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Martin and Christina Veenstra on retirement in your nineties

*****

Little did Christina Veenstra know, more than six decades ago, that meeting her future husband, Martin Veenstra, at Reformed Bible Institute would help her preparations for retirement. I recently had the opportunity to interview Christina and Martin, and as she explained, prayer was a part of her life then, and is all the more so now, in her nineties.

“I went to Reformed Bible Institute (RBI). I wanted to go into nursing, then, but I didn’t know enough English yet, after three years, so they advised me to take . So I went to RBI and that’s where I met Martin. He was in his first year, and I was in my last year, and for me, it was love at first sight. But he had other plans, and he had other girlfriends, but I prayed for three years. When I was in nurses’ training, I prayed for three years that the Lord would give me Martin.

“I was a C student in nursing at RBI, but I always passed everything. But then I did not pass my state boards for nursing, because it was multiple choice, and I still was having some problems with dealing with English, so my mind went blank. So I became a graduate nurse. And after I graduated, I think it was either the same week, or the week after, I got a letter from Martin that we would correspond. Then I knew that’s what the Lord meant me to be, that the husband I prayed for would become my husband.”

While we do not always get the spouse that we desire, even when we pray for them, in the grace of God, Christina’s three years of prayer brought her two great spiritual benefits: a partner to pray and serve with, and practice in persistent prayer, which she carries on now in her retirement years.

Partners in prayer and service

God did see fit to grant Christina the husband who, sixty-three years later, continues to join her in prayer for the people they care most about.

Martin: “Now that we’re retired, and we’re both 90, I think that our service is more here , because I don’t drive anymore either. But we do get a ride to church every Sunday. So we talk to people here, the people here who don’t know the Lord. We hope that we can help to mold them, and talk to them at hymn sing.”
Christina: “We have a hymn sing every Monday evening. Martin plays the organ, and I more or less lead it. We have 50, sometimes 60 people come, and some of them are not from the church. So we are so happy about that. I pray the Lord that I can sing until the day I die.”

Practice for persistent prayer

Three years of earnest prayer for a very specific thing is good practice for the life of prayer that is now the focus of Martin and Christina’s retirement.

Me: “What do you see right now as your role in your own family?”
Martin: “Prayer, and more prayer, and then some more prayer, because we have some grandchildren or great-grandchildren that don’t walk with the Lord. They all love us, and we love them too, but they need the Lord.”
Christina: “That’s why I pray every morning for the whole family, every one of them, in the morning.”
Me: “What do you think is your greatest challenge in life right now?”
Martin: “The greatest challenge is prayer, and just, to live daily for the Lord. And hopefully that somehow, in time, rubs off on our children, that they say, ‘We love the Lord.’”
Christina: “The Lord can change the heart. As long as we are alive, we’ll pray for them until the very end. The Lord can change their hearts and lives.”

“Living the dream”

Of course, a life of prayer is not what our culture sees as ideal “golden years.” Back on May 20, 2000, John Piper told a crowd of 40,000 college students to aim for more than just comfort in their retirement:

“I tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is: ‘Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Fla., where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.’

“That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter, before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: ‘Here it is Lord – my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!’

“Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.”

Is that “Freedom 55” attitude still around? It seems to be harder to achieve now, but many of those who have the money still want it.

Recently, as I was waiting in line at A&W beside an older gentleman, he said that it was good that “we” retired people (I guess I look retired) had plenty of time to kill. So I asked him what a typical day was like for him. He told me that he spent six months every year in Arizona, playing softball and tennis. Living the dream?

A counter-cultural daily life

Martin and Christina have certainly not bought into that “American dream.”

Me: “In what ways are you staying close to the Lord?”
Martin: “I love to read Scripture. One thing we learned at Bible school; we fell in love with our Bibles. We love our Bibles; we want to read it more, and I should read more, and now I have the time, so I can. There’s some wonderful things in there that we can know, and remember, and put into practice.”
Christina: “I do it in the morning. I’m an early bird. I’m up at five, and Martin gets up at seven, so I have my devotions in the morning.”
Martin: “So I read more at night.”
Me: “Do you have any things that you share, Bible readings that you share?”
Christina: “More or less all day long. If he finds something, then he will tell me, and if I find something in my Bible reading….”
Me: “Do you have a list of people that you pray for?”
Martin: “Mostly family. We pray for people when we hear about the need, but it changes all the time…”
Christina: “And people from the church…”

Greatest joy in life

So, what is retirement like without the 30-foot boat, the shell collection, or even a driver’s license? For Martin and Christina, it is, even with all the problems of aging, a time of joy:

Me: “What is your greatest joy in life now?”
Martin: “You raise a wonderful subject. Yesterday we heard about Levi, who is a tax collector who came to know the Lord. He could instantly know the Lord. I think the greatest joy is that we can serve the Lord, and we know that we are His. He made a covenant with us: ‘I am your God, and you are my people,’ and we take that to heart, and believe that, and we rejoice in that. I do think that sometimes there may not be joy enough in this place. We need to dwell on that more. The joy of the Lord is our strength.”
Christina: “What is your only comfort in life and death? That I belong with body and soul to my Lord Jesus Christ.”
Martin: “I think He strengthens us daily for the walk that we have with Him, and if we want to live with Him, we get reminded of that daily. He wants us, daily, to read the Scriptures, how He loves and cares for us each day….”

While Christina needs a walker for her daily walk, because of peripheral neuropathy – ”The outlying nerves don’t like getting old, so they let me know” – she also finds joy in the Scriptures, and the opportunities she has to serve others less formally.

Christina: “Over the years, the Bible means more and more to you – how much the Lord means to you. It’s just wonderful. I love this age. You have all the time in the world to be of help, or to read the Bible. When I see somebody that looks a little bit sad, I do encourage them, as much as I can.”
Martin: “You want to encourage people as much as you can. When people live in a community, it gets very lonely for people, especially when their spouse dies. So when somebody says, ‘Hi, how are you today?’ – sometimes that’s all it takes.”
Christina: “We love it here. We do believe that God put us here….”

Unlike Bob and Penny from John Piper’s illustration, who have cause to tremble at their eventual meeting with their Creator, Martin and Christina are not wasting their lives. They are, instead, living in genuine hope in the time that God continues to give them on this earth, as the final Bible passages we discussed show.

Me: “Is there a specific Bible passage that lifts you up at this time in your life?”
Martin: “Philippians 1: ‘For me to live is Christ; to die is gain.’”
Christina: “‘The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life.’ (Ps. 27).”
Martin: “Or 103 would be a good one: ‘Bless the LORD and forget not all his benefits.’”
Christina: “He is in communion all the time.”

