A Life of Service

Ok, so it has been months since I have posted. However, in the last few months, many things have happened. One of those things has been the purchase of our first home (woohoo!) at which we have internet access on demand! For me, this has been a blessing, as it allows me to keep in touch with friends and family much more often and, more importantly, allows me more tools for Bible study. The best and most demanding result of internet access has been an increase in the amount of study I have been able to do with a young man from India with whom I have been conducting correspondence courses for several years. Although he has not yet obeyed the gospel, he has put me to shame many times as we studied. We have spent a great deal of time over the last few months studying through the gospel accounts, learning about the purpose of Jesus' coming and teaching and dying. In that time, he has changed from a young man who was always begging for help in getting a secular education so that he could escape his life in the village to a young man who spends all his free time teaching children's Bible classes, working extra hours to earn money to buy supplies for needy families, and travelling to surrounding villages spreading the Word of God and doing what benevolence he can. He does not yet understand the importance of baptism and the church, but he understands what it means to be Christlike, much better than I think many of us do. I often feel ashamed when I look at how blessed I am materially compared with much of the world's population and realize how little I have actually done for God. I pray that I may do a better job of seeking out and taking advantage of opportunities to live a life of service so that I don't have to face my God with regret and shame in the Day of Judgment.

Marketing Woes

Okay, so I decided that I had overpriced my book, and went on to figure out how much I could reduce the price. Got some help from my dad, who owns a bookstore with my mom, to determine what a fair price would be. Had settled on one when he suddenly reminded me that I had to maintain the appropriate discount for bookstores, and pointed out that depending on my sales I might have to pay taxes. Frustration! Apparently, I have not overpriced my book! So, sorry, folks. Gotta pay Caesar! If you can't afford it, wait for the ebook version. (Or if you live near me, come talk to me!)

Rewriting old writing - here's a sample

Well, I did call this blog wordworker's books, so I should probably once in a while post something about a book, or at least story. Here is a piece of one I wrote several years ago and recently decided to resurrect.

          "The impact startled him, crashing onto his ears like a thousand breaking dishes. Dazed, he stared stupidly at the crumbled bricks on the smoking hood. Confused voices reached his auditory nerves as from a distance, incomprehensible. Dimly he associated the voices with the unfocused figures spinning frenetically across his field of vision. One of them with a red trembling nose flailed his arms at the wreckage. The man laughed.

            The way she had laughed at him when he came off the diving board fully clothed.   Showing off for the girls, as usual. With disastrous results, not as usual. That was the first time he ever saw her. It was his parents’ turn to host the monthly church social, and everyone was gathered in the backyard. The adults huddled around the grill debating methods of barbecuing ribs and recipes for potato salad. A couple of teenagers horsing around on the far end of the lot. His friend Beau, with sly looks in the direction of a gaggle of girls, had decided to demonstrate how to balance a pyramid of coke cans on one hand. Provoked into action by the evident success of Beau’s stunt, he declared he could balance the same tray of cokes on his head while jumping up and down on the diving board.

He took one look from the end of that diving board and it was all over. He had hauled himself out of the pool dripping and shivering in the October air while everyone scrambled to retrieve the rapidly sinking cans. All he remembered after that was the piquant mocking face over the side fence. He ran self-conscious fingers through his hair and tried to affect nonchalance. He sauntered in the general direction of the girl, his soggy sneakers making sucking sounds around his ankles.

            “Haven’t seen you here before,” he said.

            “I just moved here with my dad,” she told him, suddenly very interested in her cuticles. She added unnecessarily, “There’s water on your nose.”

            “Oh. Yeah.” He rubbed his arm unhelpfully across his face. “Uh, wanna come over?”

            “No, thanks,” she answered, abandoning her nails to look him over appraisingly. She flipped her red hair with an air of superiority. “My dad doesn’t let me hang out with strangers.”

            He felt his stomach flip. “Levi,” he gulped. “I mean – I’m Levi.”

            “From the Bible,” she said. “Me too. I’m Chloe. Ironic!”

            A man came to the door of the house on her side of the fence and stood watching them. Chloe looked toward him and turned as if to go.

            “My brother has a band,” Levi blurted, forgetting to ask what was ironic. “Sometimes I play drums for them.” He beat a haphazard rhythm on the nearest fence post, ending with a theatrical pirouette. He waited impressively for the admiring applause he felt sure his performance deserved, and felt his cheeks grow warm at the sound of her laughter.

            “I have to go,” she said. She flipped her hair again and turned away, leaving him stewing on his own side of the fence. At the back door she turned mocking eyes back on him for a moment, and he hung breathless. “See you in school, Levi,” she said. The man stayed in the doorway, watching.

            He moved away from the fence, feeling dizzy. Not noticing the Coke can under his feet. The bridge of his nose snapped on the pavement, and the can splatted against the wall with a hiss.

            The world turned black while colors he’d never seen before exploded behind his eyes. A spray of red banished the blackness as his head snapped back in the grip of an invisible rubber band. He felt rather than heard the windshield implode, spraying glass and washer fluid all over the front seat. For a suspended moment he gazed fascinated at the rainbow pinpricks of light flying toward him as if fleeing from the crumbling wall relentlessly bulldozing a path through his engine."

