Hidden treasures, that’s what my boys and I were looking for back in the days when we made our Christmas shopping rounds—first to Savers and Salvation Army Thrift Shops, then to the liquidation store nearby, then if we still hadn’t found all the gifts we wanted to give, we upgraded to Target.

A hidden treasure was what Talitha wanted last week when she and I went shopping for a very special dress to wear on Saturday for her date to the Father-Daughter High Tea at Bethlehem. She found the perfect dress for $9.99 minus the 40% seniors discount (I’m eligible).

That’s our kind of shopping.

The Apostle Paul said, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Eph. 4:28). Although we’re not really stealing, just looking for a steal, we like the principle—work so you can earn so you can be generous in Jesus’ name. We could add another piece: In order to have what we need to be generous, we also need to be careful how we spend.

So, I’m thrilled that Hidden Treasures Thrift Store opens this week. During our day-off lunchtime yesterday, John and I peeked in and were impressed at the large, airy, attractive store. Here’s what they say about themselves at their website:

Hidden Treasures is a not-for-profit thrift store that exists to impact our world locally and globally for the glory of Jesus Christ. . . .

We will be selecting international ministries from a Bethlehem Baptist Church-supported network to be recipients of 75% of all our profits. The remaining 25% of profits will be put back in to the ministry of Masterworks.

The grand opening is Thursday to Saturday this week. Lord willing, I’ll be there!

In March, I went to visit Kenya. I kissed my husband goodbye and left him at home. Or so I thought. But when I got to Kenya, I found him all over the place.

At Moffatt Bible College in Kijabe, for example, the librarian gave me a tour. One set of double doors opened to the textbook closet. Most students can’t afford to buy books for their classes, so here they can check out the required texts for the term. In the center of the center shelf was a stack of The Supremacy of God in Preaching.

Later that week, at a workshop in Old Kijabe Town, Peter heard that I was John Piper’s wife. He turned his smile on me and said, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. . . . Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions,” quoting from Let the Nations Be Glad.

Peter is a graduate of Moffatt Bible College and is now the Assistant Pastor at Kijabe Mission Church. I wouldn’t have been surprised by a former student telling me that he appreciated my husband’s book. But I was blown away that a couple of years after Peter completed his missions class, he still could quote word for word from the textbook—that’s impact.

“Did you know your dream has come true? There's a book of Lilias Trotter's art now—A Blossom in the Desert,” I emailed a friend last week. Miriam Rockness, who edited this book, earlier wrote the book that introduced me to Lilias Trotter, A Passion for the Impossible. I was so inspired by her story that I included it in Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God.

We who admire Lilias Trotter have waited a long time actually to see her artwork. Until now, it was hidden away in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford University and in the archives of the Arab World Ministries.

Lilias Trotter was an upper-class English woman of the Victorian era whose drawings and water colors were admired by John Ruskin, the art authority of the day. He foresaw for her a life of glory and fame if she devoted herself to her art.

Instead, she turned her back on that dream and followed the calling of God to Algeria, arriving in 1888 and dying there 40 years later. As so often happens, she discovered that God wasn’t asking her to give up her talent, but to use it in a different place for different purposes.

Among other things, she often illustrated her journal entries and the letters she sent home with her artwork, a visual treasure of North Africa as it was then. She also wrote several small books of meditations, often springing from her observations of nature and always illustrated with her drawings.

A Blossom in the Desert is filled with Lilias Trotter’s love of God and of the place and people he gave her in Algeria. With the eye of a true artist, she sees God’s fingerprint everywhere she looks.

Oh, the desert is lovely in its restfulness. The great brooding stillness over and through everything is so full of God. One does not wonder that He used to take His people out into the wilderness to teach them.

I find here a passage that remains with me years after first reading it:

“I am come into deep waters” took on new meaning this morning. It started with perplexing matters concerning the future. Then it dawned that shallow waters were a place where you can neither sink nor swim, but in deep waters it is one or the other: “Waters to swim in”—not to float in. Swimming is the intense, most strenuous form of motion—all of you is involved in it—and every inch of you is in abandonment of rest upon the water that bears you up.

Our neighbors can attest that we don’t use dandelion poison. We recycle. One showerhead has a water saver shut-off valve. Beyond that, I don’t give much thought to ecology. I’m scared off by people who tend to treat the earth as god, rather than as God’s handiwork. So I have avoided considering my responsibility as a steward of God’s property.

I had a one-week crash course last month when Talitha and I were guests of Craig and Tracy Sorley, BBC missionaries with Care of Creation Kenya...