Interview responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

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Pornography

A church response is needed to stop the porn crisis

Parental controls are not enough ***** Over the past several years, I have spoken in dozens of Christian communities to thousands of students and parents on the issue of digital porn addiction. Ten years ago, many parents thought the warnings about the digital porn threat were well-intentioned, but exaggerated. These days, most people are aware that porn use is swiftly becoming a norm in Christian communities. Not a single Christian high school I have spoken at did not have a significant number of students struggling with pornography. Protecting your home doesn’t protect your kids So, how do parents take steps to effectively porn-proof their homes? Many parents try to do just that. They install internet filters. They monitor the devices their children have or have access to. They use Covenant Eyes, Qustodio, or other accountability software. But time and again, frustrated parents tell me that their children have been exposed to explicit content anyways, because the parents of the friends their children hang out with do not take these precautions. Additionally, parents who actively monitor the internet access of their children by not giving them a smartphone face constant fights with their children if they are among the few who do not have one. The reality is that if Christian communities are going to respond effectively to the crisis of porn addiction among the young, it will take a community response. Yes, it is essential that individual households ensure that internet access is both restricted and closely monitored. But this is clearly not enough. In fact, secular governments are for the most part ahead of church leaders in recognizing this reality, which is why American state legislatures, the UK government, and other governments across Europe are grappling with the problem of how to keep pornography away from children. They recognize that this is a social problem requiring a robust collective solution, and Christian communities must recognize this, as well. Christian communities are, for the most part, lagging behind secular leaders in recognizing this problem and considering collective solutions. This needs to be “all in” In a recent essay in First Things titled “Parents Can’t Fight Porn Alone,” in which they make the case for government restrictions on digital pornography, Clare Morell and Brad Littlejohn explain why communities need to work together: “Pornography’s addictive properties raise the stakes. Not only are children ill equipped to make rational choices about whether to consume a product, but their developing brains are more likely than adult brains to become hooked, with lifelong consequences. Adults may abuse alcohol, tobacco, and porn (indeed, for porn, there is no good “use,” but the law cannot suppress every vice), but they are less likely to become addicted if the first exposure occurs after age eighteen, when their brains are more fully developed. And the addictive qualities of porn make a mockery of parental controls: Once a child has encountered porn for the first time (perhaps through a friend, or on a parent’s device, or before the parents realized they needed to put controls on the child’s device), his or her brain will be programmed to hunt for it again and again, so that any and every loophole or glitch is an opening to ongoing porn consumption. “Too often, portals to porn come in the form of friends. For many American children, the dark journey with pornography begins on the school bus, at recess, or even at youth group. Even when parents set up content-filtering regimes for their own families, they cannot control what other families in their communities are doing. With 95 percent of teens carrying around mini-computers in their pockets, it is all too easy for a peer with an unfiltered smartphone to expose another child to pornography. An Oxford Internet Institute study thus estimated that for a single child to be shielded from online pornography in any given year, at least seventeen households in his or her network (and possibly as many as seventy-seven) would need to be employing filters.” Porn is looking for them Re-read that for a moment: At least seventeen households in the network of a single child need to be monitoring and restricting internet usage in order to protect him or her from online porn for a single year. And as I emphasize in my presentations, it doesn’t matter whether your kids are looking for porn – if they’re online, porn is looking for them. As Morell and Littlejohn put it: “Today, the average home has multiple internet-connected devices: smart TVs, laptops, iPads, gaming consoles, and smartphones for every member of the family, not to mention school-issued devices. Each of these ‘smart’ technologies may have hundreds of individual apps, many with their own in-app internet browsers, which means there may be thousands of points of entry to the internet in a single home. A minor using Snapchat, for instance, can reach Pornhub in just five clicks without ever leaving the app. “The abundance of portals requires several different parental control solutions, few of which are intuitive or wholly reliable. Apple’s Screen Time filter, one of the best, requires seventeen steps to set up properly, has been known to stop working without warning, and even when fully functional can be hacked by tech-savvy teens. Better-designed third-party parental control apps are barred from accessing and regulating many of the most popular – and dangerous – apps, such as Discord, Snapchat, and TikTok. And if a parent, recognizing that no one solution is comprehensive, tries to install more than one external control app on the same device, the apps will often conflict with one another. “Parents thus find themselves losing the arms race against Big Tech and Big Porn. This is dire, since children do not need to go looking for pornography; it finds them on social media. The porn industry has adopted the social media influencer model, with porn performers promoting their content on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram, in order to entice users (many of them minors) to click through to their own sites.” Unsurprisingly, many parents despair. Plenty of parents eventually give up, worn down by the begging and badgering of their children and the lack of community support for their decisions about smartphones and internet-capable devices. If all the other kids have them, they can’t be that bad, right? Porn has been around forever, and most people turned out okay, didn’t they? If we are taking this problem more seriously than our community leadership, we’re probably being paranoid or going overboard, aren’t we? It is far easier to cave, cover our eyes, and hope for the best – but this invariably has devastating consequences, many of which I detail in a comprehensive chapter in my recent book How We Got Here: A Guide to Our Anti-Christian Culture. A growing problem If we are to protect our children from being exposed to explicit content and developing porn addictions – and again, I emphasize that this is a significant and growing problem in every Christian community I have visited – we will need to work together. Christian communities should treat pornography addiction with the same level of seriousness we would apply to a wave of addiction to other drugs. Pornography is more insidious because its effects, at first, are less visible – but they are no less destructive. They rewire and fundamentally transform the mind, alter our ability to relate to the opposite sex, and profoundly poison our ability to have healthy relationships. Thus, community leaders should address the pornography crisis head on. Yes, parents should ensure that every internet-capable device is locked down and monitored. But we must also work with other parents and ensure that the networks we are a part of are pulling in the same direction. (As the American psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax put it in a presentation I attended recently, it is the task of parents to find out if the household their child is visiting has unrestricted internet access.) Christian schools should develop and enforce rigid policies on smartphone use at school and, ideally, cultivate a community with a collective standard that recognizes the dangers of giving teenagers smartphones to begin with. We are all in this together, and we cannot protect our children from pornography if other parents are not willing to do the same. Time to catch up Again, secular experts are ahead of most Christian communities on this issue. Intellectuals such as Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness) are driving a new consensus: Giving a child (and that very much includes teenagers) a smartphone (or device with unfiltered internet access) is one of the most damaging decisions a parent can make. Morell and Littlejohn are right: Parents cannot do this alone. But they shouldn’t have to, either. Christian communities are lagging behind secular governments and experts on this issue. It is time we caught up. This is reprinted with permission from TheBridgehead.ca where it was first published under the title “Parental controls are not enough: A community response is needed to stop the porn crisis” and where Jonathon Van Maren blogs and also hosts a regular podcast....

