Kurt Nails It

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

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Parent: It’s time to go for your very first visit to the dentist!

LittlestPage: Noooooo!

Parent: We’ve been there before, remember?

LittlestPage: Noooooo!

Parent: You’ll get a new toothbrush.

LittlestPage: Noooooo!

Parent: You’ll get to pick out a prize.

LittlestPage: Noooooo!

Parent: Please put on your shoes!

LittlestPage: Noooooo!

Each party stares helplessly at the other.

Parent: If you let the dentist count your teeth, we’ll go to Mcdonald’s for breakfast and play in the play structure.

LittlestPage: Okay!

P.S. After five children, we’ve learned a few tricks along the way and lost most of our self-respect.

P.P.S. Please no flames. We realize that both bribery and Macdonald’s are poor lifestyle choices.

P.P.P.S. She was wonderful at the dentist office!

Wow. I have a few posts in the hopper, but I keep coming across this great stuff to share.

Michael Spencer (the ‘Internet Monk‘) had an incredibly challenging piece about how we look at prayer. [UPDATE: For some reason Mr. Spencer has removed this posts from his site. I can find no trace of it, so I have removed the link to the specific article.]

I believe we can pray for God’s revealed kingdom purposes. I believe we can pray boldly for all things related to the Gospel. But that Mrs. Smith’s niece will make a better choice in a boyfriend? I don’t think he’s that kind of God.
…
I can’t ask for God’s protection and expect that bad things that happen to other people won’t happen to me. I can’t ask for God to straighten out messes in a miraculous way and still honestly say I believe what scripture says about what it means to follow Christ in my life.

Jesus doesn’t run a protection racket, and he isn’t a rescue squad. He gives meaning to suffering and shows us the way of kingdom repentance and the cross. That’s where I am these days. I don’t want to tell unbelievers that God works things out for me because I’m on his team.

Read the comments, too, especially the great one by “J.Michael Jones”:

It is my humble opinion that the emotional reasons that these strange views are so wildly held by Christians (and scripture is so misinterpreted) is because of:

1) To make sure that their God is big enough, (omniscience), they assume that he is the extreme micro-manager.
2) To make sense out of the daily life, every event MUST have a big reason.
3) To feel secure, they must believe that there is no real danger in this world because a loving God controls every atom.
4) Evangelicalism is deeply invested in Gnostic Dualism. So events in this physical world, controlled by God’s wonderful laws of physics (as described by Newton) has no meaning unless they are spiritualized . . . strings going up to the Heavens or down to Hell. To them, only the “spiritual matters.

This is incredibly relevant to us right now because we’re struggling with prayer. In our small group we’ve moved away from the traditional model of group prayer. We found that we’d spend a half hour going around the circle asking for prayer requests and listing off the things that we were requesting prayer for. Then we’d have a time to pray, where there would always be a tension in the air. “Did we get them all? I’d better keep one eye on my notes and see which ones haven’t been prayed for yet and hit those ones.”

Then we realized two things: Firstly, the prayer that we were spending time on was already done. When we share our requests with each other we are sharing them with God. As we discuss them and support each other, that’s prayer. There’s no “magic” in saying something with your head down and eyes closed that doesn’t happen when you share a concern with another believer. The second thing we realized is that we were destroying the freedom to pray for what we felt we should pray for. Our egos, or the concern for others egos, got in the way because we didn’t want anyone to feel left out. Our process had the potential for hurting people in our group and it also broke the whole model of prayer as conversation with God.

So, now our small group prayer model is to share requests and support each other and discuss them and commiserate, and then have a short summary prayer. The requests and discussion is summarized and emailed to everyone the next day as a list for prayer through the week. It’s still weird somehow not to have that long “prayer time”. Habits die hard.

In our simple-church services, we still don’t have a good handle on group prayer. We’ve been simply having a quiet time, and people are praying for what they think is appropriate as they feel the need. Sometimes we sit for 15 minutes or longer in silence, as we all pray and wait for the spirit. It’s a powerful time, all sitting in silence together. It changes the whole concept of group prayer, so it’s still a bit uncomfortable, but it seems to be working for us.

What are you doing for corporate prayer? Small group prayer? What are your thoughts on praying for Aunt Bessie’s corns? Praying for less hugely broad post topics?

Pop on over and read about BestSister’s ‘Mama told me there’d be days like these‘. I laughed ’til I cried!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

“I suppose maybe the young people like this stuff or something, but I want my old-fashioned praise songs back. I mean, there’s some songs where we don’t even use a synthesizer anymore, it’s just electric guitar, bass and drums.”

“I can’t bear the thought of leaving Calvary but it’s getting to where we just can’t worship anymore,” said Treadwell. “If something doesn’t change soon we’ll have to start looking at some more traditional churches that play good old-fashioned music like Amy Grant and Sandi Patti.”

This is the reason I keep reading TomInTheBox.

Although our children have never had formal music lessons, we have tried hard to immerse them in quality music and an array of instruments. Though I do not play piano, I have tried to teach piano lessons, and overall I’m pleased with the results. We also do a group guitar lesson where MrPages teaches us all (although some of us are slower to absorb this information, than others!) And yet I always worry that we are not doing enough. (Isn’t that the cry of every home school mom?)

Yesterday my children performed for me a “song” they wrote and put together. I was flabbergasted and very proud; it was awesome. MrPages recorded it, cleaned it up, and now we present the LittlePages in their debut single: My Banana

“When I begin my train of thought with the gospel, I realize that if God loved me enough to sacrifice His Son’s life for me, then He must be guided by that same love when He speaks His commandments to me.” — Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer

We sponsor some children with Compassion Canada, and the LittlePages have always enjoyed writing to their “adopted” brothers and sisters. One young man in particular, young Apilak in Thailand, has always been on the top of their prayer list.

You see, ever since we started helping Apilak a few years back, he has written telling us about his asthma. It stopped him from playing with the other kids, and he was taken for medical care a few times. Whenever we ask for prayer requests, the LittlePages never fail to add healing for Apilak to the list.

Well, we recently got a letter from Apilak. Notice that line tucked innocently in there (click to enlarge):

“My family is fine. The asthma that I have ever had has been completely cured. How are you and your family?”

I read the line a few times when we got the letter to see if it was some bad translation, or if it really meant what I thought it did. This young boy, who has been plagued since we’ve known him with asthma and has little access to medical care or hope of proper treatment… has been healed! Praise God!

I still chuckle when I read how nonchalantly it’s mentioned.

Please sponsor a child. If you already sponsor a child, pray for them. It makes a difference.

Note: The orphanage that I visited in Nicaragua now has child sponsorships as well. We’re planning on adopting a Nicaraguan. Please consider it.

What greeted me this morning when I made my cup of tea: