Sacred Mundane: The Blog

As this posts I am driving down to Applegate to speak at a women’s retreat for the weekend.  I’ll be enjoying the beautiful Mountaintop Retreat Center, so I’ll be unplugged Fri-Sun.  This is the longest time I’ve ever been away from Dutch, so I’m sad just thinking about it, but excited to see how God will move in the lives of these women and in my own life as well.  We’ll be talking about (surprise!) Expectancy without Expectation.  Just like last time, I’ll post the notes (4 sessions, one session at a time) on the blog if any of you are interested, and for the ladies from the retreat.

Whew what a week–Tuesday night/Wednesday I apparently had a 24-hour bug of some sort so while I thought I’d be finishing up my notes I was throwing up and shivering under a blanket pleading with Dutch to quit throwing toys and crawling on the coffee table because I was too weak to discipline him.  What a day.  Thank goodness it was short-lived though, and my incredible parents once again blessed my socks off by coming over Thursday morning, taking Dutch out and playing all morning in the yard so I could finish my notes, then trimming all the hedges so the house looked ship-shape, then taking Dutch and me out to lunch so I wouldn’t have to cook.  Can you say “amazing parents”?  Yeah. I’m blessed.

So earlier this week Jeff sent me a cool blog post from LifeHacker about how to get the most out of your new town.  The essence of it is about refusing to stay in a little isolated bubble, and choosing to live life in a missional way, getting to know the world around you.  As you know, just weeks ago Jeff and I moved to a new town (a big city compared to where we lived before!), and so this obviously applies to us. But whether you’ve lived in your town 2 days or 2 decades, there’s still plenty to be gained by employing these ideas and learning to live Missional.

Missional living is really just a buzzword for what we should already be doing but probably aren’t.  To live missionally means understanding that the Great Commission isn’t just for foreign missionaries, it is for all believers, because we’re all called to be salt and light, letting the world see Jesus in all that we do.  Where we’re tempted toward the Sacred/Secular duality of life, Missional Living reminds us that all of life is a mission, that we are on mission with God, and that everything we do should serve that mission–to see every tribe, tongue, and nation glorify God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Writing this challenge is indeed a challenge, because this isn’t easy for me. I could very easily go through my little life in the confines of my little house and yard and dutch and Jeff and the internet and never see another person except my family and close friends.  But God wants us to go out in the world, rub shoulders and get a little dirty.  I already see this at work by taking Dutch to the playground.  He loves the playground, and occasionally other kids will come and inevitably they have mommies.  It’s easiest to just remain engrossed in our own kids and ignore the other mommies, but the other day I went through the pulling of teeth that it is and actually began talking to the other mom.  Winds up she is a believer, homeschooling, but discouraged and struggling, and in need of encouragement!  Wahlah!  Hello! I was homeschooled and I’m a pretty normal, socially adjusted, educated adult. Just talking to her was the coolest thing, and I walked away marveling at God’s little divine appointments.  I would never have had the experience if I would have a) insisted on staying home all the time or b) been too shy to talk to her.  Now I’m an infant at this, so you won’t find me striking up conversations on the sidewalk, but I’m praying that more and more God would give me supernatural boldness to just be friendly, to care about people, to be willing to engage with them no matter where they are, not with an agenda of my own, but for the genuine purpose of hearing, listening, caring, and prayerfully showing them the love of Christ as God would provide opportunity.

We don’t have to be in a new neighborhood to put this into practice.  Go to the park.  Take a class.  Let your kids take a class.  Sit at a coffee shop.  Look for ways to engage in the community that God has sovereignly placed you in, and ask Him for creative ways to make a difference where you are.  Living missional is just a fancy way of saying Care about People.  It’s so much easier to just stay at home and dust the furniture.  But God has placed His glorious message in the hands of silly little mommies and daddies and students and kids like us.  Let’s get out there and shine around a little bit.  Perhaps He’ll light up a path in an unexpected place.

I am today overwhelmed by realizing how privileged Jeff and I are.  He just called from school, elated because he passed his Greek exam, but even more elated by the Seminary Chapel he attended this morning.  As commuter students, we’ve rarely had the opportunity to attend Seminary Chapel on Tuesday mornings, but now Jeff has made a commitment to attend this term.  They someone dwindled in recent years, but apparently there is a new resurgence of God’s Spirit taking place.  For the five or six chapels of the semester, each one will embrace and a different worship style, expressing the variety of ways that God’s people can worship Him through song, scripture, and response. This mornings was a more liturgical style, which some students have likely not been exposed to.  They sand responsively and read scripture responsively, and were blessed by how God’s Spirit moved over them, even while in this more “constrained” style of worship.  Jeff loves the idea of demonstrating different styles–helping students realize that there isn’t “one right way” to hold a worship service.

