Life Is Hard, but God Is Good

In the past two months, I have buried my father and walked my daughter through open-heart surgery. The “windsock in her heart,” as her surgeon described it, that had blood flowing the wrong way, was apparently congenital, but we didn’t discover it till this past July. She is still in the hospital, but she made it great through surgery on Tuesday. So now, in my great relief, I have some time to reflect on the whirlwind that has been my life for the past two months.My overwhelming sense is that I’ve been covered in the love of God. The Almighty works with precise timing that may not always thrill us in the moment (surgery the day before my first day of classes!?), but in retrospect is always perfect, and designed for our greatest good. That my father died during the summer meant Oregon was beautiful (such beauty heals me), and I could stay as long as Mom needed me and work remotely. As for Alex’s surgery, I wanted it on Thursday instead of Tuesday, but now I’m thankful she will be stronger going into the holiday weekend, when hospital staff may not be the A Team.My second observation is that I’ve been covered in the love of Christ’s people. I spent a long time last night writing thank-you notes, and I’m sure I’ve failed to remember some folks who have helped us out. . . . And some of the people who have helped don’t even know me or that they helped. They are writers whose books have encouraged me. Three authors of two books especially come to mind.First is Dave Furman and his new work, Being There: How to Love Those Who Are Hurting (Crossway). Dave, a DTS grad, serves as the senior pastor of Redeemer Church of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. His wife, Gloria, is a former student of mine.In 2006, Dave developed a nerve disorder in his arms that renders both of them nearly disabled—to the point where he can count on one hand the number of times he has held his four kids. In fact, they have to button his shirts for him. So he speaks with serious credibility about what does and doesn’t help. His chapter on what not to do is worth the price of the book. Our family has just come out of a season of care-giving for my Dad, and then we have been on the receiving end with our daughter. And I heartily agree with all his advice. Plus, he has a great perspective on suffering.The other two authors wrote a work that is actually not coming out till October 4 (I received an advance review copy). It’s a B&H release by Raechel Myers and Amanda Bible [yes, that's really her name] Williams titled She Reads Truth: Holding Tight to Permanent in a World That’s Passing Away. “She Reads Truth” was a community before it became a book. Four years ago, some strangers started reading Scripture daily, staying connected through the hashtag #SheReadsTruth. That gave way to a web site that led to an app. And today thousands open their Bibles and find Jesus in its pages every day.In the book by the same title, the founders share their stories about everyday life living in light of God’s permanence as the world passes away. Fathers die. Miscarriages happen. (Two stories with which I totally identify.) But God is with us, and he never changes. Nor does his love fade.What are you going through today? Christ promises, “I will be with you.” And if he is for you, who and what can prevail against you?

Prophesy: Women through the Eras of Redemption History

Recently, a reader wrote to ask about the history of women prophesying throughout Scripture. . .  

While the text records the stories of fewer women prophets than men, in every era in which men prophesied, at least one woman (often multiple women) has prophesied. Prophesy, it should be noted, was/is not just predicting what will happen, but to build up, encourage, and console (1 Cor. 14:30).

The transmission of God’s truth through inspired proclamation has always had both human and divine elements (like a pair of scissors—both blades work together). So when we read 1 Timothy, for example, we understand that Paul is writing God-breathed scripture, but he is doing so via a letter to his protégé, Timothy. When he writes to the Ephesians, however, a number of structural markers in the book suggest he has a wider audience than one person in view. God used Paul’s audiences, both individual and group, and his circumstances, whether free or in prison, as a grid through which the apostle communicated God’s word. Paul told Timothy to bring his cloak and come before winter, but that does not mean all believers everywhere are to do so—a preposterous suggestion.  

We see this combo human-divine pattern with all the prophets of God—God speaks through them, but he does not turn them into passive zombie-minds to channel through them. He incorporates their circumstance and thoughts in the process of transmission.

The fact that he has consistently chosen women to do so suggests that there is nothing wrong at a for-all-time created level for a man to learn God’s truth from a woman. (If only Pilate had figured that out!) Indeed, on the Day of Pentecost and in the “last days” to come, women’s prophesy was and will be a positive sign that the Spirit has come.

Here are the eras of redemption history and a look at how God spoke in terms of the prophets’ gender:  

Era of Innocence (Adam and Eve pre-Fall): God spoke through Himself alone

Era of Conscience (Cain, Seth & Families): God spoke through Himself alone

Era of Human Government (Noah, descendants): God spoke through Himself alone

Era of Promise (Patriarchs to Sinai): God spoke through Himself alone

Time of Moses: God spoke through some men and Miriam (Ex. 15:20)

Prophet/Judges: God spoke only through Samuel and Deborah (Judg. 4:4) in terms of those described as being both prophetsand judges  

Time of kings: Some men and Huldah (2 Kings 23:14) and Isaiah’s wife (Isa 8:3)

Post-exile*: Some men and Anna (Luke 2:36)

The church: Pentecost (men, women ­–Acts 2:16–18); daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9); women of 1 Corinthians 11:5; 14:24

Last days in future – “sons and daughters” (Joel 2)

Millennial kingdom – no need

Some understand Paul in 1 Timothy as prohibiting women from ever imparting God-inspired truth to men because of what these interpreters see as a creation-level difference in men and women. Thus, they understand the text there to say either there is something innate in women or in how God has structured their involvement in redemption history that makes it "go against creation order" for a woman to preach to an audience that includes men. But whatever the explanation for Paul's prohibition, we must understand its scope in light of how God has used women in redemption history and says he will continue to do so in the future. 

