COUSINS

 

Recently a cousin with whom I have had little contact posted two items on Facebook. One was a picture of a snow blower he had gotten for his birthday (yeah! I clicked “like”) and the other was evidence that his dog had eaten and undigested something plastic (“yuck” – we have observed the same thing happen with the dogs at home here in Brazil). Afterwards, I thought “Why in the world would my only communication with a person I value and would like to know better be an expression of disdain over a natural function of pedigreed and mongrel pets alike?” That got me mulling over relationships which are important but not considered primordial in today’s hectic world, mainly, cousins.

I grew up far from my cousins – a half continent away, to be exact. Cousins – and aunts, uncles, grandparents and others significant to my family – lived in another world which I visited for a few months every four or five years. During those special visits, I met my kid cousins (I was the oldest daughter of my Stowell grandparents’ oldest daughter). Especially memorable, because marked for history by a family portrait, was the family reunion when my great grandmother was still alive, and my oldest Foster cousin, Scott, was a babe in arms. My cousin Jim was a good-looking boy of maybe nine or ten and his parents had not yet brought my Korean-born cousin Wendy onto the scene. Cousin Hillery, Aunt Jinny and Uncle Bill’s one and only, was a winsome little girl that already gave indication of the intelligent beauty she would become. Uncle Roge and wife still had not produced their two sons, and when I was in the States, proposed to have me live with them to get a good American education.

Visiting my dad’s side of the family was another story. He was ninth of twelve children and it looks like most of them continued the order given in Eden to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth”. My dad was an uncle when he was born, and my older cousins and their kin were mostly names mentioned and faces blurred into nirvana. There were cousins I enjoyed playing with – Uncle Allen’s Byron and Anne, Aunt Doris’s Dianne, Debby and Harry Milton, and cousin Valerie.  Harry went with us to Jamestown when Lau and I visited the first time when Davi was four and Debby less than two, and it was a joy to get to know him for a day. Still wish there were a way to re-connect with them: There were aunts and uncles we loved, who treated us to special meals and a gift or two – I remember each one of them. But contact with my Charles cousins was rarer as the years went by, and stopped after my aunts and/or uncles passed away.

There were surrogate cousins when we were children living in Brazil – fellow MK’s. Missionary kids were part of our life, and their parents were our real-life aunts and uncles. I still have contact with one or two (Yeah Nina!), and have discovered that we continue to have much in common despite fifty years gone by!

One of the unexpected blessings when I married was the deluge of relatives acquired along with Lau. Lau’s parents adopted me from the day he told them he was marrying that gringo blonde. His dad was one of eight brothers and sisters (with between none and eight offspring a piece) and Da. Eulina one of sixteen. You can imagine how many relatives that produced. For several years, when we had family reunions, there were over one hundred people gathered from several states of Brazil! It was hard to keep track of everybody, but the few aunts and uncles that remain, plus the many cousins from all over, plus their children and grandchildren, are always in our mind and hearts. We still keep in touch as “primo” and “prima”.

The name for cousin in Portuguese (primo or prima) comes from Latin “first”— and some of these cousins in Brazil are really “first” in our hearts. But I’d say that our children really got the prime opportunities in cousin relations.

Each time I was pregnant, my two sisters-in-law also had children, so my children grew up with same age cousins: Davi, Glaucia, and Márcio, Deborah, Daniela and Maurício, Daniel and (slightly younger) Alvaro Filho (Alvinho), then Leda. Add to these, those cousins who lived in neighboring towns, as well as those who lived far away but were part of the larger community of church family we visited. For example, Davi was fourteen when he travelled alone by bus from Jaú to São Luis dos Montes Belos, over 1000 miles away, to visit tio Neto and tia Ester and the cousins Eliseu, Eliezer and Gabriel. That’s another funny use of relatives’ names: Tio is uncle and Neto is Grandson, so Lau’s sibling cousin  (both fathers and mothers are brothers and sisters!) Venâncio was  “Uncle Grandson” to my kids!)  When we moved to Brasília, our cousin Regina Claudia and her husband Emílio, had our support every time one of her children was born, so that our second cousins are as much primos (or more!) than the many cousins I’ve never met.

Relationships change over time, and I guess that is one of the reasons relatives grow apart or even break up, apart or down. Our (Lilian, Alice and I) children who grew up together are no longer as close as they were when kids. Davi and Marcio used to spend every vacation together and have unforgettable underage experiences, from being held up under gunpoint at Márcio’s chacara to going together with a long list of Bible verses, to talk to the Catholic bishop and question why that church venerated idols and considered Mary holier than Jesus. Today Márcio is a successful customs official in the port of Santos who has made totally different lifestyle choices than Davi, who is happily married with two kids and chancellor of the largest private university in South America. Debby and Daniela are friends though living completely different lives on either side of the Atlantic, while our beloved Maurício lost his life in drug-related suicide when only in early twenties, leaving a fatherless child. My oldest Colombini nephew and niece also took different roads in life: Derlinho is hardworking, success-driven, centered father of equally successful sons, while my beauty-driven architect, niece Adriana faces continual losses (or screw-ups) in life, as do her son and daughter, and grandchild. Comparisons suck, but they always come up when considering the life and times of cousins!

