Your bellybutton looks a bit like Moshulu’s butt.
— Sullivan, comparing Scott’s navel to our calico’s anus
Scott [after Carla suffers a seemingly neverending sneeze attack]: What is your body trying to get rid of?
Carla [sniffling]: My face.
You know what Miss Leigh calls a picture? “Pitcher.” Picture. Pitcher. She’s a very complicated woman.
— Éa, on a quirk of her teacher’s pronunciation
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was the day Sullivan and Éa enjoyed their first feature-length film: the delightful-in-concept-and-execution Monsters, Inc. We watched it at the Peters’ house after church because Josh and his new girlfriend Esther were watching it. They kids sat on our laps most of the time. Carla provided some commentary and educational questions for the kids along the way to help them process.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was the day when Matt Rooke and Carla began work on widening the doorway between our living room and kitchen by doing some demolition and moving the electrical. I mention it because it was the beginning of something Carla had been looking forward to doing for a few years now, having been unable to resist opening the famous “hole in the wall” (to be fair, she did ask permission from me) in a lull of home improvement spending between when we sprang for our first 4K of solar panels and when we had Envinity install new windows. She was getting itchy back then, and it was my dad who suggested that if she wanted to widen the doorway, the first step would be to open an exploratory hole to discern where the electrical wires went.
It was our first foster care home study, which was to happen on February 2, that prompted us get beyond the hole-in-the-wall stage moving on this project now. You...
// read full article →If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was a day that featured an evening in which I struggled to understand how I am to know firsthand that God is loving and faithful as David writes if I can’t sense Him. And then I remembered: He works in me to will and to act according to His good pleasure. He is at work and He is good and He will even bring us from glory to glory, as I used to repeat in years past. Even if I can’t see Him, He is at work in me and in the world.
It was also a day when I spent most of my workday—and therefore a good chunk of vacation time—applying my very slow, barely conscious financial brain to hashing out nuances in the way we handle our finances. All so that I could figure out what to do when my parents give money toward the kids’ long-term or college savings and so that I could give Carla a better idea of what balances we can expect in our various savings accounts at the end of the year. It was an...
// read full article →Dad! In heaven, I bet that don’t have any rifles.
— Sullivan, without prompting, while being towed along through Spring Creek Park on a snow saucer
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you today was a day I realized that I’m not entirely pleased with the way I was governing my life. What I mean to say is that over the preceding few years the combination of Carla’s resistance to routinizing our relationship and my proclivity toward systems and routine has resulted in predictably relationship-free evenings: Carla curls up on the couch with her computer to watch a show, browse Facebook, and record the days, and I pursue my own agenda, usually on my computer as well.
(I speak in hyperbole that Carla would object to.)
What I was missing was a mindfulness of You that allowed me to transcend both my reliance on systems and enter sympathy, relatability, good listening, peace, and love. I resolved that day to, by God’s grace, no longer proceed through life with blinders on for getting things done, but to think of others, to enter into their skin, to respond lovingly, to allow room in my attention for impulses that are unrelated to accomplishment.
Attributing the healing miracles I’m reading about in Eric Metaxas’ Miracles to rare, poorly understood, completely undivine, powerful psychosomatics because one has to avoid confirmation bias is like remaining agnostic about the origin of a love letter left for me in Carla’s handwriting with her signature on it. If it’s in her handwriting and name, it’s rational to conclude that she wrote it. Similarly, if these miracles happened in the name of Jesus, it’s rational to conclude that Jesus did them. Is it possible that some purely natural, impersonal set of biological and psychological forces combined to make these healings happen? Yes, just like it’s possible that I forged the hypothetical love letter subconsciously out of a desire to be loved by Carla. Do I have any explanatory mechanism that is more powerful than to attribute the healings to God and the love letter to Carla? No, not even close. Does it seem overly skeptical to withhold conclusions about the origin of a miracle when it happens in Jesus’ name and has no great natural explanation because science might someday understand what is happening? In many cases, such as in the cases of these stories, yes.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you three, which I’d be allowed to do because they’re all related and happened within the same twenty-minute period at bedtime:
- I read several stories from Love Letters From God, a recent gift from my mother, to Sullivan and Éa freely by their request and without trepidation, demonstrating and substantiating that I was not as apprehensive about talking about God with them as I had been in the recent past because of my doubt,
- I was unashamed to cast the Old-Testament stories from this book as possibly fiction, demonstrating that I’ve become unafraid of a non-literal interpretation of much of Scripture, and
- I shared, upon request, some of the miracles I had heard about from friends in recent months (the story of Krista speaking Mandarin plus her brief account of seeing an eyeless man grow eyes) and one or two stories from Eric Metaxas’ Miracles, which I’d been reading after my mother gave the...
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that to my recollection, last night was the first night I puked since I was sixteen years old. Thank you, James!
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that Matt and Lara were good friends of ours, and they proved it yet again by coming over this evening and Matt helping Carla figure out what to do about the hole she had made in the kitchen wall two years prior in hopes of someday widening the doorway putting a pocket door or barn door in. We needed to get moving on something because having a hole in the wall with exposed electrical wires was a no-no for folks wanting to get into foster parenting. Lara did the dishes and prepared one of the two pizzas we scarfed for dinner (along with some beer from Otto’s—a rare sighting in the Stilson house). The Rookes also proved good neighbors in general: Matt helped me shovel out neighbor Janet’s driveway when her snowblower wouldn’t start.
I’m currently dissatisfied with my evenings. Maybe I just need to rush through the bedtime routine so that I have more discretionary time? Maybe it’s as simple as journaling a pick of the day only when I feel like I have something to journal.
