"He could never have done that."

Yes he could.

And I could have as well. And so could you.

Whether he did do it or not, is another matter.

But he could have.

There is no sin into which we are not capable of falling, given the situation and the means.

Yes, feel sad. Feel disappointed. But don't feel shocked.

songs on godly living

Jocelyn is after some.  Anyone know any?

Congregational songs on godly living are really hard to find because they are really hard to write.  Grown ups hate being told what to do (kids are used to it!) and preachy-ness generally makes for a bad song anyway.  I've tried many times, but most have been way too awful to send to Philip for a tune.  But here are a few suggestions:

Be Thou My Vision
May the Mind
Take My Life
1 Cor 13 (Rob Smith)
(but they are the three obvious ones)

These ones are a bit more tangential...
We belong to the day
Let Your Kingdom Come
Grace Unmeasured
We Are His People

Hopefully our new song will be finished soon.  It's our best attempt so far at a song on godly living.  At some stage we were thinking of re-releasing Nothing Else Matters as an adult song.  You could try that.

Anyone else have ideas?

c.s. lewis on using 'ready made' prayers as well as the 'home-made' variety

The ready-made modicum has its use. ... First, it keeps me in touch with "sound doctrine." Left to oneself, one could easily slide away from "the faith once given" into a phantom called "my religion."

Secondly, it reminds me "what things I ought to ask" (perhaps especially when I am praying for other people). The crisis of the present moment, like the nearest telegraph-post, will always loom largest. Isn't there a danger that our great, permanent, objective necessities — often more important — may get crowded out? ...

Finally, they provide an element of the ceremonial. On your view, that is just what we don't want. On mine, it is part of what we want. I see what you mean when you say that using ready-made prayers would be like "making love to your own wife out of Petrarch or Donne" (Incidentally, might you not quote them — to such a literary wife as Betty?) The parallel won't do.

I fully agree that the relationship between God and a man is more private and intimate than any possible relation between two fellow creatures. Yes, but at the same time there is, in another way, a greater distance between the participants. We are approaching... the Unimaginably and Insupportably Other. We ought to be — sometimes I hope one is — simultaneously aware of the closest proximity and infinite distance. You make things far too snug and confiding. Your erotic analogy needs to be supplemented by "I fell at His feet as one dead"....

A few formal, ready-made prayers serve me as a corrective. ... They keep one side of the paradox alive. Of course, it is only one side. It would be better not to be reverent at all than to have recourse to a reverence which denied the proximity.

(Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, no. 2)

Do you use 'ready made' prayers or exclusively 'home-made'? Why?

Who do you love more?

In this post (linked to, once again, by Nicole) Tim Challies asks the question: who should we love more - our kids or our spouse? Challies argues that he loves his wife more than he loves his kids, and that this is right. And maybe it is.

I agree that there's a primacy about the husband-wife love. They loved each other before the kids came into the world and it's their continuing love for each other that holds things together and provides a secure home for the children. But. Isn't it silly to compare love for spouse with love for kids as if the loves were the same? Apples and oranges surely. Or at least, oranges and mandarins.

There is an innate love that a mother (at least) feels for her child, a fierce desire to protect, such that she would unthinkingly throw herself under a bus to save him or her. And the death of a child is something that a parent never really gets over. One can (I'm told) come to a point of closure over losing a spouse, but not so a son or daughter. With this in mind it seems unnatural to assert that you love your spouse more than your kids. What is this 'love' that you are speaking of?

A couple more things...

• is the question actually different for men and women? Ephesians 5 tells husbands to love their wives and give up their lives for them. Wives are not specifically asked to love their husbands - but to honour, respect, obey them. Perhaps the father-child relationship is actually more similar to the husband-wife relationship than the mother-child relationship is to the wife-husband relationship. Any thoughts on this?

• In situations of an abusive father, I think it would be quite unhelpful for a wife to have it in her head that she needs to love her husband more than her kids. The safety of the kids should come way before any affection she feels for her husband.

• I'm hesitant to write this one, so I'll put it in a small font so maybe you won't see it... It gets on my nerves that some men (thankfully not the wonderful one I'm married to) use this kind of argument to demand more sex from their overworked and tired wives. Such men need to think about what it actually means for them to love their wives more than they love anything else (work, hobbies, newspapers, tv) and leave it to their wives to do their own thinking...
  

Overall, I do agree with Challies' basic idea. It's good that our kids understand that the primary relationship in the family is between mum and dad, not between mum (or dad) and them. In our home we try to find ways of expressing this, and often our kids don't like it - but we think that in the long run it makes them feel more secure and behave better as well.

embroidery

embroidery

If, as now I see,
these twists and loops were fashioned by design
and guiding hands divine
held and tied the threads intentionally,
these tangles aren't what first I thought they be.

Stitches binding hearts.
I felt each pull of in and out, around
and fancied I was bound
and tugging chords were tearing me apart,
the needle piercing, wounding like a dart.

This tangle's nothing new.
Two chords unwound will soon become entwined.
Your thread is linked with mine.
They move together, separate on cue
with in and under, out, around and through.

Mistakes, maybe they were
but now I see each knot was artfully
positioned, carefully
arranged so the pattern would not err.
And even if the picture seems a blur

turn over, see it clear.
Below the threads are ripped or pulled too tight
but over all is right.
So let our needles move in joy and tears
and stitch and stitch through all the coming years.

sar 2008