FOr the message, each chapel will have a different professor share.  The topics? They are asked to share what is their one message, if this was the last thing they were ever able to share with students before they die, what would it be.  Wow. Powerful.  These are men and women of God who have loved and labored with Christ for 20, 30, 40, 50+ years (Dr. Reeve is 92 and just retired after teaching at Multnomah for more than 40 years.  She has served Christ as a single woman her entire life.)  These men and women have wells of knowledge, wisdom, and grace to impart to us as students.  And the amazing thing is that they don’t just love to teach, they love us.

So today Dr. Blom shared a story, which I’d heard before.  He explained that is was through his mentors that he learned the most about loving Christ.  When he was a young pastor, he’d finished preaching a message and many people around him were telling him how good the message was, etc.  He was beaming, of course, and exclaimed, “I love preaching!”  His mentor responded, “‘Tis good to love to preach. ‘Tis better to love the people.”  Dr. Blom hadn’t done anything wrong, but this was a powerful reminder that we can fall in love with what we do more than who we serve.  “Tis good that I love to write.  “Tis better that I love the people I write for.  ‘Tis good that I love to speak at retreats.  ‘Tis better I love the people at the retreats.  ‘Tis good to love to minister and serve and do good deeds.  ‘Tis better to love the people, all of them: nice, grumpy, young, old, sweet, smelly.  ‘Tis better to love the people

Jeff and I are so privilege to be at a school where professors truly do love the people.  My mentor, the professor I mentioned earlier in “Being Believed In” amazes me about how she always makes the aim of our time to serve me.  I am her intern, which means that I will do anything she asks me to do, but she continually returns to what would be best for me, as her follower.  She loves what she does as teacher, scholar, researcher, but most of all she pours her life out for me, the person.  I’m so thankful for the men and women at Multnomah.  Jeff and I are privileged indeed.

So my prayer is that whatever we love to do, that most of all we would love the people.  ‘Tis good to love to _____, ‘Tis better to love the people.

Today I’m at school all day, which means that it is Daddy Day at home.  I hate leaving the house, realizing I’ll miss the precious moment when Dutch gets up in the morning, the smell of his breath (I know weird, I love the way he smells in the morning), kissing his round little cheeks, and the way he runs across the room when Jeff puts him down and jumps into my arms.  I love the “day off” that Mondays provide me.  School is a breeze compared to Mommyhood :-).  But most of all, I love that Dutch gets a special Daddy day.

Mid-morning Jeff emailed me to say that he and Dutch had been on a long bike ride (Jeff has a baby bike-seat on his bike and Dutch LOVES riding in it), and to the park, and then had stopped to share a large french fry at Burgerville (yes, my son loves french fries, who doesn’t?).  Dutch ate most of the fries and then made the sign for “please more.”  Fortunately they stopped at one large fry.  But all in all they were having a special day, and I had to smile and thank God for letting Jeff have these precious little moments with Dutch.  I know enough to know that Dad matters.

That’s one of the most significant things I’ve learned in all of my Family classes here at Multnomah.  In Conflicted Families we learned that 75% of adult disorders and emotional problems can be traced back to the person’s relationship with their father.  75%!  It’s also pretty well-known that when children are taken to church by their father growing up, they are significantly more likely to continue attending church into adulthood, whereas those who are taken by their mother have a far less chance of continuing attendance into adulthood.

It’s sad that we’ve diminished the role of the father in the home today.  Yes, there are natural, biological reasons that moms spend the majority of the time with the children, but amazingly enough, even thought the majority of hours are invested by the moms, dads play perhaps an even greater role in the developmental health of his kids.  In an age where an increasing number of dads are deadbeat, disconnected, or addicted to work, we more than ever need to encourage our men to invest in the home.  Children are hungry for their daddies.

I am so thankful to have had a childhood full of my father.  As a school teacher, he was home summers and most afternoons.  Even when he refereed many evenings, my amazing mother toted us along to colleges across the state, settling for late-night dinners at Burger King so that we could be together as a family.  I vividly remember running to the door each day shouting, “Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home!”  So I guess my call is for men to recognize their irreplaceable role as dads.  You are so important. So valuable. You don’t have to do the parenting thing perfect, but do it!  And moms, encourage your husbands.  Don’t nag them for letting the kids get dirty (or feeding them french fries) or letting the house get dirty.  Cheer them on in their devotion to the family.  All it takes is a little cheering and encouragement.

So thanks, hon, for making Daddy Day so special for Dutch.  Although I wish you would have saved me some Fries.