Nancy Wilson's Blog, page 33

January 4: Tender Hearts

We are exhorted to be tenderhearted in Ephesians 4:32: “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” We see it again in 1 Peter 3:8: “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous.”

Though all Christians are called to be tenderhearted, this quality is generally cutting with the grain with women. “Mother love” is sensitive, gentle, full of pity, sympathetic, forgiving and so forth. Women are generally good at these things, showing mercy, anticipating needs, extending comfort, and multitasking all of it. No one needs to tell a mother to love on her baby unless she is a hardhearted woman.

This kind of love is not sentimental, cutsie love. That kind of love can’t go the distance. Sentimental love is about the warm feeling I get when I do nice things for others; it is not really about the others. Jesus was not getting good feelings when He died on the Cross. Far from it. Real tenderheartedness is sacrificial, like Jesus’ love for His bride.

Jesus describes His love for Israel this way: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). This love is sacrificial in hostile conditions, not just an affectionate feeling. This is like a hen protecting her brood from the attack from some predator. This love lays its life aside for others.

God is restoring His image in us, making us like Jesus Christ. Though we may be have some natural inclinations toward  tenderheartedness, sin disrupts and hardens us. But God can and does restore us, and He give us the means to be tenderhearted toward one another when we don’t really feel like it. Like when we are weary or needy ourselves. This kind of love extends itself until it is completely spent. Only God can create that kind of love in our hearts.

Every home needs a tenderhearted woman in the center of it, even if you live all alone. Ask God to give you a tender heart. Excel in this! Back to 1 Peter 3:9: “Knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.”

January 3: Proverbs 14:30

“A sound heart is life to the body,

But envy is rottenness to the bones.”

Envy isn’t always obvious. Today I’d like to think about the kind of envy that presents itself as a desire to do a good job – using that as a way to keep us from noticing what it actually is.

When caring for children and the home is what you do full time, you will spend much of your time trying to problem solve. How to get the laundry running smoothly, how to make the playroom functional, how to have the living room be the playroom but still somewhere a person could sit if necessary. How to work through the temper tantrums that your toddler has begun throwing, how to make a birthday fun, how to make your grocery budget last the month. These are the sorts of problems that you work on full time.

But what if there is always a solution that is just outside of your grasp? What if all you need to do your job well is more money? A bigger home, a husband who knows what to say or build the things you think of, children who obey, a better washing machine, a dishwasher, a second car, a second income, more time, more friends, more help from someone?

What if in the course of all your problem solving the solutions are always the things that you don’t have?

Well let’s look back at this verse – a sound heart gives life to to the body. The ESV translated sound as tranquil. A still heart. A heart that isn’t grasping. A heart that is trying to solve the problems that it does have, and not the solutions that it doesn’t. A heart that is thankful for the husband it has and not the counsel it doesn’t have.

Envy of this sort isn’t just not helpful, it is downright destructive. When you are at peace with your situation, with the gifts you have been given, your bones are free to have strength. The bones of your housework, the bones of your work with your children, the bones of your relationship to your husband. When your heart is still, your bones are strong, but when you begin to envy, to look everywhere else, your foundations will fail you.

This verse describes the peace of contentment as more than just prevention – it describes it as a life-giving thing. Contentment gives life to to the body, but envy makes the bones rot.

 

January 3: Proverbs 14:29

“A sound heart is life to the body,

But envy is rottenness to the bones.”

Envy isn’t always obvious. Today I’d like to think about the kind of envy that presents itself as a desire to do a good job – using that as a way to keep us from noticing what it actually is.

When caring for children and the home is what you do full time, you will spend much of your time trying to problem solve. How to get the laundry running smoothly, how to make the playroom functional, how to have the living room be the playroom but still somewhere a person could sit if necessary. How to work through the temper tantrums that your toddler has begun throwing, how to make a birthday fun, how to make your grocery budget last the month. These are the sorts of problems that you work on full time.

But what if there is always a solution that is just outside of your grasp? What if all you need to do your job well is more money? A bigger home, a husband who knows what to say or build the things you think of, children who obey, a better washing machine, a dishwasher, a second car, a second income, more time, more friends, more help from someone?

What if in the course of all your problem solving the solutions are always the things that you don’t have?

Well let’s look back at this verse – a sound heart gives life to to the body. The ESV translated sound as tranquil. A still heart. A heart that isn’t grasping. A heart that is trying to solve the problems that it does have, and not the solutions that it doesn’t. A heart that is thankful for the husband it has and not the counsel it doesn’t have.

Envy of this sort isn’t just not helpful, it is downright destructive. When you are at peace with your situation, with the gifts you have been given, your bones are free to have strength. The bones of your housework, the bones of your work with your children, the bones of your relationship to your husband. When your heart is still, your bones are strong, but when you begin to envy, to look everywhere else, your foundations will fail you.

This verse describes the peace of contentment as more than just prevention – it describes it as a life-giving thing. Contentment gives life to to the body, but envy makes the bones rot.

 

January 2: Good News

Before God sent Good News in His Son Jesus Christ, there was bad news. This bad news is that our hearts (as Jeremiah 17:9 puts it) are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. That is very bad news indeed. And complicating this further, God sees our hearts (1 Samuel 16:7) and all the vile things that come out of them (Matthew 15:18-19). Proverbs (27:19) says “As in water face reflects face, so a man’s heart reveals the man.” We are all exposed before God, each and every one of us.

But God’s Good News is powerful to save us in this desperate condition. “I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7).

Our response to this Good News is to put and keep our trust in the living God.”The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart…that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:8-9).

So let’s review this material: 1. Our hearts are corrupt and God sees them in all their stench and filth. 2. Only God can change our hearts. 3. We must never trust our own hearts, but put our trust in God who is powerful to save.

This is Good News for the New Year and for always.

 

January 1: Proverbs 11:24-25

Happy New Year, All! We thought we would try something new this year – alongside our normal posts, we are going to give  a whirl at a daily devotional post. Hopefully soon there will be a special place for you to find them – but until then, they will just show up in the regular mix.

There is one who scatters, yet increases more;

And there is one who withholds more than is right,

But it leads to poverty.

 The generous soul will be made rich,

And he who waters will also be watered himself.

These verses are such a beautiful picture of God’s intention for His people to be givers. He loves to bless those who give, who scatter. God is not endorsing a tight fist, in fact, that is what He breaks with poverty. And of course He isn’t talking about simply giving money here. As mothers, we could simply substitute words like energy, love, joy, provision, interest, delight, time. Anything that we know we should give, and yet still want to keep for ourselves. But haven’t you ever spent a day trying to save your energy, trying to build up some joy for yourself? And yet – at the end of the day, that is not a dam that God wants us to have. He wants our rivers flowing fast – flowing furiously over waterfalls, splashing recklessly all around. He does not want us tending peaceful little ponds. The promise in these verses is that God will provide our tributaries. He wants us to rest in that, and to give freely what He has and is giving to us.

When we give what God has given us – when we scatter it recklessly – we are transformed (through His continued blessing) into a vehicle of His blessings for others. We become tributaries to what will become rivers of reckless giving. When we give beyond our apparent capacity – when we give of ourselves, of all that we have been given, we learn to rely on the provisions of God, and we know He is always capable of a rainstorm,  melting snowcaps, and springs that flow out of the driest of rocks.

He who waters will also be watered himself.

January 1, Proverbs 11:24-25

Happy New Year, All! We thought we would try something new this year – alongside our normal posts, we are going to give  a whirl at a daily devotional post. Hopefully soon there will be a special place for you to find them – but until then, they will just show up in the regular mix.

There is one who scatters, yet increases more;

And there is one who withholds more than is right,

But it leads to poverty.

 The generous soul will be made rich,

And he who waters will also be watered himself.

These verses are such a beautiful picture of God’s intention for His people to be givers. He loves to bless those who give, who scatter. God is not endorsing a tight fist, in fact, that is what He breaks with poverty. And of course He isn’t talking about simply giving money here. As mothers, we could simply substitute words like energy, love, joy, provision, interest, delight, time. Anything that we know we should give, and yet still want to keep for ourselves. But haven’t you ever spent a day trying to save your energy, trying to build up some joy for yourself? And yet – at the end of the day, that is not a dam that God wants us to have. He wants our rivers flowing fast – flowing furiously over waterfalls, splashing recklessly all around. He does not want us tending peaceful little ponds. The promise in these verses is that God will provide our tributaries. He wants us to rest in that, and to give freely what He has and is giving to us.

When we give what God has given us – when we scatter it recklessly – we are transformed (through His continued blessing) into a vehicle of His blessings for others. We become tributaries to what will become rivers of reckless giving. When we give beyond our apparent capacity – when we give of ourselves, of all that we have been given, we learn to rely on the provisions of God, and we know He is always capable of a rainstorm,  melting snowcaps, and springs that flow out of the driest of rocks.

He who waters will also be watered himself.

