Thanks to Austin at SkyCow, my two daughters, Bekah and Rachel, and my daughter-in-law Heather are now going to be posting on Femina with me. In other words, you are now in for a real treat. They are all very busy mothers with lots to say about lots of topics. I hope you will enjoy this new format. I even know how to post pictures now, but I promise to exercise restraint. With my daughter Bekah’s family hunkered down into serious packing mode to head back to Oxford on Tuesday, I’m doubting you’ll hear from her for a week or two. Between all four of us, I don’t know who has the most on her plate. But I’m hoping this will quadruple the output.
Monthly Archive for September, 2007
I mentioned some time back that we have twin grandbabies coming, probably in November, Lord willing. My daughter has blossomed into a beautiful sight, inciting frequent comments from total strangers. She is regularly asked when she is due by people who think it must be any minute (given her shape). When she confesses to a December due-date, there are gasps of astonishment and the occasional “Holy Smoke!” She feels compelled to say in her defense, there are TWO in there. But she has had some real prize-winning comments, most of which I am not at liberty to share, but a couple that I feel it is safe to repeat.
From the barista: “If I were you I would be hating my life right now. I would so shoot my husband.” Given such a great attitude, my daughter asked her on the spot to be her birth coach.
From the manager of the gym: “Poor your body.” We really felt it would have been more appropriate to offer her a free membership. Nothing like a little uplifting comment!
A few years ago I did some study in the book of Proverbs on the different kinds of women. In the process I read quite a bit from  Charles Bridges’ Commentary on Proverbs. Here is a very short summary of just a few of his many insights, mixed in with my observations.
In Proverbs Lady Wisdom is contrasted with the woman Folly. Both women offer an invitation: Lady Wisdom is like a hostess seeking guests, and Folly is like a hunter seeking prey. Folly flatters, offering food, wine, sex, and pleasure. Lady Wisdom requires obedience, concentration, hard work, and loyalty. Those who respond to Folly’s invitation lose their strength, their health, and ultimately their lives; but those who respond to Wisdom’s invitation find beauty, order, life, peace, a good reputation, longevity, honor, wealth, and blessing. Lady Wisdom is training students to set them free, while Folly is enslaving her captors. Though Folly begins as a seductress, she ends as a de-feminized executioner. Lady Wisdom is a mother figure who invites, reproves, teaches, protects, blesses and exalts her children.
Lady Wisdom produces inner strength, individuality, self-respect, reverence for God, excellence in skill, and depth of insight. The woman of Folly rejects authority, won’t listen to reproof, and has a loose tongue. Those who find initial pleasure at her table end with bitter regret.
Both Folly and Lady Wisdom invite fools to come sit at their table, but they serve up entirely different menus.
“If you wish to discourse of religion, get your minds well furnished with knowledge. Hereby, you will have a treasure to fetch from. ‘I am’, says Elihu, ‘full of matter’ (Job 32:18). Some are backward to speak of good things for lack of matter. The empty vessel cannot run. If you would have your tongues run fluently in religion, they must be fed with a spring of knowledge: ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Co. 3:16). In one of the miracles that Christ wrought, he first caused the water-pots to be filled with water, and then said, ‘Draw out now’ (John 2:8). So we must first have our heads filled with knowledge, and then we shall be able to draw out to others in good discourse.” –Thomas Watson, The Great Gain of Godliness
Lots and lots of good can be done by the tongue, so it is particularly unfortunate when Christian women stir up evil and mischief with their tongues by backbiting, criticizing, or general cattiness. This tears the place up when we ought to be building. It is destructive, not constructive, creating division where there ought to be unity, and more than one church has been destroyed this way.
Cattiness includes all of the following: making stuff up, believing the made-up stuff and passing it on, talking about things that are not our business, breaking a confidence, criticizing choices other people make about their own lives (especially topics relating to children, childbirth, education, birth control, etc.), running down husbands, or grumbling about decisions made by those in authority over us, whether it is parents, husband, pastors, elders, or our city council. Backbiting, reproaching, being at tattler and busybody can be summed up as “speaking things which they ought not†(1 Timothy 5:13). Slander, false statements maliciously intended to hurt someone’s reputation, putting spin on the story, being spiteful with a desire to hurt, annoy, or humiliate; complaining, attributing motives….all this can be called backbiting or cattiness. Continue reading ‘Idle Chatter’
This little book, The Loveliness of Christ, Â is a collection of quotes from the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, the great Scottish preacher (1600-1661). I have a small hardback copy that a dear friend gave me, and my father and mother-in-law reprinted it as a booklet some years back. It is especially helpful to those who need comfort and strength (I think that is all of us), and I give you a few samples here.
“I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.”
“Ye will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven, in Christ’s company, without a conflict and a cross.”
“How sweet a thing were it for us to learn to make our burdens light by framing our hearts to the burden, and making our Lord’s will a law.”
“I see grace groweth best in winter.”
“Neither need we fear crosses, or sigh, or be sad for anything that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ.”
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