It makes sense that if I’ve spent all day working on stuff and getting things done that I had preconceived to get done that I then spend some time in relaxation and recuperation. Part of the problem is that I don’t fully engage with what I’m doing when the kids are around. I have a slight feeling of guilt when I pursue something other than them.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you it was a day we had our 71-year-old neighbor Janet Donald join us for chicken pot pie dinner. It wasn’t the first time we’d had her over for dinner; it was probably about the twelfth. But this time, as we enjoyed her company, I thought once or twice about how she, being seventy-one years old, will likely die while Sullivan and Éa, how she’d probably beat Carol, Sully, and my dad to death’s door and thus be the closest person yet to our kids to die when that time comes.
What benefit, these thoughts? Not much. Except to say I hope to fill our days in part with loving Janet well in her twilight years.
Naturalist scientists don’t seem to understand that we people of faith aren’t looking for predictable, reproducible patterns in nature like they are. We don’t exclude all but that which is empirically observable from our account of reality. We are people of the anomalies.
Remembering this will help me keep the weed of anti-supernaturalism out of the garden of my mind.
Jesus went out from there and came into His hometown; and His disciples followed Him. When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?” And they took offense at Him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household.” And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He wondered at their unbelief.
— Mark 6:1-6, emphasis mine
I read the above excerpt this evening in a renewed effort to understand who You are, God, as revealed in Jesus. I typed, “God might wonder at our unbelief,” and I realized You might be wondering at my unbelief. I am, in a...
// read full article →If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you about three things that happened while dining at Luna II Woodgrill this evening with Carla, Sullivan, Éa, and the Doroshes:
- Sullivan learned about such Marvel characters as Mr. Fantastic, Thing, Thor, Lizard, Wolverine, and Black Cat via a coloring book the waitstaff had provided and via my answering his questions about them as he leafed through. It was strange to help him be introduced to characters. I don’t want Sullivan to open comic books and fall in like I feel like I did as a youth, but at the same time, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. So I didn’t. I did wonder, though, what effect his seeing the buxom Black Cat will have on his perception of normal busts in women as he hits adolescence.
- In talking with the Doroshes and Carla, I learned that if you learn of a funeral and you know the deceased or the deceased is someone very close to someone you know, you should go. How well...
A new interpretation of Hebrews 11:6, which reads, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him,” just came to me: The writer is saying, in effect, “You can’t do these crazy things I’m telling you about Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and so on without trusting God. It just can’t be done. If you don’t think He is and that He rewards those who seek Him, you obviously won’t be able to do the kinds of things in this list.
Here is a great reinterpretation of Luke 11:9, which reads, “Ask and it will be given to you…”:
It’s tempting (and lucrative, for some preachers) to treat this nugget of Scripture as an ironclad promise. Whatever you ask for—promotion, wealth, the spouse of your dreams—God will give it to you.
Unless, of course, Luke 11:9 is part of a larger narrative in which Jesus has already told us what to ask for. After a brief episode in which he defends Mary over her sister Martha for choosing what matters most—being a disciple, a citizen of his kingdom—Jesus’ followers ask him how to pray. Jesus tells them to ask for things like daily bread, the advent of his kingdom, forgiveness for sin. Only then does he say, “Ask and it will be given to you.”
It’s not, “Ask for anything you want.” It’s more like, “Ask for my kingdom, and you will have it.”
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I’d tell you that it was the day we visited our Bellefusian friends the Lundins for the first time this calendar year. We joined them at their house for a dinner comprising their leftover vegetable soup and our homemade dessert-pretzels, and for a discussion of their recent roller coaster ride in shopping for houses in State College. I’ll say that the reason I choose this as the one thing I’d tell you about is that when Rebecca recommended Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin, I shivered in my soul at the thought of there being a coherent alternative morality that is superior to the Christian morality. The prospect—yet unfounded, but still—the prospect that a secular philosophy might be capable of making not just good people, but better people on average than Christian philosophy, rattled me a little this evening.
“Oh boy, I hope I was right…”
— Bart Ehrman, responding to the following interview question: “In the For-All-Eternity category, what will be your final thought?”
A winsome set of last words, if there ever was one. On my deathbed, I know I’ll have hope, and I know I’ll have fear. I also want the levity I read in Ehrman’s response.
Stop looking for God on the Internet.
If you asked me in my old age to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I would tell you that I wasted hours of my workday trawling the Internet for religious certainty.
What prompted it was, I think, my wanting to test the strength of the Intelligent Design argument after reading some of Eric Metaxas’ attempt to cast all of existence as a miracle in Miracles, his popular volume which my mother sent me late last year when she first heard about my doubts. What kept me at it for what must have easily accumulated to half the workday was…I’m not sure what: An inner drive for certainty and stable identity? A proud wish to test my faith, which was renewed through the Christmas holiday at my mom’s house? A masochistic streak?
Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t love. My willful diversion today was unloving to my colleagues at DiamondBack, our customers, Carla, the kids, our church, and God. Even if atheists are right, exposing myself to their thinking in this way, via this medium,...
// read full article →“In themselves and rightly used, the basic things of life are sweet and good. What spoils them is our hunger to get more out of them than they can give.”
— Derek Kidner, The Message of Ecclesiastes, hitting the nail on the head about why I need to stop turning to the Internet in a quest for religious certainty. If I don’t watch out, I won’t spoil the Internet; I’ll spoil me!
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
— Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: The Mind of the Universe (1981), as quoted in Eric Metaxas’ Miracles (2014)