A Lesson from the Olympics

My Engage blog post this week:

Mo Farah, 33, said he thought his Rio 2016 Olympics "dream was over." This member of the Great Britain team was defending champ (London, 2012) of the 10,000m event, and he had every reason to believe he could win it again—until he tripped on his training partner and fell on the track.But rather than give up, Farah did something remarkable. He jumped back to his feet. And he didn’t just prove he could get up and make it to the finish line. No—he took off and ran for 16 more laps and pressed on to won the gold!The apostle Paul uses a running metaphor for the Christian faith in his letter to the Philippians: “Do everything without grumbling or arguing . . . though you live in a crooked and perverse society, in which you shine as lights in the world." How? "By holding on to the word of life [the torch?]. Why? "So that on the day of Christ I will have a reason to boast that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain” (2:14–17).The Philippians’ maturity was what Paul had to show for all his sacrifices—enduring hunger, persecution, loneliness, cold . . . And he likened his labor for them to training for a race.Elsewhere Paul gave training advice to the Corinthians. Bear in mind that in ancient Olympic events, there were no second- or third-place awards—the winner took all:“You know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize. So run to win!” (1 Cor. 9:24).One way to win is to get up when we fall rather than wallowing in our failure. Our falls may make it much more difficult to win, but we can still cross the line as champs.And how do we “train” to win? Paul tells us: “All those who compete in the games use self-control so they can win a crown” (v. 25). Runners who constantly indulge their minds and bodies with thoughts of defeat, inhaling crack cocaine, contracting STD’s, and snarfing up mounds of ice cream don’t win gold medals. Rather, champions control minds and bodies in order to cross the finish line first.In ancient times, the Olympic winner didn’t receive gold or a medal as his (it was always a “he”) reward. The winner’s prize was a crown woven of olive leaves from Mt. Olympus—leaves that would soon wilt. With the image of these wilted leaves in mind, read Paul’s words:“That crown is an earthly thing that lasts only a short time, but our crown will never be destroyed.”God rewards winners in the spiritual life with rewards we can enjoy for eternity. So, Paul’s advice? “I do not run without a goal . . . I treat my body hard and make it my slave so that I myself will not be disqualified after I have preached to others” (9:24–26).Do you share Paul’s goal? How can you make your body your slave so you can not only finish the race but win the imperishable crown?

Hope: Amy's and Caleb's Stories

My husband, Gary, is the East Africa field leader for East-West Ministries. About a year ago, I went with him to Kenya, and we had a video/writing team with us. Two of the children in our sponsorship program, Amy and Caleb, shared their stories with the team. And now we can finally share their words with you. We love these kids! Thank you to those who have had a part in alleviating their suffering. You make such a difference! Follow the link above to find out more.

Willis R. Grafe (1920–2016)

Dad and me at my college graduation, 1981.

My dad died in mid-July. Those words twist my stomach. He would have been 96 today. He lived a long and vigorous, virtuous life, still collecting bread from grocery stores and delivering it to the poor well into his 90s. He taught me to hike (backpacked the Grand Canyon with his brother, my hubby, and me at age 69) and to canoe and to sing at the top of my lungs at sunrise on Easter. In my early elementary-school days, he could be found at night sitting in the doorway to my bedroom with the autoharp in his lap, singing to my sister and me as we lay on our bunk beds. He stopped saying "I love you" only after Alzheimer's took his mind in the past few years. But he would still deliver a bear hug. Here is the eulogy I wrote with help from my mom and siblings, and which I read at his memorial service.  

