Summer plans

I've been thinking about a family mission statement lately. Where is our family going? What are we trying to teach our children and why are we making the decisions we make?

I found some ideas to guide what we should be learning as a family - and as individuals. See what you think of my list:

• Learn wisdom
• Accept instruction
• Understand words of insight
• Learn to deal wisely, justly, and righteously with equity
• Teach knowledge and prudence
• Acquire skills

But the one I consider most important is this overarching idea: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

How do we as a family grow in our fear/respect of God? As we do that, it appears that we are at the trail head of knowledge.

These ideas come from Proverbs 1.

Our family's summer plans include the start of a moviemaking company as we learn more video and screenwriting skills. The goal is to make movie shorts (and maybe full-length someday) that will honor God.

Keep your eyes open for samples here. And hold us accountable for God's mission statement as laid out in Proverbs

Ruth: the dawn's coming

When purpose is lost, powerful emotions surge through our veins. We are angered, numbed, stricken. The loss may possess our waking moments, consuming us in the passion of reconciliation. Or we may buckle under the weight, crushed by the hopeless of recovery.

For ancient Israel, the concept of the blessing was a powerful one, wrapping them in a warm cocoon of protection. From the time of Abraham, they had trusted in two parts of the promise from God: land and offspring.

God came to Abraham with a promise and a blessing. In Genesis 12:2, God promised to bring a great nation from Abraham’s line and to bless all the people of the earth through Abraham. This great pledge sustained the people who descended from Abraham. Their greatest desire was for offspring. Their children represented their greatest yearning for God’s purposes and blessings.

The land was closely linked to offspring. God, after his tremendous blessing in Gen 12:2, made a second amazing promise: I will give this land to your offspring. Thus came the dual promise of land and offspring. They were linked through God’s promise to Abraham.

Imagine Naomi. She was an empty woman who had lost all of God’s promises. Her family had left the land during the famine and now she returned, without family and without land. She was barren, a widow in a culture that treasured land and offspring, not old used-up women.

The author of Ruth weaves those two desires – for children and offspring – and pulls the threads tight in his story. Naomi accused God of failing her, of forgetting his promises. She left Bethlehem with the land barren. Now she returned, barren herself. We are to understand that the lack of seed forced her to leave Moab and she returned to Bethlehem with lack of seed – or offspring. However, she failed to notice that the land is no longer barren, a foreshadowing of the fertility coming.

Notice the number of farming or harvest words that appear in chapter 2. From the second verse, where we see “field” and “glean” and “ears of corn,” to the end of the chapter, we see a wealth of harvest terms. This is no accident.

Read chapter 2 of Ruth and notice all the harvest words you see there.

Next week: the abundance of the land

Purpose

Abraham Lincoln said:

I want it said of me by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Jesus said:

The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness. John 10:10

Time

All we have to decide is

what to do with the time that is given to us.

JRR Tolkien

On Writing: ya' think?

She was brilliant and she knew it, drinking trendy coffee and discussing authors with foreign names. She finally focused on me and gave me the oddest compliment I’ve ever received: “You look like some one who….thinks.”

I think it was a compliment.

But whether or not I look like someone who thinks, you need to think if you want to write. If you long to paint pictures with sentences, you have to first have an idea to convey and a purpose to your writing.

I know that you want to smother your text with colorful adjectives and skillful word choices but first you have to have a point to all this. I have read paragraphs of lush description, applying layers of color and texture to a scene. I could smell the roses and taste the hint of lemon in the air, but I had no idea why I was there.

Description fleshes out the purpose of the writing but description can’t be the purpose.

You as the writer need to be clear on your point. Some call it the “take away” or the theme of the article or book. Call it what you what, but know what it is.

Can you, in one sentence, describe what you want your reader to gain from your writing? If you can’t, you need to do some thinking before you do some typing.

Look at Luke, who in the first paragraph of his gospel disclosed his point: “It seemed good also to me to write an orderly account …so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”[1]

And John framed his entire gospel around his “take away”: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”[2]

Last week we talked about knowing the reason you write. Today, I’m asking you to know the reason you are writing each piece.

Next Tuesday: The Michelangelo approach

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[1] Luke 1:3-4

[2] John 20:31