Counting our Days

As tempting as it is to come up with ten New Year’s Resolutions, I thought better of it, and I decided to consider Psalm 90:12 instead. Maybe I can come up with ten things to learn from this short verse.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (KJV).

Or in the NKJV: “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

1. Apparently we must be taught to number our days, because otherwise we naively think we have an unlimited supply. The calendars just keep whizzing by, year after year, and we think nothing of it. But God has put a lesson on the board, and we are to learn it.

2. It is also clear from this prayer that the psalmist assumes God is the only suitable teacher for this material. No one else is capable because no one else understands it. We just don’t get it. We need the Holy Spirit to do His work so we will learn this important, central, vital  lesson. In other words, this is a big deal, not a minor detail.

3. The end of this teaching is wisdom. We don’t learn to count down how many days we have left on this earth so that we can party to the end. We are looking for wisdom here. Wisdom is what we want and obviously need, and it doesn’t just grow on trees. We must be taught. That means sitting down at our desk and licking our pencil.

4. If we really get this lesson, if we learn that time is a gift to us with limitations,  it will result in wisdom. Wisdom is when we come to the application part of the sermon. Wisdom results in doing something.

5. When we consider that our end is nearer than we thought, this steadies us up a bit and puts life in perspective. It gives us a healthy sense of urgency. How important is it that you continue this fuss with your sister, for example? Wisdom helps you get it right and cover it with love and forget about it. Now. Not tomorrow.

6. This knowledge also results in gratitude. We are more thankful for each day when we understand our life is a mist. How many more times will you sit down at the table with your family? How many mornings will you wake up to see the sun? How many more times will you get to sit in church and hear a sermon and sing the “Doxology”? Ten times? Two times? One hundred times? Wisdom makes each one count.

7. If I see that the gas gauge of days left for me is under the halfway mark, maybe even under the quarter mark (and there’s no filling it back up again), I’m not tempted to spend my time dragging Main Street, wasting my resources. I consider my ways. This is walking by faith.

8. When I think my days have a stop mark, I might start to get my house in order. What kind of legacy am I leaving behind? If you knew you only had ten days left, what kind of things would you take care of? Are there bills unpaid, apologies to be made, letters unanswered, things unsaid that need to be said,  forgiveness to be sought or extended? Numbering our days makes us rush to get these things done. It’s a good kind of pressure.

9. Numbering our days makes us count our blessings, which far outnumber our days no matter how many we have. This goes back to #6. Today is my anniversary. How many blessings have resulted from my marriage to this man of mine? An infinite number that only God can count. Blessing upon blessing. And how many blessings did I receive from my parents? Innumerable. And my children? Can’t count that high. And the grandkids? Now that’s impossible. All I can do is thank God for the mounting pile of blessings that He has poured out and continues to pour out on my head.

10. Finally, none of this is meant to make us morbid. God wouldn’t want us to learn to number our days if it would make us fearful or negative.  If it does, then we haven’t learned it correctly. When God teaches us to number our days, we are wise, not frantic. Wisdom is a glorious thing. It is peaceful. Therefore, we should get wisdom.

The New Year is a great moment to begin learning how to count down with joy the days that are left to us. Then we can gratefully fill each remaining one with faith in our good God. He has planned good works for us to walk in, so we had better keep our eye on our opportunities and apply our hearts to wisdom.

And of course: Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!

Feeling a little Stressy this Christmas?

I wrote a post for Resurgence on a few ways to control the stress of Christmas, which you can read here.

I should have written number 7 – wrap every gift the moment it comes in, but that would have been hypocritical. Enjoy!

Some Better Pictures of Christmas (because the last one was so bad)

So we have been trying to rev our way into Christmas. About time, I know! Our Advent mittens are up at last. Here is my sweet Daphne showing us a few:

 

There is a little craft fair tonight that is raising money for our teacher’s Christmas gifts. I made some doll sleeping bags which were super simple and quick (once I got around to actually doing them – that part took a long time). I used this tutorial, fabric I had in my fabric stash (I admit I love funky older fabrics, and this was a fun time to use them). My brilliant innovation that I am stupidly proud of was using nylon potholder loops for the ties. Super simple and fast, and they come in cute colors, which you already knew because they are all over your house.

So yesterday, for the Advent surprise the kids got to go shopping in the stuff that I made for the craft fair and each pick something. Titus picked one of the bear/dog/mouse/mystery animals that I knit, and Lina picked a tiny raccoon, and the other girls picked sleeping bags. You just can’t sew twelve doll sleeping bags and not let your own girls have one, and I know myself well enough to know “I’ll make more later” was a bad idea.

