Quotations: The Power of Always Trying Again

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"After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other hand, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."

C.S. Lewis
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Not Abandoned

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A small, nine-year old girl gripped the ball and nervously threw the pitch. The batter hit the ball in a line drive so fast that the young girl did not have time to react. The ball connected with the pitcher's stomach and the girl crumpled face forward into the grass, the breath knocked out of her.

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"She's just pretending. C'mon guys, let's go eat some of that birthday cake."
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The girl still lay face down in the grass. She wanted to move, to talk, but she couldn't find strength to do either. She wanted to scream, "I'm not pretending!" But it was impossible to move. She was conscious for the moment, but barely. Then all went completely black.
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Fifteen minutes later the girl woozily stood up. "Where am I and why am I standing in this field?" Then she remembered.
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Alone. Abandoned. They had left her.
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I was that little girl. Though it's been years since the accident, the day is still vivid in my mind. I was only a child, but I never felt so utterly alone as that day in the field.
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I staggered home into my mother's open arms and she comforted me with these words: "Honey, Jesus understands exactly what you're feeling."
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Those words were true then and they are still true now.
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Do you remember the story Lazarus? John 11 tells of the death of Lazarus and his sisters' immense grief. But that it is not all. It also tells the story of Jesus' own grief. John 11:35 tells us that "Jesus wept."
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It always struck me oddly that even though Jesus knew that He would shortly raise His friend from the dead, He wept when Mary and Martha told Him of Lazarus' death.
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I do not claim to understand every aspect of this verse, but I think after reflecting on my accident on the field so many years ago, I understand these words a bit more. You see, Jesus felt for His friends. Yes, He knew the rest of the story. But in that moment, He keenly understood what Mary and Martha were going through. So He came along side them. And He wept.
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In the same way, He knows you. He cares for you. He understands you. He loves you.
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He weeps for you. He weeps for me. We are not abandoned. We are loved.
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Devastation and Relief Work in Haiti

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This 7-minute video chronicles through video footage and photographs some of the devastation and relief work going on in Haiti. The video is from an organization called Churches Helping Churches and it is well worth the 7 minutes.
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“You love Jesus, you teach the Bible, you marry a woman, you have four children, you’re serving the Lord in ministry, and now your wife is gone, your church is gone, your home is gone, Bible college is gone… So why do you smile? Where is your joy?”
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"It's from the Lord."

(HT: Hope Road)
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Quotations: Embrace

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"He is our Father, and He loves us, and He knows just what is best, and therefore, of course, His will is the very most blessed thing that can come to us under any circumstances... Could we but for one moment get a glimpse into the mighty depths of His love, our hearts would spring out to meet His will, and embrace it as our richest treasure. And we would abandon ourselves to it with an enthusiasm of gratitude and joy, that such a wondrous privilege could be ours."

Hannah Whitall Smith

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On Deliberate Prayer

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Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

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I read the above verse yesterday, searching for what it said about prayer. In terms of proper prayer procedure, it doesn't say much. There is no mention of magical incantations, notes on specific posture, or even instructions on how to pray (should one start with praise? confession?).
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Rather the verse shares a simple observation: Jesus prayed deliberately.
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Over and over again the writers of the gospels note Jesus' habit of deliberate prayer: John 17 records Jesus' prayer for himself, his disciples, and all believers; Matthew 26:39-42 details Jesus' purposeful and agonizing plea to his father, that the "cup" of suffering would be taken from him--if it be in the Father's will; Mark 6:41 notes Jesus' prayer over the loaves and fishes. Indeed, Jesus clearly had a habit of deliberate prayer.
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In pondering this habit of Jesus', I was reminded anew of the absolute necessity of prayer. If the Savior of the world prayed purposefully, should I not also follow his example? I can do the two-second prayer quite well, the "O Father, grant me grace" right before a big test, or in the middle of a stressful conversation. It is in the faithful discipline of purposeful prayer that I lack.
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Indeed, prayer is exhausting; yet Jesus shows me that it's vitally important. Prayer takes time; yet Jesus made time for it. I cannot run from what the gospel so clearly reveals--I can only beg for the willingness to realign my life so that purposeful prayer exists in it. In doing so, I might have to give up something: studying, dreaming about warm days on the beach, enjoying the ability to "not think" while I walk. Yet, by praying, I am not only following the command of scripture to pray (see Ephesians 6:18a), but I am also patterning my life after Jesus.
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O God, grant me grace and strength to do just this, that I may glorify thy Most Holy Name. Amen.
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Friday Footprints

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A trace of where we've been on the web this week...
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Would I Have Hid the Jews During the Holocaust?