In a Nutshell

Tidbits – February 2025

Are there little green men? While there seems no biblical reason to preclude finding simpler life on other planets – plants and even animals – Christians have good reason to doubt we’d ever find intelligent life. It’d be hard to fathom how they would have fallen in Adam’s fall, and how they could be saved in Jesus’ crucifixion, if they don’t share the same human nature both shared. So, then, what are we to make of the many claims of alien encounters? In his book Alien Intrusion, creationist Gary Bates makes the case that some of these were probably demonic encounters instead, with the fallen angels masquerading as aliens. Bates makes a good case, noting how many of the “abductees” were heavily into the occult at the time, which may have opened them to demonic possession. In a recent article, a secular writer, Ron Unz makes a very different case, also compelling, that it is all, or at least largely, pure bunk. He writes: “Sightings of UFOs and aliens have been reported for decades, but the only solid evidence provided usually consisted of a few blurry photos, unable to convince anyone except true believers and sometimes even plausibly accused of being faked. “However, that situation would have completely changed in 2009 with the release of the Apple iPhone 3GS, which introduced the feature of video recording. So for the last fifteen years, the vast majority of Americans have always been carrying those sorts of smartphones, which double both as still cameras and easy video recording devices. If a noteworthy UFO or some strange alien creature suddenly appeared, within seconds a powerful photographic or video record could be produced, documenting that reality in extremely convincing fashion. “Consider, for example, that immense UFO – larger than three football fields – that allegedly hovered over the heads of those five solid Maryland citizens at their dinner-party. If smartphones had existed in 1976, three or four of those individuals would surely have produced a convincing video record of that remarkable encounter, and with exactly the same scene captured from several different angles by such camera footage, a fabrication would have been impossible. Those Maryland eyewitnesses could have sold their collection of videos to our television stations for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the reality of UFOs would have immediately become accepted worldwide. 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He's out in the UK, and he says if you take Christ out of Christian, all you're left with is Ian. And Ian's a great guy but he’s not going to save you from your sins.” Again! Again! Again! A child never tires of being thrown in the air. In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wondered if, in this endless sense of wonder, they were more God-like than somber adults. “It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. … It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.” There are no atheists In his book Choosing My Religion, R.C. Sproul argues that “...I don't think too many people who have a firm hold on reality can technically be called atheists. Recently a man came to believe in God at a meeting of atheists. The speaker declared that he was going to give God three minutes to prove Himself by striking him dead. The man stopped speaking and stared at the clock on the wall. In perfect silence one minute passed, then two and at least three. As the deadline passed there was an audible exhalation of air throughout the room. People had been holding their breath. ‘I knew in that moment that we were a bunch of hypocrites. There wasn't a real atheist in the place,’ the man said.” There are no atheists II Romans 1:18-20 says that there are no true atheists; everyone, at some level, knows there is a God. As Paul puts it, "since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen... so that people are without excuse.” Sye Ten Bruggencate gave an illustrative example of this deep-down knowledge by sharing a conversation he had while doing street evangelism. “This fellow, in his fifties, he comes up on his bicycle. And he tells me that two of his brothers committed suicide. He said that after his brothers committed suicide, he swore at God. He was angry with God. “He happened to have a book on Hinduism on his bicycle that he had picked up at the dollar store just a day or two before. And you could tell that he'd read through it, because he wanted answers, or so he said. He said, ‘You know this Brahman, this oneness of being, I can get into that. I like it. This makes a lot of sense to me; I could get into Hinduism.’ “So I said to him, ‘Tell me, is that the God you were angry at when your brothers committed suicide?’ “He started crying. “People know... they know God exists.” Choosing to be blind A question every creationist has to confront at some point is, “How can so many very smart people be wrong about evolution?” One answer is provided in Ezekiel 12:2 where God describes Israel as a rebellious people that "have eyes to see but do not see, and ears to hear but do not hear." We’ve all been this willfully blind and deliberately blind sort at some time, and if you don’t recall it in yourself, you’ve surely seen it in kids – your son, standing there with a cookie in his hand, insisting that he doesn’t, in fact, have a cookie in his hand. Richard Lewontin once explained how this choice to be blind has also been made by secular scientists when it comes to evolution. To be clear, this is no creationist talking here: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” Limited RAM I was recently talking to someone who explained that they knew quite a bit about the Middle East, though “I can’t recall most of it right now.” I loved the way he put that. It’s one thing to have just the right response stored away somewhere in our brain, and quite another thing to be able to pull it up at just the moment we need it. I think many of us have this same problem – we might have an adequately-sized "mental hard drive" but it seems most of us have limited RAM storage. "Banned" books Cartoonist Eddie Eddings made this provocative suggestion on his blog: “When you see a display of ‘Most Banned Books’ at a bookstore or online – ask them why they didn't include the Holy Bible. It is not only the best-selling book of all time – it is also the most banned.” Wit and wisdom of Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell is a 94-year-old American economist who may or may not believe in God – he never talks about Him – but who most certainly has a keen understanding of human nature. What follows are a half dozen quotes that highlight his biblically-aligned insights into man’s fallen nature. “What the welfare system and other kinds of government programs are doing is paying people to fail. Insofar as they fail, they receive the money. Insofar as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.” “What exactly is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”“Much of what are called ‘social problems’ consists of the fact that intellectuals have theories that do not fit the real world. From this they conclude that it is the real world which is wrong and needs changing.” “One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.” “There are 3 questions that would destroy most arguments of the Left. The first is, ‘Compared to what?’ The second is, ‘At what cost?’ And the third is, ‘What hard evidence do you have?’” “How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?” ...

News

Saturday Selections – Feb. 1, 2025

How people would run if they were dogs (2 min) Should he do one on cats? Does it matter where women work? Some Christians might love to have a more definitive answer than this article provides, but it does offer a biblical perspective worth considering. Why nobody has friends anymore "The Survey Center on American Life reports that that in 1990, almost 70% of men had five or more close friends. By 2021, just 40% reported having that many." Christian apologetics on Rogan Last year Canadian Christian apologist Wes Huff dismantled a former Joe Rogan guest, Billy Carson, who then threatened legal action. That kerfuffle got Joe Rogan's attention, and then, suddenly, a Christian apologist was invited onto the world's most popular skeptical podcast. The way a fly flies is fly! The speed at which a fly flaps is so fast it has been hard to investigate what it is really up to. But now, as we're starting to get in-depth looks for the first time, evolutionists are awestruck at how intricate and amazing a fly's flight mechanism really is. Springtails do their own stunts They jump the equivalent of 6 stories, exploding upward 150 times faster than the blink of an eye! ...

News

Blind guides can’t suppress Dutch MP sharing truth about the unborn

Early this year, a Dutch politician managed to vividly illustrate the horrors of abortion, despite the efforts of the opposition to shut him down. Presenting at a January 15 meeting to fellow members of a committee on medical ethics, Member of Parliament Gideon van Meijeren brought along a model of a 22-week-old baby to show the reality of who a doctor is killing, and how children of that age can feel pain as they are brutally murdered. As Jonathon Van Maren reported in his piece on TheBridgehead.ca “Dutch MP silenced for exposing reality of abortion releases powerful pro-life video,” when Van Meijeren brought the model out to accompany his remarks, committee chair Mohammed Mohandis immediately objected. The chair would not allow the doll to be shown, even instructing that the live feed of the meeting be turned off. A neighboring committee member actually grabbed the plastic model in an attempt to put it out of sight as the meeting continued. Van Meijeren objected to the decision of the chairman, reminding his colleagues that illustrations and objects have often been used in Parliament, and that his freedom of expression was being curtailed, but Mohandis would not change his mind. Rather than continue without visual aids, Van Meijeren left the meeting. But that wasn’t the end of it. A little later, he released a powerful video, and in a wonderful twist it has been seen by almost 100,000 so far, which is many more than would have seen the committee meeting. There he further explained how terrible it is that the Netherlands allows abortions all the way up till 24 weeks gestation, well past the time frame that children are perfectly formed, and can feel pain. Speaking in Dutch, he said: “It is not new to me that other members of Parliament would like to close their eyes to reality, but that there is such a panicky reaction to the showing of an anatomical model of a 22-week-old fetus, yes, that is quite telling, because the model itself is, of course, not shocking at all. No, what is shocking is that these babies are killed on a daily basis in the Netherlands. That is why this may not be seen.” The young politician went on to describe the horrific manner in which older babies like these are killed through the indiscriminate ripping off of limbs and body parts inside the womb. By nature, we want to deny the realities of our sinfulness: Adam and Eve hid from the Lord in the Garden after their rebellion; David was blind to his own murder of Uriah until the prophet Nathan confronted him. When our political leaders deny citizens access to the truth by suppressing free speech and covering up atrocities, they have become like the “blind guides” that Jesus condemned in Matthew 15: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone, they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit” (Matt. 15:13-14). Picture credit is a screenshot from the MP’s viral video. If you know Dutch, check out his video below. ...

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Evangelism

It's necessary: use words!

