Tag: Story

What My Daughter Taught Me About Joy

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

There was a fight in my house on Sunday morning. A big one.

We separated the combatants, and no one was badly hurt. I’m not sure what started the conflict, but I was relieved to hear the elephant was not involved.

Making the Bed

One morning a few months ago, my youngest daughter (4) was taking longer than usual to make her bed. It was Sunday and I was trying to herd my children toward the car.

I entered her room and saw her deep in thought and narration. After straightening her pillow, sheet, and comforter, she was arranging some stuffed animal friends on top of the bed. This was serious business.

The animals were going to church. The sanctuary (the bed) was all prepared and the preacher (a penguin) was ready to give his address from the pulpit (the pillow).

We’ve seen a similar drama unfold every Sunday since. There isn’t often conflict, but there is always a story.

Story and Joy

My children are constantly in the midst of a story. Their creativity bubbles and overflows, and I love it. (I blame and thank their mother.)

To me, making the bed is an easy, necessary task to complete as quickly as possible. I grumble throughout and take no pleasure in the chore.

But where I complain, my youngest delights. And she teaches me about her Creator.

Reflecting Our Creator

My daughter approaches work much more like God than I do.

He created and proclaimed it good. In every blue sky scattered with cottonball clouds, in every mud puddle begging for boots, in every colorful October leaf shower, can you see God’s playfulness? His delight? His pleasure in creating, sustaining, and spinning our earth on his finger?

Since joy is a fruit of the Spirit, God must be the most joyous. This, despite so many efforts to paint him as severe, brooding, and dour. He is no British matriarch on PBS.

Yes, God is holy and his holiness demands obedience. But holiness is not drudgery. Obedience is not grim. For the Christian, growth in obedience parallels growth in joy.

Our Source of Joy

I don’t mean our lives are all balloons and confetti. But the joy of the Lord is deep, warm, and abiding. This joy remains precisely because it doesn’t depend on circumstances.

Our joy is rooted in a restored, permanent relationship with God. We have the promise of a future with him and a foretaste of it now. That God makes this joy available and free to his enemies is unimaginable.

And yet, there was a great cost to providing this joy. Though it was for “the joy set before him,” Jesus endured the cross. Because of our sin, Jesus’s joyous fellowship with God was broken for a time so we might know the unending joy of reconciliation with the Father.

Imagine not just the confusion and wonder at the discovery of the empty tomb, but picture the joy that first Easter morning. Jesus is alive! Death is not the champion—Jesus is!

Pursue Joy in the Lord

While stunning and earth-shattering, this truth has practical implications: more smiling, more singing, less complaining. This godly joy should trickle and seep into every second of every day.

Because God is king and Jesus is alive, we can find joy in even the most mundane tasks. Just ask my daughter—she’d be glad to show you.

Post credit | Photo credit

Remember Who You Are

Posted onAuthorAllan Edwards

The stories we tell ourselves matter. Go into work thinking everyone’s out to get you and you’ll find yourself paranoid and agitated. Remember how much your family loves you and you’ll walk in the door ready to dole out hugs and kisses. There’s a connection between the story we tell ourselves and how we relate to the world around us.

This is especially true for Christians who join the story of their life to the great story of life itself when they lose themselves in being united to Jesus by faith. Our story gets swooped up into his. “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” writes St. Paul, “for me to live is Christ.”

Too often followers of Jesus forget whose story they’re living in. Their own failures or problems of the world dominate the story of their lives more than the glorious good news of King Jesus’s resurrection and reign. One Scottish minister gazed at a congregation of Presbyterians and, for the long look in their faces during worship, asked, “Have yae all been baptized in vinegar?”

Is it any wonder that anger, resentment, and broken relationships characterize our churches? Or that our defense of the faith is more reactionary arguments than gracious invitations? No wonder many of us lack any power to fight off sin and temptation in our lives.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” writes the author of Hebrews. What do we hope for? What is the true but unseen story? Namely, that we who have believed have been bought with a price. We are not slaves but sons of the most high. Jesus isn’t ashamed to call us family. We’re destined for the New Jerusalem where every tear will be wiped away and God himself will be our light. This is our story!

What if we believed it?

In his fantasy adventure novel “North! Or Be Eaten,” Andrew Petersen writes of two brothers, long lost princes. One is hideously transformed into a beast when he loses hope in the true story of his kingdom. After he attacks his older brother, both boys are bedridden, one from injuries, the other having been restrained, for days on end. Each morning the boy’s mother asks her beastly son, “What is your name?” only to be met with a growl. But each night the older brother whispers stories of their youth to his transformed brother—stories of their childhood games, adventures, songs—till at long last one morning their mama comes down to their room and asks the beast, “What is your name?” and is delighted to hear “My name is Kal, son of the High King.”

He listens to stories of his true self and then, as the shadow passes, he believes them, and he remembers who he is.

Do you have a story teller reminding you of who you are? A gospel speaker whispering “beloved, child of God, adopted, chosen, made new” in your ears? How precious and powerful—to remember the true story of our identity and so live with hope for things as yet unseen.

Photo credit

Links for the Weekend (12/20/2019)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

Come, Desire of Nations, Come: An Advent Reflection

Here is a wonderful extended meditation on Haggai 2:7, one of the lesser-used prophecies about the Messiah. Matthew Arbo notes the reference to this verse in the hymn Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and writes about the need for God to shake the nations before the desire of all nations will come.

He is the desire of all nations whether the nations know him or not. He isn’t the desire of just some nations. He is the desire of all nations. The nations desire him irrespective of whether they acknowledge him or not. He is the object of their deepest and highest longing, for the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he rules over the nations (Ps. 22:28). 

Three Things to Remember When Giving Comfort to Grieving People

The holiday season can amplify loneliness and grief. Randy Alcorn gives three helpful things to remember when we have friends who are grieving.

If we don’t know what to say to a friend in crisis, remember that so long as Job’s friends remained quiet, they helped him bear his grief. Later, when they began giving unsolicited advice and rebuke, Job not only had to deal with his suffering, but with his friends’ smug responses, which added to his suffering.  

The Enduring Power of ‘A Christmas Carol’

Eric Metaxas writes at BreakPoint about the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.

Dickens’ classic shoots down the idea—prevalent in some Christian circles—that reading novels is a waste of time. They seem to forget that Jesus Himself was a master storyteller. For instance, He didn’t just say, “Come to the aid of those who need help.” Instead, He told a vivid story about a Samaritan who rescues a wounded man.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article written by Sarah Wisniewski called Consider the Sycamore. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Thanks to Cliff L for his help in rounding up links this week.

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.