Perspective

Recently I have been feeling greatly overwhelmed by life. I have a one-year-old daughter who thinks she is twenty-one, thinks she should be able to do anything she wants by herself, and who can somehow manage to reach even unreachable items! I am three months pregnant with our second child, and consequently low on energy and high on hormones! I live several hours away from most of my family and still manage to get caught up in typical family disfunction without being able to enjoy many of the benefits. Health issues keep my husbands family in turmoil and us busy trying to help fill in the blanks left by those health issues. I am extremely active in the church, as is my husband, and that means about half of our free time each week is filled up with church related activities or preparation. Because of my husband's job and the degenerating morality of this country, we decided several years ago to take martial arts lessons to learn self-defense, so that fills up a couple of nights a week. Somewhere between all that, we still find time to be a family by ourselves. Writing? That almost never happens! All important, some enjoyable, but together quite a load! Occasionally, like this week, it becomes too much to handle. Then, I wake up and turn on the news. Flooding in New Jersey due to massive storms is driving thousands out of their homes. Tornadoes in various places along the east coast resulting in the same. And the biggest news item of all, thousands dead and unimaginable destruction in the Pacific due to the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded and the tsunami that followed it. Hey, what's wrong with my life again? I am alive. I have my husband and my children safe with me and need have no fear for anyone else that I care about. We have a house and a car, and money with which to provide our family's needs. I don't have to worry about how to survive an hour from now, tomorrow, next week... There is nothing wrong with my life. In fact, I have the greatest life ever!

Time

I was thinking today as I alternated between tending my child, getting myself ready for the day, catching the latest news and weather, and heading out to my inlaws for the afternoon. My daughter doesn't understand what time is, yet. She thinks it is a word that describes clocks, watches, naps, eating, going somewhere, and Bible class collectively. Even once she is old enough to understand the concept, it will mean little to her life as an innocent and happy child for quite some time. By the time she is a teenager, time will rule her life; time to get up, time for school, time to go to work, time for whatever extracurricular activity she enjoys, time to go, time to come home, time for bed. Only as she becomes an adult, with a family and responsibilities of her own, will she understand that time is not infinite and must be at times carefully managed, and at times studiously ignored. I have many interests and many responsibilities, and often feel that meeting all of them is impossible. And if by that I mean meeting them all at once, it would be impossible. I have to do one thing at a time, realizing that time is only a tool given to me to use. If I crowd my life with tasks and goals, I have abused, not used, the time I have been given. Sometimes, my house will be spotless, my laundry will all be done, and my supper will be cooked perfectly and on time. Sometimes, I will be able to write several pages on my latest work. Sometimes, none of that happens. Sometimes, I stop looking at the clock and just enjoy watching my daughter grow without thinking about how much older she will be tomorrow. Sometimes, I stop looking at the clock and talk to my husband until we have no more words to say. Maybe I will never have the time to write the great American novel. Assuredly I will never have the time to make an appearance in Good Housekeeping. I will never have time to achieve success as the world sees it. But when I look back on my time, I will have timeless memories of life and love, and I will know that I spent my time in the way God gave it to me to be spent.

Introduction to my book

I would like to introduce my first published book. The name of it is God's Woman: Reflections from the Scriptures, and it is a women's Bible study book. It uses the concept of looking in the mirror to connect the stories of several Bible women and the lessons learned from each of them. It would be a great tool for personal Bible study, as well as a good classbook for women or teenage girls. A few of the women discussed are Eve, Sarah, Rahab, Mary, and Lois and Eunice. My goal in writing the book was to share my thoughts from personal study in the hope of helping other women who struggle with the same issues I do surrounding living a godly life in an ungodly world. I am including the introduction to the book as a sample reading in this blog post. If anyone is interested in the book, it can be found on Amazon.com, and can also be ordered from www.createspace.com/3526413.

Introduction

            Throughout history, women seem to have had a fascination with looking at their own images. Archeology has uncovered examples of mirrors in perhaps every culture on earth, some of bronze, silver, or other metals, some of glass. There are many material reasons to look at oneself in a mirror. We as women are very concerned with our physical image, so we use mirrors to determine if any blemishes flaw our appearance, to add cosmetic aids in order to improve our countenance, to arrange our hair in ways that enhance our more pleasant features, or to ensure that our clothing fits properly and becomes our natural appearance.

 In James 1:23-25, the Word of God is compared to a mirror in which a man looks at himself to determine what kind of man he is - what kind of image he is presenting to the world. A man who looks at his image, sees the inevitable flaws in himself, and goes away unconcerned with no intention of doing anything to eliminate those flaws is condemned. On the other hand, the man who willingly uses that mirror image of himself as a tool with which to improve his spiritual appearance is blessed.

As women we can understand this concept very well. A woman who gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror at her messy image, and then goes about her daily business without brushing her hair or her teeth, washing her face, putting on appropriate clothing for her tasks, or otherwise taking steps to make her appearance acceptable to others is going to find herself lonely and ineffective at whatever task she tries to accomplish. Others will look at her and see only a slob who cares nothing for herself, and infer that such a person is unlikely to show any greater concern for anyone or anything else. However, the woman who takes steps to make herself clean and orderly and dresses herself with care according to the tasks she has set before her will be shown respect and attention, and will find that the way toward accomplishing her goals has been smoothed and shortened by the willing help of others.

God has provided many opportunities throughout scripture for a woman to view herself in a spiritual mirror and examine herself for flaws. Each woman mentioned in the Bible contributes another element of our reflection. Some of those elements are flaws that need to be addressed and eliminated from our image. Others are spiritual cosmetics and appropriate garments that should be used to make our spiritual image more pleasing to God. As we examine our souls in this mirror God has provided for us, what reflection do we see looking back at us? Which of these flaws glare back at us, and what are we willing to do in order to eliminate them? Are we truly seeking spiritual beauty, or are we willing to live our spiritual lives being seen as slobs by the God who can determine our eternal fate?