Patty Duke starred in of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid, where “identical cousins” were look-alikes from contrasting life situations. Looking at the pictures of cousins in albums of the past, we remember good times and regret the bad moments (or days, months and years) that accumulated pain in their lives and ours. Most of the time, I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on in my cousin’s lives, or the lives of my children’s cousins. We heard and read and intuited what was 80% gossip and maybe 10% reality – leave the remaining 10% for whatever other motives one might have. We loved our family, and had hundreds of reasons to become closer to people like and unalike us, and we allowed opportunities to flutter like feathers from a torn-up pillow on a windy day.

 

The Bible is packed with stories about relatives and relationships of all kinds. Some cousins reach the Hall of Fame for giving bad advice – take Jeroboam’s young kin in 1 Kings 12:8-15 – causing permanent division and constant civil was between Judah and Israel. Come New Testament times, a couple of memorable cousins change the world: Yohanan ben Zacariah and Yeshuah ben David. The first was born to aged infertile Levite parents who had trouble believing they would give birth to John the Baptist. Six months later Jesus was conceived by a Judean teen virgin whom Joseph, carpenter of royal lineage, married. One spent his early years on the outskirts of Jerusalem and as he matured, assumed the wild trappings of a prophet in rough clothes and a diet of locusts and honey. The other spent his first years a fugitive in Egypt until the puppet tyrant king died and he returned with his family to grow up in Nazareth, Galilee. John’s whole purpose in life was to prepare the way of the Lord. Jesus was the Lord whose way had been prepared “from the foundation of the earth”. When the two met as adults, Jesus asked John to baptize him, and John announced “Behold the Lamb of God”. Both were destined for violent death – John beheaded on a whim, Jesus crucified – and he was ressurrected three days later! Those are cousins of true renown!

I take this moment to honor my cousins by blood ties and through heartstrings, in hopes that we may build bridges in our humanity, and connect the many existent or imaginary gulfs into one distinct, diverse, and divine family!

Elizabeth Gomes

scripturient

scripturient: (adj) having a consuming passion to write

pronunciation: skrip- tUr- E- ent

Today I learned a new word I had never heard before with my old friend who is, like me, an English teacher. I have been immersed in Scriptures since childhood, and am equally passionate about writing since I first learned to read (and consequently, write), and know at least a dozen words derived from the Latin scriptura in both English and Portuguese, but was unfamiliar with the adjective that perhaps describes my past and present goal: scripturient. Thanks, Nina Woody Morway, for defining the passion that consumes me as well as significant others in my life!

Here in Brazil day before yesterday was National Readers’ Day, also a definition I had never heard about, though every day at our house has always been a day for reading and writing. Many friends posted comments about the books they had recently read; a few ventured to mention the books they futurely wish to write, and my mind was boggled with thoughts and ideas and plans and mental outlines and entering and deleting a glut of stories and concepts my fingers (or word-processor, when push comes to shove) are too slow to write. Got letters from a couple of thinking friends and discovered that it was my reading-thinking-corresponding aunt’s birthday, so I wrote to her and was immediately rewarded with her delightful communication. And began to consider how relational reading and writing really are.

Have a facebook friend who is a writer of romantic, slightly steamy (if someone can steam only slightly) novels. I don’t even remember how she got on my list, but along with my thirty-something author friends – mostly Christian thinkers and doers – who write serious popular non-fiction, this writer lightens me up with her humorous posts. Her relation to books is downright idolatrous, and her books are about relations – love and hate – between glamorous men and women, but you really can’t say her writing is relational in the sense that the Biblical God of Scriptures wrote, or people who believe Him write about the Word in flesh.

The wisest king in the world, author and compiler of the ancient wisdom of Israel, chose to call himself simply Koheleth, Teacher or Preacher. He “searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true”, describing the words of the wise as “goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails – given by one Shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:10). But in the same text he warned of the vanity of anything given in  addition to the words of the one Shepherd: “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” and after all had been said, concluded that humankind’s whole duty was to “fear God and keep his commandments, for God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil”.

There is much argument as to when or even where another wise man lived and wrote (or was subject of deep drama laden with dialogue from beginning to end. But the oft-repeated declaration of faith he left for all generations of Old and New Testament believers,

I know that my Redeemer lives

and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed,

yet in my flesh I will see God;

I myself will see him with my own eyes-- I, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!

is sandwiched between a scripturient declaration writers like you and me wish for:

Oh, that my words were recorded,

that they were written on a scroll,

that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead,

or engraved in rock forever! (Job 19:23-25)

Scripture speaks of writing as more than documenting a covenant, though the everlasting covenant is written in hearts and stone and from the beginning of human history “inscribed by the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18; 34:27). As God’s image-bearers, His people were to “write down for yourselves this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it...” (Deuteronomy 31:19). Not just the songs and poems,

but also the ethics of “love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man (Proverbs 3:3).

