All around our home you will find various bags of coffee, filters, glass decanters and a big Bunn machine.  Conversation often involves terms like French Roast, Turkish grind, vanilla, and fake french accents.

In just around a week’s time, there will be a mobile food cart in downtown Flint serving crepes.  And delicious coffee, of course.

Support has been overwhelming, with over 800 facebook fans within a week!

I used to be one of those annoying people who said ridiculous things like that.

*sigh*

The concept of a triune God is difficult to understand, and while it may never be fully grasped, even a basic comprehension is essential to the faith of a Christian. It is, after all, part and parcel of the nature of God and His dealings with us.

I like how Philip Yancey seeks to describe one God that consists of three persons,

In the unseen world, no confusion exists about how three persons can be one God. On our side of the curtain, however, we learn about the three persons the only way time-bound creatures can learn anything: in sequence.  We learn first of God the Father from the Old Testament. We then learn of Jesus from the Gospels and of the Spirit primarily from the book of Acts and the Epistles.

God first revealed himself as holy and transcendent to a tribe he nudged, as a parent nudges a child, through early stages of development. “The fear of the Lord if the beginning of wisdom” could stand as the enduring lesson of the Old Testament.

Jesus introduced a new stage of intimacy. “I no longer call you servants” he told his disciples; “Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

As he then prepared to leave he promised the Spirit, a Comforter who would achieve an intimacy so close that we somehow participate in the very actions of God on earth: God does his work through us.

I’d be interested in hearing how the Trinity makes sense to you..

Tags: Christianity, spirituality

That loud buzzing in the trees you hear this time of year? It’s the cicadas singing!

The children found a cicada in the process of molting.

Tags: children, homeschool

Comfort.

It’s such a nice word. It conjures up images of things like snuggly blankets and mashed potatoes.  But for living life, is comfort really something to strive for?

There are a lot of things going on in our life right now, and most of it I am not at liberty to write about since it involves others.  Suffice it to say that we are being stretched. But it’s not really a bad thing to be stretched.

Comfort can also mean stagnant.  If comfort is my goal, my life may end up being pretty shallow and selfish.

Seth Godin recently wrote, “It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.  It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.  It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.  It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.”

He went on to say that identifying that discomfort means you’ve found where leadership is needed.  He was referring to leaders in business, but I think it could apply to everyone in many situations.  We’re all leaders in some aspect.

I do know that when I am unsure, unsettled or uncertain (uncomfortable) it drives me to seek.  And seeking is good.  Sometimes it’s intellectual, and I feel the need to read, dig, and ask questions.  Other times it’s spiritual and causes me to dive deeper into prayer and Bible study.

Growth usually isn’t pleasant.   So I would say discomfort could very well be a sign of good things going on.

Tags: presuppositions

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but life is messy.

I see that along with blessing comes even greater responsibility. And if there’s one thing true about responsibility, it’s that it humbles. Or at least it should. When consequences loom, for yourself and maybe even those you love, the need to weigh things carefully and learn as much you can about whatever it is you’re contemplating is real and heavy. The irony in this is that through research, prayer and conversations, it only becomes more evident how much I don‘t know and how much there is I may never know.

It’s easy to react in one of two ways.

Fear of not knowing the “rules” and the dread of maybe making a wrong decision could cause one to run from the responsibility.  But in doing so, one runs from the blessing as well.

Or, the reality that life is full of mystery and paradox could cause one to admit, Hey, I don’t have it all figured out, and it’s okay if I’m wrong as long as I’m most concerned about my intention and heart being in the right place.  Simply put, make the best decision they can with the information they have, and leave it in God’s hands.

I have to say that I find it amusing when I share something from my heart, an honest struggle or something I’m pondering, and a person’s response is one of supreme confidence and absolute certainty.  I realize with compassion that they will probably soon be humbled.  If they’re blessed.

The best advice I’ve gotten is from someone who says, I don’t really pretend to know exactly x or y, but this is what has helped me, or this is what I’ve learned, or this is how another friend handled it…  And I’ll pray with you and help you any way I can.

