Firsts and Technology

Today we celebrated Belle's first year of life.  As we prepared for the festivities, we wandered down Memory Lane and  stumbled across some other firsts.
1996

Micaiah ... needing a little Daddy-support during her big day

1998

Isaac ... supported by "big" sister during his historic day

2000

Abigail ... a bit uncertain of those clowns on her cake

2008

Bear ... diving right into his cake after luau celebration

2012 ... today.  Over the years we have been blessed to have our extended family (at least some) nearby as we celebrated these milestones ... that is, until today.  Today we recorded another first -- celebrating a 1st Birthday on two different continents via Skype!  Grandma and Mimi joined us as we watched Belle watch Bear open her presents, as we sang "Happy Birthday," and as we searched for a bib to catch the cake crumbs escaping from Belle's fingertips and lips.  Here are a few of our new cobblestones in Memory Lane ...

Within Community

One thing I am learning from our time here in Germany (and from our time in the military) is the importance of reaching out to others in the community where we have been planted for this season.  "Community" seems to be sprouting up in several different areas of our life, so much so that on Tuesday, I will be sharing a devotional about our need for true community with the ladies of PWOC.

Here are some sneak-peak excerpts:

Over Labor Day weekend, we traveled to the other side of Germany … to the Mecca Exchange on Ramstein AFB. My mother was with us, and so as our little community of eight tumbled out of the vehicle near the outskirts of the vast parking lot, we recognized the need to have a plan [we're not in Hohenfels anymore]. Once we entered that enormous shopping arena, we knew that it would be very easy to become separated from each other as everyone had varied items on their wish list. We were not united in this area at this time. So we divided ourselves into proper groups (paying close attention to adult-child ratios) and determined a specific meeting time and locale. Had we not taken proper precautions, our small, usually close-knit community (AKA “family”) would have been swallowed up by the much larger, sometimes distracting (bright-lights-big-city) community.


Community –
Dictionary.com defines it as:

1) a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists

2) Ecclesiastical. a group of men or women leading a common life according to a rule.

We all are a part of communities … the Military Community; the Army Community; the Christian community; and FRGs, church, small groups, family, to name a few.  Let's go back to The Beginning:
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," then when He creates man, He says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Catch the pronouns there? US, OUR – the first community was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – the Trinity. Perfect community; perfect fellowship; perfect love.

Then in the New Testament, Jesus builds His Church, His Community.   In Acts 2:42-47 we see the early church in action,

"And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.  And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts,  praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."

That sounds pretty radical ~ most would even say “impossible” in today's world. And yet those in the early church were simply responding to the command given them before Christ ascended. At the end of each gospel account, there is a commissioning => Go and make disciples … go and love your neighbor.

These people were living out the One Another commands we see in Paul's epistles. For instance, Colossians 3:12-14 states:  "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

In the commentary section of our study Bible, I found further descriptions of these key terms:

compassion – an emotional, caring relationship with those whose lives are hurt and broken
kindness – a readiness to do good, even when it may be undeserved
humility – a posture of lowliness and servanthood
meekness – gentleness in offering help; a non-coercive approach to encouraging change in others' lives
patience – a willingness to take the long view in the face of human frailty

And ABOVE ALL … PUT ON Love – what does Love do? Binds everything together in perfect harmony.

The exhortation by Paul to “Put On” demonstrates the need to be intentional. We will not just fall into perfect harmony with one another. It will take work … it involves reminding ourselves that the Lord has been merciful and gracious to us … how can we not also be merciful and gracious to our brothers and sisters in Christ? Let us PUT ON Love and live in Community.

End of the Year Matching Game

Last week on the final day of 2011, the older three children sat down to the tasks of contemplating the previous twelve months and completing the “Happy New Year” worksheet that mom had reprinted with the permission of a friend! Here is a sampling of their answers (try to guess who penned each response; note – the youngest two had help with their oral answers!):

 

Lessons learned:     

• Getting work done before last minute relieves stress
• Leaving friends to go where God has called me can be difficult
• It is important to enjoy Germany
• God is the Creator of all things
• How to crawl

Wonderful memory:      

• Coming to Germany
• Traveling to Italy and France
• Experiencing nature/outdoor adventures during a week of camp
• Romantic gondola ride with my whole family
• Castles, Castles, Castles

Something I made:      

• Medieval dresses
• The world safe from dragons
• Shoe rack
• Friends
• An entrance

Favorite books read/re-read in 2011:      

• Dr. DeSoto by William Steig
• The Dragon's Tooth by N.D. Wilson
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul
• Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
• The Thief by Megan Whelan Turner
• The Dragon and the Raven by G.A. Henty
• Saint George and The Dragon by Margaret Hodges

Favorite Christmas gift:     

• books
• i-pods (thank you, Uncle Wes and Aunt Dawn)
• boxing monkey patch (must read fav book #1 to understand this one)
• everything knightly
• singing camera
• love (someone remembered the point!)

