The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

This week, I finished a book that was breath of fresh air. After reading The Handmaid's Tale, which was good, but grim, this was good fun. Did you know that sometimes, it's okay to take a break from heavy reading and read something fun? I forgot this. When my kids were at home and being homeschooled, I read out loud to them every day, even when they were older. We often read fun books. I forgot how necessary that is.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first in a series by Canadian author Alan Bradley.  Oh, how I do love it when the Canucks write good books! The books are centred around the adolescent Flavia deLuce, who lives in the English countryside with her two sisters and father in the 1950's.  At this time, Elizabeth II is a young mother of an infant son, Charles.

Flavia is a precocious lover of chemistry who likes to taint her sister's lipstick with poison ivy. In this first volume, which involves rare stamps, boys' schools, and traipsing through library archives, Flavia helps uncover why a man has died at their home of Buckshaw. Of course, thinking through chemical processes contributes to the solving of this crime.

As I said, this book was good fun. Flavia is funny, charming, albeit the kind of impish child I wouldn't want to have to discipline. In recent days, I've read a few fiction volumes which involve depicting relationships among young people and their siblings. I think it takes a skill for a man to write so adeptly about how young sisters might interact with each other.

When I got this volume from the library, I took out the second, which I'll begin this weekend.  I love reading my volumes on theology and all that stuff, but I love to read a story that's fun. It's good for the soul.

Thankful Thursday

Today, I'm thankful for my new bike. My husband has ridden his bike for a couple of summers now, and I decided to join him. The trail is an old railway line, and it's filled with the beauty of nature. This past Sunday, I finally went the whole 24km trip with him. We went again on Tuesday. Next up, a basket for my camera. This is good exercises and time with my husband.

I'm thankful for fresh asparagus. I love it.  Sometimes, for lunch I roast a bunch and eat it with butter.

I'm thankful for the book of Nehemiah.  I'm learning so much. Nehemiah was spiritually attuned to God's calling.  Am I?

I'm thankful for my in-laws' beautiful yard, where I can get good photo ops:

I'm thankful for blogging friends and encouragement.

I'm thankful for the sound of the birds out my window at this very moment.

I'm thankful that God is patient with me.

Soaking in Nehemiah

I am studying Nehemiah and loving it. One thing about teaching a book of the Old Testament is that it forces us to look at the historical context more. These truths we learn become part of our memory, and the next time we read or teach a book of the Old Testament, we may remember the historial details a little better.

I taught on Sunday, looking at Nehemiah's prayer when he heard that the walls had been breached in Jerusalem, and then how he dealt with Artaxerxes when he wanted leave to go to Jerusalem. I think the kings of Persia were very fickle people. Artaxerxes was the one who stopped the building of the temple (Ezra 4:20) and he is the one who gives little resistance to Nehemiah leaving. Nebuchadnezzar was by turns hateful toward God, and then praising Daniel's Gods.  What was up with them? I also found it interesting that Nehemiah handles Artaxerxes in a similar manner that Esther does when she goes before Ahasuerus.

J.I. Packer, in his book, A Passion for Faithfulness, talks about Nehemiah's call to build the walls and what we can learn from it:

The fact we must face is that impenitent and unconsecrated Christians will be out of earshot when God calls them to service, just as they are out of line already, without being fully aware of it, in regard to the imperatives of daily Christian living.  Apathy and sluggishness with regard to ordinary obedience brings deafness when God calls to special service.  But Nehemiah, a consecrated and repentant servant of God, as his prayer in 1:5-11 shows, was sensitive to God's approach and ready to receive particular guidance. When the bad news floored him and set him prayng, he soon found himself suspecting what god's vocational call to him was. Faithful souls ecome quick on the uptake in these matters.

I was thinking that when we are spiritually apathetic, we tend to read our circumstances differently than when we are more consecreated and less apathetic. We may look at our circumstances not as an opportunity for service to God, but a nuisance, or a drudgery. It's all about our disposition toward God.

Next week at Out of the Ordinary, I will be discussing Nehemiah 1:1-2:8 in more detail.

Stress free social media

In my ongoing effort to use social media in a positive way, I am giving myself some advice. These are probably no-brainers, and most people probably already know these things, but I'm pretty dense at times:

I should set time limits.  No, this is not legalism. It's a boundary. Boundaries are not legalism. Setting a boundary helps to keep me from being excessive. 

Keep Twitter and Facebook off my phone. Currently, I have Twitter on my phone, but not Facebook. Do I need to be able to scan comments while I'm away from home? It's a time killer when I'm waiting for someone, but a book could do just as nicely. One thing about having those things on my phone is that if there is a controversy or debate, I'll be tempted to think about it all the time because responding is so easy.

