Joey and I made a hasty decision… and opened our presents on the evening of the 20th! We were going to wait and have our own little Christmas celebration tonight, but now we’re going to spend an extra evening with his family. We tried to make it a special night—complete with homemade mochas and A Muppets Christmas Carol. I’m not sure if either of these things will become traditions, but it was pleasant nonetheless. Here’s what Joey got me!

The first two came together in a collector’s set. I really like these new versions of Jane Austen’s classics! Well worth the money. Joey was playing on my bookish side this Christmas. :)

I got Joey a small djembe (drum) and a pasta-maker. Apparently I was playing on his artistic side.

Anyways, I’m sure you’ve found this post very interesting. I’m just trying to do something, ANYTHING, to keep me from doing all the things I need to do before I can truly enjoy the holiday. Merry Christmas!

without the bells and whistles

Mmmm… I hope I never have to abandon my “cup of coffee in the morning” routine. 

Christmas is just around the corner—as if there’s anyone who could be so absentminded to miss that fact.  It’s going to be a very different holiday this year than any I’ve experienced before.  Here’s why:

1. I have never, EVER been away from my family on Christmas day
2. I won’t get to open one present on Christmas Eve, resulting in a brand new pair of “Christmas” pj’s (courtesy of my mom)
3. I’ll miss out on the traditional Christmas Eve Finger Food Extravaganza my family indulges in every year
4. I’M PREGNANT

It’s not like missing any of these things (save the fourth) really makes any difference in my life… and they are definitely NOT what Christmas is about, but I love all the childhood memories of happy times that keeping these 3 little rules conjure up.  I guess my new role is to look back on Christmases past and simply remember.  Life is different now.

In the meantime, I have the things of this Christmas to look forward to, such as…

• spending quality time with my new family
• making new traditions with my side of the family
• taking in everything along with my new husband for the first time
• benefiting from the happy smiles and giggles of my new niece, who is much more over-stimulated than I will ever be
• rejoicing over my new life, brought by my God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who made Himself nothing to be redemption in this fallen world

I truly do love all of the nostalgic feelings that are part and parcel with Christmas time, but I think the greater thing to focus on this Christmas is my role in this life.  And what is that role?  To be a loving, supportive wife, a soon-to-be parent, and, above all else, a minister of the gospel of Christ.  If I had nothing else in this world except Jesus and a burden to bring Him glory, it would be a full life. 

“I no longer live”

The word of God is a delicious spring of wisdom, truth, and love!  That the Lord God Almighty would be so compassionate, so loving as to reveal His very character and His unfathomable sovereignty in the words and pages of a book is remarkable.  More than remarkable!  Words, with all their variety and depth of meaning, fall short to praise Him as He should be praised, I’m afraid. 

You may wonder what could be so earth-shattering to bring about such a sudden gushing of conviction.  It’s nothing, really, Rather, it’s that I’m nothing.  Or, better yet, it’s that God has shown me that I need to humble myself to be nothing.  I’m too prone to believe myself as something, and yet even more prone to exert myself to be the most something something that ever was.  I’ve bought into the lie that this life is about “bettering” myself.  “My life is not what it should be… I need to become better…” 

It sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?  Fairly “un-Christian”, wouldn’t you say?  Ah ha.  There lies the problem.  Christians are always thinking about how they can “better” themselves.  I won’t condemn all Christians—I’ll just speak for myself.  When I am feeling spiritually dry, my first thought is, “Oh, I haven’t been reading the word.  Perhaps if I just read the word more, I will be content in my faith again.”  When my earthly relationships seem to be faltering, I immediately think, “I don’t have enough love.  I need to become more loving.  Then my relationships will be better.” 

Hold on a second, what’s wrong with those two things?  What could possibly be said against reading the word of God and being more loving?  Aren’t those good things in themselves?  Then how could these good things—and the pursuit of them—ever lead to anything bad? 

Thus our minds rationalize our behaviour, and thus we are deceived.  I see this deception needs to be explained further.  I will leave that to God’s word.

“…a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.  So, we, too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by Christ and not by observing , because by observing the law, no one will be justified.”  (Gal 2:16)

I would venture to say that being justified is the ultimate form of “betterment”.  To be declared righteous, to have your sins removed—what could be better than this?  So, according to this snippet of Scripture, by observing the law (keeping up practices that seem to be required of all Christians), no one is the better for it. 

Okay.  Hold on a second.  Doing good things, being righteous in deed and creed, does nothing to help my plight?  Goodness, what else can God possibly expect? 

Let’s just heighten the tension a little more, shall we?

“… if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”  (Gal 2:21).

The only thing worse than knowing I can’t behave myself out of condemnation is the realization that by doing so, I, in effect, say that Christ’s death on the cross was useless.  

It looks pretty hopeless, doesn’t it?  I must confess that I have not been entirely fair.  I’ve skipped some of the key parts of the passage that explain the solution. (As an aside, isn’t that annoying when people do that?  Give only half the truth of the verse, or purposely ignore the parts that shed the proper light on the situation?  Be constantly in the word, and you will not be so easily taken in!)  What is this solution you ask?  GRACE!  FAITH!  It is by FAITH in Christ that we are justified!  Doing good or proper things doesn’t make us any better.  It just shows that we feel guilty about something or other.  It is by Christ we are justified—by His gruesome death on a condemning cross for the sake of restoring relationship between man and God. 

When we put our faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross—finished because He not only died, but defeated death and rose again—God looks at us and does not see all of the sins which condemn us to hell.  He sees—and accepts—Jesus Christ’s righteousness as our own.  And that’s what grace is—undeserved favour, being accepted as a child of God when our sin has made us nothing more than an undeserving stranger. 