**The highest score wins our sincerest adulation.

 

With just over a year of German-living under our proverbial belts, we recognize there is still much to see and do in the upcoming year. We hope everyone has a wonderful 2012!

 

Abounding in Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, and this becomes quite apparent when you live in a foreign land. While I am thrilled to know that we as Americans hold fast to this tradition, I am not sure we fully understand it. It is definitely a time for families to come together, and that is a rarity in far too many homes. It is also a time for remembering all of the blessings that God has given us as a nation, as families and as individuals. But, was that the original idea behind a day of Thanksgiving? Or are we missing something?

Bear with me a moment while I meander to my point. During December 1777, approximately 12,000 soldiers of the Army of the United States were moving onto Valley Forge. While some early triumphs were achieved against the British a year earlier, the past year had seen little success. In fact, one would have to say that the revolutionary forces were clearly losing. The capital had been lost, and Congress was now operating from the outskirts of Pennsylvania. Some even wanted to replace General Washington. Any hope of victory would seem just that, a mere hope. Soldiers were not being paid due to a lack of funds from Congress, and inflation was so bad that soldiers wanted to be paid in British pounds. While most did not have usable clothes, possibly only a third had shoes and when on guard duty, they would stand in their hats in order to protect their feet from the frozen ground.

Wait, it gets worse. General Washington was having to apologize to the citizens of the fledgling nation for literally stealing clothing for his troops. He was unable to properly feed them (hunger had become the norm) and informed them that the plan for surviving the winter was for the soldiers themselves to build shelters of wood and clay. The wood they would have to chop themselves and the clay they would have to make from the frozen ground. This would take at least six weeks. For the soldiers, the prospect was to survive the winter only to be defeated by the waiting British Forces in the spring. I could go into more detail, but know this, things were bad.

On the 18th of December, Congress called for a day of Thanksgiving and Prayer. Think about that for a moment. Amid all of this suffering and failure and gloom ... amid the hunger, sickness and cold ... General Washington tells his troops to stop working and to march to the appropriate locations to give thanks to God.
Do you think they were thanking God for the special blessings they were enjoying? Were they thanking God for the bounty they were about to devour? That is hard to imagine, isn’t it?

But they did give thanks. They gave thanks for what they had to be thankful for. They gave thanks that God was God. That He is the Creator of all things. That He created us and allowed us to know Him. I am sure each of them had their own personal things to thank God for. I am also sure that few were thanking Him for the food and the weather.

I am not telling my children to not be thankful for how God has blessed us. We have a wonderful home, and we will enjoy a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. We have amazing friends and family, and we are blessed with good health and an amazing adventure of a life. We most certainly ought to give thanks for the blessings He has given us. All blessings come from Him. Our nation was right to declare an official day for Thanksgiving in order to acknowledge what we have been given. But our Thanksgiving needs to go beyond this. It needs to recognize that even if all of this were stripped away, we are still called to come to Him with Thanksgiving and praise. We need to remember that long before Abraham Lincoln declared this a national holiday and long before the Continental Congress declared a day of thanksgiving, God had declared everyday to be a day of thanksgiving. It is all over the Bible, but I love the way it is presented in Colossians

“…rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Col. 2:6-8)

“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.” (Col. 3:15)

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts….abounding in thanksgiving.

If that is the way we can truly approach Thanksgiving, then this will be a wonderful Holy-Day indeed.

Reformation Day/All Saints Day 2011

October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg. The things he wrote were not all new ideas, but they would go a long way toward influencing the growth of the Church for the next 500 years. The Germans of Wittenberg will proudly tell you that the reformation began here on this very spot. The Germans of Catholic Bavaria would rather not talk about him at all. In Switzerland, one is reminded that the reformation began in earnest in Geneva at the hands of Jean Calvin and Ulrich Zwinglii. A case can be made that the reformation of the 16th century began in the thoughts and ideas of previous centuries, written and argued by such men as John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and even Augustine. But it is difficult to deny the significance of what happened in Wittenberg.

This October 31 we found ourselves in Germany and figured there was no better day to make our long anticipated journey to Wittenberg – to visit the location where Luther taught, preached, presented the 95 Theses, ranted against the selling of indulgences, and generally confronted Rome in every way. This is where Luther happened. It is the place that I have longed to visit since I first heard the story of what he did here. That desire only increased when we found out we were moving to Germany.

Every year when I delivered this particular lecture to my students, I felt myself getting caught up in the emotion of what happened at Worms when Luther confesses, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Of course, it wasn’t the proud, boastful words many would imagine. It was defeated words of a man enslaved to the truth. Knowing the consequence of his admission, he confessed (after asking for and being granted more time to consider his answer) that he believed the Bible to say these things, and that unless he could be persuaded by use of the Scriptures, he could not recant. Later in his life pride may have been an issue, but I don’t think so here. Here, in this moment, one sees a man who has succumbed to the conviction of the inerrancy of God’s Word. He believed what he read. As Abraham believed God. And Joseph. And Paul. And John. And Polycarp. Hudson Taylor. Jonathon Edwards. And so many others. We would be remiss to not set aside a time to remember them.