I hadn’t expected to meet a witch on the bus, what with their alternative form of transportation. Yet there she was, not a wart to be seen, sitting across the aisle. She had started the ride buried in a book, but her head came up when my friend and I discussed a particular point of theology in a slightly louder than normal fashion. This friend was on his way to becoming a minister, and theological topics always had the effect of cranking up his volume. I suspected that this was a conscious decision, rather than just an outburst of enthusiasm, since he always talked about how Christians had to be more of a light to the world. And he was a light: a roaring, exploding bonfire of light that could not be ignored by anyone within earshot. Whether we were sitting in a steam room, or hanging out at a coffee house, or sitting on the bus, he provoked obviously unchristian people into talking with us. This time around it was the witch. A few minutes into the ride she interrupted us to ask us what religion we followed. My friend was happy to explain, and then asked her what church she went to. “Oh, I don’t go to a church,” she said, “I worship my personal goddess at home.” The way she explained it, witches (or Wiccans) sounded a lot like New Agers. They did try and cast the occasional spell, but only love spells, and the central tenet of their religion was a respect for all of nature. It was just mumbo jumbo, nothing shocking or new for us, until she started talking about her personal goddess. After listing all sorts of benefits that came from having a goddess on call, she admitted it was nothing but a fabrication. That admission left both me and my conversationally-endowed buddy at a loss for words; we just couldn’t understand how someone could knowingly choose a delusion over a real, caring, and powerful God. So we asked. They don't understand The question surprised her. “You guys have to understand,” she blurted, “You pray and that makes you feel better, right? So what’s the difference between what you do and what I do?” The basic fact she didn’t understand, the thing no one had told her before, was that we Christians serve the one real God. This woman had never heard that before. Her Wiccan experience with religion was an openly delusional one, so she, quite logically, assumed that all other religions were similarly based. I found her ignorance surprising, but since then I’ve found it isn’t unusual. In fact, I had a similar sort of encounter less than a month later. This time my friend and I were making our semi-regular pilgrimage to a display sponsored by our university’s pro-choice club. I always went to pick up as many free brochures as possible, which, once I was out of sight, I would gleefully destroy. It was a small thing – a very small thing – but I thought it was at least as good an approach as the one my friend tried time and time again. He always debated with the pro-choicers. But what was usually a waste of breath turned out a differently that day. After a heated five-minute exchange one of the young ladies at the table asked for clarification, “Do you mean you really, honestly think it’s a baby?” “Of course,” my friend replied, “Why else would we even care?” Well, that just didn’t fit with what she had been told, “I thought you religious types were just using this issue to try to control women.” Her friend nodded in agreement. They didn’t understand – they were utterly ignorant. Conclusion I’ve always wanted to believe that evangelism was as simple as living a good Christian life. I wanted to believe I didn’t actually have to talk about God as long as people could see His presence in my life. Actions are louder than words, right? The problem is, in this post-Christian age people don’t have the background – they don’t know the basics of Christianity – to understand our actions. A Christian who doesn’t work on Sunday is just a guy who gets the day off. No sex before marriage becomes the rational act of someone who’s scared of sexually transmitted diseases. Action against abortion is understood as a power grab against women, and even prayer can be explained away as nothing more than a type of meditation or some psychological self-talk exercise. Actions only speak louder than words when the reasons for the actions are understood. And the world doesn’t have a clue anymore. So, as John MacArthur once put it, we need to “Preach the Gospel and always use words.” The world doesn’t understand so we all have to start talking and explaining. If you already are, you may have to start talking a little louder. And if you’re uncomfortable with cranking up the volume maybe you can just hang out with a conversationally-endowed buddy who isn’t. A version of this article first appear in the January 1999 issue under the title "Dumb, but not deaf"...

Assorted

On the Truth, and the cost of lies

"Remember: one lie does not cost you one truth but the Truth" - Hebbel **** It seems that truth is bendable - it has become elastic during the last decades. People can twist and turn it any which way they want, especially if they have a good lawyer. "Guilty or not guilty?" "Not guilty." "Have you ever been to prison?" "No, this is this is the first time I’ve been caught stealing.’ Surely truth is a question which has plagued mankind for centuries. The question of what, exactly, truth is, has been particularly in the headlines during the last year. There are those times in which we do not speak the truth in order to shield others from something. The Bible records incidents in which people did not speak the truth and two incidents immediately come to mind: the first deals with the protection of the small Jewish babies by the Hebrew midwives (Ex. 1:15-21). The second recounts the hiding of the Jewish spies sent to search out the land for the Israelites (Joshua 2). Incidents such as these remain relevant to the present times. We have only to think of the Second World War during which time many Christians hid Jewish refugees. **** My husband and I had such an incident in our lives as well. It had not nearly the magnitude of life and death to it, but it does illustrate the fact that things are not always black and white. A few years after my husband’s graduation from the Ontario Veterinary College, we had our third child. An aunt of my husband’s, Tante Til, had come over from Holland to help me out for a week or two. She was cheerful, lively and a bastion of cleanliness. We enjoyed having her around. Tante Til had a wonderful sense of humor but she also had a passion for sterilizing whatever came within her reach. Perhaps this was because she mistrusted my husband’s close daily contact with stables and their inhabitants and distrustfully eyed the mud caked to his large rubber boots. Tante Til was “proper” and would never dream of letting a soup bowl function as a cat dish or using her handkerchief to wipe away a cobweb. Tante Til was not extremely fond of animals and the kitten, dubbed “Little Grape” by our two girls, had to stay out of her way. The litter box was vies (dirty), and my husband was delegated the task of cleaning it while I was in the hospital. He gladly did so. We had, I am ashamed to say, acquired the habit of cleaning out the litter box with something I had never found much use for – a silver salad fork – somehow failing to inform Tante Til of this rather disreputable habit. The fork lay in a secluded corner on the kitchen counter. It was a dirty black because I hated cleaning silverware, finding it a useless chore when it would only get dirty again. Besides that, we had lots of stainless steel. One of my first nights home from the hospital, Tante Til cooked us a special dinner - mashed potatoes, vegetables, pork chops, applesauce and salad. It looked and smelled delicious. As we sat down and bibs were tied around the girls’ necks, Tante Til shone with goodwill. "Nou, eet maar lekker, jongens! (Eat hearty, guys!)" We prayed and then began to put the food on our plates. It never hit us until my husband began scooping some lettuce onto his plate. He suddenly realized that he was holding the silver salad litter fork. Only the fork was not holding cat litter but green salad. His second scoop, therefore, hung in mid-air. He caught my eye and I grinned at him. He didn’t grin back. "Good salad, isn’t it, sweetheart?" I said wickedly. "Dank je (Thank you)," Tante Til beamed. "Zal ik jou ook wat geven? (Shall I give you some too?)" "No, thank you," I answered virtuously, "it might give the baby gas." My husband ate around the salad on his plate as Tante Til explained in detail how she had cleaned the fork she had found on the counter and wasn’t it nice and shiny now? "Je moet je zilver wat vaker poetsen hoor, kind (You should polish your silver a little more often, dear.)" She gave me a sidelong glance but smiled tolerantly for wasn’t I a young mother with a great deal to learn? I cannot recall whether or not my husband ate the salad on his plate, but I do know that we never told Tante Til what the salad fork had actually been used for. "I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare," said Montaigne. **** Most incidences in daily life, however, call for plain, unadulterated truth - truth you should never shy away from. A number of years ago, during a snow-infested January day, I noticed a car slide to a stop behind a snowbank in front of our house. Our driveway was engorged with snow and I watched to see if the driver of the car would wade her way into it or head for our neighbor’s house. She turned into our driveway. It was a slow process, getting to our door, but it gave me time to put the kettle on, arrange some cookies on a plate and finally, wipe a few hands and noses while giving instructions on good behavior. When I looked through the window again, the woman was only about three quarters way up the driveway. I walked to the door, opened it and smiled a welcome. The woman was small and carried a briefcase. I did not know her. She smiled back and her funny, black hat tilted in the wind. "Why don’t you step in for a minute?" I said, fully confident that this tiny lady was lost and in need of directions and a hot cup of tea to warm her up. "Bad weather." The short, terse statement was carried by a strong voice, albeit a strong voice with a quaver. I nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly. She pulled off her gray, leather gloves and began opening her briefcase in the kitchen. A watchtower tract fell on the ground. I bent simultaneously with her and we almost bumped heads. She reached the pamphlet first and picking it up, held it out towards me. "No, thank you." My words came automatically. The pamphlet quivered. The hand that held it was blue-veined and old. "It’s free," she said, mistaking my refusal to take it with fear of having to pay for it. I shook my head. "I know." She put the tract back into her briefcase. The kettle was boiling and I turned to unplug it. Her voice followed me to the counter. "The world has many problems." My oldest son toddled into the kitchen and smiled at her. I walked past him and said, "It’s a good thing that Jesus Christ came into the world." She nodded, her little hat nodding with her. "Jesus was a good man." I both agreed and disagreed. "He was a good man," I said, "a perfect man, yes, but He was and is also God." She smiled and answered, "How could He be both at the same time?" Shaking her head, she laughed at what appeared to be a foolish and impossible notion. And when I persisted in speaking of the Triune God, she gave up and put her gloves back on while two of my children fingered her briefcase. With her gloved hands she pulled the small, black hat firmer onto her wet, gray hair and then opened the door. The wind blew swirls of snow into the foyer as she stepped back outside. I watched her go, the snow filling in her plodding steps almost as soon as she lifted her feet. And a few minutes later there was no trace to show that she had been by. Pascal said, "Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." **** Providentially not only the liars are in the news. The January 30, 1999 issue of World magazine records that a man by the name of Daniel Crocker confessed to murder. Daniel Crocker, who at that time was thirty-eight years old, was sentenced to twenty to sixty years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in ten years. The unusual aspect of Mr. Crocker’s case is that he was living free and easy, with a wife and two children in Chantilly, Virginia. He had committed the murder twenty years previously, smothering a nineteen-year-old girl with a pillow following an attempt to rape her. However, his Christian conscience, following his conversion later in life, would not let him alone. Compelled by the Holy Spirit, he confessed his murder and was consequently tried and convicted. Mr. Crocker and his wife, Nicolette, reportedly were able to pray together twice before the sentencing. Mrs. Crocker said that their two children, Isaac, 6 and Analiese, 9, who were not at the trial, "know what Daddy’s doing is right." Mr. Crocker apologized tearfully to his family "for embarrassing and shaming them" and to the relatives of Tracy Fresquez, his victim. Mr. Crocker submitted, at this point in his life, to the Truth. And that Truth, even though he is a murderer, will set him free. **** According to the NIV Exhaustive concordance, the word truth is used 224 times in the Bible. One of the phrases recurring throughout Jesus’ ministry reads, "I tell you the truth." When the truth of the Bible is compromised, there is no sweet, roundabout way to avoid conflict. Emerson aptly said, "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both." Although in this phrase the word choice smacks a bit of arminianism, the fact remains that you cannot have both truth and repose. A lot of people today, however, are convinced that you can have both, never realizing that they have thereby lost their hold on Truth. Although they might agree with Mark Twain’s quote, "Truth is the most valuable thing we have", they subconsciously go one step further with him when he adds, "Let us economize on it." But there is no way to economize on the Truth of creation; there is no way to economize on the Truth of headship; there is no way to economize on the Truth of God’s judgment on homosexuality; and there is no way to economize on the Truth of being servants of one another in love and compassion. Because to economize on one principle does not cost merely one truth but the Truth. And only if you believe this Truth in your heart and confess this Truth with your mouth, shall you be saved. This is an abridged version of an article - "Remember: one lie does not cost you one truth but the Truth" - that first appeared in the June 1999 edition of Reformed Perspective....