Willis Raymond Grafe was born in Mill City, Oregon, on August 13, 1920. He was the child of Leroy and Gladys Grafe, and brother of Herman and Louise. Gladys died when Willis was 8. At age 13, he placed his faith in Jesus Christ at a revival, and by age 16 was leading music with Louise at a local church.At Gates High School, Willis played basketball and baritone. After his siblings graduated and his family members moved away for school and work, Willis, having one year left of high school, slept on a neighbor’s back porch in exchange for room and board.To complete his first year of college, Willis spent three winter terms at Oregon State College, working springs and summers at a sawmill to pay his way through. He signed up to go to the Yukon Territory and Alaska, working on the advanced survey crew for the ALCAN Highway connecting the continental US with Alaska. Afterward he enlisted in the Navy, which sent him to boot camp at Farragut, Idaho, and on to train at Texas A&M University as a radio technician. He spent several years stationed in Pearl Harbor in the mid-1940s, and he was active there in the Methodist Church, before returning to OSC (later named OSU) on the GI bill to study civil engineering. He served as class president his senior year. During his college summers, he worked for the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads in Oregon, Washington, and Montana.At OSU’s Weatherford Hall, Willis met Beverly Ann Scharf in the living room of the house mother. Ann was there with a friend, and Willis offered them a ride home in his new Studebaker to save them the bus fare. Afterward, he asked her out, and their first date was a clam-digging adventure.In 1950, Willis received both a BS and a BA degree from OSC, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and Blue Key Honor Societies.Upon graduation, he worked for a number of companies before returning to the Bureau of Public Roads, later renamed the Federal Highway Administration, where he would work for more than 40 years.But back in 1952, Willis and Ann drove away from their wedding in the new Studebaker, and before long the government sent them to live in a cottage without a bathroom at the south end of Glacier National Park, near where Willis supervised a survey crew. The couple bought their first home in Portland, but during the seasons when mountain roads could be built, they lived in a trailer in Steamboat, Alma, and Lebanon, where their two sons, David and Steven, were born.When the couple were raising three children in the trailer—having added Carolyn—Willis was transferred to work in the Vancouver, Washington, office and later the Salem office. In 1957, he and Ann bought a house on five acres on the Willamette River with a one-acre garden and rows of Bartlett pears which Willis turned into a pear and a Christmas-tree orchard.Two more children were born—Sandra and Mary (“Betsy”).The seven Grafes camped, hiked, climbed mountains, sang accompanied by Willis on the autoharp, and made annual clam-digging trips. They started with five kids in tents and later graduated to travel trailers. The men in the family also took annual hunting trips to northeastern Oregon forty miles from a paved road.In 1968, Willis volunteered for a transfer to the Washington DC office to “expose his children to culture.” While there, he took the family to museums, historic sites, and free concerts; and to compensate for the lack of mountains, he took up white-water canoeing, winning the title of senior championship canoer at Great Falls, Virginia.After seven years in Washington DC, Willis took early retirement and moved the family back to Oregon, where he took a job in the Linn County engineer’s office and settled in Albany. He retired from that job after nearly ten years at age 65, having also served as president of the Oregon Association of County Engineers and Surveyors. During his second retirement, he and Ann relocated to Woodburn 21 years ago.Willis published Gates and the North Santiam and An Oregon Boy in the Yukon. He spent his entire life walking the mountains, from age 16 on. He made his last vigorous hike at age 89, having backpacked the Grand Canyon, and led and participated in numerous hikes with the Chemeketans, summiting many of the major Cascade peaks, including Mt. St. Helens multiple times, both before and after the eruption. He returned three times to the Yukon.In his civic life, Willis traveled doing missions in Mexico and Haiti, serving on water development projects. He was active in Rotary—traveling to Haiti, and at age 89 to Thailand. He was a Friends of the Woodburn Library volunteer, and he collected and delivered for the local food bank until age 92. Willis was also a lifetime member of the Mill City Masonic Lodge 180, and for many years he served as an elder at Mid-Valley Community Church.Willis is survived by his wife Ann of 64 years; son David of Portland; son Steven and wife Christina of Goldendale, Washington; daughter Carrie of Vancouver, Washington; daughter Sandra and husband Gary of Mesquite, Texas; and daughter Mary and husband Mark of Richardson, Texas; and grandchildren Heather, Roy, Caleb, Julia, Jonathan, Devin, Erin, and Alexandra.

Fiction as Story

Olympics in the Bible?

The ancient Olympics started in Olympia, Greece, in 776 BC, and they lasted for nearly 1,200 years. Emperor Theodosius banned them for being pagan and unworthy of Christian culture. The modern Olympics were reinstated in 1896 in Athens.The apostle Paul may be alluding to the Olympics when he uses running a race as a metaphor for the Christian faith in Philippians 2:14–17: “Do everything without grumbling or arguing . . . though you live in a crooked and perverse society, in which you shine as lights in the world by holding on to the word of life so that on the day of Christ I will have a reason to boast that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.”He may also be making an analogy to torch races when he speaks of shining as lights" as they are “holding on.” The Athenians held races, called lampadedromia, in honor of certain gods, including Prometheus. Relay runners passed the flame, and the first to arrive at the altar of the god had the honor of rekindling the fire.—Excerpted from my summer Bible study, Frappe with Philippians

The Importance of Doing Nothing

One of our family's best-ever vacations was a trip to Alaska, a gift from my father-in-law three years ago, after I finished my oral examinations. Thanks to the generosity of friends, our family just returned from spending a few days at Galveston Beach with them. A cup of java with water in view soothes my soul better than a month of Sundays. What about you? How do you relax?I blog monthly at the Geek Ambassador site, and my latest contribution addresses our need for rest: Most geeks I know, despite the stereotype that science and math nerds think only in abstract precepts, have an artsy side. We detect patterns others miss like peanuts triggering migraines. We create stuff like Velcro. And we think outside the table the box lies on.Yet if we work too hard, laboring through the weekends and refusing to take that trip to the Grand Canyon, we lose our creative edge.We know the facts:

• The average adult needs six to eight hours of sleep nightly.

