It is clear that when two people get married, each and every story is going to be different. As much as we would like to find the button to push or the formula to plug, the whole thing is a mystery, from start to finish. You can see why some cultures and some eras just let the dads settle things by arranging marriages. Makes me shudder! But I know that God can and does use all kinds of means to bring about good ends. I once knew a couple from India who met on their wedding day, and they were very happily married. Even so, not a practice I want to recommend.
But for all you unmarried women out there reading this, especially those of you who do not fit into the “early” category, these posts on early marriage can just be aggravating. I can see why. So here are some suggestions for you in the hope that you do not lose heart.
First off. Marriage is a means, not an end. It is not the only means of glorifying God, but it is one of the common means. But He has other means. So glorify God where you are, in what ever state you are in. That is a tall order and requires diligence. Coasting always Continue reading ‘What about us?’
If you have a chance, take a look at the cover story in the August issue of Christianity Today, called “The Case for Early Marriage” in which the author Mark Regnerus urges Christians to consider marriage in their early twenties rather than their late twenties or early thirties. (He is careful to distinguish what he calls early marriage from teen marriage, which he does not recommend.)
He has good reasons. He considers it better to marry early than sign chastity vows that might (easily) be broken. He feels the church should spend less time teaching abstinence (though a good thing, as far as it goes), and spend more time preparing young people for marriage at a young age.
Young Christians are often urged to put off marriage for several reasons. One compelling reason is that their parents insist that they be financially independent when they marry, finished with college and employed. That can be a heavy burden, and a long-term engagement is like a sexual pressure cooker. He argues (and I Continue reading ‘Early Marriage’
And don’t they look dapper! Here are a few of our very scholarly descendants who are starting school today!
Our friends Csaba and Lisa Leidenfrost have been Wycliffe missionaries to the Ivory Coast for a couple of decades or more. They raised their children among the Bakwe people, and spent most of their married life At the Edge of the Village in the home they built of handmade cement blocks. What began as monthly letters home to the congregations that supported them, became a book a few years ago. Lisa’s descriptions of life in Africa are so delightful, instructive, and postive in outlook that they were collected, organized, and published.
I’ve been rereading At the Edge of the Village this summer and enjoying entering into Lisa’s life in the jungle (though grateful it is at a safe distance). She is one tough cookie. She tells her stories with a light-heart and good humor: the time the tarantula’s hairy leg poked through the ceiling, her standard caution to the kids as they ran out to play (“Keep a lookout for cobras!”) or the time they thought they found a crocodile in their pond.
I have been reading some of these short sketches to my grand-kids, and if success is measured by the interest and laughter they evoke, then this book wins five stars. But not all the sketches are funny (though most are). Lisa describes some of the trials involved in living in Africa, the hardest being when she contracted typhoid, but I can tell she is holding back. She finds the bright side and the funny side (like her boys exploring her hospital room to figure out how everything worked) in the midst of difficulty and hardship, keeping her faith afloat when everything is else is sinking.
I think you’ll enjoy this book, and if you have children to read it to, they will enjoy it as well. Where to get a copy? I dusted around and I found several places: Here. Or here. Or even here.
Being a pastor’s wife, I have seen many people come clean over the years. It usually involves confessing to lying or stealing or cheating from years before. It could be a student confessing that he cheated on a test or lied about the reading he supposedly did or that he broke some school rule or other. It could be someone confessing that he slandered, harassed, or spread lies around about a teacher or co-worker or about a school or church. Or it may be confessing to stealing from a roommate, an employer, a friend or family member.
Sometimes coming clean means making restitution beyond the simple confession of wrong doing. It certainly requires returning the stolen article or money. But if the sin was cheating, it may mean that you will retroactively receive a poor grade. You could lose your degree or your job. If what you have done is really bad, you could even go to jail.
Coming clean takes courage and faith. It requires back bone because you have no guarantee how the confession will be received. But you are required to put things right, regardless of the outcome. Coming clean is evidence of a desire to have a clean conscience, Continue reading ‘Coming Clean’
New St. Andrews College has officially begun its sixteenth year with just under two hundred students. When it started in the fall of 1994, Bekah the guinea pig was in the first freshman class of four, the only woman in the school, but a full quarter of the student body. Though outnumbered three to one, she represented her sex well (just ask those old classmates of hers), and by the time she graduated, she was happily married to Ben and large with our first grandchild who was born a few days after she got her diploma.
Rachel was a freshman in high school when NSA began, and every so often she would tell us that she did not want to go to NSA when she graduated. We would reassure her that no one was going to make her go to NSA. She even tried telling us that she was really the Continue reading ‘NSA Convocation’
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