But, the reformation of the 16th century was not the reformation at all. It was a reformation. It was a further reformation of the one that began two thousand years ago when Christ began reforming the world to make it new again. That was and is the Reformation. And the Reformation Day that we celebrate, appropriately, on the Eve of All Saints Day is a reminder of all those who have gone before us to boldly and faithfully proclaim the truth of God before us. All of those who have labored in the service of God, both before and since the beginning of the great reformation. A reminder that the labor continues.

This is why Reformation Day and All Saints Day fit perfectly together. This is why we celebrate with a bigger Sabbath feast than normal. This is why our children write papers on past Saints that we share as part of our festivities. It is a reminder of the story that God is telling and the characters that He uses. Fittingly, this feast happens in the Fall … when summer is dying. The reminder that death comes in order that the world may be reformed. That soon all things will be made new, but for now we must die.

I love being able to discuss these stories with my children. I love that they were thrilled to make the long drive to Wittenberg. The annual festival in Wittenberg seems to have lost the focus on scripture over the past five centuries, but my children still enjoyed the medieval costumes and performers. Maybe some day my children will tell their children what it was like to visit Wittenberg on Reformation Day. Maybe my grandchildren will look to the end of October not as a time to dress up and ask for candy, but as that time when the holiday feasting begins. A celebration of God’s story. A reminder that Christ’s final victory is over death itself.

 

Eating, Drinking and Whatsoever

Happy Holy-Days to you! Not the usual spelling and for a reason.  I love the holiday season, and I know that the word “holidays” is usually relegated to the Christmas season (which seems to begin earlier and earlier for the retail market).  I say we take our word back in its original form. The Old Testament is very particular about the feasts that those who are of the family of God are to remember and teach to their children.  Historically, the Christian church has recognized the Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter periods with other days receiving more and less attention during different periods.  New days have been added, and some are being recovered.  Always, this is to be done to remember, not just the celebration, but the reason we celebrate.

“And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make greatmirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them.” ―Nehemiah 8:12

For our family, the holiday season begins the end of October with Reformation Day on October 31^st and All Saints Day November 1^st.  Then, of course, we celebrate Thanksgiving in late November followed by the four Sundays of Advent leading up to Christmas Day.  As our family has grown, literally and figuratively, I have tried to make these holidays and this holiday season an increasingly more meaningful part of our family traditions.

 

“There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.  This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.” ―Ecclesiastes 2:24

Obviously, our culture already makes Christmas and Thanksgiving a big deal, and Halloween is becoming bigger and bigger each year.  Yet, I wanted our holidays to be special for reasons other than the popular commercial motivations that seem to surround the public celebrations.  I want to be sure that our holidays remain Holy in the hearts of our children.

Thankfully, we are beginning to see success even as each year seems to bring something different.  Establishing traditions can be a challenge when you find yourself in a different location every few years.  This year's season is our first in Germany. Last Christmas we spent sojourning through Kansas City; in 2009, I was in Iraq; and in 2008, we were together in Hawaii.  All the transition can make establishing traditions a challenge, but it also allows for the possibility to introduce new traditions and find new ways to focus on the real meaning of each holiday.  We are doing our best.

“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” –1 Corinthians 10:31

We will be eating, drinking and whatsoever with healthy abandon.  I pray that we do it all to the Glory of God!

Remember How Your Hair Always Looked Good the Day BEFORE School Pictures...

Or maybe you had a sibling who crashed his bike and came home with stitches and a big bandage on his chin?  Just a few more reasons to be thankful that we are a "homeschool family" ... snap-snap.  (Are you humming the Adams Family tune while thinking of the lyrics by Tim Hawkins?)  Moving on.

Although we have been somewhat tardy in setting a date on our school calendar for pictures, we have been quite diligent in all other areas of our schooling.  The elder two have thoroughly enjoyed the instructors and the challenges of their online classrooms and are learning to budget their study time in order to satisfy more than one very patient and understanding teacher!  Abigail is looking forward to that specific challenge but satisfies herself at the present time with trying to introduce a new subject or two into her curriculum, wincing when she hears the condition, "IF you finish your other assignments, then we will begin _________."  And then there is Bear.  He is an eager student and always wants to know "When are you teaching me?"  He loves to sing the Alphabet Chase song, read books, memorize his Cubbie verses, play the matching game, and draw with big sister on the days that he isn't "doing music" with his other two (older) siblings.  Belle simply takes it all in with a big grin.

During last weekend, our school photographer had an extra day or two off from his real job, and so we were able to schedule individual photo ops.  Only two students needed to take advantage of the "re-take" day!  We hope you enjoy.