• People who never take a one-day stop every week have higher rates of depression.

• Some 25 percent of Americans and 31 percent of low-wage earners take no vacation, ranking below 138 other countries in rest time taken.

• Americans forfeit billions of dollars in unused vacation days.

• Annual vacations cut the risk of heart attacks in men by 30 percent and by 50 percent in women.

• Performance increases after a vacation, with reaction times going up 40 percent.

• Vacations cure burnout, the last stage of chronic stress.

• All studies show performance increases with recharging and refueling.

Reflecting on his job interview experience, a seminary president recalled the kinds of questions he received from the committee that hired him. They seemed to love his description of uber-long workweeks, asked nothing about his habits of rejuvenation, and applauded the workaholism that made possible his achievements.But it’s not just those who evaluate leaders who reinforce such behavior. Most of us encourage each other to maintain impossible to-do lists. We o-o-h and a-h-h over another’s accomplishments, but if someone takes a great vacation, we’re more likely to express jealousy than affirmation.In my own journey from workaholism to setting aside a day for rest, I have found one piece of advice especially helpful: to structure my day of rest after those who have observed such days for thousands of years—by going from sundown to sundown rather than resting from sunup to sunup. For me, working on Saturday, ceasing in the evening with a big meal or a movie, taking Sunday till evening for rest, and gearing up for the workweek that night has worked out much better. That structure allows me to move work to the edges of both days while still allowing a full twenty-four hours to recharge.Having practiced such a day for a couple of decades now, I have some advice:

• Refuse to feel guilty about taking time off. Rest is not a luxury; it’s a necessity and a gift.

• Never use busyness to cover pain. Busyness—as opposed to abusing alcohol, taking illicit drugs, and using other forms of self-medication—is a more socially acceptable way to numb pain. But it’s still unhealthy. Do you need to see a counselor?

• View yourself as being one-seventh disabled. If you found out tomorrow you had a chronic condition that required you to cut back, you would find a way to make life work.

• Check your identity.  Many of us tend to wrongly get our identity from what we do. But as the saying goes, we are human beings, not human doings.

• Accept your mortality. Sleeping and time off can serve as regular reminders that life is short and it will soon go on without us. Our rest time provides a good opportunity to reflect on how we can give away power, mentor those coming behind us, and delegate responsibility to those ready to assume it.

• Expect to become more ethical. Ever notice when you get bored how you start making lists like, “Check in on my parents” and “write a thank-you note”? Slowing down can have the same effect. All those promises we’ve forgotten we made can come to mind when our minds slow down long enough to remember. And other people will view our follow-through as integrity.

• Plan ahead. Take meals, for example. Consider eating lighter, easier-to-prepare foods such as sandwiches and fruit, which require minimal effort. One family eats “breakfast for dinner” on Saturday nights. I rely on the crock pot. If you have small children, work out with your spouse, a grandparent, or a friend how you can give each other gifts of time alone.

• Consider lowering your standards for vacation destinations. Take a stay-cation if you can’t afford to leave town. Don’t assume your options include “Tahiti or nothing.” Fly a kite in a park near your home. Take your journal and head for a friend’s back porch.

• Plan vacations before you leave home. Are you the type of person who gets frustrated when you have to spend precious time off making decisions about where to eat and what routes to take? If so, consider doing your research in advance or assigning it to a travel companion who enjoys handling such details.

In the same way that the holes in lace make otherwise boring fabric beautiful, times of rest and reflection create spaces in our lives that add beauty. Are you making time to recharge?

Complementarians on Women in Ministry: Diverse Images

Synogogue - blindfolded woman in 13th century ivory set, Descent from the Cross.