Assorted

Why write?

You might not make a lot of money writing, but you can have an impact ***** It’s been said that all that is needed to become a writer is the strong desire to say something. Writing is simply taking your thoughts and research and organizing them on paper, or in your computer, or on your blog, to prove a point or tell a story. It may soothe someone’s soul, clear up a dispute, record family history, challenge someone to live a more godly life, or simply brighten a person’s day with humor or appreciation. This issue marks the 20th anniversary of my first article in Reformed Perspective, and over the years I’ve had people ask me how they could get started in writing. Sometimes what they mean is, “How can I make money off of writing?” and the short answer is, that probably isn’t a good motivation to write… at least not for most of us. I heard at a Christian writers' conference that with most books you might only make about a dollar off each one, so unless someone famous promotes your book, you won’t earn much. Magazines pay a bit, and if you can get into one with a larger circulation, it will pay more. Newspapers may take articles on a volunteer basis, or give you $25 (for the 6 hours you spent on it!). But getting paid is only one reason for honing your writing ability. In her book The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Edith Schaeffer shared that she thought there was all sorts of “art found in the ordinary areas of everyday life.” “Each person has, I believe, some talent which is unfulfilled in some hidden area of his being – a talent which could be expressed and developed.” Schaeffer pointed out that the ability to write ought to be used to express our creativity and/or to bless others, and not just considered as a way to possibly earn money. She gave many examples of how one might use writing in daily life, such as letters of appreciation, explanation or persuasion; poems, anecdotes, adventure, humor, family history, or stories given as a gift. Writing also helps the writers themselves organize their thoughts and process their feelings – as one best-selling author put it, “I write to find out what I think.” This is true of journaling and of writing fiction, as it can aid you in processing your own thoughts and emotions through your characters. So how did I get started? Let me outline how it has progressed for me. Writing just for fun I discovered in grade school that I enjoyed writing. In 5th grade I wrote 50 stories in 6 weeks to earn an A, and a funny poem in 6th grade that was well-received by my classmates. In high school I found essays very easy to write. However, when I got to college, my previous attempts were deemed "average" and I was challenged to improve. My professor said, "Somebody has to write the books and tracts and magazine articles – why not you?" I kept that advice in mind over the years. When I taught English Grammar and Composition for 5 years, I honed my abilities while seeking to inspire my students as I had been inspired. My interest in writing didn't stop when I got married and had 6 kids. I found opportunities to write for various company and club newsletters for free. I wrote occasional poems for family members, and composed songs for my children. I wrote Sunday School lessons for little children. I also wrote a letter to the sellers of a house we dearly wanted to purchase – and that letter caused us to win the bid! I wrote three articles for free for our local newspaper, which turned out to be good listable experience on my résumé since the articles were posted online. I also attended Christian writers' conferences. These seminars provided advice, encouragement, and connections with seasoned writers and publishers. One thing led to another We cannot know what we might do that will lead us to something else. As far as paid writing goes, here is how my journey has progressed: In 2005, with high hopes, I sent an article to Reformed Perspective. After improvements, my first and second articles were published. Then I was on a roll, tackling numerous topics for my own column, entitled "Soup and Buns." An article about those earlier Sunday School lessons that I had written with a friend, led to an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in California hiring me to write a 2-year curriculum entitled “Bible Overview for Young Children” with matching topics for ages 2-6 and 6-9. Copies have been sold to churches, families, and Ladies' Bible Study groups and given to missionaries. In 2009, I published a book, a collection of Reformed Perspective articles, entitled Soup and Buns: Nourishment from God's Word for Your Daily Struggles. From 2010 to 2013 I began writing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) paragraphs for clients' websites. Each paragraph of 350-500 words paid from $3 to $9 each. I found the opportunities through Upwork.com and wrote about everything from credit cards to chicken recipes. After a month using Upwork.com, I bid on three requests for community newsletter articles in small towns about an hour away. Note: those freebie newspaper articles I wrote a few years back were the proof to this new company that I knew how to write. They got me the job! One thing led to another, and soon I was invited to apply for a full-time position as their Publication Manager. I have continued to write for Reformed Perspective, and occasionally for Una Sancta (a Free Reformed Churches of Australia publication) and New Horizons (the OPC denominational magazine). I have a new book entitled Life and Breath and Everything which contains over 50 articles first published between 2010 and 2024. Encouragement The best writing teacher I ever encountered assigned numerous projects to her 7th graders, and graded them only on content. She wanted them to express, explain, or exult, not be exasperated! Each student then chose their favorite 3 projects and cleaned up all the grammar and punctuation in them for their final grade. If you had a teacher that frightened you away from writing by marking you down for each misplaced comma and word on every project, don't think that you cannot write. Write. Express yourself! If someone else is going to see it, fix it up before you deliver it. Very rarely is a first draft perfect. Conclusion In Ecclesiastes 9:10, we read, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." Schaeffer's book applies this to writing, but also to other forms of creativity, such as sketching, painting, cooking, gardening, or music. We all have God-given skills that can be used in our daily lives. The important thing is to start doing it, and then see where one thing might lead to another. Sharon's new book “Life and Breath and Everything” is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Her first book “Soup and Buns” and her “Bible Overview for Young Children” are available by contacting her at [email protected]....