A thoughtful article by Elrena Evans on Christianity Today's blog, Her.meneutics, reflecting on Miep Gies, the Christian Dutch woman who helped hide Anne Frank and preserve her diary.
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The Bloom Book Club
An online Christian book club specifically for women. They're just gearing up to start a new book, The Same Kind of Different As Me. Check it out! (And we also thought we should mention that we really like the name of the book club.)
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Twenty29
The Rebelution recently announced this new event, but the details are still somewhat under cover. You can find some information here (click on the pdf link), and no doubt they'll be sharing more in the future. So far, however, it sounds like a promising and challenging event.
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We'll be back Monday...
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grace & peace,
Jessina, Megan, and Joanna
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Sister to Sister: A Living Palace

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Dear girls,

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This morning I taught my freshman composition students a lesson on writing and revision. It's one of my favorite lessons (ironically, it's among their least favorite). I consider this lesson a kind of two-for-one deal: my students think they are getting a lesson on why the teacher thinks it's important to proofread and why they should begrudgingly consider whether or not each paragraph supports a thesis statement. But really, it's as much a lesson about spiritual growth as it is about writing.
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I begin my lesson by asking my students to share with the class their strategies for revising papers. Typical answers run along the lines of "Oh, I don't change anything after a first draft. It only comes out right the first time" and "Maybe I add a few commas, or change a word or two." Sometimes I get this one: "Revising just messes up my paper."
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When I get these answers, I like to prod my students to realize the implications of these statements. "So, you really always write a paper perfectly the first time? No changes needed at all?" I ask. I then encourage them to slash out whole pages, to unashamedly re-order passages with cut and paste. By the end of the day's lesson, my goal is to take my students from minuscule alterations of comma marks to radical, whole-scale changes of the purpose and thesis of their papers. Usually at this point they start to see what I'm driving at--the important correlation between being open to revisions in a paper and being open to life revisions.
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I am concerned by the misplaced confidence and unwillingness to try out changes that I see in some of my students. But I am more concerned that this is often similar to the misplaced confidence that I perceive Christians taking toward God's methods of revising us--we'll allow change for a few metaphorical sentences, but then we feel confident that we are "good enough," or that true, radical revision would just mess up our image of an idealized, contented Christian life. Often we deceive ourselves into believing that we somehow got things wrong, or are being punished if God imposes major life-revisions on us, and we forget that we are in a beautiful process of being re-fashioned into an utterly new creation.
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I like to remind myself of a quote by one of my favorite theorists, Peter Elbow: "Meaning is not what you start out with, but what you end up with." I enjoy thinking that God sees purpose in our lives in a similar way. I believe God is all about revision; and while I believe that He appreciates even the small, punctuational changes we make, my hunch is that He's out for what I call "global" revisions--whole-scale revision that leaves no part of us untouched.
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Any form of change is scary--it's scary for my students to think about deleting a beloved, yet redundant, paragraph, and it's far, far scarier for us to think about the kinds of sweeping revisions God might bring about for us. Will He revise a career plan? Will He revise the family or community that we live near? Will He revise our plans for marriage or a family? Will He show us the need to revise faith in a loved one? Revisions are always difficult, and I can well understand why it's not our idea of a fun time. The process of revision is time-consuming, scary, and extremely messy, yet always, always necessary.
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In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis draws on a parable by George MacDonald to explain God's idea of revision:
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"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of--throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
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A palace--how wonderfully unimaginable! And so, dear girls, I want to encourage you to look at your changing lives as a part of God's process towards a new creation. His command of Be Ye Perfect means just that, but it will be perfection on His terms, not ours. So, if nothing looks to you like you thought it ought to, rejoice! You're most likely in the process of becoming a palace.
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Much love,
Sarah
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Sarah Tillman, 26, is a graduate student in English literature at the University of Delaware where she also teaches freshman composition classes. She lives in Delaware with her husband, Nathan, and her two kittens, Venus and Diana. Her favorite things to read are poems in Middle English, novels by Thomas Hardy and Toni Morrison, and fabulously revised papers by her students.
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