My Engage post this week:

I read recently that when boards of directors have both male and female representation, they make better decisions. Doesn’t that sound consistent with Genesis 1:28? Not to everybody. Especially not those at the conservative end of the complementarian camp (and it is a very wide camp with a lot of difference inside).The word “complementarian” gets underlined in red in a Word doc, because it’s a word people made up. And they did so to emphasize that men and women are complementary.Some say “egalitarians [hereafter E’s] believe men and women have no gender differences and that complementarians [hereafter C’s] believe in the beautiful design of God for gender differences.” But honestly? That’s baloney. In terms of their view of the existence of gender differences, both camps believe men and women are complementary.The actual contrast between E’s and C’s and their view of gender differences is in whether they believe hierarchy is ever a ramification of those differences. E’s don’t believe In it, ever; C’s do. But to greatly varying degrees. And that is where they differ.So I want to focus primarily on the difference between some complementarians.Among those who believe in hierarchy, whether broadly or limited to within marriage, there is great diversity in how differently they think gender differences should work themselves out. Some C’s believe that by virtue of their maleness, men are created for authority over women in a way that women are not created to have authority over men. Others, like George and Dora Winston, would limit that hierarchy to marriage.Some think complementarity means men and women should partner in every way possible as they “rule the earth” together, with a few roles limited to men. But even those roles, they would say, should be greatly informed by women’s contributions. So asking a non-elder woman to attend an elders’ meeting, for example, might be viewed as consistent with Scripture rather than unfaithful to it.At the other end of the complementarian spectrum are those who mislabel the others within the camp as egalitarians and say such people are too liberal with the biblical text. Many of them teach that women should be excluded from seminaries, boards, elder meetings, writing commentaries, and translating the Bible. One theologian I know in this camp taught his all-male class that women being granted suffrage in 1920 was and is an evidence of a male leadership failure. To these folks, a woman involved in all the above-described contexts represents men failing to fulfill their spiritual responsibility to lead.When it comes to theology, the former group actively look for ways to involve women; the latter often see doing so as compromise. So some male complementarians create seminary internships for women, make sure women are represented on journals and committees, invite them to bring their scholarship to translations, and believe that without women’s eyes on the text, they miss something essential. One C I know who attends a conservative church asked a woman seminarian to join preaching-team meetings, even though he doesn’t believe a woman should preach in church. He thinks the team needs her input. I know of other complementarian men who have offered to help women get ordained so they can have more far-reaching ministries. Generally, those in this part of the camp believe complementarity means men are lacking in some way without women’s eyes on the text and active contributions. That is, they invite women to “do theology.”The more traditionalist complementarians see such actions as male fail. And they often label the evangelicals at the other end of the specrtrum as "liberals" and "egalitarians." Sometimes even sissies! But the difference is not in views of inerrancy; it is in views of interpretation.The fact that only 7 percent of the membership of the Evangelical Theological Society is comprised of women (and those who do belong often feel marginalized) may be a reflection of the more conservative belief. ETS's journal has no women on the review committee, and they voted only conservative complementarians to the executive committee this past year. The fact that the ESV translation committee chose to have no women translators or study note writers probably also reflects this thinking. And Master’s Seminary bars women from receiving training there.With this knowledge as a backdrop, let’s look at how Paul did ministry, as seen in Romans 16:Now I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant [“deacon”] of the church in Cenchrea, so that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and provide her with whatever help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many, including me.Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life. Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Also greet the church in their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked very hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my compatriots and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to [or “among”] the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.Relevant to the discussion? Or no? What about you? How do you see the first-century church on this issue? Welcoming? Allowing by way of concession? Limiting? A combination?Do you think those who hold to inerrancy but have a different view from yours have a low view of scripture? Do you see a difference between a business board meeting and church involvement? Why or why not? Do you know what you believe and why?

End Police Violence

Sick of it? Me, too. I'm pro-life. That means I don't believe in murder. Not of babies, not of black men, and not of police officers. We can speak out. We can pray. We can disciple people for life change. And there's stuff we can do on a civil level as well. 

Mark Your Calendar

The great theologian N. T. Wright is coming to Dallas this fall, and you're invited to a free event.SMU-Perkins is hosting him for "Simply Wright" on the SMU campus November 15–17, and they've extended the invitation to friends in the community.Dr. Wright is professor of NT and Early Christianity at University of St. Andrews, as well as being a prolific author and a retired Anglican bishop. The topic is related to his book, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good. Go to smu.edu/perkins-simply-wright to sign up as well as receive discussion materials.The three public evening lectures, Nov 15–17, begin at 7:30 and will take place in this order: 15th in McFarlin Auditorium, 16th and 17th at Highland Park United Methodist Church.

#Free on Kindle: July 4 only

Check out the updated edition of my first novel. It's free today only on Kindle.       

The Only Child: #Doesn’tPlayWellWithOthers & Other Myths

My post yesterday at christianparenting.org: 

