8-8-08

8-8-08–That’s the start date of the 2008 Olympics in China. We are planning a little Chinese celebration that night to watch the opening ceremony, eat Chinese food, and pray for China. The boys are planning some competitive Olympic events as well.

You can order these prayer bands from Voice of the Martyrs. Voice of the Martyrs is an organization that aids Christians around the world who experience persecution for their faith in Christ. Over 500,000 prayer bands have been purchased from VOM. The prayer bands are also being distributed to members of house churches in China who will be praying for us. You can also read about Christian persecution at VOM’s blog and sign up for their free newsletter and prayer request e-mails at persecution.com. (Their site is down at the moment–I trust that’s a temporary thing.) They also have a free quarterly publication to teach children about kids around the world who are suffering for Christ. It’s called Kids of Courage.

VOM has been predicting that Christian persecution in China would increased prior to the Olympics. Here is a recent article from Christianity Today on the recent persecution of one of China’s house church leaders.

For those of you interested in learning more about the church in China, I highly recommend The Cross: Jesus in China . It is a 4-hour DVD set on the history of the church in China–how Christianity has grown tremendously in spite of intense persecution. The number of Christians in China has increased from 700,000 in 1949 to about 70 million today! It is one of the most encouraging things that I have ever watched. There are many, many interviews with Christians who have served years in prison and labor camps because of their faith. The joy on their faces is inspiring. Many express gratitude at being allowed to suffer for Christ.

And, finally, for those of you interested in teaching your children about China, I have discovered a fabulous website: www.childbook.com The whole site is devoted to media to help teach your children about Chinese culture and the Chinese language. There are links to information about Chinese culture and China-related coloring pages as well as much to purchase. We are spending the month of August studying China. I recently purchased software to help me learn to speak and write Chinese. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Less-Wild Lovers

It’s summer, and I’ve been taking a much-needed break from most of my life, including blogging. I just got the urge to blog today. Can’t promise there’ll be anything else for another month. We’ll just have to see.

Just to let everyone know, there’s not much news on the adoption front. Whenever anyone asks what’s going on with the adoption, my answer is “Just waiting.” Actually, we are in the process of updating our homestudy to renew our approval to adopt from US Immigration Services. It’s just about like doing a homestudy all over again–lots of paperwork. This approval is good for 18 months, so hopefully we won’t have to renew it again. We may just have a little girl by then!

In other news, my baby is five years old today! Titus has been a great baby of the family. He has finally quit reminding me in the past few months “But I’m still a baby.” So I’m taking that as a sign that he’s ready to grow up a little. But one of his favorite things to do is to pretend that he’s a baby animal and that I’m a mommy animal and to cuddle up to me and talk about how much baby pandas (or whatever the animal of the day is that day) needs his mommy. Very sweet!

The Next Rob Bell? (Actually Titus is wearing his Daddy’s glasses, and I think he’s doing an imitation of his dad.)

Titus loves to imitate characters in movies we watch. He has been going around imitating Wall*E from the previews we’ve seen. So he had a Wall*E birthday party. He had a friend sleepover, and we went to see Wall*E. It was really cute!

My Baby

Now to the title “Less-Wild Lovers”: I was reading one of Ransomed Heart’s Daily e-mails this morning:

The Religious Man or Woman is a popular story option in which we try to reduce the wildness of life by constructing a system of promises and rewards, a contract that will obligate God to grant us exemption from the Arrows. It really doesn’t matter what the particular group bargain is-doctrinal adherence, moral living, or some sort of spiritual experience-the desire is the same: taming God in order to tame life. Never mind those deep yearnings of the soul; never mind the nagging awareness that God is not cooperating. If the system isn’t working, it’s because we’re not doing it right. There’s always something to work on, with the promise of abundant life just around the corner. Plenty of churches and leaders are ready to show you how to cut a deal.

These stories comprise what James McClendon calls the “tournament of narratives” in our culture, a clash of many small dramas competing for our heart. Through baseball and politics and music and sex and even church, we are searching desperately for a Larger Story in which to live and find our role. All of these smaller stories offer a taste of meaning, adventure, or connectedness. But none of them offer the real thing; they aren’t large enough. Our loss of confidence in a Larger Story is the reason we demand immediate gratification. We need a sense of being alive now, for now is all we have. Without a past that was planned for us and a future that waits for us, we are trapped in the present. There’s not enough room for our souls in the present. (The Sacred Romance, 42-43)

A friend and I recently had a discussion about the common belief among fellow Christ-followers that if I do everything right then God is not going to let anything bad happen to me. Although I don’t believe this to be true, I find myself whenever I’m going through a difficult time angrily saying to God, “I’ve tried my best to live my life the way you want me to! Why is this happening to me?”

Two lines from another Ransomed Heart daily e-mail I read today jumped out at me. “[God's] wooing seems wild because he seeks to free our heart from the attachments and addictions we’ve chosen, thanks to the Arrows we’ve know.” and “Satan is the mortal enemy of God and therefore ours as well, who comes with offers of less-wild lovers, hoping to deceive us in order to destroy our heart and thus prevent our salvation or cripple our sanctification.”

This reminds me of a song I’ve recently fallen in love with by Kendall Payne called “Aslan”. It is based on the part from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Lucy, after discovering that Aslan is a lion, asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan’s safe. Mr. Beaver replies, “Safe?…Who said anything about being safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Don’t stop your crying on my account
A frightening lion, no doubt
He’s not safe, no he’s not safe
Are you tempted now to run away?
The King above all Kings is coming down

Chorus:
But He won’t say the words you wish that he would
Oh, he don’t do the deeds you know that He could
He won’t think the thoughts you think He should
But He is good, He is good

I know you’re thirsty, the water is free
But I should warn you, it costs everything
Well, He’s not fair, no He’s not fair
When He fixes what’s beyond repair
And graces everyone that don’t deserve

No one knows Him whom eyes never seen
No, I don’t know Him but He knows me
He knows me, He knows me

Lay down your layers, shed off your skin
But without His incision, you can’t enter in
He cuts deep, yeah He cuts deep
When the risk is great and the talk is cheap
But never leaves a wounded one behind

Just some things to think on. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!