My theology these days is murky at best. I don't know if I believe in hell (or some other form of punishment) or complete redemption for all mankind (whether they like it or not). I don't know if I think it's important for all Christians to go to church every week. I don't really care if people use the f-bomb to express their emotion. And I really don't think it's that important to know what I believe about creation and inerrancy. No, I've decided to go with Bill Johnson on these and say "I don't have dogs in those fights." Rather, I'm trying to cope with the everyday demands of three little ones and gleaning what I can from those interactions.
I've recently rediscovered a cd that I bought for the girls, and we've been listening to it in the car. One of the songs asks, "Mr. Cow, how do you say to the Lord, 'I love you'?" To which he replies, "Well, I stand around in the field all day and it gives me plenty of time to say, 'Moo, moo, moo.'" It may sound funny, but that song gives me a lot of hope. Because I don't get much time to "spend with the Lord" these days. I'm too busy answering cries for Mommy to get much time at all (see dramatic decrease in blog posts since Macy was born as corroborating evidence). This song reminds me that I am worshipping God every time I do my normal tasks that he's assigned me. Changing the world one diaper at a time.
Another favourite points me to creation. "When I look at the trees blowing in the breeze, ooh ooh I praise You, Ooh ooh I praise you. When I see a bird up high, swooping in the sky, Ooh ooh I praise you, Ooh ooh I praise you. It's a wonderful world for boys and girls, such a wonderful world for boys and girls and we praise you Creator God." I love to watch my kids marvel at caterpillars and get excited about ants and squeal with delight at pigeons. God has indeed made a wonderful world for boys and girls.
I am content with this as my theology: God is good. A lot of stuff is bad, but God is good, and my job is to love Him and everyone who comes across my path. Selah.
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Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. -Mahatma Gandhi
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4 comments:
I say...Amen to that!
I love God a new each day when I hear my 3 little ones belting out worship songs off their kids cds with quite a few wrong words. I'm with you about not much time for the 'quiet time' but I believe that God is gracious and understands. So keeping listening to the kids praise an be assured God knows are heart! I enjoy your blog...
Hi Greta,
Found my way here on a search about Bill Johnson. Your post reminded me of something I was just reading a few weeks ago, by Chieko Okazaki, who was in the presidency of the Relief Society (the Mormon women's organization) in the 1980s. I'm going to quote her at length because I thought it agrees well with what you posted about. Here goes:
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I think we sometimes have the mistaken notion that religion is like a special room in our house. We go into this room when we need to "do" religion. After all, we cook in the kitchen, we entertain in the living room, we wash in the bathroom, we sleep in the bedroom, and we "do" religion in this spiritual room. The fallacy of this view of religious life is obvious. It means that we can walk out of that room and close the door behind us. It means that we have compartmentalized our lives so that religious experience is just one cubbyhole out of many. It also means that we spend most of our time in other rooms. Yet we feel guilty because we're taught repeatedly that this should be the most important room in the house and we should spend most of our time there. Does this sound even a tiny bit familiar?
Rather than think of spiritual life as a separate room, let's think of it as paint on the walls of all the rooms, or maybe a scent in the air that drifts through the whole house—the way the fragrance of spaghetti sauce or baking bread has a way of drifting through all the rooms of the house, becoming part of the air we breathe. Our spiritual lives should be our lives, not just a separate part of our lives.
Suppose the Savior were to come to visit you. You've rushed around and vacuumed the guest room, put the best sheets on the bed, even placed some tulips in a vase on the dresser. Jesus looks around the room and says, "Oh, thank you for inviting me into your home. Please tell me about your life."
You say, "I will in just a minute, but something's boiling over on the stove, and I also need to let the cat outside."
Jesus says, "I know a lot about cats and stoves. I'll come with you."
"Oh, no," you say. "I couldn't let you do that." And you rush out, carefully closing the door behind you.
While you're turning down the stove, the phone rings, and then Jason comes in with a scrape on his elbow, and the visiting teaching supervisor calls for your report, and then it's suppertime, and you couldn't possibly have Jesus see that you don't even have placemats on the table, and someone forgot to turn on the dishwasher so you're eating off paper plates, and then you have to drive Lynne to her basketball game. By the time you get back to the room where Jesus is waiting patiently, you're so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open, let alone sit worshipfully at his feet waiting for words of profound wisdom and spiritual power to wash over you, to make you different, to make everything else different, and you fall asleep whispering, "I'm sorry. I'll try to do better. I'm so sorry."
How we pour guilt over ourselves!
This isn't the gospel. We know that on some level Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that he experienced everything—absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means Jesus knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer—how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student-body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked, and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.
There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands about pregnancy and giving birth. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion.
His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world." (Matt. 28:20) What does that mean? It means he understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down's syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children who ever come are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were [married] last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that.
So do you really think you're shielding him by keeping the door closed while you're throwing paper plates on the table and sending Chrissie off to wash her hands for the second time? Do you really think he doesn't know? doesn't understand? wouldn't laugh and help?
But he'll stay in that room if you put him there. The door to him is always open, but the door to you can be closed and stay closed—if you choose to close it. If one great constant in the universe is the unfailing love of the Savior, the other great constant is his unfailing respect for human agency. He will not override your will, even for your own good. He will not compel you to accept his help. He will not force you to accept his companionship. He leaves you free to choose.
I beg you to open the door and let him out of that room.
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Good stuff, Greta. I like your theology. :)
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