Economics - Home Finances

“Honey I blew the budget!”

A FEW THOUGHTS ON GETTING BACK IN THE BLACK AFTER TAKING A PLUNGE IN THE RED “Honey I blew the budget!” Do those words sound familiar to you? Were you one of many Canadian couples that made a New Year’s resolution to build a budget and live according to it? And February 14th came along and you blew it? Or perhaps the budget was blown before you even started because your Christmas spending made the budget a non-event? Or perhaps it is a much less dramatic event that got you off to a bad start: you just can’t seem to stay within the amounts you had agreed on. How to start: prayer Let’s see if a frank discussion of some potential issues can benefit us all. Before we do that I believe that everyone should begin their budget process with prayer. Pray that God would grant you the courage you need to be honest with yourself and your spouse as you build the budget. Also pray that God will grant you a sense of satisfaction with the gifts He does grant. Pray that God remove the sense of covetousness from your heart. Pray that God would forgive your sense of entitlement if that is something you struggle with. A sense of entitlement? What do I mean with that last line? In my business I often hear the following excuse when a couple comes to me and they are having serious difficulty making ends meet. Often it is because one or both of them have what I call “a strong sense of entitlement.” They say things like, “We deserved that one-week vacation in Mexico because we both worked very hard these past three months.” Or, “I deserve that new dress or new suit, because I have not treated myself to anything new for a long time now.” Or perhaps you blew it on Valentines Day; you dropped in at the flower shop on your way home and purchased a dozen roses for your wife and then, when you got home, you told her, “Honey, I am taking you out for dinner tonight!” So you take her to that very special (read expensive) restaurant downtown. The dozen roses are $25 and the dinner was $100. But your entertainment budget for the month was $30. So what do we do now? Well, the temptation now is to reduce your contribution to the church for the month because the church, after all, has lots of other people that can pay. No easy way, but there is a way So, how can we deal with these kinds of blown budgets? Discipline. One word only. Discipline. There is no easy way to deal with this temptation. Once again, let me urge you to pray. In John 15 Jesus encourages his disciples to bear good fruit and He also says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (verse 7). You see! Jesus clearly says it. Of course we need to keep this in its context. Jesus is saying this in light of His other comments regarding the bearing of much fruit. I take this to mean that there is a relationship between what we are to ask for and bearing fruit. So, pray that God will help you in your struggle with covetousness. Or ask God to grant you His peace and satisfaction so that you are truly at peace with what He gives you and you don’t just use that Visa credit card that makes it so easy to grab “stuff” that God has not granted you. Looking at the grocery budget But let’s move on, because there may be other ways we can help you with your budget. Let’s take a hard look at your grocery budget. Do you really think $800 per month is what it takes to provide a family of five, two parents and three children, with all that is needed? Perhaps we can find a way to do this for $500. This is not always the most fun part of running a household but perhaps you can make it a little more enjoyable. First, it’s vitally important that you plan a menu for every day of the week. If you know that Monday you are going to have chicken and rice and a vegetable for dinner, then the two weeks before you can keep an eye on the flyers and purchase that chicken when it is on sale at one of the grocery stores. If you put together a planned menu for the entire month, you have a great weapon that you can use in your battle with the budget. If pork comes on sale this week and you know that there is pork planned for next Thursday’s dinner, buy it now when it is on sale, and freeze it. Or if your family regularly has oatmeal for breakfast, (I know, oatmeal is old school, but it’s healthy and it’s cheap) then find a store that sells oatmeal in bulk - leave the individual packages on the shelf and buy it in bulk. You will easily save 20 per cent. As I said earlier, grocery shopping is not always the most fun, but what you can also try is to band together with one or two of your friends. I know, for example, that here in Alberta one of the grocery outlets will give you a $25 gift card when you buy $250 dollars of groceries. So join forces. Go to the store with two or three of you. Make sure you all have a list - impulse buying is dynamite on grocery budgets (it blows them up!). When you go through the check-out, ask the cashier to sub-total at each person’s purchases. That saves you the hassle of having to total it up at home. And then share the gift card on your next trip. Try to purchase fruits and vegetables that are in season (when possible). In the summer and fall, find a farmer’s market and buy some extra beans and carrots and freeze them. Don’t improvise In my experience though, it is not the grocery dollars that destroy a budget; it is the impulse buying. It is the idea that I must have a new 40 or 50-inch television, even if that means it goes on a credit card. Or, it is the new stereo for the car or the new cellphone with all the latest technical stuff. Or even just the cellphone plan that we just have to have - the one with unlimited texting! - or the cable plan that has all those sports channels. or the new chesterfield and chair that we just have to have. The unexpected expenditure Some other things that can blow a budget are things like a hot water heater that bursts, or a furnace or a refrigerator that packs it in. Now these truly are valid items that need to be dealt with. But once again, a few tips may be beneficial. Check out the nearest used furniture and appliance outlet or go through the local free “buy and sell” magazine. You may be surprised at how often you can find a very good used furnace or a refrigerator (I have a used hot water heater stored away just in case). The wealthy in your town or city often will be replacing perfectly good mid-efficiency furnaces for a high-efficiency furnace and often you can buy their used one for as little as $200. Insurance There are some other areas in which we can save money as well. One of the areas I often look at with my clients is the cost of all their insurance. Call to a few other brokers and see if the premium you are paying to insure your home really is the best premium available. If you are not in BC or Manitoba, check the rate on your car insurance as well. Another high cost is the cost that many young people pay for life insurance. The life insurance industry will go to quite some lengths to show you why you need a million dollars of life insurance and a further $200,000 critical illness policy. But I would suggest that you look at that more carefully. Also look at the type of life insurance that you have. Ask the insurance salesman why he might be recommending whole life or universal life insurance when a 20-year-term policy at less than half the price may be all you really need. You won’t live like your parents Another mistake we often make is we compare what we have to what we had when we were still living with our parents. But remember, our parents have been working for 20 plus years and are often at the top of their pay scale while we are starting at the bottom of the pay scale. Once again, at risk of sounding repetitious, be satisfied with what God grants you. Greed and covetousness are sins that are spoken of in many places in God’s Word and these are sins that we need to fight against daily. So, if we go back to our initial statement, “I blew the budget,” don’t despair. Ask God to bless your attempt to start the process again. And do not be afraid to start a third or a fourth or even a tenth time. Living within a budget is a tough thing to do and it does require some determination. But when it works it works well....