Jairus’s daughter. John Updike. Condoleezza Rice. Cary Grant. Chelsea Clinton. My grandmother. And my mother. Do you think “most selfish people in the world” when you hear these names and labels? Neither do I. But they were or are all only children. And the stereotype of only children is that they refuse to share, act spoiled, and hog the biggest bowl of ice cream.Fortunately, this caricature of only kids as brats with tiaras or ponies on the back forty has changed somewhat in the past four decades, in part because more people have “onlies.” Whereas 10 percent of American families had an only child in 1976, by 2014 that number had doubled. Some place the percentage as high as twenty-three. And in New York City, like other urban centers, the number is closer to 30 percent.Mothers with master’s degrees have more only children than mothers with less education. But that does not necessarily mean these moms opted for education over more kids. Lots of women, myself included, pursued higher education precisely because nothing was happening in the family-expansion department. Among my colleagues and students at the school where I teach, a disproportionate number of them are childless or have only one child. Of those whose stories I know, the vast majority were not by choice.Certainly, some couples do choose education and careers over larger families. After all, it costs $245,340 to raise a child, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And that’s just from birth to eighteen years. Smaller family size also stems from starting later, as many delay marriage as compared with couples in the past.Nevertheless, neither of these factors had a thing to do with my own parent-of-an-only-child status. Our small family size was due to factors other than cost or education—factors like infertility, multiple pregnancy losses, and failed adoptions, not a lack of desire.But as we’ve parented an only child, we’ve discovered that the caricature was wrong. As it turns out, only children score quite low on narcissism and high on sociability indexes, meaning that in terms of relationships with their peers, they do better than just fine. They score even higher than firstborns on leadership ability and maturity, perhaps because they have no choice but to interact with adult models who tend to cheer on their achievements and affirm their self-images. And in fact, only children have higher IQs, on average, than those with siblings.“How will she learn to share…?” people would ask me about my daughter, as if they’d never heard of a church nursery or an educational classroom. Even only children have to take turns on the swing and jungle gym.In the self-centered category, only children are basically the same as oldest children. But different. That’s the conclusion Frank J. Sulloway, author of Born to Rebel, reached. He says that, like oldest children, only children tend to be more conservative, but, like the babies of the family, they innovate more. Only kids are the wild cards, he says. They have more freedom to define themselves than do others.The Draco Malfoy stereotype of the only child stemmed from the teachings of nineteenth-century psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who labeled being an only child as a disease. At the time Hall had a voice, psychoanalysis was all the rage. Yet while his theories have been debunked in the academic world, it sometimes takes magazines and news outlets about three millennia to catch up on data.So if singletons are more slandered than exceptionally selfish, what about the image of the “lonely only?” “Aren’t you afraid she’ll be lonely?” people would ask, eying my child and then my flat belly with pity. Those who knew of our situation wisely refrained from voicing such concerns, but strangers often made assumptions.Many parents of only children do fear that their child will be lonely both in childhood and adulthood. And these same parents are also often absolutely concerned that their child will be spoiled. But parents with many kids share some of these same concerns.Parents of “onlies” also fear that they themselves will die young, leaving their child orphaned in adulthood. Or they worry that they will linger for decades in poor health, strapping their child with the double burden of caring alone for two elderly parents. In short, they may fret about the future. And some of their concerns are similar to how singles feel.Some of these concerns, also, it turns out, parents of only children share with parents who have more than one child. Who will take care of me? Will I be a burden? I expressed just such a lament to a young Christian friend recently: “Who will take care of me when I’m old?”She turned to me and with a look of hurt in her eyes, as if to suggest “why would you even wonder?” and answered, “I will, Sandi. And the body of Christ.”The Lord told the children of Israel, “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (Isa. 46:4). He’s the kind of God who still cares for his children today. And he does so through his people. Caring for the old and infirm among us is part of what it means to be pro-life.

Are You Ready for Rio? Aug 5–21

Learn to Learn

I'm now a regular blogger for Geek Embassy. Here's my latest post, Learn to Learn: Not the "I love you" song but this most often got stuck in my head.

“I love you, you love me….” These lyrics played in my head for years as I worked with one of my clients, the then music producer for Barney and Friends. (Please don’t hold this against me.) I served both as his publicist and as the “studio mom” who booked kid singers for rehearsals and entertained them during breaks. And if I discovered one thing during that gig, it was this: I needed to revise my stereotypical view of home-schooled kids. Maybe some youngsters end up socially inept due to lack of interpersonal contact from learning at home, but I sure didn’t meet any of them. No, I met kids who could commit to acting and singing and creating because they had flexible class schedules and spent zero time lining up and waiting their turn for bathroom trips. These kids knew storylines from Gulliver’s Travels to Robin Hood (they even knew there was a version of the latter before the one with tights). And the biggest surprise: they had serious social skills like saying “please” and “thank you” to each other and looking grown-ups in the eye while conversing about how Maid Marian roamed through the woods dressed as a page.As part of my job, I also met the brilliant home educators behind the kids, parents deeply committed to teaching their children about botany by taking them to real forests and history by actual walking tours of Boston and panning for gold in California. Before long, I developed radar for super-geek home educators; I always loved asking what they were learning.Although I’ve long since changed careers, I’ve continued to pick the brains of home educators. And one of my favorites is Erin Teske. If I could have attended any schools in the world, I would have gone to Erin Teske Elementary, Erin Teske Middle School, and Erin Teske High School. Her kids did the. coolest. stuff.A few years ago, Rhonda, Erin (mother of Ellie), and I embarked on an Art-geek trip through Italy. From our base in Vicenza, we explored Florence, Padua/Milan, and Venice—with each of us responsible for one city. Rhonda took Milan, I took Venice, and Erin took Florence. And holy cow! Erin found us a hotel on the river’s edge near the city center with a terrace on the roof. (When Rhonda discovered the terrace and announced it with some exuberance, we thought she was saying there was a terrorist on the roof—but that’s another story.) In that city, thanks to Erin’s lesson plan, we “learned by seeing” about the transition from medieval to Renaissance art by observing our way through Giotto in the Brancucci Chapel, the Uffizi, and the Pitti Palace.I give you all this background to say this: when Erin recommends a book about self-education, I listen. And recently she give two thumbs up to one: Teaching How to Learn in a What-to-Learn Culture, by Kathleen Ricards Hopkins. Hopkins draws on up-to-date research about how people learn and provides how-tos for helping students develop as readers, writers, and mathematicians. But it’s not just for people seeking to educate geeklet spawns. Geeks themselves can benefit from learning how to help themselves learn.