Read the rest of the article. 

One my my continual needs for self-control comes from being the oldest of 10 children and then 35+ years of mothering. I feel very comfortable telling people what to do, speaking as if I know what’s best. Others call it bossy. My fight for self-control in this area has two parts—reminding myself who God is and then preaching that to myself.

I fight bossiness by reminding myself that God is God and I’m not. So however convinced I am of the best course for someone else, I might be wrong. (When I forget to remind myself, God graciously does it by proving me wrong.)

I must say, the older I am, the more young people there are who think I might have some wisdom. What comes most naturally is to say, “You ought to...” Instead, I try to force myself—even correcting myself mid-sentence, if necessary—to couch advice in phrases like, “You might think about...” or “If I were in your place, I think I might..." or “What happens if you...?”

The hardest time to bite my tongue, though, is with my husband, not because he needs me to tell him what to do, but because I think he does. In those cases, I remind myself, “He is an adult. He doesn’t need me to tell him how to..." Most often this is with insignificant things like packing the car trunk for vacation. When it’s larger decisions, we talk a lot and pray together. But then if the decision is not what I would have chosen, I try to say to myself, “Who’s to say that I’m right and he’s wrong? If things go badly, even really badly, it’s not the end of the world. If things go well, then God has taught me something new through my husband.”

I’m not all-wise and omniscient. Only God is. It’s a relief not to have to be God.

The pastors’ conference has become a tradition in the Piper family. Back in the days when the conference was small enough to be held in the Bethlehem church building, the sons who were homeschooled loved to hang out there. It didn’t take them long to figure out who the pastors were that enjoyed talking with kids and playing basketball during break. Oh yes, and there were killer snacks.

The big family event during conference is Tuesday evening when the speakers and their wives are invited to dinner at our house before the evening session. We’ve done this since the very first conference, because we wanted to give the speakers one time during the conference when they could visit with each other.

As hostess, I expect to enjoy the conversations going various directions while I move between the kitchen and my place at the table. But the year of the first conference, J. I. Packer was at my end of the table and we realized we enjoy the same kind of mystery novels—mostly by British women. Many visitors enjoy going upstairs to see my husband’s study, but Dr. Packer was the first who asked to see my library. Whenever our paths cross since then, he tosses out the name of another mystery author I should look for.

It would have been hard for children to grasp what a privilege it is to visit at the table with teachers, preachers, pastors, and missionaries, many of them respected around the world.

One year Abraham and Barnabas asked Greg Livingstone which countries he’d visited. Greg told them he’d give them a dollar for every country they named that he hadn’t visited. He was pretty impressed with all the names they knew, including Western Sahara. By the end of the evening, Abraham (middle-school aged) was ready to follow Greg to Afghanistan. He was miffed when Greg told him to stay home a few more years and finish his education. Over the next year or two, the boys received random, miniscule installments of rupees, dirhams, piastres, dinars, etc. Unless they’ve pardoned his debt, I think Greg still owes them. Or maybe the devaluation of the dollar has erased the deficit.

Barnabas remembers one meal seasoned with the two Scottish accents of Iain Murray and Alistair Begg. And there are rumors that C. J. Mahaney shook the house with his foot-stomping laughter.

These days, Talitha is our last child living at home. Like her brothers before her, she begs to skip school during the conference. This year, I will pick her up midday on Wednesday in time to hear her daddy’s presentation about her Opa. But otherwise, she has to maximize the evenings for volunteering and socializing.

Greg Livingstone’s here again this year. Get ready for Tuesday evening, Greg. Make sure Talitha finishes her education before you recruit her. And watch your wallet.

When we knew Alex and Brett Harris would be in town for the DG Pastors’ Conference, we wanted to catch them for an interview. Who better to interview two popular young bloggers than another young person? The guys were glad to sit down with Talitha Piper, 12, and answer her questions.

The message of the 19-year-old twins is, “Do hard things.” That’s also the title of their book, available in April.

They are high school grads, homeschooled all the way, and applying now to colleges for the fall or spring. In the meantime, this year is filled with writing, organizing Rebelution conferences (4 in 2007; 7 in 2008) and answering the emails they receive through their website.

Talitha's Interview with the Harrises

Alex and Brett, the name of your ministry and your website is The Rebelution. Tell me how you got that name.

Rebelution is a combination of the words rebellion and revolution. It kind of gives the idea of rebelling against rebellion. As we wrote articles and developed the ideas, it came to mean a teenage rebellion against low expectations.