I also made one of the most random standby recipes of ours: a little gem we call Trash Corn.

I got the recipe originally off of a random google for popcorn recipes. However, it was called something like “Razzle Dazzle Popcorn Classy Surprise”. Motivated by forces I cannot remember I made it, and lo, it was delicious. The original recipe calls for a final dusting of edible glitter. Makes for an all around more elegant popcorn experience. I was plumb out of food glitter and didn’t have the time to run to the store today, so this batch is a little less classy. I bought the mixed nuts at costco, and they claimed to be “extra fancy” so that should make up for something. Here is how I do it. Pop 4 bags of popcorn – I use the kind that is less fake butter. Healthy pop? Something like that. I take the popcorn out, making sure to leave the old maids behind to not break teeth, and put them all in a clean (duh) unscented (of course) trash bag. Then I melt three bags of white chocolate chips. I throw a bunch of craisins in the bag, and a healthy spattering of mixed nuts. These include the macadamia nuts and exclude the monster brazil nut attention hogs. Pour in the melted chocolate, and twist the bag shut leaving a air pocket in it. Then shake. When it is all semi-evenly coated, you spread it out on something and sprinkle with cinnamon. Kind of a lot of cinnamon. Edible glitter at this phase if you are classy like us. Then you invite people to eat it, and you won’t need to ask them again.

And today in super happy knitting news, I finished Shadrach’s Christmas Radcoon.

I love knitted toys, but don’t love knitting them the most. So I think that this Racoon’s super-power is pushing through to the end, because that is how his cape was made. By the sweat of hating seed stitch. But, he is adorable. But not as adorable as Radrach himself, as you can see.

It is just getting merrier around here every minute!

Some Better Pictures of Christmas (than that last one that was so bad).

So we have been trying to rev our way into Christmas. About time, I know! Our Advent mittens are up at last. Here is my sweet Daphne showing us a few:

 

There is a little craft fair tonight that is raising money for our teacher’s Christmas gifts. I made some doll sleeping bags which were super simple and quick (once I got around to actually doing them – that part took a long time). I used this tutorial, fabric I had in my fabric stash (I admit I love funky older fabrics, and this was a fun time to use them). My brilliant innovation that I am stupidly proud of was using nylon potholder loops for the ties. Super simple and fast, and they come in cute colors, which you already knew because they are all over your house.

So yesterday, for the Advent surprise the kids got to go shopping in the stuff that I made for the craft fair and each pick something. Titus picked one of the bear/dog/mouse/mystery animals that I knit, and Lina picked a tiny raccoon, and the other girls picked sleeping bags. You just can’t sew twelve doll sleeping bags and not let your own girls have one, and I know myself well enough to know “I’ll make more later” was a bad idea.

I also made one of the most random standby recipes of ours: a little gem we call Trash Corn.

I got the recipe originally off of a random google for popcorn recipes. However, it was called something like “Razzle Dazzle Popcorn Classy Surprise”. Motivated by forces I cannot remember I made it, and lo, it was delicious. The original recipe calls for a final dusting of edible glitter. Makes for an all around more elegant popcorn experience. I was plumb out of food glitter and didn’t have the time to run to the store today, so this batch is a little less classy. I bought the mixed nuts at costco, and they claimed to be “extra fancy” so that should make up for something. Here is how I do it. Pop 4 bags of popcorn – I use the kind that is less fake butter. Healthy pop? Something like that. I take the popcorn out, making sure to leave the old maids behind to not break teeth, and put them all in a clean (duh) unscented (of course) trash bag. Then I melt three bags of white chocolate chips. I throw a bunch of craisins in the bag, and a healthy spattering of mixed nuts. These include the macadamia nuts and exclude the monster brazil nut attention hogs. Pour in the melted chocolate, and twist the bag shut leaving a air pocket in it. Then shake. When it is all semi-evenly coated, you spread it out on something and sprinkle with cinnamon. Kind of a lot of cinnamon. Edible glitter at this phase if you are classy like us. Then you invite people to eat it, and you won’t need to ask them again.

And today in super happy knitting news, I finished Shadrach’s Christmas Radcoon.

I love knitted toys, but don’t love knitting them the most. So I think that this Racoon’s super-power is pushing through to the end, because that is how his cape was made. By the sweat of hating seed stitch. But, he is adorable. But not as adorable as Radrach himself, as you can see.

It is just getting merrier around here every minute!