News

Saturday Selections – Jan. 18, 2025

Click on the titles to go to the linked articles... Motorized machines in your cells? Yes there are! Kinesin are "motorized transport machines" that...

Conferences

Striving to be godly men

A men's conference that had to turn hundreds away can now be watched online ***** I don’t think I can quite grasp the measure of tension that must...

News

Trudeau resigned and Parliament prorogued – now what?

News

Charitable status of churches and religious charities threatened

News

Saturday Selections – Jan. 11, 2025

Music as the fingerprints of God (6 min) George Steiner here is lecturing on the wonder of music and is not trying to argue that music points us to God. But he does believe it points us beyond materialism – our response to music shows that we are more than what we are made of. " speaks to us that there is something else which, paradoxically, belongs to us profoundly but somehow touches on a universal meaning and possibility that we are not only an electrochemical and neuro-physiological assemblage; that there is more in consciousness than electronic wiring." Evolution can't explain eggs This is a bit of a technical one, but even if you get only the gist, you'll understand just how amazing the seemingly simplest things around us really are. It's only because we take God's engineering for granted that we can overlook the wonder that is an egg shell. Evolution has to explain how they could come to be in some step-by-step evolutionary process? As if. Trudeau is gone, so who is going to replace him? The Liberals are about to run a leadership campaign, but have this worry: "One of the key concerns that is out there is that the party could be prone to something approaching a takeover, or could be prone to a lot of people who don't give a hoot about the Liberal party who might be termed single-interest activists signing up and having a very real impact on the selection of our next leader." Is anyone plotting a pro-life takeover? Should we be? Abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide in 2024. And it wasn't even close. 45 million unborn babies were aborted last year – so relayed Jonathon Van Maren. That number is more than the population of all of Canada. In the US abortion accounts for 60% of all African American deaths. To put this number in a different context, COVID killed approximately 7 million in total over 4 years and in response we shut down the world. Six times more die each year from abortion and no notice is paid. Who will stand up for the unborn? Will you? Will any politician? Will you vote for a politician who won't? The danger of being a sermon critic As Tim Challies explains, if you focus on what you think should have been there, you run the risk of missing the fruit that is there. Amazing information packed inside you (12 min) This video makes the point your DNA coding is more incredible than even the most complicated computer code, but it also kind of reduces us to just that information.... as if we could make a human if we only managed this same level of programming. So, as you watch, recall that we are more than our matter, being both body and an immaterial, eternal soul. ...

Assorted

How to be happier

Keep long lists, and short accounts ***** As I pad down the hallway to my home office, sometimes I’ll look down and remember that the laminate planking I’m walking on was laid down with the help of friends. I’m not the best with a hammer or saw, so while I did some of the sweating, my friends brought the skill. I was so very thankful at the time, and now whenever I remember it’s a warm feeling still. As of late I’ve been remembering these friends more often because of a curious book. It’s about a guy who set out to personally thank every person involved in getting him his morning brew. There’s the barista, of course, but a farmer had to grow the beans, and then there’s all the people in between – it turns out there are an astonishing number of people involved in a simple cup of coffee. Who picks the blend? How many are involved in the actual roasting? Someone had to design the lid (there’s quite some engineering to it), and then there’s the coffee cup sleeve – there wasn’t always a sleeve – and when we remember that coffee is about 1 percent beans and 99 percent water, then there’s a whole municipal water department to thank too. And who makes the pipes that carry the water? We haven’t even gotten into the boats and trucks involved and all the crews who man and make them. A long list to be thankful for This guy wanted to personally thank everyone involved but quickly realized that might amount to millions. So he narrowed it down to the one thousand most directly involved. G.K. Chesterton said that, “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude,” and this book was an eye-opener for just how many blessings I’ve been taking for granted. If thousands – millions – are involved in making a cup of coffee, how many could I thank for everything I find even on my short journey from bed to shower each morning? How many designers, engineers, miners, and factory workers were involved in making the Kindle that wakes us up each morning? And what about our bedding, the bedroom carpet, bathroom tiles and that long-shower necessity, our tankless water heater? I normally clomp past it all, but I could choose to start each day just looking around in amazement. As Chesterton reminds us, “gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” The author of this book is a sometimes-blasphemous atheist (which is why I’m not sharing his name - I don’t want to promote him) but even as an atheist he recognizes that his disposition to grumpy ingratitude isn’t good… for him. “…gratitude is the single-best predictor of well-being and good relationships, beating out twenty-four other impressive traits such as hope, love, and creativity. As the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says, ‘Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.’” But why is thankfulness next to joyfulness? He doesn’t seem to know, but we do. God created us to glorify Him and then gave us innumerable reasons to do just that. And because He loves us, He so fashioned mankind that when we do what we were made to do, it is good for us. And He’s so gracious that even when we do a half measure, thanking the people around us, but forgetting the God Who made us, it is good for us still. Sometimes we need a Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk – someone outside the Church – to remind us of what we have, and what unbelievers don’t. I was struck by that here, when this author shared, “…I’ll occasionally start a meal by thanking a handful of people who helped get our food to the plate. I’ll say, ‘Thank you to the farmer who grew the carrots, to the truck driver who hauled them, to the cashier at Gristedes grocery story who rang me up.’” This fellow is “praying” to people he knows will never hear him because he feels such a need to express gratitude. To quote Chesterton again, “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.” When I look around the dinner table at the food that’s there once again, and the family gathered around, and when I really stop to think of all I’ve been given here, my heart can’t help but swell, but now there’s another blessing I can bring to my giving, loving Father – I can thank God that I can thank God! Keeping short accounts But if Christians have so much to be thankful for, why aren’t we more joyful? Why am I too often grumpy, sullen, and short to the people God has gifted me? Part of it is that we take so much for granted. We easily forget what we have, so there’s something to keeping a thankful journal. Around Thanksgiving each year my wife gets some notecards and encourages us each day to draw something we’re grateful for, and then we put the cards up on the hallway wall. It’s quite the display by month’s end. But even more of it is taking for granted the biggest gift we’ve been given: forgiveness. In his booklet How to Maintain Joy in Your Life, Jim Wilson shares how, upon his conversion, he experienced joy liked he’d never had chasing after the world’s substitutes. But as this Navy midshipman set out on his Christian journey, he found that joy diminishing. And it continued diminishing for the next three years. Sitting in the stateroom of an American destroyer stationed in the Sea of Japan, he was struck that for the 3 years since his conversion he hadn’t really been confessing his sins. Oh, sure, he’d confessed some sins, but there were many he hadn’t taken to God for all sorts of reasons. When he confessed his sins, God forgave him, and once again he started feeling that same joy. Guilt is a weight. But, thanks to Jesus, it’s one we don’t have to carry. Guilt is also God’s way of getting our attention. As it says in Hebrews 12:11: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Jim Wilson was trained by that discipline, but like the rest of us, he was a slow learner. “I would again disobey, get disciplined, and lose my joy. This time, instead of not confessing, I would confess after a while… ten hours, a week, 2 weeks.” Eventually he realized that he didn’t have to wait to confess his sins – he could “keep short accounts.” Then, instead of a series of ups when he was forgiven, and downs when he wouldn’t go to God (or at least not yet), he started to experience ongoing joy. “Sometimes I went for a while before confessing, but generally I would confess right away or within a couple of hours. I’m not saying I have not sinned in those years…. But I have a low tolerance for discipline. I do not like it. As long as I am unrepentant, the discipline stays on me, the hand of the Lord is heavy. I can remove the discipline of the Lord by repenting now.” For those of us who’d prefer to stay miserable, he concludes his booklet with a list of what you can do instead of confessing your sin. You can justify, excuse, or hide it. You can blame someone else, procrastinate, or stand on pride. A favorite for many is “generalization,” where you readily admit “mistakes were made” without really getting into the dirt of what you did. But tricking yourself doesn’t trick God, and you can’t enjoy Him if you are hiding from Him. Conclusion If you want to be happier, it isn’t complicated. Open your eyes wide, and see the world as it really is. There are troubles, but then there is God, and He continues to bless us beyond any measuring. And the biggest of those blessings is that we can know for certain – we can count on Him – that when we come to our Father with our sins, He will always and forever forgive. That’s got me a little verklempt but I can assure you, they are happy tears....