Tell us the kinds of things you’re responsible for in a normal week.

Right now, we’re out of high school and are taking a year off before college, because we feel like God has opened a lot of doors for us with our ministry. We have breakfast with our family and then go to our computers. We get tons of emails that we look through and respond to. Then there’s lots of coordinating of the conferences—creating brochures, keeping the website updated, arranging meeting places, recruiting volunteers, and many more time-consuming details.

Up until recently our book was the major thing we were working on. It took up just about every waking moment. We like to say God has a sense of humor, so if you write a book called Do Hard Things, he’s not going to make it easy. We just finished the last minor changes—we think. We finished the book about 27 times.

Besides that, we write for our blog and for some Focus on the Family publications.

Next week, we go home and record Do Hard Things as an audio book so it can be released at the same time as the book.

We try to keep our evenings free for time with our family. We always have family worship in the evening.

What’s a Bible verse that keeps you going in your faith?

There are 2 that have driven what we do with the Rebelution. The first is 1 Timothy 4:12: “Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity."

What’s so neat about that verse that it’s not just saying, “Hey, don’t look down on me because I’m young”; it’s challenging the young person to be an example. That’s the high standard, the calling, that God has for young people.

That’s the theme verse of the Rebelution—rebelling against low expectations is really pursuing God’s standards.

Another verse would be 2 Timothy 2:22: “Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart."

That also captures the Rebelution, because we’re supposed to rebel against low expectations, and flee youthful lusts, and supposed to do hard things like striving after these godly standards, and we’re supposed to do it along with other people who also care about those things and love God with all their heart. That’s what the Rebelution is about. It’s not just an isolated thing. We’re trying with our website and our conferences to bring young people together who share that passion.

Who are some heroes in your lives?

We have many heroes, both living and dead. In fact, that’s one of the principles of the Rebelution. We tell people that we want them to make friends with dead people. You can sit down with a book all night long and dialog with a person long dead. We have a lot of heroes like that, for example, Francis Schaeffer and Jonathan Edwards. Our living heroes would include our parents and your father, Talitha. He’s shaped us in many ways, so it’s an honor to be interviewed by you. Others would be Randy Alcorn, C. J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, Mark Dever and people that our brother, Josh, has introduced us to through his New Attitudes conferences.

We try to have heroes in different areas, for instance, political heroes like Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. We look for people that embody the person we want to be later in our lives—husbands, fathers.

The title of your book seems to be a slogan for you—Do Hard Things. Where did you get the idea for that slogan?

It’s something we learned from our father. He told us about the Vikings—not the Minnesota Vikings. They raided villages and everyone was afraid of them. They weren’t nice people. One thing that made them unstoppable was the strength they had from rowing those 20-ton ships with their own muscles. Their strength came from doing themselves the hard labor that other seafaring people left to galley slaves. That’s a lesson for us and other young people. If we are willing to do those difficult tasks that other people neglect or ignore, we’ll gain strength from that.

That gave us the idea for “Do hard things.” We realized that’s the way God’s created us to grow. In every area, doing hard things is the way that God’s making us grow.

Give me 2 or 3 sentences that tell me the heart of your book.

Alex: Doing hard things is your best life. It’s not your easiest, but it’s your best life. It’s a life full of adventure, excitement, and fulfilment because it’s what God made you to do for his glory.

Brett: In the book, we quote G.K. Chesterton, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” That’s the goal of our book and our ministry, calling Christian young people to be the generation that finds it difficult, but still tries.

I got a letter recently from someone who hopes to be a writer. She says:

I get so frustrated with myself because even as I am typing, I think, "What am I doing?  I can't write!" I would like to get published some day, but I don't even know how to start.

No 7-step list will guarantee a writer is formed out of a non-writer, but here are some suggestions, things that have been helpful for me.

1. Write!

The cliche answer is probably the best one—if you want to write, write. Don't think about publishing at first. And quit examining yourself and your ability. Don't worry about grammar and spelling at first. Just write. Anything. Journal. Letters. Blog. Keep a writing notebook or computer file. In it, write random paragraphs describing something you've seen or imagined. Jot down ideas or connections that have come to your mind when you're reading your Bible.

All of this is good practice and good source material for you. Sometimes I happen across a random piece of paper where in the past I briefly wrote a thought that I'd now completely forgotten. Without the paper it would have been totally lost. Now it slips into something I'm writing as if it were totally fresh today.