The revelation to the prophets, whether by Habakkuk, who wrote disturbing questions in Judah right before the Babylonian invasion by Nebucadnezzar, or Daniel in exile, or John on Patmos, was to be written visibly – as a royal message and a readable road sign: "Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay (Habakkuk 2:2).

Jesus Christ himself commissioned John to write what he had seen, what is now, and what will take place later (Revelation 1:19) and finishes off with a promise:  "I am making everything new!" affirming: "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."  Rev. 21:5

Of course, we scripturient writers, whether passionately driven or leniently procrastinators, do not own the words of God nor write anything close to inspired Scripture. But the most prolific writer in the New Testament compares us to letters – a writing genre with which he was quite adept – as he wrote to the Corinthian believers:

You show that you are a letter from Christ,

the result of our ministry, written not with ink

but with the Spirit of the living God,

not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Paul gives Christian readers and writers words of trust and competence, of unsurpassed beauty and glory and competence – goals we seek in writing the truth (even through fiction), writing well, ministering in a new spiritual covenant: “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant-- not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life...” that breaks into poetry:

If the ministry that was engraved in letters on stone,

came with glory, so that the Israelites

could not look steadily at the face of Moses

because of its glory, fading though it was,

will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?

If the ministry that condemns men is glorious,

how much more glorious

is the ministry that brings righteousness!

For what was glorious has no glory now

in comparison with the surpassing glory.

And if what was fading away came with glory,

how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face

to keep the Israelites from gazing at it

while the radiance was fading away...

But whenever anyone turns to the Lord,

the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the Spirit,

and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory,

are being transformed into his likeness

with ever-increasing glory,

which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3.3-18).

We really cannot say such a text is taken out of context when applied to a modern Christian writer’s scripturient desire! May 2014 find us writing with passion, truth and love, good metaphors and profound simplicity!

Elizabeth Gomes

LOUDMOUTH AND STILL, SMALL VOICE

Coral Infantil Sementes da Esperança (http://www.alagoas24horas.com.br/conteudo/?vCod=77856)

Some time ago, Lau and I were invited to participate at a youth conference and for the first time I was listed as speaker. Usually my articulate, immersed-in-the-wisdom-of-the-Bible husband, was keynote preacher and I accompanied him for support and maybe a question-answers session for women, but I was never a spokesperson. This time was different: both of us would be speaking to the entire group at different sessions, and I must say I loved the idea. The week before the event, my doctor pronounced a verdict on my intermittent sore throat: we’ve got to operate, or the infections will escalate to unbearable heights. So I had a tonsillectomy and was forbidden to speak. I went to camp with Lau and the young people of the church, but was not only mute for public speaking but also for singing praises. All I could do was play the recorder – and I was never a great instrumentalist –when they sang in congregation. I wrote expressing my frustration:

Lord, I want to be a mouth,

shout from mountaintops, proclaim through great reads

-- but today you make me silent,

and to a mute voice you whisper, “Just be still

and remember that I Am.

I give and take what plans you make

to work out well all one can say

of mercy and sheer grace.”

  I wanted to proclaim, I confess it now,

for it made me sound important

   and the sound of my enamored voice seemed

   clearer than the message I was to communicate.

“Dumb speaker, talk with your life,

shout with your being and love with your seeing,

be a hearer, be a doer – but stay quiet,

listen humbly, learn intensely, share my infinite gentleness!”

When our children were young and my mother was visiting, she once exclaimed, “They are so loud! Why can’t they be more quiet and polite like so-and-so’s kids?” I confess that I was never a good teacher of politeness or quietude. At the dinner table we always seemed to have wild discussions about everything under the sun – sometimes three or four simultaneously. Ideas, dreams, frustrations, spiritual struggles and temporal victories were all on the table, spilled over, hoarded while shared, communicating thought and hope with words, not always of wisdom, but always wielding authenticity. Sometimes our words rose from the flesh, but we always looked toward the Word who became flesh, and tried to flesh out faith in action. All of us, became, become and are becoming speakers, though the sound of music runs from rhythmic rap to symphonic praise to the simple do re mi of pain.

When I consider that one of the only permanent aftershocks of my cerebral vascular accident is losing my voice I must concede that God was generous to me. (He is always generous and good and would still have been good if I had lost everything, even my life – but a proud and strong-willed loudmouth can learn a lot when she is not the soloist and can’t even carry a tune in the choir – if she learns to listen well). So losing one’s voice is an opportunity for learning to hear – even when one perceives that physically my hearing impairment is increasing.

Jesus’ brother may have had similar issues before he wrote: My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires (James 1.19NIV). Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger! My tendency is the opposite: quick indignation, quick and easy talking, hard of hearing and harder still to listen well, so James’s admonition is counterpoint to what comes naturally. And we not only must listen well, but do what we heard from God. Jesus said that what distinguishes his sheep from others is: My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me (John 10.27). Christ knows those who listen to him, and those who hear his voice follow him. Doers and not just hearers or sayers (I must concede that some Sayers, like Dorothy, are real doers with their stories – but you get the point).