“…a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.  So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.  If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin?  Absolutely not!  If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker.  For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.  I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”  (Gal 2:16-21, NIV, emphasis mine) 

Living by faith does not mean we throw the law by the wayside.  On the contrary, putting our faith in Christ for our justification will enable us to joyfully observe the law and NOT depend upon it for salvation!  Faith—the accepting and believing in God’s grace—frees us from slavery to the law for “justification”. 

Paul (the writer of Galatians) attests that those living by faith in Christ will still fall into sin.  This does not nullify the salvation we have received.  It only proves how much tighter we must cling to Christ's sacrifice, how we cannot be justified in ourselves but in Christ’s death on the cross of shame.  We still need to repent of that sin—do not think that by sinning more, we are simply helping God’s grace abound more (see Romans 6)!

I think the verse that sums everything up in this passage is “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (v 20).  In order to truly have faith in Christ above our own attempts at “being good”, we need to actually die to ourselves.  We need to daily put our faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and thereby Christ will live in us.  The life we have on this earth will be one of faith, and not one of works. 

This may be a lot to take in, a lot to understand.  I don’t expect anyone to grasp it without the Holy Spirit revealing it.  He has opened this tiny little section of Scripture to me this morning, and I praise Him for it!  THIS revelation is what inspired my previous explosion of adoration for God, for His word.  What a timely lesson to learn. 

“My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”  (Proverbs 3:11-12, ESV)

a reason for feeling lousy

I had yet another midwife appointment yesterday—and I’m back with Kari, my original midwife!  This is a cause for celebration.  She’s amazing at what she does!  I don’t know how to explain it.  Even though she gives you the same information that all the other midwives give, you just feel so much more informed and assured of a healthy baby when she tells you what’s going on.  She can tell you exactly where she’ll get the strongest heartbeat, and then be bang on target.  She’s hilarious—I think being British helps her in this area.  I mean, really, what does the phrase “I was in there like a whirling Derbyshire” actually mean? She just makes me giggle. 

This last month has been a tough one for me.  I’ve been feeling dizzy, sluggish, and sometimes flu-ish.  I’ve also had to watch how quickly I stand up, or else I’m in danger of fainting or getting a wicked headache.  With all of the H1N1 hype everywhere, you might guess that I’ve been a little uneasy about my present  condition.  All my fears were silenced yesterday, however, when Kari took my blood pressure.  Over the last four weeks it has dropped significantly.  When Kari told me what it is now compared to what it was four weeks ago, I was astonished—and slightly worried.  Thankfully there was a medical student present in the room who had the ability to ask more intelligent questions than I could have done.  Kari explained it’s common for girls my age to have low blood pressure to begin with (which I did), and it’s expected to drop between 24-28 weeks, which is where I am right now.  For pregnancy, this level is normal.  The student seemed astonished, and rightfully so: if I was sent to the hospital with that blood pressure at any other time in my life, they’d think I was dying.  I’m normal, however, and that knowledge is good enough for me.  It won’t go up at all in the last weeks of pregnancy, but Kari assured me that I will become more accustomed to it, thus I will feel better. 

So, that’s the latest in my road to motherhood.  In the meantime, I’m enjoying sitting back, putting my feet up, and delving into novel after novel. 

omitting “grace” and “faith” from the text

I was searching for verses on “grace” for a project I’m working on, and I came upon a verse that many have heard before:

• Eph 2:8-10

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  (ESV)

I need to use a version of the verse that is easy to understand, but I don’t want to use one that twists the meaning to something “more fitting” to what I’m doing.  That would be misusing Scripture.  My two default translations happen to be the New American Standard Bible and the English Standard Version, but I was curious to see what other translations had to offer.  Here’s a broad look:

• Eph 2:8-10, New International Version 
  
  
  8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

• Eph 2:8-10, New King James Version
  
  
  8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

• Eph 2:8-10, The Message
  
  
  8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! 
  9 We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! 
  10 No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

I was completely stunned when I read these verses in The Message.  He deliberately removes the words “grace” and “faith” from the text.  I understand that Eugene Peterson is trying to get away from “church jargon” to make the Bible easier to grasp, but I will not support his version as being Scripture.  God is not a teacher that waters down His “lessons” to the students’ level.  He is God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth!  His ways are above our ways, and its our wonderful privilege to seek out His truth and His ways, to long for bigger things, deeper truths.  Any teacher will admit that in order for her students to learn, they need to be offered knowledge that is beyond their grasp—something they need to work at attaining.  It’s not cruel—on the contrary, it’s extremely loving. 

I suppose what bothers me the most is that the general public regards The Message as any other Bible.  New believers are encouraged to read it as if it is a literal translation. It’s not.  It’s a paraphrase… mortal man’s summary of God’s words.  I’m sorry, Eugene Peterson, but the TRUE Message belongs to God, and, whether you intended it or not, people are being deceived into exchanging the immortal God with “images” or “thoughts” brainstormed by humans.  In our own study of the Bible, we may be led to think about the text in some of the same ways that The Message states it, but I am completely content with relying on the Holy Spirit for that understanding.  The LORD is faithful, and His word never goes forth without accomplishing that which it was sent out to do.  That is HIS role, you know. God is a jealous God, and He jealously guards His Word.   The words of other translations of Scripture are completely understandable—we just need to actually apply our minds and rely on the Holy Spirit for understanding. 

One final thought…

I find it interesting that the world has so readily accepted this paraphrase in place of versions such as the NKJV or NASB, or even the NIV.  I doubt a re-write of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in contemporary language would be so well accepted as the Message.  And that’s a sad thought.