I've Been Thinking About This…

If you’re tracking me on Bloglines or some other blogreader, I’m splitting this blog up into 3 pieces:

• All my Christian, church and faith-related entries will go here;
• posts related to software design and development, hardware and other technology will go here, and
• other stuff into a catchall here.

New blog entries will still be announced via twitter & facebook.

Several reasons, but the precipitator was that this blog has been around for about 3 years and I’ve messed with it so much it was starting to do some very weird things – pieces of admin pages going walkabout; cache acting strangely; stuff like that. So I started fresh, exported everything to the appropriate new blog, and away we go…

Happy reading!

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The end of Proverbs – we’ve made it through all 31 chapters. And how appropriate to end up at this chapter that lauds the wife. Marriage is more than a contract. It is a 2-sided life-long commitment that must be adhered to without let-up. Diving in with both feet, supporting each other to the fullest, being strong where the other is weak, and each trusting the other’s strength to cover one’s weakness – these are some of the graces of the best marriages, and so they are shown here.

It is clear that this is a fairly wealthy household. The mistress of the house has servant girls to manage (v. 15); buys a field with her own money (v. 16), and is hardly likely to plant the entire field herself, so she must also be managing farm hands. She has applied herself in the past and can sew (vv. 21, 22, 24), weave (v. 19) and trade in the marketplace (vv. 14, 18, 24). She is also generous to the poor and needy (v. 20).

It is also clear that this is a marriage that has continued for years. She has raised children who are well-fed and clothed (v. 15, 21) as well as respectful (v. 28). Her husband is one of the village or town elders (v. 23).

The gates of a village, town or city were important places in the ancient Middle Eastern world. It was where the elders gathered (Job 29:7). They could see goods and people enter and leave the city – an important job for the elders, for it took the pulse of the community. Inbound people could ask for directions. Farmers off to their fields would be seen and noted. The poor could ask for alms (Amos 5:12). Discussions of weather and war would take place. Boaz came to the gates of Bethlehem to redeem and ensure his marriage to Ruth (Ruth 4:1-12, esp. v. 11), for this was where justice was executed and witnessed (Amos 5:15; Deut 25:7).

So when, “her works praise her in the gates” (Prov 31:31, ESV), just who is telling people about her works? Her husband, of course. Verse 23 says that her husband sits among the elders of the land in the gates, and he’s obviously been bragging on her in a big way. By the way, just because we don’t hear anything about what the husband is doing in the chapter, it would be wrong to assume he sits around in the gates all day doing nothing. This chapter is a paean to her, not to him.

The thing is, such boasting as the husband is doing has a manifold impact. First it protects the marriage from outside attack because it tells the listeners that he thinks highly of her. Secondly, the listeners naturally feel they should respond with some bragging on their own wives – which can only be a good thing. Thirdly, the word gets passed on to others, possibly people who will trade with her or just chat on the street, who will see her in an ever better light. Fourthly it will get back to her – and whilst it is always nice to hear a compliment first-hand, it is even better to hear it second- or tenth-hand.

What an excellent thing it would be if every husband would follow suite and boast daily about his wife!

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We’re so very quick today to decide that we’re no longer in love. We’ve got examples of this type of behavior in our books, movies and television, and it all seems to work out well there – so if we get divorced we’ll come out the other side of the storm and into smooth sailing.

We think this way because almost the whole of our western civilization has confused ‘feelings’ with ‘choice’ – ‘being in love’ with ‘loving’. Being in love is an emotion: romance starts off with an emotional attraction, which draws man and woman together. Sacrifice for the other is no problem. Courtesy toward the other, even during stress, is no problem. Treating the other with grace is no problem. We want to make a good impression, and we’re willing to make the investment.

Love, on the other hand, is an act of the will. True love is not about an investment, because an investment assumes there is a return on the principle. An investment is all about, “What do I get out of this?” Love is all about, “What can my spouse get out of this?” The focus is utterly different.

No question about the teaching here. In an age when a man and a woman often came together as the result of a contract made by their parents on their behalf, they knew from the start that the union would take work. And into this approach comes this encouragement: for a man to see his wife as the source of his refreshment and renewal; to see her as someone who should be blessed or fulfilled; to rejoice in her – none of which can properly or fully be accomplished if he’s simply looking for the ROI.

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I was thinking the other day about how our church year starts with the school year. The summer drop-off is over, and we’ve used those lean months and put all our efforts during them into planning for a successful startup in the fall. There’s a definite drop-off during the summer, isn’t there?

We tend to think that ‘people are away on vacation’, and some of that is true, of course – schools are out, so parents take time to travel with the kids. In fact, when they go away for a week, they tend be away for the weekends at both ends of that week, so attendance is hit twice as hard. Trying to categorize attendance loosely. I came up with:

1. People who do come to church during the summer,
2. People who are vacationing in the area who come to church here,
3. People who are away on vacation, and
4. People who don’t bother coming to church during the summer. They’re in the area, but they see church as either
• essentially a social organization,
• a priority only when combined with nursery or Sunday School in order to get a break from the kids, or
• less important than a morning at the beach, a round of golf or a lie-in.

So we move the service times earlier, both because of the heat and to let people get on with their fun activities for the rest of the day. And many times we don’t put the effort into the service that we would otherwise – the choir stops, or the coffee stops, or the pastor switches off with a lay speaker. And as a result, the sermons tend to be shorter, and there’s a tendency to make them simpler, on the grounds that there are people visiting, and church should be lighter. Further, our logic goes, we’ve lost so many over the summer, we don’t want to lose more by getting intense.

I would suggest, however, that the above indicates that – if anything – summer is the time to go deeper. To preach more meat and less milk, because the people attending are the mature Christians who crave insight, and long for solid – even difficult – teaching. This is the time of the year to speak of the sovereignty of God; of obedience in difficult circumstances; of persecution and its power; of the disciplines of Christianity; of the need for personal prayer and meditation; of the pain and power of personal sacrifice; of worship as an end rather than a means.

Could it just be that this annual drop in attendance is something to be used, not feared? Should we attack rather than retreat?

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I never liked cats. They’re standoff-ish; independent; cold. They move fast in a preemptive strike and the next thing you know you’ve got a scratch across your cheek. So when my wife said she needed to go back to the pet shop because she forgot to get dog-food, the last thing I was anticipating was a plot by my wife and daughter and an ambush by a half-pound kitten. (Warning number one: she only went to the pet shop in the first place to get dog food; how come she forgot? I ignored that point, rather than question my wife’s mind. It may not have been a good call — I paid for it later.) Into the pet-shop we walked; surrounded by the smells of fish food and happy puppies, I was an innocent being brought to the slaughter. We picked up the dog food.

My daughter said, “Oh, just look at the kittens!”

I said, “They’re Tribbles, and they’re Trouble. Come on, we’ve got the dog food … Chloë’s hungry; let’s go.”

My wife said, “We have time to look at them. We’d like to see that orange one there, please.” (This last to the clerk.) Warning number two: she was too specific, but the bell going off in the back of my mind still wasn’t loud enough. Out came the kitten.

She said, “Just hold it. No, really, it’s purring. Feel how soft it is on your cheek.” She touched the loudly-rumbling kitten to my face — it didn’t lash out and scratch me. (I realize now that the cat was in on the plot as well.) She put the kitten in my hand. The whole of that tiny body lay there, purring enormously, exuding contentment as the tail hung gracefully down. I lifted it back to my face — he reached out and touched me on the nose, paw velveted. It was an amiable gesture; there was an enormous contentment in holding him so. My daughter put up her hand and gently stroked it. (Warning number three: my daughter should have wanted her own kitten to hold at the same time. Went right over my head.)

“How much is he?” my wife asked the clerk.

“Thirty five dollars.” came the reply.

“Honey?”

“No!”

“But Dad, he’s so cute, and small, and all alone!”

“Which part of ‘No’ didn’t you understand?” (But already I was weakening under the onslaught of this insidious purring.)

“Chloë will love him.”

“They’ll fight.”

“He’s a lover, not a fighter!”

“Don’t quote McCartney to me.”

“It was Michael Jackson, and it’s true.”

“Absolutely not. Your mother and I will talk about this, but the answer’s still going to be ‘No’.”

And we left. Yes, it’s true; we walked out of that pet store and drove home. And when my wife was talking, all I could hear was that purring reverberating in my ear. Promises were made about who would look after the cat, change the litter, get the food ready. But when we got to discussing who would name it, and how we’d each get a vote, I realized I had lost. A lifetime of cat-less-ness surrendered to a tiny marmalade Tribble.

We got back into the car and went back to the pet shop. As we walked through the door, somebody else was holding my cat! Thank heavens, she put him back in the cage, and walked out of the store. I went to the counter and put down my thirty-five dollars. As we walked out, the woman was coming in with her husband, saying,

“I forgot to get the dog-food; it won’t take a minute.”

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Well, the Biffster caught another mouse yesterday. This doesn’t happen when I’m in the house, for the most part, probably because the mice stay hidden when they hear me wandering around. But sometimes when I’m out, the mice come out to play … and so does Biff.

Once I came home to find 5 of them, lined up in a row in the hallway. One by one I picked them up and carried them away, until I got to the last one. Turns out this one had only been faking death … when I went to pick him up, he leapt up and ran away. Biff gave me – I swear it – a disgusted glance, as if to say, “Pathetic! Can’t do anything right. Couldn’t you smell he was still alive?” And then ran off to catch him all over again. This time Biff made sure he was dead. I apologized to Biff for making him do double work. I was very contrite, and I believe he forgave me in the end – after all, I’m only human.

So last night, I got home and wondered why the door down to the basement was wide open. I was sure I hadn’t left it that way, but there it was. I knew it had to be Biffy, but he had to be running up the stairs from the basement at one heck of a lick! I didn’t really think too much about it at the time, and we went in to watch a season of “As Time Goes By” together, Biff draped along my legs. Then I thought I’d go make myself some hot chocolate and finish my current book – Church Marketing 101 – and saw the mouse behind the door.

So you can see on the sidebar that the meeces count is going up. I’m so proud of that boy.

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