One of the aspects of writing, for me, is communicating truth in a way that is lovely and loving. Paul says it well: “speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ” and “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body” Ephesians 4:15, 25). The result of truthful communication in love is growing in all things in Christ, and the reason we do so is that we are all members of the same body.

We see progression: good listening yields true speech, which results in growing as participants in one body. When Charles Wesley expressed the desire for a thousand tongues to speak the praise of our Redeemer, he was not just talking about multiple languages. We believe there are people out of every tribe and nation who have heard and are practicing the written Word by the living Word incarnate – so more than a thousand tongues are talking, and talking well. But each singular Christian has the opportunity to express what has been expressed in: “the honors of thy name”. One Word made flesh and dwelt among us – this “charms our fears, bids our sorrows cease, breaks the power of cancelled sin, sets the prisoner free, ‘tis music in the sinner’s ears, ‘tis life and health and peace”[1]. Wesley’s wording is laden with awesome!

Isaiah saw the incredibly awesome throne of the Lord, encircled by six-winged seraphs singing the holiness of the God who fills the earth with his glory. The prophet’s exclamation was not of having reached a personal pinnacle of spiritual success – on the contrary, he had to say “Woe to me! I am a man of unclean lips, and live with people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty!” Isaiah’s mouth was touched and his guilt removed, and he was commissioned to tell God’s wayward people “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken” (Isaiah 6.7-12). A prophet sent by God must communicate the truth even under the threat of total ruin. In an utterly forsaken land, arises a voice crying in the wilderness – predicted by prophets, fulfilled by the last prophet of the old covenant: John the Baptist (Isaiah 40:3; 43:19; Matthew 3:3). Even the advent of the locust and honey-eating prophet was preceded by his father Zechariah’s being stricken with... muteness (Luke 1.5-20). And John was called to preach in the middle of nowhere – in the desert of Judea. Some of God’s servants who were pretty holy had to shut up while God was entering humankind!

Awesome were the scenes witnessed while shepherds watched their flocks and angels sang one unforgettable night, and the uncultured sheep-watchers were commissioned to spread the word concerning Jesus (Luke 2:8-18). The same John (not the Baptist, but the old apostle who had walked with Jesus since early in his lifetime) who spoke about the Word made flesh (John 1.1-14) wrote to complete the joy of every believer with “the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete!”(1 John 1:1-5). Nearly a hundred years later, John heard the voice of angels and fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing the vision of the eternal city, when the messenger intervened: “But he said to me, Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers the prophets and of all who keep the words of this book. Worship God!" (Revelation 22:8).

The entire Bible is laden with the dance of hearing, understanding, and being silent and acknowledging our woe before we can communicate life-giving speech. Listening to the voice of the Wind that blows when and where he wishes (John 3:8-12) we are born anew. It is in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:11, 12) that the Lord speaks to us after letting loose earth-shattering thunder and fire. Likewise, he expects our powerful speech, whether through multimedia at full volume or written books shared by word of mouth in plain English or Portuguese (in our case), or Chinese, or International Sign Language, Swahili or any other language in this world, to be simple, understandable truth spoken in love, with the whisper of the Spirit that resounds throughout the earth.

This Christmastide, I wish I become known for listening well – not just music that I love, but God’s forever music, the sound of a mighty rush of wind and a gentle breeze that touches one’s life to leave it never the same. I wish my friends to hear the Voice – not voices of idols or babble of incoherent speech, but the voice we are admonished to listen to without hardening arteries or heart. May we develop learnable hearts and minds, so we acknowledge the God who gives “knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning” (Daniel 1:17).

I remember my Jewish friends who celebrate the feast of lights, Hanukkah, a lesser festival in their calendar, and the words of the prophet who was displaced from his land and served faithfully through several international[2] dynasties:

Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;

wisdom and power are his.

He changes times and seasons;

he sets up kings and deposes them.

He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.

He reveals deep and hidden things;

he knows what lies in darkness,

and light dwells with him.

I thank and praise you, O God of my fathers:

You have given me wisdom and power,

you have made known to me what we asked of you,

you have made known to us the dream of the king.

This song is reminiscent of Paul in his letter to the ex-pagan Corinthians:

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"

made his light shine in our hearts

to give us the light of the knowledge

of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay

to show that this all-surpassing power

is from God and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:6-7).

May Faith communicate the truth of a brilliantly happy Christmas to you and yours, with glories that are not our own, and treasures multiplied throughout the earth in every tongue, for every nation!

Elizabeth Gomes

---

[1] O for a thousand tongues to speak, Charles Wesley, in Hymns of the Christian Life # 7, Philadelphia: Christian Publications

[2] From the year 605 to around 532 BC, from Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon through Cyrus, the Mede, and then Darius, king of Persia.

