know what men would fall in love with? Girls never know.”

“I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.”

“I think the goodness should come before he expects that.”

“You know better, Mary. Women don’t love men for their goodness.”

“Perhaps not. But if they love them, they never think them bad.”

“It is hardly fair to say I am bad.”

“I said nothing at all about you.”

“I never shall be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that you love me - if you will not promise to marry me - I mean, when I am able to marry.”

“If I did love you, I would not marry you: I would certainly not promise ever to marry you.”

“I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought to promise to marry me.”

“On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in my to marry you even if I did love you.”

Part Two

Book Tag and Linkage

Well, Veronika tagged me, so I suppose I’ll be compliant and post on books.

Who is your favorite author and why?
This is definitely in the top 10 worst questions ever. It’s somewhere in between ”What’s your favorite book?” and “So, you’re at college this year…you must be so glad to be free from your family, aren’t you?” (I’m the oldest of 9 kids, and absolutely love it) which is right above “So, what are you doing on Friday night?” I could not choose a favorit author, so I shall give you a nice long list of some of my favorites. And it will be in no way exhaustive. After all, I’m an English major…

Elisabeth Elliot, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, Christina Rossetti, George Herbert, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters (especially Charlotte, though), Victor Hugo, John Piper, Amy Carmichael, C.J. Mahaney, J.I. Packer, George Eliot, Edmund Spenser, the Brownings, Chaim Potok, Scott, Tozer, Tennyson… and I could keep going, but I’d bore you to tears. *smiles*

Who was your first favorite author and why?
My first favorite author, eh? *thinks* Probably Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have many a fond memory of curling up in a big brown chair with Dad and falling asleep as he read the Little House series aloud.

Who is the newest addition to your favorite authors and why?

My latest finds (again, plural, for I cannot bear to leave someone out) are T.S. Eliot and George Herbert. Introduced to them by the infamous Dr. Brown in Brit Lit this year, between her efforts and those of my Renaissance Lit prof, I fell head over heels for these gentlemen and their writings. Herbert was a metaphysical poet, and thus used very complex verse form. He was also a pastor, and his poems are almost entirely devotional/meditational. Eliot, on the other hand, can be seen as depressing and obscure, but that’s because he wrote in such a way that his poems are dense with allusions and references to other literature and trivia and songs and historical events. With the help of good footnotes and a good scholar to pester with questions, he’s very intruiging and profound. I particularly love his Four Quartets, which in a way, narrates his spiritual pilgrimage.  I’m now a poetry nerd. Thanks, Drs. Harvey and Brown!

Linkage

In case you didn’t see this already, I’m writing a guest series on the Beauty from the Heart blog on biblical femininity. Also, my friend David Ketter is writing a parallel series on his blog, [Re]Connected, on biblical masculinity. Enjoy!

Desperate Houswife To-be?

His Will

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace:
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

-William Cowper

If I believe this to be true about God, then I must actively fight to set my eyes on Him.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.

- Prov. 3:5-6, ESV

Do I really believe that God is good and sovereign and out for my best interest and His glory? Do I really believe that He who died for me loves me as much as the cross says He does? If so, I must act like it, and not just say it. I’ve got to fling myself upon His truth and promises and wait for His will with the utterly abandoned delight of a small child trusting the good purposes of a parent to bless them.

My son, keep your father’s commandment,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
Bind them on your heart always;
tie them around your neck.
When you walk, they will lead you;
when you lie down, they will watch over you;
and when you awake, they will talk with you.
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life…

- Prov. 6: 20-23, ESV

Submission to His will is not apathy. It’s the hardest fight a wayward heart like mine can face and it takes an active devotion to Him that stubbornly refuses to swerve. And I can’t do it. But He can strengthen me for this fight. And He will be with me for it, going before me and laying forth good paths for me to walk in. Hard they may be, I know they will be good.

How much faith do you have, dear one?

All that You give me, Father.

Searching to See God?

through the dark streets they’d go searching to see God in their own way // save the nighttime for your weeping [cemeteries of london, coldplay]

“…spent from about 4am to 7am staring intently at my ceiling.”

O God, You are my God; earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon You in the sanctuary, beholding Your power and glory. Because Your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise You.” [Ps. 63:1-3]

My soul yearns for You in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks You. [Is. 26:9a]

If it’s an ordinary Wednesday afternoon and there’s no one to see and nowhere to go and nothing to do, what is it that I rely on to get through? Do I “make do” and put up that facade of having-it-all-togetherness and save the nighttime for weeping or the quiet restlessness of a weary, empty soul? Or do I turn my eyes heavenward and look upon Him in His sanctuary, beholding His power and glory?

 

Is He my primary delight? Do I desire Him above all else and find in Him alone my joy and satisfaction?

Pressing on in Faith

I don’t like hard things. They’re uncomfortable. It’s like having someone pinch you in a tender spot over and over again. If I had my way, I’d be lazy and hide in a shell of selfishness from reality, from God’s prodding at my heart and from pain.

However, I’m starting to realize (for the Nth time) that these hard things are incredible blessings. When God reveals a sin and takes hold of it, uprooting it from my heart, He tells me that it’s dead to me and I must relinquish it. I all love my sin - not going to lie. It’s comfortable. Yet when He claims it as dead to me and pushes me away from the old places I once wallowed in, and into new lessons and seasons . . . it’s good. I can see Him more clearly when He clears aways the weeds from my heart. Pain drives me to Him, and because I know that He is sovereign and that He is good, I am able - through the tears - to thank Him for hard things. They make me know Him better, and that is simply amazing.

When He lays His hand on something in my life and looks me in the eyes and says, “Let go; this is not yours. It does not glorify me or serve you. I have something far better for you!” I know that He’s right, and though it’s difficult to surrender I know that I can trust Him. He doesn’t change, and He’s always been faithful to His own. If He cared enough to supply the fulfillment of my greatest need by slaying His only Son in my place, then how can I not trust Him to continue to be good to me?

That good might not look like I expected, but that’s all right. I would far rather have His best for me than my misconception of what His best might look like. And so I will press on, by His strength, in the faith that He gives me. For He is my Lord, and I can trust Him.

Shall I take from Your hand Your blessings
Yet not welcome any pain
Shall I thank You for days of sunshine
Yet grumble in days of rain
Shall I love You in times of plenty
Then leave You in days of drought
Shall I trust when I reap a harvest
But when winter winds blow, then doubt

Oh let Your will be done in me
In Your love I will abide
Oh I long for nothing else as long
As You are glorified

Are You good only when I prosper
And true only when I’m filled
Are You King only when I’m carefree
And God only when I’m well
You are good when I’m poor and needy
You are true when I’m parched and dry
You still reign in the deepest valley
You’re still God in the darkest night

(As Long as You Are Glorified, Mark Altrogge)

Musings from a winter’s evening

The Romantic poets felt that the soul was revived by beauty and sustained by memories of beauty. They wrote of beauty restoring the soul and giving them meaning. They felt whole when their eyes and souls were filled with the awesome beauties of nature.

Sure enough, they forgot the One who made the beauty and missed a great deal of lovely truths that make the beauty all the richer–that give it meaning and Him glory.

But . . . they were on to something. There’s a tingling of timid delight when one sees something lovely these days. I think our culture has forgotten the simple, lonely loveliness. On the ride back from NYC, we wound our way through miles of snowy, barren hills and fields. The trees were crisply outlined against the stars and moon in the darkness by the clinging remnants of snow on their branches. The expanse of nothingness was still, the air clear, the woods deep and restful. And my heart was glad to see it, to see dear Orion high above again, to see the empty spaces and the wild beauty under the moon’s fading beams. And one girl with us in the car commented:

“There’s nothing out here at all. I don’t think I like it. There’s…just nothing.”

And I was quiet. For I love what she called nothing. The rich stillness, the pale, forlorn beauty. It’s wild and fresh, a bit uncanny, and very rich. And the One who made it all is greater still.

He’s not a tame lion, but he’s good.

The other night, as I walked across campus to my room, a very damp, sticky snow had begun to fall. I was struck by the stillness of it; the contented manner in which the flakes amble on their way to rest on the walks. The twinkling feeling of snow on my eyelashes. The silence of my footfalls in the snow. The joyous weariness of working my mind until it could absorb no more left me content and numb intellectually, but in the snowfall–with the silver glintings of the stars, street lights and the flakes embroidering the inky darkness of the night . . . my soul was refreshed.

These are the small graces, the little moments when…