Tags: presuppositions, spirituality, worldview

Imagine my surprise yesterday afternoon when I saw a doe walking down the street outside our home.  I grabbed my camera and found her munching apples contentedly from one of our trees.  She kept a careful eye on me, but kept eating as I snapped some photos.

I believe this is the culprit that ate our entire crop of cabbage while we were away a couple weeks ago.  I have seen her have many near misses with vehicles and even people on bikes.

Tags: photos

Some thoughts I’ve been chewing on..

“If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one’s life, ther is no point in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or with Jesus of Nazareth.” Andrew Greeley

“Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.” G.K. Chesterton

“A church uncomfortable with paradox tends to tilt in one direction or the other, usually with disastrous consequences.” Philip Yancey

Tags: Christianity

Tags: photos

Here’s a vintage post for your enjoyment, originally published November 2007.

I remember back to the summer of 1992, when I spent each weekday babysitting 3 darling children, ages 2, 3, and 4.  I arrived there just before 7 am, in time to greet them when they awoke, then spending the morning and afternoon with them.

But there is something I must admit.

While I played with them and prepared their meals, I often remember being surprised and a little disgusted at the mother’s house cleaning skills.  Or lack of them. Sure, I’d take the time to scrub, repair or reorganize what had been neglected, but in my heart I’d also tsk tsk the entire time.  I would wonder how on earth the mother hadn’t noticed what I considered to be obvious and taken care of it.

Thinking back to my critical spirit, I blush as I realize how much God has humbled me!  Now that He has blessed me with five active children and another soon to be born, I look back to that home I spent the summer in and marvel at all the mother did.   She worked full time in a connected home office, taking care of the bookwork for her husband’s business while raising 3 very lively children spaced only a year apart.

And she did it with a smile.  When one of her children sneaked (snuck?) away from my watchful eye to steal a moment with their mother in the oft forbidden office, she would always welcome them with a hug and a couple minutes attention before I coaxed them back into the main part of the house.

I realize now how incredibly quick and effortlessly children create huge, unimaginable messes.  When you are instructing one child to clean up the farm set, another child is in different room dragging out the puzzles and relocating all the pieces to 100 different places all over the house.  Just when you have one child trained to put away what they have before they take out another thing, you have a different child putting the phone in the kitchen cupboard and another throwing your shoes in the trash.  While one child finally grows out of the fort building stage, you have three more dragging all the chairs into the center of the living room, draping 10 blankets all over them and filling it with every book, doll, and movable object they can find.

I can have the house spotless (well, at least a house with no obvious puddles or moldy growth visible) and within two hours or less it looks as if I haven’t cleaned in well, two years.  Or more.

If I spent an hour cleaning up lunch, so what.  At three o’clock the children will wake up from nap wanting a snack, and the kitchen will resemble a disaster scene.  After spending another hour tidying up, it is soon time to prepare supper.  Hmm.  And if the children want to help, which they always do, it looks like a small bomb went off.  Food splattered on every inch of counter space.  Finger smudges on the cupboards.  Splotches dropped on the floor.

So the bathroom is clean. Well, until one child brushes their teeth, leaving globs of toothpaste on the counter and running down the side of the sink, the toddler goes potty and “misses”, and another child washes their hands resulting in pools of water on the floor, gray scum on the sink handles, and dirty smudges on the hand towel.  Time passed; 10 minutes.

I think of her whenever I am hurriedly chipping a hardened unidentifiable mass from a table chair before a guest can be seated.  I think of her when I discover a chunk of petrified food in the toy closet or an apple core crawling with fruit flies in the bedroom windowsill.  I think of her when I put the children down for their nap only to discover the sheets are wet from an accident during the night.  I think of her when the true color of the children’s coats is impossible to tell through the layer of grime on the front.  I think of her when I find an artful scribble on the wall or furniture.  I think of her when something from one shelf of the fridge is dripping down to the next shelf… for two months. I think of her when I finally wipe the bottom three inches of the windows because I can no longer see out of them.

Now, when I visit a home and see what I call Living Life Messes I am no longer horrified.  Truly nothing can make me feel more at home than dried mud on the front entry floor and an unwiped table.

Now they live their life here, I think to myself.  And smile.

Tags: homelife, parenting