CONTROL FREAK

 

I am not a TV addict. While my husband enjoys watching action-packed adventure movies, almost as soon as the television is turned on for us to relax most evenings, I get down to more serious relaxation – and doze, or even sleep the whole night, if I remember to put and turn on the C-pap before saying goodnight. After prayer, hugs and kisses and a screen-filled story, I usually don’t follow the CSI’s or NCIS’s or Blacklist or whatever past the first ten minutes. If I have a good book, I can spend hours past bedtime reading, but only a short scene or two on the screen – unless it is a historical novel or well-crafted mystery. If Lau gets up to answer the phone, however, I grab the remote control and do some serious surfing, checking out several national and international news stations, a couple of cooking experts (I especially loved Kylie and Nigela and enjoy Jamie Oliver’s thirty-minute meals) and even take a peek at ridiculous situations on What Not to Wear or Wife Swap. As soon as Lau gets back to the bedroom sofa, I return the remote control to him, trying to focus the scene where he left off – while I return to Terra Somnia.

What makes me crave the control when I don’t even like TV? Guess it’s really a matter of wanting to know what’s on on twenty-something stations in living color and deadly world news or crime scenes. It’s having that gadget in hand and doing something different from what is presently presented – like the idea of “anywhere but here” of a wanderlusting reader or watcher. I have to confess that not a few moments of irritation have risen around issues of remote control and who says what we will watch.

Long ago, when I was younger (I am still young at heart, though over sixty-five!) I used to criticize my mother for her need to control every detail in her well-ordered life. Mom’s closet had clothes with notes about the date they were purchased (shortly before she died at 88 I found a skirt she had bought in Porto Alegre when I was fourteen), what accessories she could wear with the outfit, and a rubber band on each hanger indicating whether the garment was sparkling clean or had been worn and would need laundering after two or three uses. She knew where every penny she paid had been spent (or wasted, in her opinion, many times when given to someone else). Mom made to-do lists and grocery lists, collecting coupons and comparing savings. She had reams of paper of all colors, shapes and sizes, but used to cut up used envelopes and write notes in her impeccable ambidextrous calligraphy on everything from “B’s birthday” to “mail check for tithe” to “turn over the compost pile” and “make soup from chicken bones” or “pray without ceasing”. On her birthday list, besides writing the name of the person whose birthday would be celebrated on a certain date, she wrote the relationship beside the person’s name: Beth – daughter –August 17^th; Deborah – granddaughter – October 25^th, Louella – friend .... and for many years indicated what was given for the occasion. As I said, I used to criticize my dear mom for the controlling details of her life, until I realized that the need to be in control was due to the fear that she was losing control, forgetting, and worse, not being able to foresee the outcome of plans and dreams. To a detail-oriented, well-ordered woman, the shocking surprises of life were earth-shattering, and she had trouble dealing with them, except as “reasons for prayer requests”.

In John Frame’s Doctrine of the Christian Life we read about the reformed understanding of God’s authority, presence and control, and when we learn about God’s control over all things, we learn to trust God and his providence. Our faith is in who he is, what he does and did, and what he promised for our future. It is trust in the sovereign care of our loving Father. We often think of Romans 8:28 as a catch-all for a sort of fatalistic clichéed Christian life, but when we look carefully at the text we understand that God’s will in the life of those who love him is full of purpose and controlled conformity – to him!

And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit,

because the Spirit intercedes for the saints

in accordance with God's will.

And we know that in all things

God works for the good of those who love him,

who have been called according to his purpose.

For those God foreknew he also predestined

to be conformed to the likeness of his Son,

that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those he predestined, he also called;

those he called, he also justified;

those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:27-30)

 

In the case of God Almighty, control is beneficial (God works for the good of those who love him), relational (that he might be the firstborn of many brothers) and progressively better (those he predestined he also called, those he called, he also justified, those he justified, he also glorified). Human control freaks (like you and me) often do not want to control for the benefit of the one(s) we control, but for our own personal benefit. Instead of thinking relationally of others as brothers and sisters, we want to dominate or dictate as captains of our own souls as well as of others’ lives, and in lieu of improving the circumstances toward glory, we want to control because we don’t believe the other person is capable of wise decisions and actions! Remote control in hand, we boss around here, there and everywhere – even when our choices are just as stupid as the other options presented!

Jeremiah was a prophet who received the Word of the Lord when he was still very young, and foresaw and experienced the destruction of his people and nation even when every other prophet was preaching peace and good times, and the shepherds of Israel were “curing the hurts of their sheep superficially”. When he got to writing Lamentations, there was no way to control what was happening in current events or heartfelt stories – for Judah has gone into exile and she who was queen among the provinces is now a slave (Lam.1:3,1). But Jerry had to admit he lost all control: “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath”. His skin and flesh “grow old and he has broken my bones”; he is “surrounded with bitterness and hardship”, dwelling  “in darkness like those long dead”; “walled in so I cannot escape”; “weighed down with chains”; “barred my way with blocks of stone”... “he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long” (Lam. 3.1-20).