Realize that comments boxes can be bad places.  Encouragement is good, but starting a debate in a comments box never ends well. Comments boxes heat up quickly, and people forget their manners. If I want to feel happy at the end of the day, avoiding controversial comments boxes may help. There is also wisdom in letting someone else have the last word and being willing to suffer an offense.

Utilize private messages. Whatever happened to email? Do we have to do everything in public?  Debates in blog comments can be really bad; on Twitter, they're incoherent.  If I really want to engage someone, I should email where I can be more explicit and hopefully avoid misunderstanding.

Measure my reaction.  The more quick and emotional my reaction, the more necessary it is for me to avoid saying something. Comments fired off in the heat of the moment may not be well-thought out. I can't remember where I read it, but someone suggested waiting even as long as a day to say anything.

Learn to ignore. There is a lot of good on social media, but there is a lot of poor thinking, ego, bad judgment and outright stupidity. I can ignore these things. Ignoring is very freeing. I can also remember that I likely perpetuate these things myself, and I must be gracious about the whole matter.

Read silently.  It is "social" media, so there is an element of interaction possible. But just like sitting in a room full of people doesn't mean I have to take every opportunity to speak, I can safely just read and not engage in dialogue. Sometimes, my silence is more valuable than my opinion.

Now, what I need to do is recite these things to myself when I am tempted to say more than I need to say, or to start squirming at the words of another.

Churning without butter

I admit that I churn quite a bit. I often have a hard time letting things go. That can be good, but it can be bad. I long to be more like my husband who knows when to stop and let things go.

Over the past number of weeks, I've had more than one occasion when I've thought to myself, "I'm done with social media." I've seen things (and probably said things) that remind me how easily it is to abuse a good thing. And yes, I do think social media can be a good thing. We're the problem when it gets abused. If human beings weren't misusing social media, they'd be misusing something else.

I've written about twenty posts which have made their way into the garbage, and they're in the trash because I felt like my honesty would just be a bad idea. So I wrote them, enjoyed the catharsis, and then dumped them. Note to self: I need to do that more.

My thoughts have been mostly on the way women pile on other women for the choices they make. My daughter has a name for a certain kind of friendship.  She calls it the "I like you if you're like me" kind of friendship. Yes, we all tend to gather around common things, but sometimes, we can be so narrow. I knew a family once who wouldn't let their kids play with other kids who weren't "Growing Kids" children, i.e. their parents subscribed to Gary Ezzo's parenting methods. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't want to be like that.

I think we confuse being strident with being convicted. I've seen a lot of strident lately. I've seen a lot of folks who come at others with an attitude that says, "I cannot possibly be wrong." I don't begrudge anyone his certainty if he feels he's come to those conclusions with thought and consideration, but sometimes, being too unwilling to consider being wrong means we're simply not teachable.

Over the past few weeks, I've been reminded also that people flock to division and argument. People gravitate to those kind of articles. The articles that simply explain a theological truth often get read far less, and in reality, it's those kinds of articles we should be feasting more upon because understanding theology helps us understand other things.

I've seen people bully others. I've seen people cling tenaciously to having the last word. I've seen people defend their arrogance by saying they're just promoting truth. I like the word "winsome." I think truth is much better wrapped in winsome than arrogance. We all hear people get snitty if you mention "tone" of words, and comments like "tone police" come up. Yes, dialogue in the public square should be allowed, but there are some people out there who can't seem to come across as anything other than condescending and negatively sarcastic. And just for the record? "Well, duh!" is one of those phrases that really can't be spun in any other way than condescending.

Another reason I've been churning is because I know I've been arrogant, strident, and unteachable, and I'm cringing for every time that someone else thought that about me. I've been blogging since 2004; that's a lot of time to be arrogant online; never mind the times I've been arrogant face to face.

My husband is not an arrogant man. He's very cautious and careful. He doesn't get riled in an argument. He doesn't cling to the feeling of being right or vindicated. He's willing to let someone have the last word. He's willing to be wrong. He knows how to demonstrate if he's right and someone else may be mistaken; but he's decent about it.

He churns a lot less than I do. There has to be a connection.

Someone on my Twitter feed this past week re-tweeted this comment by Joe Thorn:

I am genuinely grieved over the arrogant, loveless, and needlessly divisive social media blasts from xians against xians.

I had to stop and ask myself am I guilty of "social media blasts."  I was thinking that social media blasts are meant to garner attention. To what are we drawing attention? Truth or just ourselves?

Edification, that's the name of the game. And that's what I need to seek to do. I'm sure it would involve a lot less churning.