Musings on the The Great Divorce

If you want the discomfort that comes with your toes being trampled on by someone far greater than yourself, try reading anything by C.S. Lewis. This time, it was The Great Divorce, which we're currently reading in my English class at Greyfriars. The students love it, and I love it too... even more now that it's a third or fourth or fifth read.

In it, the narrator (in a dream) takes a trip to heaven and while there, witnesses numerous "ghosts" arriving at heaven's door. Most of them find petty, trivial reasons not to enter heaven, all of which had something to do with their besetting sins while on earth.

In the scene with a grieving mother (in hell) who just wants to see her son (in heaven), she is rebuked for loving her son too much. On earth, he died as a young boy and momma never got over it. At the expense of her relationships with her husband and daughter, she establishes her son as a sort of idol and appeals to the natural feeling of "mother-love." She has to, as Lewis says, learn to "want God for His own sake" if she wants to enter heaven and see her son.

In what is one of most poignant phrases of the book, the mother is told that she allowed the "tyranny of the past" to ruin her. What should and could be a healthy, joyful relationship in its proper place went sour because she allowed the past to rule over her, and how often can we say the same about ourselves?

As Eli enters every new stage of development, it's so easy to wish that he would stay little--to wish that things would stay just as they are. But this is just another example of letting the past rule over me. God, in His goodness, has ordained that there be a beginning and an end to everything; a season, as Ecclesiastes teaches. When I'm tempted to reminisce about how carefree life was pre-baby (you mean there was a time I didn't need to schedule my day around a child's naptime and bedtime?), I'm letting the past rule over me. When I allow myself to get in a funk because I want to "re-do" my semester in London, I'm letting the past rule over me--and I'm not talking about a wishful nostalgia, a sweet rememberance of how incredible the experience was. I ache to go back! Alas, we are put where are for a reason. God desires to teach us something new in every phase of our lives, and sometimes the lessons are a bit harder to learn.

The mother in the book is given such hope, and so are we. When we learn to love God fully and to mortify our desires for the sake of obedience to Him, then we can learn to "love a fellow-creature fully." Joy can be hers, if she will learn that lesson--and so it is for us!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Pie

In my quest for fun Easter dessert recipes, I decided to try this recipe, with a few minor changes. I got the original recipe from this website. It was delicious! Here's my version (and the end result)!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Pie


1 quart fresh strawberries, sliced
1 (8oz) package of low fat cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 bag semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 graham cracker crust

Melt about 1/2 of the bag of of the chocolate chips in the microwave for about 15 seconds, being careful not to burn. Continue to microwave in 15 second intervals, stirring well after each heat. Set aside.

Beat the heavy cream, vanilla extract, & 1/2 cup of the confectioners sugar with an electric mixer in a bowl until it becomes thick.

In a separate bowl, beat together the softened cream cheese, the other half cup of confectioners sugar, & the cup of melted chocolate.Gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture.

Spread the cream into the chocolate pie crust. Then, press the sliced berries into the mixture ALL over it. Find every single available nook & cranny, and shove a berry in it!

Melt the remaining chocolate in a bowl.  I poured it into a ziploc bag, cut a tiny edge of the corner of the bag, and drizzled the chocolate over the strawberries.

Refrigerate until set.

Creative Teaching

Through pinterest, I stumbled upon a wonderful website full of out-of-the-box activities for little ones. As Eli appears to limit his interests to walking aimlessly around the yard or dragging my cell phone cord around the house, it might be a few more months until he "gets" these activities, but it's nice to have this resource at my fingertips.

The one I'm looking forward to the most is below... it's a seven day project that teaches the creation story.

Day 1 of Creation: Light
Day 2 of Creation: Sky
Day 3 of Creation: Flowers, Plants, and Trees
Day 4 of Creation: Sun, Moon, and Stars
Day 5 of Creation: Birds and Fish
Day 6 of Creation: Animals and Man
Day 7 of Creation: God Rested

Personally, I like day 7 the best, but I have a feeling Eli will disagree.

Pinterest Party!

Seriously, if I could come up with an idea like Pinterest, I'd be stinkin' rich. It took a while for me to jump on the crafty bandwagon, but now that I'm on, there's no going back. I've cooked so many recipes from Pinterest--some good, some terrible (think mayonnaise + parmesan cheese spread atop a chicken breast.... I thought it was a good idea at the time). BUT this past weekend, Rachel and I hosted a "pinterest party." Where did I get this idea? Yep. Pinterest.

We five attendees had a good time chatting, crafting, and eating. Can't wait to do it again soon! Here are some pictures of the party, and the three crafts I made... or tried to make. :)

Children as olive plants...

Thankful this day for little man and the assurance in God's word that children are a blessing. We sang Psalm 128 in church on Sunday, put to the tune of "Come, Thou Fount". Just beautiful.

Blessed the man that fears Jehovah
And that walketh in His ways;
Thou shalt eat of thy hands' labor
And be prospered all thy days.
Like a vine with fruit abounding
In thy house thy wife is found,
And like olive plants thy children
Compassing thy table round.

Lo, on him that fears Jehovah
Shall this blessedness attend;
For Jehovah out of Zion
Shall to thee His blessing send.
Thou shalt see Jerus'lem prosper
All thy days till life shall cease;
Thou shalt see thy children's children,
Unto Israel be peace.