Truly Jeremiah, who was called by the Lord before being formed in his mother’s womb”, and was appointed to have control “over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10) seems to have lost it all – health, prestige, being believed, family, friends, position and even possibilities in his nation.

Some of my friends and family have situations similar to that of Jeremiah. They are faithful to God, but by the standards of prosperity-gospel preachers and of the real world we live in, all seems lost. Even I  have no control over circumstances or situations, and wish there were a magical remote control to put things back onto the right station or more pleasant programs. Like Jeremiah, they (and we) “well remember... and our soul is downcast within” but there is something else, something more:

YET, this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,

to the one who seeks him;

it is good to wait quietly

for the salvation of the LORD” (Lamentations 3:20-26)

And in spite of no control in our hands, like crying prophets, demoted priests and fallen kings and queens, we sing: Great is thy faithfulness, Oh God my Father, There is no shadow of turning with thee/ Thou turnest not, thy compassions they fail not/ as thou hast been, thou forever wilt be! Great is thy faithfulness!

Elizabeth Gomes

GLORIFIED SPECIALS



Thomas Alva Edison (born Feb 11, 1847 -- died Oct 18, 1931), was taught at home by his mother because at age 7 he was expelled from school for being considered mentally retarded -- he was deaf.

 

I remember in Grandma Kate’s kitchen, seeing the old man with long hair and crooked hands. “So you’re Dougie’s girl,” he said. I was five going on six, loved my daddy Douglas and had never heard him called Dougie, but it sounded like a good mixture of Douglas and Daddy. I nodded. Cat swallowed my words. That was the first and only time I met my Grandpa Charles. Later I asked my parents about him and was put off with “He’s in a hospital”. Institutionalized. “Always been crazy”. How come there were such pretty paintings all over Grandma Charles’ homestead, though everyone said she was so poor an’ he never gave her anything? Why does Grandpa Charles have long hair – boys wear it short. ‘Cept in pictures of Jesus and Moses and people from the Bible. Is Grandpa from the Bible times? Did he die? And when we visited the Richmond park and zoo, daddy told me that his daddy had worked on a lot of the parks – he was a landscape architect.  Later asked mommy what a landscape architect was, and she replied, “It’s a glorified name for a gardener.” I liked glorified names. Having seen television for the first time, I was enthralled by some of the advertisements. “Halo shampoo – it glorifies your hair!” and was sure that would make me not only more beautiful, but somehow holier. There was always a vague remembrance of an unknown grandfather who sired twelve kids and left my valiant, perfect matriarchal grandmother to raise them by all herself during the Depression. Some years later I overheard my mom and dad mentioning that he had died in the “Institution”. No great grief. Just emptiness.

Nowadays the problems of mental illness are different. People are no longer institutionalized for long periods. Several friends I know on both sides of the Atlantic have family members who struggle with mental illness and though there is no more a culture of “putting away” or institutionalizing people who have “gone mad”, many are the unresolved issues, and families are embarrassed to talk about them. Often family and friends wish there were a way to simply “lock up” the “offender”. “Crazy” family members spend like made, though they may have been the most beautiful child in the family, do weird and irresponsible things like getting rid of all their belongings, or expecting Christmas presents every day, or hiding and hoarding food, when not getting drugged and dragged naked into the street by their folly. They are old children, never growing up and never knowing what a soft, gentle demeanor can do to make them lovely once more.

Once when a recovering addict answered the phone at the Refúgio clinic my husband directed in Brasília, the person on the line asked, “Is that where the crazy people stay?” and Ulisses, without missing a beat, answered, “Yeah, here the best of us drool!” Especially after I suffered a CVA, I felt that not only the “best of us drool”, but also the Brazilian saying “between doctors and madmen, we all own a bit of both”. Edward Welch describes diseases that “characteristically alter intellect, emotions or behavioral capabilities. These can impair understanding, pose limitations on the expression of the heart, provide occasions for temptation and sin, and raise unique problems for families.... because they mimic spiritual problems of the heart, they are often misdiagnosed by counselors and physicians”.[1]

Now, a blog is no place for an all-encompassing, deep essay on mental disabilities – and I am certainly not qualified to analyze such problems. Have a couple of friends who are respected neurologists, many who are practicing psychologists, and even a couple of psychiatrists, besides the pastoral and family counselors with whom I am familiar. I can only write as a Christian reader who wants to know what the Bible can offer to those who are perturbed. Mainly it is a matter of hope and encouragement.

I write as a “drooler” -- one who not always can control the saliva I produce – much less the mental and psychological issues that we confront on a daily basis. I write as the child who discovered that her grandfather was labeled “crazy” and put away, the young mother who discovered a child she begat and wholly loved -- with mental illness that loses her, the middle-aged couple who have to deal with their parents’ senility, the “golden years” grandmother who faces the reality of her own disenfranchisement as she forgets more often, remembers “long ago” but lets the beans burn and the shower run dry and mixes up the grandchildren’s birthdays. I write to friends who are afraid of “losing it” and want to grab every detail of their past and hold tight so it won’t get away, while hoping to forget those things that hurt deep in their heart of hearts and still make them feel “like the motherless child” of the Negro spiritual.