2. Immerse yourself in what you admire.

When you find an author you love to read, read everything you can find by that person. Think of authors whose writing grabs you, then soak yourself in their work. For me, there have been all sorts. It would be hard to pick out just a few, but here's a very random sample: George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Schaeffer, Elisabeth Eliot, P.D. James, Alexander McCall Smith.

A practical and surprisingly helpful way to get a feel for the quality of another author’s writing is to copy down well-turned phrases of theirs that you find as you read. Then, not only are you passively taking in good writing as a reader, you are also practicing putting it out yourself as a writer.

3. Practice improving other people’s writing.

I think editing other people's work has helped my writing a lot. As an exercise, you might take random paragraphs from other writers or yourself and see how much you can cut out and still leave a good paragraph. Shortest is not always best, but long is often weak. See what other ways you might improve the paragraph.

4. Join a writers’ group.

In college, I should have majored in Lit because I love reading. But Lit required a lot of writing. So I majored in Speech, so I could just talk, because I didn't like to write.

When I was in my late 30's, someone at Bethel College asked me to write a very short piece for the alumni magazine about an Alumna of the Year (or something like that), a person in our church. And I was probably 40 before I started thinking I might enjoy writing and began to do it because I liked it.

About that time I joined the Minnesota Christian Writers Guild. At the monthly meetings, even if the speaker is talking about a kind of writing I'm not interested in, somehow it's still good fertilizer and watering to whatever I am interested in.

Look for a writers' organization near you. Whether or not it should be a Christian group depends on what kind of writing you’re doing. As you look for a group, keep in mind there’s some pretty goofy stuff out there (both Christian and non-Christian), stuff that won't advance your thought or writing or your faith very well.

5. Start a writers’ group.

Later I started getting together monthly with a small group of other aspiring writers. Each of us brings something and we take turns reading to each other. Then we encourage each other and make suggestions. That has been really helpful. And you should recognize that comes from me, who doesn't take criticism easily nor want anybody telling me what to do.

Round up your own group of writers or would-be writers. Needing to have something fresh each month is good motivation to keep writing.

6. Participate in events for writers.

Find conferences you want to attend. American Christian Writers, for example or Christian Writers Guild. These are big conferences and will have tracks for beginners. Look around those websites for other helpful info, too. Another good annual conference is Write to Publish, always in Wheaton, though not associated officially with the college.

Same thought here as above about deciding whether to go to Christian conferences or others.

7. Ask yourself what you want to say and who you want to say it to.

Before moving eventually toward publishing, probably most important is getting past the general idea of writing, and getting down to asking yourself, “What do I have to say? What do I want to say? What are my great burdens that won’t let me be content until I deal with them on paper? Who do I want to write this for?”

Over time this sense will grow, perhaps from your random writing notebook. You’ll start to notice what gets most of your word count, or what raises the strongest emotions in you, or what you've been learning as you've written. Writing is one of the best ways (besides talking to yourself!) to know what you really think . You realize how unfinished your thoughts have been when you try to get them out of your head and into something cogent on paper.

Keep learning!

Really, what we're talking about here is continuing education. I was surprised to discover that my education wasn't finished when I finished college. I realize now that I learned to learn in school. And I've gotten my real education since then.

So, if you want to grow in writing, that means you want to continue your education in writing, and that means WRITE!

So far, the landmark Something-Zero birthdays—20, 30, 40—have been no big deal for me. But this year, I beg the kindness of my older and wiser friends, because I’d been moping a few months about the birthday due before the end of the year—60. I never knew when I crossed the halfway line of my life, but I do know sixty is definitely on the death side of the midmark of my life span, and I don’t like that thought.

Those feelings changed recently and rapidly, though. A few days ago I was within inches of not ever having a 60th birthday...or our 39th wedding anniversary...or another Christmas....

That afternoon I had the bright idea of checking out the new book outlet and stopping at the craft store for some colored cellophane to turn our picture windows into “stained” glass for the season. It was snowing, but this is Minnesota. If I let a little snow stop me, I’ll hibernate till April.

Cars were passing me on the freeway, but I was careful and stayed in the slow lane. Then the road curved to the right. But when it straightened, my car kept curving until I was stopped on the right shoulder, off the highway, facing in the direction of the oncoming traffic. My car and I both were fine and the snow wasn’t deep, but I didn’t dare do a U-turn onto the freeway when I couldn’t see around the curve to judge traffic. So I called 911.