Refugees: An Infographic

Today is World Refugee Day. Will you take a moment to familiarize yourself with some facts? Kenya and Ethiopia, countries where we work, receive an enormous number of refugees.

From Visually.

Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Nazareth?

The depiction from the USA had no Jesus at all.

My column on refugees/immigration ran in DTS Magazine recently: 

Standing in Nazareth's Basilica of the Annunciation, I gazed up at mosaics from all over the world. These works depicted the Virgin Mary with Jesus, and in each case Jesus bore the ethnic identity of the predominate group in the gifting country. That is, the art from Ecuador showed Jesus as Ecuadorian; the work from China, as Chinese; and the one from Thailand, as Thai. The baby Jesus from Slovenia even had red hair.The mosaics’ creators made these localized images to remind viewers that Jesus is “one of us”—which he is. Yet so many artists have depicted Jesus as white for so long with such far-reaching influence that many think of Jesus as white, even if unconsciously.

Taking the Blinders Off

There’s nothing inherently wrong with localized depictions of our Savior. Yet they can blind us to the reality that Jesus was born of a Jewish mother in the Middle East. And in a world of Roman power, he was so deeply Galilean that in the same city where I saw the diverse mosaics, two millennia earlier, Jesus slipped away into the crowd without detection (Luke 4:30).The olive-skinned Jesus knew how it felt to live as an outsider, to be “other.” He spent his first years in Egypt as a refugee who fled infanticide. When he relocated to Nazareth, he doubtless felt the sting of being “one of the new kids in town.” Later, he experienced being homeless. And if that weren’t enough, consider how he probably spoke. At Jesus’s trial in Jerusalem, Peter, another Galilean, heard someone say, “Your accent gives you away” (see Mark 14:66–70).The one who is “one of us” in his humanity was also wholly “other.”

Build Strong Partnerships

Years ago, members of my church took a spring-break trip to a border town, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Every night after walking dusty roads with members of our sister church, our team crossed back into the United States, where we had a discount on lodging. But something about the experience made us feel unsettled, so we took Octavio Esqueda (MACE, 2000) with us the following year, and we asked him to help us build a better relationship.At the end of our week together, Octavio did have some suggestions, and our choice to follow them led to a stronger partnership that benefited us all for decades. First, incarnating Christ means “presence,” he said. “So stay on the Mexico side. Otherwise, it feels like you’re ‘fleeing to safety’ every night.” Second, instead of scheduling the trip for spring break—the most convenient time for us—he advised going over Christmas.True, that was a terrible time for Americans, but in Mexico, nobody would have to take time off work to cook beans or translate for us, and people would have extra relatives in town, meaning extra tamales, and extra nieces and nephews happy to attend Christmas programs. Next, quit calling the work a “mission” trip; call it a “ministry trip.” Finally, invite members of the Mexico church to help us in Dallas so we would recognize that we were equal beneficiaries of each other’s help.

Move Toward Unity

Jesus prayed that we all might be one (John 17:21). And a move toward unity across barriers—whether ethnic, geographical, social, physical, or spiritual—means we must acknowledge that we all have forms of blindness. So we must ask questions and listen; serve, instead of expecting others to accommodate us; and learn from each others’ perspectives.The kingdom of heaven is upside down. Our king was a Middle Eastern, persecuted, homeless, refugee outsider who tells us that to serve the naked and the poor is to serve him.We all have prejudice in our hearts; often we have biases we don’t even know about. But—good news—our Lord loves and changes bigots. Recall that when a man named Nathanael from Cana (John 21:2) insulted Jesus’s adopted hometown with, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (1:46, NASB), Jesus invited him to join the Twelve. Our Lord in his grace even gave this man a glimpse of his own identity as the Christ: “You will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (v. 51, NASB).When we humble ourselves and celebrate unity in diversity, we ourselves benefit; and we can give others a glimpse of the reality that something truly fantastic came from Nazareth.