Mental and emotional disabilities remind us that nobody is really normal. Disability requires patience, time, trust, submission and hope” – qualities most of us, normal, mildly or severely disabled all, severely lack in our post-modern world. There is need for “awareness that to live will involve us, at some time and at some level, in physical and/or psychic suffering”.[2]

Michael Beates poses some hard questions:

Why do we... demand that everybody be ‘normal’ and look the same? Why do we ... try so hard at hiding people with disabilities from our everyday view? Why do some people with visible and invisible brokenness often feel as if they have to hide the problem in order to join God’s people for worship? Finally, and perhaps more importantly, what answers does the good news of the gospel give us for those questions, and how does the gospel give us hope in these situations?... Many sources number statistics as to Americans with disabilities at over forty million people.... Add to this the number of people whose ‘brokenness’ is relational and emotional, and this category may include almost every other person in the pew.[3]

I have a dear friend who struggles with bipolarity and a split personality, and has illusions that, if by faith, she stops taking her meds, the Lord will heal her through the television ministrations of some quack evangelist. Another loved one is locked in her room and her dreams while hoping she will be healed by a new relationship, a new love, so she buries the meds and tries out new loves.

Disability is not foreign to the Bible. King Saul was tormented by fits of madness for which David was called to sing, play his harp and comfort the king – First case of music therapy that we have documented knowledge (1 Samuel 14:14-23). Later, David sought refuge with the king of Gath and faked madness in order to save his own life (1 Samuel 21:10-15). Job found himself disabled, disenfranchised and in despair, and his wife gave the counsel of a madwoman (Job 2:8-10). The Bible runs the gamut of descriptions, from “simple” (13 times) folly (9 times) fool or foolish (24 times), stupid or stupidity (5 times) madness (54), unreason (3). The book of Proverbs is pregnant with contrasts between wisdom and folly, good-sense and nonsense, giving vivid examples of various types of spiritual, mental and emotional “disabilities” which all of us have seen, if not experienced personally. Reason and understanding were removed from mind and behavior of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, who behaved like an irrational animal (Daniel 4). Later both reason and government were restored.

When, upon preparing to enter the promised land, Moses presented his people with the fullness of blessings or destitution of curses as they obeyed or disobeyed the Word of God, I was intrigued by one of the curses: “The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart.... So you shall be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see” (Deuteronomy 28.28, 34), and goes on to a horrifying description of evil in the land. A couple of thousand years later, Paul warns Timothy of the evil of the “last days”, which in every detail seems to describe our days:

For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 3:2-7).

.We are confused at Biblical representations of those who are disabled. The imago dei, the fact that we are created in God’s image and likeness, would indicate that we were created perfect, and the many imperfections in the people around us whom we love and loathe are the result of the universal fall, but definitely “not the way it should be”. Just as the sacrificial lambs goats or bulls had to be “perfect”, entrance in the tabernacle and temple were denied to those with deficiencies. But sacrifices were made “for the simple and those who could not answer for their own sanity” (Numbers 15:30; Ez 45.20). On the cross, Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do” Luke 21.34. There is a disability due to ignorance which is freely forgiven. But as we look at the Gospel, we see that the Spirit was upon Jesus to heal and set free. Beates says:

In many respects (John 9 being an exception), Jesus never fully explained his focus on the lame, blind, crippled and poor. He let the healings and parables speak for themselves, allowing the hearers to connect the dots, so to speak.... Paul drew the lines more clearly, perhaps for the sake of those new to the covenant community... but throughout, we continue to see (albeit sometimes subtle) an important thread in the fabric of our understanding of the gospel: brokenness (spiritually and emotionally) and weakness (physically representing our spiritual state) are the normative human condition. And recognizing this reality is the first step to embracing the life-giving power of the gospel.[4]

There is a very special boy in our family who has struggled with learning disabilities, mental and neurological challenges, and in a way will always need help, medical and psychological, to function properly. But he loves the Lord and was taught in the Word. When he was still quite little, at a school that denied the Trinity, he said to his dad, referring to his teacher, “Here Dad. Tell her that God is three in one -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Tell her like the Bible says!” More recently, he has depended on the Lord to strengthen him in the areas where he is weak, and prays that “God will use me with my disabilities to help other kids like me to know Jesus”. We are as proud of this young man as of the other children all – whether normal, gifted or disabled. This gospel is what gives hope to us – whole or “special” – in manifold ways. Paul says it humbly and triumphantly:

For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God – and righteousness and sanctification and redemption -- that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the LORD." (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

Elizabeth Gomes

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[1] Counselor’s Guide to the Brain and its Disorders, Edward Welch, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991, p. 107

[2] Disability, p 71”.

