It’s January first and everyone knows that we now switch over from the Christmas shopping, decorating, and eating to the January cleaning, organizing, and exercising. Funny how we are all on the same page when it comes to such things. We must all be related after all. The storekeepers know this about us, so down come the decorations and out come the files, planning books, and exercise equipment. And the diet centers know this as well, and they are offering special deals to get us back on track after the big fudge binge.

I don’t think God minds this about us; after all, it seems to be a design feature. He gives us new mercies every single morning, an opportunity to start again, a fresh beginning every day as the sun comes up. He gives us new weeks, new months, and new years. And we find pleasure in that. Our kind Creator is willing to wash away our sins more than daily, knowing that we are the sort of creatures who just can’t stay out of messes. We need ongoing opportunities for the fresh start. Read More

Freely give. With the high feast of Christmas just around the corner, I thought I would write a little “heads up” to all of us women who are working so hard to make it a glorious celebration. We have shopped for the gifts. We’ve wrapped them all (or we will soon). We’ve put time, effort, thought, money, and energy into this thing called Christmas, and we are starting to get tired now, and we haven’t even started making the pies. And, let me tell you, if you are tired, you become an easy target for stumbling. So here are my tips for staying cheerful and joyful in the midst of many duties and much serving at Christmas.

Get your rest! You mothers of young ones especially. Put your feet up and count your blessings. Catch a few z’s when you can. That last push can really be exhausting as well as exhilarating, so watch yourself. If you get too worn out or too excited, you may come Read More

Some years ago when my kids were heading into the junior-high years at Logos School, we started thinking what we could do in lieu of “the prom” that is so characteristic of high schools. Those years (the poetic stage) are when students start caring about how they present themselves, and we wanted to work with the grain, not against it. And because we were deliberately trying to establish an alternative to the dating culture, we started scratching our heads about what we could do that wasn’t a prom, wasn’t dorky, and was an event that our kids would be excited about.

About that time a friend told me about a school that had a program they called Protocol for their high-school students. They taught a week or so of intensive manners and then planned an event for the students where they would have an opportunity to apply what they had learned. This sounded like the perfect thing for us to imitate at Logos, so we began to figure out how we could do something similar. Read More

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.

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. Read More

Habits can be good or bad, and we all want to overcome the bad ones and cultivate the good ones. Recognizing a bad one is the first step to correcting it. And once we see it, we have to take action at once. Mental habits of mind can be just as difficult to break as quitting biting your fingernails. But here are a couple of things that might help.

A bad habit is a like a pathway that has been worn in your lawn by taking the shortcut. If you want your lawn to look good again, you have to redirect the traffic by either putting up a fence or by making yourself walk the long way around the lawn. The path is not going to disappear overnight, and you may put your foot on it once or twice before you remember and go back around. But eventually, the grass will grow back in, and you may forget there ever was a pathway wrecking the lawn. That is the grace of God. Read More