Waiting for the State Patrol, I had a front row view of every vehicle that almost made the same slide I had. I played the scene mentally—a car certainly would total mine, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt me. But what if it were a semi looming against my compact car? I decided to get out and walk up the hill away from the shoulder and the highway.

I opened the door and stood up. In that instant, glancing over my car door I saw a gray minivan skidding toward me. It glanced off the front left corner of my car and then along the side where I was standing, until its left front bumper was stopped by my left rear bumper. The rear side of the van was jammed against the edge of my open door.

At the moment of impact, I was knocked flat on my back, parallel to my car, right next to it. I watched the bottom of the van slide past on the other side of me. There was just enough time to think, “I’m dying in one second.” Then the van stopped, and I thought, “No, not now.”

There was no time to be frightened or relieved. The woman in the van was fumbling to open her window, sobbing toward the place she’d seen me go down, “Are you hurt? Are you all right?” Reassuring her, I scrambled to my feet, standing within the triangle formed by the sides of our 2 cars, wedged apart by my open car door.

That evening, as the hours passed, I found new bruises—tokens of what might have been. She could have been driving 50 mph instead of 35. Not many seconds later, I would have been a couple of steps up the hill, directly in the van’s path. Standing just inches further from my car my fall could have thrown me under the van’s wheels. A slightly different trajectory and the van would have crushed my door against some vulnerable part of the falling me.

Instead, God used the van to brace my door in the open position, so that I was within a protected space. Within a triangle—a symbol of the Trinity, I remember now.

I notice that news reports these days call such an incident a crash, not an accident. Good choice. None of this was an accident—not one movement or position of either vehicle. I say this not just because I’m alive today. I pray that my children would recognize God’s loving precision, even if they were at the mortuary right now.

My birthday blues resonate with the newish “old saying”: “Growing old is hard, but it beats the alternative.” The author of that adage, though, doesn’t have the wisdom of Paul, who said, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21), whether death comes today, or sometime—God knows—after 60.

God threw me onto my back to make sure I know he wants me to be glad about my birthday. He might have been letting me know he wants me to have a birthday this year, but I’ll have to live a few more days to be sure. I pray for his help, that they continue to be thankful days.

At the Piper house, on special occasion days, the women do most or all the food preparation and set-up, so the men wash the dishes.

Now there’s a great reason to give thanks!

What turns the 4th Thursday of November into Thanksgiving? Turkey? I know one family who doesn’t like turkey. Their traditional Thanksgiving meal is Vietnamese carryout. But whatever our food traditions, is that all there is? Not if we plan real thanks into the day.

If we want to give thanks, we need only two things. Something we’re thankful for and somebody to thank. Seems so obvious, but I think I need to say it because it’s amazing how many people can say, “I’m thankful for _____ ,” without admitting that God is there to hear their thanks. And they’re certainly not giving him credit for whatever it is they’re enjoying.

Maybe we can get ready for Thanksgiving by giving someone else a reason to give thanks. It might be by food donations we make ahead of time. Or it might be through invitations to our table—someone with no relatives nearby, a newly-arrived refugee family, a lonely neighbor, international students from a nearby college.

And then, how will we express our thanks to God? Perhaps there’s a posterboard on the wall where anyone during the day can write or draw pictures of what he’s thanking God for. Perhaps one of the children will make place cards with a verse of thanks on each, to be read sometime during the meal. Maybe this is a good day to pull out the year’s journals or photo albums or videos to remind each other of all that God has done in our lives this year.

And maybe Dad will begin the meal by leading in a thankful song and reading some words from Scripture:

Oh come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the LORD is a great God,
and a great King above all gods. . . .
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.

(Psalm 95:1-3, 6-7)

I haven’t been able to phone my dad on Father’s Day for more than 15 years. But I remember him today. And as years pass, the things that were hard seem smaller and the strong roots of my father’s life seem more and more important.

For Daddy’s funeral, my husband wrote a poem remembering the strength of Daddy’s life. Psalm 1 was Daddy’s favorite passage of Scripture. It was a sweet thing today to read it again and to give thanks again for a father who did his best to point me to Jesus.

In Memory of Dr. George Henry

Reflections on Psalm 1 and Joshua 24:15
by John Piper

No tree however deep the roots,
However high and green the shoots,
However strong the trunk has stood,
Or firm the fibers of the wood,
No tree was ever meant to be
A never-ending shade for me
Or you. Save one: where Jesus died
With bleeding branches spread as wide
And far as faith for sinful men.

But there was shade, especially when
The tree was old: the leaves were thick
With life, and though the root was sick,
The bark deep-creased with age, the limbs
Were laden down with love, and hymns
Were heard beneath when wind bestirred
The bowing branches with the Word
Of heaven. O there were years of shade!

And more: there was the fruit he made,
Or better, bore, when all the ground
Seemed dry, we turned again and found
The branches heavy with some rare
Well-watered food and sweet called Care.

There must have been a river there
Beneath the arid earth somewhere
Deep-flowing up around the tips
Of dying roots, and giving sips
Of everlasting life for him
To share with us while every limb
Gave up its own. O, there was fruit!
Life-giving from the dying root.

And more. Much more. There was the wood
And it was strong. It had withstood
A thousand storms, and everyone
More firm. And now for every son,
Grandchild and every daughter here
He lies a fallen tree and dear,
And leaves in you the solid wood
And bids you stand where he has stood
Beside the river of the Word,
And that you keep what you have heard,
And sing with him in one accord:
"My fruitful house will serve the Lord."

On my “mentors” shelf sit books by Edith Schaeffer, Ann Ortlund, Gail MacDonald, Elisabeth Elliot, and Ruth Graham. I never met Ruth Bell Graham in person. But I spent time with her through her writing. She expressed a winsome, seemingly uninhibited breadth of personality and emotion—from impertinent to pensive.

Many Advent seasons, I read aloud to my children The Christmas Story (now revised and retitled, One Wintry Night). We returned to it again and again because it tells the whole Christmas story, beginning with “In the beginning.”

When I heard of Ruth Graham’s death, I pulled from that shelf her Collected Poems: Footprints of a Pilgrim. Among the many flagged pages, I found three for today.

Ruth Graham’s calling was to her husband and children. Her life was shaped in large part by the publicness of Billy Graham’s life and the challenges of raising children and keeping love warm while he was so much on the road. In this poem I hear a young Ruth preaching to herself when she’s about to say another goodby to her beloved (p. 90):

Love
without clinging;
cry
if you must—
but privately cry;
the heart will adjust
to the newness of loving
in practical ways:
cleaning
and cooking
and sorting out clothes,
all say, “I love you,”
when lovingly done.

So—
love
without clinging;
cry—
if you must—
but privately cry;
the heart will adjust
to the length of his stride,
the song he is singing,
the trail he must ride,
the tensions that make him
the man that he is,
the world he must face,
the life that is his.

So
love
without clinging;
cry—
if you must—
but privately cry;
the heart will adjust
to being the heart,
not the forefront of life;
a part of himself,
not the object—
his wife.

So—
love!

Dr. Graham and their children, children-in-law, and grandchildren today are experiencing what Mrs. Graham wrote once about another house and another person (p. 179):

A house
is not the same
when she who made it home
is gone;
it looks
as it has always
looked
and yet
forlorn.
There is an emptiness
within,
a silence
where her chuckle was.
From now on
it is me alone
who once was “us.”

I pray God will bless the Graham family and that they might find the same comfort she did after the death of someone close (p. 268):

. . . flowers brought
a flood of memories
with which
my life is full.
Because of her
I’m rich.

I thank God for the life of Ruth Bell Graham.

If you can’t walk, even with crutches, and you don’t have a wheelchair, will you stay home? Or will you find some way—any way—to get to the market and to church? How will you move without a chair?

In Cameroon, when our short-term team saw people arriving at our work sites to receive a wheelchair in the name of Jesus, we had a glimpse of what people are willing to endure in order to be mobile. Some—even adults—were carried by family members or friends. Some crawled on hands and knees. Some sat on the ground with legs pretzel-folded and used their arms as crutches. Some lay straight on the ground and dragged themselves forward in a sort of army crawl. Some moved with hands and feet on the ground, bent into a steep triangle.

Imagine what it’s like on pot-holed pavement or on dusty or muddy ground. Imagine the callouses and cuts on your palms and knees. Imagine the state of your clothes. You can never be clean. You can’t speak to anyone face to face. Maybe you can’t even get your head at the correct angle to see where you’re going.

And realize that everyone is looking down on you literally, and many are looking down on you socially and wondering what you did to deserve this.

But to these Cameroonians—and to so many more in so many places—it is more important to get out and around than to avoid humiliation. Dignity takes a backseat to mobility.

It came to my mind that almost every person I know in America who uses a wheelchair would be in this position if no chair were available. I will not downplay the immensity of the challenges my chair-using friends face every day. But at least they are upright and facing the world.

I came home from Cameroon filled with thanks for many things, and the list keeps growing—that 100 more people in Cameroon are not crawling now, for example, and that my friends here don’t have to crawl.

In my life I am thankful that God has used the humility of these Cameroonian acquaintances to remind me that some things are far more important than avoiding humiliation. My highest priority should be spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ, even if I have to crawl to do it, even if I get dirty and hurt, even if I’m looked down on for it.

In 1929, young Elsie Viren was the efficient, capable new secretary to the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church. By the time we Pipers arrived 51 years later in 1980, her days were filled with teaching Sunday school, visiting the church’s elderly and shut-ins and working 2 days a week at her manual typewriter in the office blessing all of Bethlehem’s missionaries with regular letters.

After more than 60 years devoted to the Lord and Bethlehem, it was a sad day when Elsie knew she wouldn’t be driving anymore—and later, sadder still when she couldn’t come in to the office. In the months that followed, sometimes she found my name on her “important numbers” list and called me from her room at the nursing home, wondering whom she had been visiting and when someone was coming to pick her up and take her home or back to the office.

During Elsie’s last Easter season, my husband went to visit her as she lay in bed, weak and fading. He read an old familiar story to her. But it wasn’t familiar anymore. She looked as if she might be asleep, until she heard the words, “Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last.”

Her eyes flew open in horror. “Oh no! They killed Jesus?”

My husband told me later that she was comforted when he gave her the news that Jesus did not stay dead.

I thank God that although Elsie may have forgotten what happened to Jesus and someday I may forget, Jesus will never forget nor lose the ones he died for. Praise the Lord, the power of the cross is not dependent on my memory. The power of the cross depends on our Jesus who said, “My Sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one [and nothing, not even lost memory] will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).

A Month of Preparation for Easter

Ordinarily at the Piper house, we begin looking toward Easter near the beginning of Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. That was February 21 this year. During the season, we have special devotional readings each Sunday. Along with the readings, we use candles to help us symbolize what was happening as the world moved toward Jesus’ death.

On the first Sunday of Lent, which would be the 6th Sunday before Easter—February 25 this year—7 candles are burning. During the Bible reading, one is snuffed out. The 2nd Sunday’s devotional time begins with 6 candles burning and one is snuffed out during the reading, and so on through the weeks. The 7th candle is blown out on Good Friday.

Then on Easter, during the reading, all the candles are lit. At our house, the candles are the centerpiece for all our table gatherings on Easter.

The Symbolism of the Seven Candles

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). But for a while it seemed as if the darkness was overcoming—for a long while.

The seven candles symbolize the Light of the World—the Light that was God’s glory and that illuminated God for us—the Light that, in the end, seemed to have been darkened. As we move through the season preceding Easter, the candles are snuffed out one by one, until all are dark on Good Friday, when Jesus died and the earth was covered with shadow. Darkness apparently had won. The Light of the World had been extinguished. It was finished.

But NO! Easter brings resurrection! Life! Return from death! The Light has won, and all the candles burn as we praise him—the Light of the World, the Bright Morning Star, the Glory of God.

A Unique Easter Preparation

This year, God gave us Pipers a unique preparation for Easter. Early in the Lenten season, my husband went to South Carolina and was with his father as he declined rapidly and died. This year, our eyes are opened wider to the bright hope we have in the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

A Week of Preparation for Easter

But now we have less that 2 weeks till Easter, and we haven’t begun our usual weeks-long candle and devotions tradition.

So this year we will use the devotions and candle daily, beginning the Saturday of Palm Sunday weekend, tomorrow, March 31. That is what works for us this time. And actually, daily over one week is probably the best way to do it if there are small children in a home, because the weeks of Lent can seem to stretch out too long to hold a child’s attention.

I invite you to join us these coming days of Holy Week—you in your home, we in ours—as Scripture reminds us of ways God has extended mercy to people over all the centuries of human existence, and reminds us that most people have rejected that mercy, rejected it so completely that they even killed his Son. And then Scripture will call us to rejoice that the Light of the World CANNOT be darkened eternally—only for 3 days.

[A fuller explanation of our Easter traditions, including how to make a playdough mountain, is excerpted from Treasuring God in Our Traditions and posted over at Crosswalk.com.]

If you were born with a disability or know someone who was, imagine being born in a village where that is considered to be a shameful curse from the spirits—something to hide or get rid of.