[3] Disability and the Gospel, Michael S. Beates, Wheaton: Crossway, 2012, p. 17.

[4] p. 61.

PROVERBS AND PRECIOUS PROMISES

A garland of grace for your head (Prov. 1:9).

Over the last couple of weeks I had a translation deadline that forced me to ignore simple pleasures like checking my emails or posting comments on various things that were happening in the lives of friends and family. Once when I began a posting, my computer went beserk and so I went on to other activities, only to discover two days later that that unfinished comment “graced” my timeline and several people “answered” my unfinished incomplete non-thought. Talking to a friend, I had affirmed that one of the reasons we are involved in Christian counseling is that we have seen and felt more than skin-deep the need for wisdom in the body of believers who so often set off for “ministry” with the best of intentions but total lack of wisdom in practical life, even though they (we) believe the Word of God and serve the living Word with heart and mind. The Bible is full of guidelines for our path, from Genesis to Revelation. This early morning I made a pit-stop at an old favorite, Proverbs, whose God-breathed words of wisdom were collected by the wisest of men who was a total fool when it came to marriage and involvement with the idols of his culture.

The introduction delineates the raison d’etre for the book that at first glance seems to be a potpourri of antithetical sayings: attaining wisdom and discipline;  understanding words of insight; for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair; for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young. When I mentioned to the friend my desire to help women in ministry deal with their being as redeemed Christians with fallen worldviews in a decadent world, I felt guilty of being like a blind person trying to lead the blind. I am certainly no better than the women and men we have observed over the years – stumbling, bungling, banging their heads and breaking their hearts while trying to love God over all and love their (our) neighbor as (our) themselves (Matthew 22:36-39 rehashing Deuteronomy 6:5).

If we deem ourselves wise, we must learn to listen and add to our learning (Prov. 1:5), and if discerning, get further guidance for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise. It’s not the understanding of ancient clichés, though the name of the game is “proverbs, parables, sayings and riddles of the wise”. It starts with the fear of the LORD –without which we will fear what man can do to us, fear our very stepping into the arena of true knowledge. This fear of the Lord goes with us at every stage of life – unless we are fools enough to despise wisdom and discipline.

Fear of the Lord touches even on our ambivalence to our forefather’s instructions: though our memory listens to the instruction and teaching of our father and mother, we often forget the garland of grace for our head and chain for our neck – we remember instead the goads to our self-esteem and fear they instilled on “what will other people think?”

In a way I was a Christian “flowerchild” wearing a crown of daisies and wishing a gold necklace of rubies, but too often I neglected Peter’s reminder that:

           His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness

            through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

           Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises,

           so that through them you may participate in the divine nature

           and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

           For this very reason, make every effort

           to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;

          and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance;

          and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness,

          brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

          For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure,

          they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive

          in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

          But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind,

          and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

          Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager

           to make your calling and election sure.

          For if you do these things, you will never fall,

          and you will receive a rich welcome

          into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

          So I will always remind you of these things,

          even though you know them and

          are firmly established in the truth you now have.

          I think it is right to refresh your memory

          as long as I live in the tent of this body,

 Often I forget that wisdom calls out from the streets and plazas of life and think that “nobody knows anything worth knowing.” But they do! Somebody does! He says: “If you had listened to my rebuke I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you...” (Prov. 1:23). I remember the lament of Wisdom Incarnate over Jerusalem: “How often I would have gathered you under my wings...”

God’s wisdom is not an intellectual assent – it is essentially a conjunction of mind, heart, gut feelings and action. From the injunctions to the Law in Deuteronomy (see, for example, Deut. 32:47: They are not just idle words for you-- they are your life. By them you will live long in the land...”) to the petrine, joannine and pauline injunctions to Christian living (example: Eph 1:17-18). Every son of Adam or Daughter of Eve is admonished in Proverbs 7:1-4 to use wisdom as safeguard for moral purity:

 

           Keep my words and store up my commands within you.

           Keep my commands and you will live;

(Living according to God’s word is a matter of life and death!)

           guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.

(Look at God’s teachings as the most precious of gifts)

           Bind them on your fingers;

(That is why my fingers, though sluggish, are anxious to write!)

           write them on the tablet of your heart

(this tablet is affectionate and written in living stone).

           Say to wisdom, "You are my sister,"

           and call understanding your kinsman

(if I want to be keen in wisdom I must make Wisdom my kin!)

 

The story of Wisdom began in eternity, and the Proverbs narrative (7-8) reminds one of what John narrates in the beginning of the Gospel when the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and glory (and sends us back to the beginning of time narrated by Moses in Genesis one). The entire story of learning and understanding from God in love which encircles and inspires (in spirals of involvement from the Lord of Life to human creature created in his image) is a true story that gives hope for me and any other person who realizes we have only begun to scratch the surface of learning – but He promises that we will know Him! That will be sufficient to learn and proceed to know throughout eternity!

Elizabeth Gomes