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how to change the world.

Posted on by Wick

I don’t have a chart on which to give myself a “Gold Star” at the end of each day, and yet it’s something I try to do as often as possible.   I make it a goal to tell each of my daughters, one of their tasks that has already begun, is to change the world.  Usually this comes after a prayer about “God’s love filling our hearts”, or a compliment on how I see the Love of God in their lives.  I admit, it doesn’t happen every day.  But I do think it happens often enough that they’re connecting the dots.

Who they are, and what God is doing in their life, is meant to change the world.  Not someday, when they get big/popular/famous/rich enough.  But right now, through simple acts of humility, love, forgiveness, charity, grace, friendship, sacrifice, etc.

I’ll be honest: when I opened this window to write today, I was preparing to tackle a different issue.  There was a megachurch, that most of us probably really enjoy the fruit of, that also has quite a bit of fruit that doesn’t taste like Jesus.  I wanted to write a post, pointing out their problems, and believing that might encourage us to “do it right”.  But I think I’d rather spend more time pointing out my daughters, and have you be encouraged to change the world with them.

It’s not difficult, and not for only a few.  It’s an invitation we’ve all been offered in scripture and in relationship to Jesus.  And I think it looks like this:

1. Love. Not warm fuzzy, smiles all the time, and marshmallow bunnies here.  I mean real love.  Love that is always there, even when there’s disagreement.  Love that will speak Truth from a God we believe to be the source of all love.  Love that sits by you even when you stink.  Love that is willing to be vulnerable, even if it knows you might take advantage of it.  (think Jesus, not a woman in an unhealthy relationship with a controlling boyfriend)  We discover what love looks like with each of our children, and aim to show it/reinforce it whether it’s been a great day, or incredibly stressful/tense.  We help them to see what love might look like, even in the face of “friends” who don’t have their best interests in mind.

2. Simple.  It doesn’t take thousands of people, bright lights, loud music, and high emotions to change a city or the world.  It takes simple acts that go outside the normal routines of life.  Calling people to “pause” and consider the fact that they’re loved or valued by you, because they’re loved and valued by God.  Helping two sides of a conflict to see beyond their own desires to win, and connecting them to the humanity on the other side of the issue.  We invite our children to join us in tasks of communicating love and value to others.  Even as simple as praying for someone before bed, or giving up that bed when they come to visit.courage

3. Faithful.  In a world guided by “what feels right”, we change the world when we are faithful.  To a family, to a church body, to a spouse, to a friend.  When we make a commitment, there’s a higher purpose to that covenant.  God is revealed when His people go out into a world swayed by every new report/feeling, and stand firmly as followers of Christ, who have peace enough to Trust Him with tomorrow.  We call our children to be aware of what commitments we make as a family, and help honor them.

4. Self-less.  Even as I write this, I’ve received the latest ad for “The Mockingjay – Part 1”.  A great story, for sure.  The tagline even reads, “The courage of one will change the world.”  But I’m not putting the hope of tomorrow on my daughters strapping up for a battle-to-the-death against the evil in our world.  I’m inviting them to realize “The Love of One HAS changed the world.”  Forever.  That as we give up our appetites and self-serving inclinations, and instead love our neighbors AND our enemies – we continue in small part what Jesus began and promises to bring to completion.  We invite our children to envision regularly how they might put others and Christ first….even if mommy and daddy could still use practice in this area. (admittedly daddy more than mommy) 🙂

5. Etc.  I realize this is not an exhaustive list.  Nor do I sprinkle scripture throughout it like a really good blogger or pastor should.  Nevertheless….there’s some good stuff in here.  I should probably read it again sometime down the road….:)

Posted in Different Moments, Uncategorized

bedtime prayers.

Posted on by Wick

Sometimes we can spend a few minutes in prayer, and move straight into our bedtime story without anything seemingly significant happening or being said.  On those nights, we believe the significant “thing” is simply the faithful prayers, and routines/rhythms of a home that values coming before God together.  Even when parts of the prayer seem rote and automatic, we make time and space available for hearts and minds to be honest before each other and before God.

We confess: there are nights this doesn’t happen.   (gasp)  We’re not too worried about forcing a child who was sleeping in the van on the way home to wake up and have a prayer time.  Or when mommy & daddy are wiped from a long hard day, we’ve been known to skip right to hugs and “good nights”.  But more oft than not, the days close with a pause for prayer and conversation about what God is doing in our hearts and lives.  If it does seem like the prayers become more repeating a few quick things without much pause for thought, we mix it up.  Some nights we ask each daughter individually what’s on her heart and mind, and then a parent will summarize all of these things in one family prayer.

Our church is beginning another emphasis on prayer right now as a reminder.  I’ve written before about the helpful reminder found in “7-5-2”.  It’s not a magic formula, and prayer does not guarantee a healthy family/home.  But prayer brings together hearts and minds in the presence of God, and when that’s done on a regular basis….it sure offers a great place for His Love and our relationships to grow.

Here’s a short video, where my hidden iPhone camera catches the unpolished prayers of our 5 and 6 year olds. It may help to know that we are adopting a daughter from Africa currently, our church is praying for a young woman named Mollie who’s been bed-bound for a while now, and our extended family were on their way to visit us that weekend…

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lake.

Posted on by Wick

In honor of Governor Bond Lake, where I’ll be spending this weekend for a Senior High Labor Day Retreat, an excerpt from one of my favorite books:

“The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous.  I have in my minds’ eye the western indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scolloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between.  The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from the water’s edge; for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary to it…IMGP0704

…A lake is the landscapes most beautiful and expressive feature.  It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.  The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, “the glassy surface of a lake.”  When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another.  You would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows that skim over might perch on it.  Indeed, they sometimes dive below the line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived.  As you look over the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it.  It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again.  It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like imperfections in glass.  You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it.  From a hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake.  It is wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised – this piscine murder will out, – and from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in diameter.  You can even detect a water-bug ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off, for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly.  When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely cover it.  It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees.  Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again.  Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast.  The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable.  How peaceful the phenomena of the lake!  Again the works of man shine as in the spring.  Ay; every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning.  Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo!” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden