New Creation

If you are fruitful and you are connected with the Father, and part of new creation, you will never fit back in original creation.

We don't belong to this world. We don't fit in. We can never fit in.

It's just the way it is.

We belong in the house of the Lord forever.

Right now: we belong with God's family...in the Lord's house, with the Lord's people.

One day: we will be with the Lord.

Fantasy

This year I've been reading a lot (I know, no big surprise, right?). There are a smattering of different authors and genres, but 2 stand out. I think this year will be my year of biographies and fantasy. It's an interesting combination, isn't it: real life and pure fiction. They seem to balance each other nicely. The biographies I've spoken of frequently (and will write more about as I read more), so today is for the fantasy.

What I've been reading is a lot of Terry Pratchett. I started reading his books a year or so ago (I don't really remember when I started). One of my teachers had borrowed Thud from a mutual friend and was reading it at work. I took it away; the official reason was to keep him focused on work but really so that I'd have something to read. The teacher wasn't much interested in the book (it wasn't his brand of humor) so he didn't object much. I loved it. It made me laugh from the start. When I finished, I believe I lent it to another friend, who also loved it (just so you know: it did eventually make it back to its owner).

If you like British humor and fantasy (or even just British humor) you should really try Terry Pratchett.

Anyway...I read one or two of his books over the course of the following months, but I was reading a lot of other stuff as well. I didn't really get into Pratchett until this year. I've been reading them at a rate of 1 or so a month (borrowing them from a friend (who borrowed them from a friend) or the library). They take place on Discworld, a flat, round world that is carried on the backs of 4 elephants who stand on a giant turtle. There are witches, wizards, heroes (who usually aren't much use), trolls, dwarfs (and Captain Carrot of the Night Watch, who was raised as a dwarf and was fully grown before they told him that he was a human), and an assortment of other people and beings. Oh, and we can't forget DEATH, who shows up frequently. He once adopted a daughter, then got an apprentice who eventually married the daughter. Now DEATH has a granddaughter who inherited many of her grandfather's abilities.

And yet...it's remarkably like here (pre-industrial revolution, which is a much better setting for fantasy). Just take all the weirdness of life and people, and magnify it, make metaphors literal, and bring things to their natural conclusion, exaggerate everything, and you'll get close to Discworld. They deal with the same issues we do (hence the frequent appearance of DEATH), only in their own way (it helps that most crime is very organized, with guilds and everything). 

Yes, it's pure escape literature. When I'm reading Terry Pratchett I can't worry about what's happening at work or the school assignments looming before me or the future or anything. I can just relax and laugh.

One word of advice: if you insist on reading Terry Pratchett in public, be prepared for the looks (and slight edging away) from people when you start to laugh suddenly.

This and That

Sunday School is winding down; there's only one week left. This week we reviewed the past year; next week we'll do a quick review of the Reformation lessons, have a bit of an end-of-year celebration, and finish making welcome signs for the church. Then we're done! I've really enjoyed my kids this year. I'm also really ready for a break.

The summer will be busy, though, with Junior Church responsibilities. I have a couple new teachers to replace the teachers who are changing roles (one will just be our music person; another couple is taking over one of the Sunday School classes to give those teachers a break). I've also recruited a lot of the Junior/Senior high class either as teachers or helpers. This summer will be all about training. We had a short session today so everyone could learn (or be reminded of) what Junior Church is all about and I'll do on-going training with individual teachers over the summer so we're ready to go in the fall. I also need to find time to have a Sunday School meeting to make sure everyone is ready for that.

Work has been up and down. It hasn't been bad (for the most part), just...work.

School work...well, I'm behind on the major pre-session assignment, and it will take some steady work and focus to get it done on time. There are a couple other things to get done as well.

Over all...I don't know. I'd like more sleep, less work...wouldn't we all! There are days when I think that everyone wants something from me and I don't have anything left to give. On the other hand...I love what I do; I just wish things were more balanced instead of everything at once!

I have many, many things I want to write about. I'll try to get some of them (one of them?) out this week.

What I'm Thankful for Today

1. My Sunday School class. They're usually bright, funny, and great to be around (and I say this after kicking one of them out today...but the rest were angels after that)!
2. My home. It's small, but it fits me nicely. It's warm, comfortable, and full of books.
3. The 7 boxes of books that have been donated to the church library over the past 2 Sundays.
4. The 2 new bookcases that we have in the church library! They're on wheels, so we can move them out of the way if we need to when the library is closed.
5. The weather has been wonderful lately.
6. Being surrounded by books.
7. Friends
8. Family (I can see nicely framed pictures of my sister's babies from where I'm sitting).
9. Value Village, where I found the frames for the pictures of the babies.
10. My church family
11. The 2 people who are interested in teaching Junior Church as well as the current teachers. It looks like I may have enough people to staff Junior Church and Sunday School in the fall and to give a couple teachers a break.
12. Spring. Everything is green and alive and there are flowers and it's all so lovely!