Our Children are Arrows

When I consider God's calling on mothers, I'm both encouraged and overwhelmed. There are so many things that God desires and commands of mothers, but for we who are fragile and forgetful, that's a good thing! Scripture truly is sufficient to provide us with every proper tool to be good parents, but it is so easy to become fearful of "messing up" our children.

We're called to be faithful Christian women first. How can we expect to be good Christian mothers if we are not obedient to this foundational principle?

We're called to be good Christian wives--we were wives before we were mothers, after all.

We're called to discipline sin in our children out of love--but when? How do I know if Eli disobeyed by stepping in the road or just missed a step and stumbled into it? How do I know when he can understand the command not to throw a temper tantrum? How do I know when it's an act of disobedience that he doesn't "Come here!" when I ask him to?

We're called to teach the Word of God to our children "when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up" (Deut 6:6). This means that our whole lives ought to conform to the Word of God, and our children should see that--by the way we treat our husbands, by the way we treat other people, by the way we treat them. What if Eli remembers that fight we had in front of him? What if he hears me lashing out at the slow driver in front of me? As we teach him the Word of God in small ways--begging him to repeat the one word answer to "Who made you?"--it's easy to worry that we're not doing something right. How can I know that Eli is being transformed by worship, even at 16 months old?

Covenantal parenting can sometimes be overwhelming. As I was meditating on this yesterday in the car, watching Eli crane his neck to see the school buses and trucks, I thought to myself, "So much of how Eli 'turns out' depends on me."

And yet so little.

Psalm 127:1 says, "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." It's interesting to note that two verses later, the psalmist tells us that children are a "heritage from the Lord." Perhaps the psalmist wants to emphasize the importance of trusting God in raising our children. So much of what we do as covenant parents is based on faith, believing God's promises that our children will be like "arrows in the hand of a warrior." This, of course, requires obedience--the kind of exhausting, endless obedience that is extraordinarily hard when our little ones don't behave the way we want them to. As we're told in James 2, faith without works is dead. I can love and believe fully all of God's promises to His people, but unless I use this knowledge to affect my behavior (specifically as I train Eli), it's of no profit.

At the root of it all, though, is a firm faith in God's promises--He is the only One who has the power to make our children "arrows..." It's the kind of faith that starts within us and works itself out to our fingertips, in our everyday actions. Oh, what an encouragement that is, and how often I forget it! We have story after story in Scripture of God keeping His promises to His people, in spite of their disobedience. I ought to remember this more as I spend my days disciplining, loving, feeding, changing, reading to, and praying for little man.

Marx Was Right

If you want to learn history, you should become a history teacher. Nothing requires a thorough understanding of a subject like having to teach it to malleable, inquisitive, talkative students whose parents are paying to learn from you. How's that for pressure?

Thankfully, this school year has been fruitful for me in many ways--I've witnessed small blessings in my classroom that encourage me on the "We'll never get through this material!" days. Reminders that the students aren't computers and that our goal is not to inculcate them with material to be regurtitated mechanically. In the classroom, we are doing the same thing we do with our little ones. We're either starving their souls, or we're nurturing them. Again, how's that for pressure?

Our most recent study has been in Animal Farm by George Orwell. A "fairy tale" (the subtitle originally given to the novel by Orwell himself) set on a farm with elitist pigs, ignorant sheep, vain horses, and a raven named "Moses," the story parallels the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The animals revolt against Mr. Jones, the owner of the farm, and begin what they hope to be a utopian existence without the evils of humanity to oppress them. The pigs, and eventually the sole pig in power (Napoleon), slowly take command and begin to manipulate the memories of the rest of the animals on the farm. Whereas one of the 7 Commandments of "Animalism" originally read, "No animals shall sleep in a bed," the words, "with sheets" are later added to justify the pigs' finding repose in Mr. Jones' bed. After a generation of deception and "spin," the animals blindly accept their oppressive fate as subjects of Napoleon because they forget their past--they forget why they revolted against man in the first place, they forget what the foundations of Animalism are, and in an ultimate twist of irony, they can't tell man and pig apart at the end of the story.

As we reflected on this phenomenon in class, we considered Karl Marx's poignant warning, "A people without a heritage are easily persuaded." He knew that better than most people, as his "persuasions" in the Communist Manifesto have been the battle cry of some of history's most tyrannical, bloodiest dictators.

Sadly, Christians have ignored this warning and have compromised in so many ways as members of the current culture.

We, whose God forbid murder and required monogamous, sexually pure relationships with members of the opposite sex, ought to speak the loudest against abortion and perversions of marriage (in whatever form).

We, who inherited the reformational movements of Jan Hus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin, ought to strive the most vigorously for the centrality of God in worship--not man centered, seeker-sensitive, emotionally driven worship.

We, whose God required us to teach the word of God to our children all the time (Deuteronomy 6:7), have surrendered them to the enemy and allowed a system hostile to what we believe as God-followers to train our children.

We, who follow a God that honors private property, individual responsibility, and charity by volition and as a recognition that God is the giver of all things, have believed the lie that the state ought to mandate, moderate, meddle, and steal for the sake of "taking care of its people."

In what other ways have we as Christians forgotten our heritage? And what will they persuade us to do next?