My latest novel: Lethal Harvest Remix

Sixteen years ago, a couple of wannabe novelists saw stem cell research on the horizon and launched our first narrative that explored the ethical side of such complex medical issues. Completely apart from our planning, the book launch happened the same week leaders at the Human Genome Project announced they had a rough draft of the human genome. And that announcement thrust our subject into the headlines, so books flew off the shelves.The characters in our story used landlines. And they could receive email only when using desktop computers. No smartphones, no texting. And acting according to what is now outdated medical procedure.So this month, Lethal Harvest re-released with a makeover. In the 15+ years since we wrote the story, I've grown as a writer and spinner of yarns. So when Kregel asked for an update, I jumped at the chance to improve on the dialogue, characterization, and general storyline—while, of course, updating the tech. My beloved coauthor passed suddenly three years ago, so the new book also includes a preface I wrote about him.So now...voila! The new and improved Lethal Harvest about a rogue doc at an IVF clinic.

My Latest Book: A Short History of Ephesus

The city of Ephesus had great significance in the ancient world from its beginnings in the eighth century BC through the fall of Rome. Books of scripture were written to people in this city and from people residing there, as well. Cleopatra and Mark Antony killed off her sister here. And the temple of the Ephesian Artemis here was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The apostle Paul left after an uproar in Ephesus having to do with idols and money. And Shakespeare later made the city his setting for "A Comedy of Errors." (Ironically, Ephesus's history reads more like a tragedy than a comedy, considering that its inhabitants consistently sided with the losers.)For all these reasons I chose "The city of Ephesus from 100 BCE to CE 100" as one of my PhD examination fields. And having done all that research, I wanted to make accessible my summary of the city's history and ethos, especially for teachers and preachers seeking to understand biblical backgrounds and contexts for their messages.Voila! I have finally published my work as  The City of Ephesus: A Short History. It's a Kindle book in which I devote special emphasis to Ephesus’s prominence in the first centuries as a center of religious activity.The biblical Book of Ephesians was probably written to more than the church at Ephesus—perhaps also to the church at Laodicea and other nearby churches. But the apostle Paul's protégé Timothy was in Ephesus when Paul wrote him the letter known to us as 1 Timothy (1 Tim. 1:3). My work is, therefore, I believe, of greatest benefit to people teaching through that book. But hopefully it will be of help to anyone interested in the Acts of the Apostles (esp. Acts 19), the world of the earliest Christians, and biblical and historical backgrounds.

Hillary's Not the Only Woman to Make History

Want a summer read that’s part adventure story, part biography, part introduction to biblical manuscripts, part historical drama, and part faith journey? If yes, check out Janet Soskice’s The Sisters of Sinai.

The main characters are identical twins Agnes and Margaret Smith of Scotland. Their travels lead, among other places, to St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. There Agnes discovered one of the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels ever found.The sisters’ staunch Presbyterian father, widowed shortly after their births in 1843, raised his girls as one might raise boys in the Victorian era—educated, physically active, and engaged in the life of the mind. And he kept a promise that whenever his daughters learned a language, he would take them to where that language was spoken. Because the twins loved to travel, early on they mastered French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Their deep interest in the Bible and its languages eventually led them to add Hebrew, ancient and modern Greek, Arabic, and old Syriac to their resumes. It was knowledge of the latter, known only to a few people on earth, that opened the doors to Agnes’s big discovery.Both sisters were widowed early after inheriting massive sums from distant relatives. One twin had been married to a man who traveled widely; the other, to the librarian and manuscript custodian at Cambridge. Reading of the sisters’ unlikely educations combined with their father’s promise, the means to travel, and the contacts their husbands brought into their lives will leave readers marveling at the providence of God. A pilgrimage to the sites of Abraham and Moses took the women to the land of the pyramids, and a hunch about forgotten manuscripts led straight to a dark cupboard in St. Catherine’s Monastery. Agnes’s discovery had enormous ramifications at a time when people were questioning the now-established early dating of New Testament manuscripts.The Sisters of Sinai reads like an adventure book. The author herself has heady credentials: she’s Professor in Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College. Writing with the storytelling skill of a novelist combined with the research savvy of a scholar, Soskice recounts the twins’ challenges: traveling on camel and floating the Nile in a time of cholera when women were thought to need male escorts; interpersonal conflicts with jealous scholars who despised the sisters for lacking university degrees; and the misogyny that kept closing doors to the women and minimizing their contributions. But Solskice also provides an introduction to the world of biblical manuscripts that engages rather than makes eyes glaze over. And she draws on diaries to include the sisters’ internal pilgrimages of faith with their good, good God.Take this one to the beach; sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.THE SISTERS OF SINAI: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, by Janet SoskiceIllustrated. 316 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. Published in 2010.