In a Nutshell

Tidbits – January 2025

Flying Duck Orchid God's inventiveness is sometimes so shockingly inventive, it might make you laugh out loud. This is a real flower called the "Flying Duck Orchid" that actually looks like the bird in flight (see above). Is Christianity good for the world? God's critics love to attack all the good He gives. But Gary Bates, the former CEO of Creation Ministries International, once told a short story that shows just how apparent God's goodness is, even to those who try to deny it. "Two of my colleagues were speaking on an Australian Christian radio station a few years ago....and a young geology student....told my colleague that Christianity was "not much good," and that she was drawn to religions like Buddhism or Islam. My colleague asked her what country in the world she would choose in which to raise her future children. “'Australia, of course,' she replied. "He shot back: 'If it couldn’t be Australia, what would be your next choice?' “'Umm … America, I guess … or maybe England.' “'And if that isn’t possible?' “'Well,' she replied, hesitating, 'probably Germany … or Switzerland …' "After she had been prodded to consider several more, my colleague pointed out that she did not cite any predominantly Buddhist or Islamic nations. Her ‘wish list’ was made up entirely of countries that most would define as having a Christian foundation (despite their rapid decline into secularism)." My colleague wrote: “Of course, our young lady’s choices were neither unusual nor surprising. Not even the most vehement Christian-bashers would prefer to bring their children up in Iran, Burma, Saudi Arabia or the like. But rarely would any of them make a connection between their choice of countries and the Bible.” SOURCES: Gary Bates' 2013 End of the year letter; He culled the story from Dr. Carl Wieland's "One Human Family" On reputation “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” – Coach John Wooden Hebrews 12:6-7 in fiction In Russell Hoban's Bedtime for Frances, Frances is having some troubles staying in bed. Thankfully, when Frances has once again gotten out of bed and padded to her her parents' room, her Father knows just what to say. "'How can the wind have a job?' asked Frances. "'Everybody has a job,' said Father. 'I have to go to my office every morning at nine o'clock. That is my job. You have to go to sleep so you can be wide awake for school tomorrow. That is your job.' "Frances said, 'I know, but...' "Father said, 'I have not finished. If the wind does not blow the curtains, he will be out of a job. If I do not go to the office, I will be out of a job. And if you do not go to sleep now, do you know what will happen to you?' "'I will be out of a job?' said Frances. "'No,' said Father. "'I will get a spanking?' said Frances. "'Right!' said Father. "'Good night!' said Frances, and she went back to her room.” On the pull of power "Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote." – Alexander Solzhenitsyn Two great lines from a great book "Don't trust in your strength, because there is such a thing as pride. "Don't despair in your weakness, because there is such a thing as forgiveness." – Trevin Wax, from his "Clear Winter Nights" Democracy needs Christ as King “If you want to defend democracy, you must first understand why. It’s not because the people are always right, as some hyper-democrats have claimed. Remember that, given the choice, the people cried, 'Give us Barabbas!' The reason we defend democracy is that, in a fallen world, no man or woman can be trusted with absolute power; so those who govern must be made accountable to those they govern. “But the electorate, in turn, must have a standard to which the government is held accountable – a fixed standard of right and wrong. And unless that standard is transcendent – from a source higher than the shifting tides of public opinion – society will inevitably descend into the Law of the Jungle: 'Might makes right.' The transcendent, immutable standards of Biblical justice and compassion are the only reliable protection for the weak and helpless." – Ron Gray, former leader of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada A peculiar blessing “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go.” – attributed to Abraham Lincoln 7 one-liners Give Satan an inch and he'll become a ruler. Morality, like art, consists of drawing a line somewhere. Don't put a question mark where God put a period. When it comes to giving, some people stop at nothing. A Bible that is falling apart probably belongs to someone who isn’t. If evolution is true, why do mothers have only two hands? Give God what’s right…not what’s left. SOURCE: from material circulating the Internet A man in a pit A man fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out. A liberal came along and said, “I feel your pain.” A conservative walked by and said, “Only bad people fall into pits.” A politician promised, “We’ll pass a law banning pits.” An optimist said, “Things could be worse.” A pessimist claimed, “Things will get worse.” A news reporter wanted the exclusive on the pit. A socialist was angry there weren’t more rich people in pits. A capitalist left to look for investors to build a toll bridge over the pit. A self-pitying person said, “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen my pit!” A fire and brimstone preacher thundered, “You deserve your pit!” A psychologist noted, “Your mother and father are to blame for you being in that pit.” A self-esteem therapist said, “Believe in yourself and you can get out of that pit.” A Christian, seeing the man, said, “Jesus would want me to help you out of this pit,” took him by the hand and lifted him out. Source: adapted from a bit in Cal and Rose Somra’s "More Holy Humor" The wit and wisdom of Will Rogers Years ago, comedian Will Rogers got a laugh when he noted: “We don't seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?” Today governments in North America and Europe are using this method to deal with prostitution, illegal drugs and gambling. They’re turning Rogers’ small, gentle joke into a big bad one....

News

Saturday Selections – Jan. 4, 2025

"Are you Christian?" (3 min) In this "sermon jam" Paul Washer challenges his listeners to really examine their lives. Why Christians should be the most pessimistic and least pessimistic people on Earth One thing that sets Christianity apart from Islam and every other religion on earth is that it is entirely pessimistic about Man's ability to please God. But Christians shouldn't be pessimistic about the state of the world. Yes, there are troubles, but God hasn't let us fall into utter depravity and He also continues to shower blessings on an undeserving world such that here in the West we are richer than people 100 years ago could have ever imagined. So why then, does it always seem to us why this past year was a doozy, and this upcoming election is always the one that matters most? Turns out there are "7 laws of pessimism" – this is an entirely secular take, but one that Christians can read to take warning of how the temptation of ingratitude can so easily and sneakily come our way. The myth of sexual experience The world says it's important for dating couples to test their “sexual compatibility" before they consider marrying. But the data says God's ways are best – couples who were sexually inexperienced before marrying are more than twice as likely to be "very satisfied" compared with couples who were highly experienced. Courage: the virtue that enables all others If you were tempted, like me, to nitpick this title, then consider this question: is Love, without the courage to speak needed truth to a loved one who doesn't want to hear it, really love? Or is it courage, that enables true love? In this article and accompanying podcast, Jonathon Van Maren speaks to a particularly courageous woman, and new Christian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Two collections of Bible reading plans It's a new year, and, like many of you, that means I'm renewing my resolution to read through the Bible. And I'm looking to some good advice to: Pick a partner to read it with, to build up the positive peer pressure Don't sweat it if I miss a day... or a week – just continue on with that day's reading rather than trying to catch up. Engage with what I read – the point is to know God better, not mark ticks down. Nancy Pearcey on biblical masculinity and the Cultural Mandate Nancey Pearcey, author of The Toxic War on Masculinity, points to some pop culture ideas of what a man should be like – self-sufficient, isolationist, independent – and contrasts that with what the Bible says. ...

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