What I'm reading

I'm reading more biographies (the Christian Heroes Then and Now series) and enjoying every word of them. The latest have been Gladys Aylward and Brother Andrew. Their lives were amazing. I've read about Brother Andrew before (God's Smuggler...I've read it several times) but not much about Gladys Aylward. The stories all tend to concentrate around her struggles to get to China (the mission agency turned her down, she went alone, and she travelled by train across Russia in the winter) and the journey with the children across the mountains to safety during WWII. It's all exciting stuff, but there was a lot more to her life that I'd like to read about that this book mostly only touches on.

I'm also reading some Terry Pratchett novels for fun and enjoying them just a lot. They're just fun to read and great if you like British humour.

For school I'm reading A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. It's a really, really good book and I'd recommend it to anyone. It's pretty easy reading, the parts about being a shepherd are very interesting to read, and how Christ is our Shepherd is laid out nicely and is very encouraging to read.

The rest of my reading has to do with bits of commentaries and Bible surveys and the like as I work on the major school assignment.

Rowland Bingham

I'm still reading a lot of missionary biographies (primarily from the "Christian Heroes Then and Now" series, which I highly recommend). The one I just finished was about Rowland Bingham. I had never heard of him, so I was curious about what he had done.

When Rowland Bingham was 20, he wanted to go to the Sudan to be a missionary. He joined another young man who was in England, looking for a mission board to sponsor him; they were joined by a third young man. No one would send them to the Sudan. Africa was "the white man's graveyard" even for those who stayed on the coast; anyone who went inland was going to die. Anyone who had tried had either died or been brought home seriously ill.

The young men were determined to go anyway. They formed their own mission organization, Sudan Interior Missions (SIM) and went to Africa. Rowland became ill and stayed near the coast to send supplies as needed and the other two men went into the interior. Both of the young men died before reaching their destination. Rowland went back to England and then home to Canada.

So it seemed that everyone was right: there was no way to evangelize the interior of Africa, no way to get to the Sudan, and trying would result in certain death. But Rowland Bingham did not give up. He raised money, he recruited people to go, and he tried again. This time he stayed in Canada to oversee things and other men went. They eventually turned back because it seemed impossible. Rowland didn't give up. More men volunteered and were sent to learn the language and the culture and then go to the Sudan. This time they made it. Still, many people died bringing the gospel to the Sudan and the interior of Africa. And yet still more people volunteered.

By the time SIM reached its 50th anniversary, there were 350 missionaries from around the world serving with them in Africa. There were thousands of believers in the Sudan, in Nigeria and Ethiopia, who would not have heard the gospel if Rowland and the later missionaries had given up because it was too hard.

Today, more than 100 years later, SIM has changed some. Different groups joined together under the name SIM (and in fact the name has changed a couple times although they kept the acronym) as the mission spread; there are now more than 1600 missionaries serving in more than 50 countries, evangelizing, ministering, equipping, and discipling.

Sleepover Weekend

This was a sleepover weekend. My Sunday School girls were over Friday night and the junior/senior high girls were over Sunday night (actually, it's Monday morning as I type and they are still getting picked up (side note; the parents are great about picking up the girls by 11:00)). It was a good weekend (thanks to some good naps). The younger group only had 3 girls and they were pretty low key and asleep by 11:30. The older group had 8 girls (a smaller group than last time; no one had to sleep under the dining room table or in the entryway).

It was a quieter sleepover in many ways. We've started doing crafts at sleepovers; the girls enjoy them and it keeps them more settled. Last night included some rock animals, painting, and a lot of friendship bracelets. We did watch some movies: RV and The Princess Diaries. Later, when they were starting to fade but wanted another movie, we put on The Sound of Music; by intermission they were almost all asleep so I turned it off.

When they decided to start talking about boys I took control. It actually started with them talking about what they would do if they had a baby when they were teens: raise it or give it up for adoption (which actually came from one of them mentioning that her cousin, who had a baby at 17, was pregnant again). From there we moved to how to avoid teen pregnancy (I had to convince them that "only date nice Christian boys" was not a guarantee). They I steered them to what they should be looking for in a potential husband and then to what they needed to be as well. We talked about fear of the Lord, wisdom, discernment, and integrity as well as the negatives: not abusive, not quarrelsome, not a gossip. There was a lot more as well. (I relied on God's Wisdom in Proverbs as a guide because there was no way I'd remember everything on my own and I wanted them to think about this Biblically and the Proverbs book conveniently provides Scripture references). Anyway, it was a really good talk, one that I plan to repeat as often as possible to keep them thinking properly about relationships (and not just dating; we talked about what these characteristics had to do with  being a good friend and child as well).

This morning they cleaned up (and they are very good about doing most of the tidying up; there was only a bit left for me, plus things like taking down the garbage and then vacuuming). Then, after breakfast, we watched Tim Hawkins and they all went home (they're all gone now). One mom brought me coffee from Timmies, so I'm happy. The only thing left to decide is whether I should vacuum before or after nap time!