In January, I was part of the Cameroon Harvest Project 2007. This was a joint mission of Bethlehem Baptist Church and Joni and Friends International Disabilities Ministry. The purpose was to distribute wheelchairs to people for whom a wheelchair is out of reach, either because they’re not available or are way too expensive.

One of the people we met was a 6-year-old named Sandra. Her story is hard to forget.

When this little girl was born with obvious disabilities, her fearful parents took her to the riverbank and left her—a newborn baby. This was called “returning her to the gods.” After 3 or 4 days of lying there, she was rescued by an old woman. But when the woman was at work every day, she left the small girl, who couldn’t move from the position in which she was placed, closed up in a shed with the chickens. If there was food within reach of her mouth she could eat. She had no ability to move away from her own waste or that of the chickens.

Nungu Magdalene, a Joni and Friends Associate, found the girl when she was about 4. She named her Sandra and took her to the school and home for children with disabilities that Magdalene founded and operates in Santa, near Bamenda. She and her staff pray with her, sing over her, and show her how Christ loves. When people from Sandra’s village see her now, they are amazed at what prayer and Christ-like love has done for her.

On the day our team worked near the school and home, Sandra was tense and apprehensive at first among the unfamiliar people and activities. But among the chairs we had brought was one—just the right size, with the right kind of harness, the right kind of head and trunk support, and with the ability to tilt backward so that Sandra’s head doesn’t flop forward. All our chairs were chosen “randomly” and shipped months ahead of our arrival. But God had prepared beforehand the chair for that one particular little girl in that one particular place on that one particular day. When Sandra knew that the chair was hers, her apprehension was gone.

Sandra is non-verbal and it isn’t clear how much she is able to comprehend. But sometimes even words would be inadequate. When the therapist placed her in her new chair, Sandra’s stunning smile radiated understanding, gratitude and joy.

We were blessed by Sandra, who never was a curse. And we pray that she will indeed be God’s.

What my husband said last Sunday at the end of a sermon on forgiveness and forebearance in marriage:

Picture your marriage as a grassy field. You enter it at the beginning full of hope and joy. You look out into the future and you see beautiful flowers and trees and rolling hills. And that beauty is what you see in each other. Your relationship is the field and flowers and the rolling hills. But before long, you begin to step in cow pies. Some seasons of your marriage they may seem to be everywhere. Late at night they are especially prevalent. These are the sins and flaws and idiosyncrasies and weaknesses and annoying habits in you and your spouse. You try to forgive them and endure them with grace.

But they have a way of dominating the relationship. It may not even be true, but it feels like that’s all there is—cow pies. I think the combination of forbearance and forgiveness leads to the creation of a compost pile. And here you begin to shovel the cow pies. You both look at each other and simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies. But you say to each other: You know, there is more to this relationship than cow pies. And we are losing sight of that because we keep focusing on these cow pies. Let’s throw them all in the compost pile. When we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can. And then, we are going to walk away from that pile and set our eyes on the rest of field. We will pick some favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies. And we will be thankful for the part of field that is sweet.

Our hands may be dirty. And our backs make ache from all the shoveling. But one thing we know: We will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will only go there when we must. This is the gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again—because we are chosen and holy and loved.

What I thought as he went along:

That is so true....But then I hope the congregation doesn’t think he means we should just shovel our problems aside and live in denial. We do need to deal occasionally with the disagreements and sins that come between us....No wait. Listen to him. I should have known he wouldn’t leave us with that misunderstanding. “When we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can.”

What I told him after the service:

The compost pile is such a good analogy, and you know, you can take it even further. Thanks, see you later.

He smiled:

I wonder what she means.

What I meant:

I’ve never composted, but I understand that periodically you need to leave your pleasant paths and visit the compost pile.You need to bring your shovel or pitchfork and stir the compost around. In other words, occasionally we do need to revisit the causes of stress and anger that are between us and release and diffuse the heat that’s been building up in the pile. Yes, we spend most of our time in the large, pleasant meadow that represents the good that predominates our relationship, but sometimes we have to talk about hard things or sometimes one of us needs to confront the other about something that is difficult. We do sometimes have to go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can.

When we do that digging and stirring, our hands will be dirty and our backs will ache. But after the digging and stirring is done for now, if we have stirred well, our aches will be the satisfying pain of a job well done.

We don’t want to live there, but the compost heap does exist and we do need to dig down deep sometimes. This can involve stirring up some stinky, rotting material that we’d rather not see or smell. But if we don’t stir it up, we’ll just have a manure pile, not compost. We wouldn’t want to pitch our tent right there, but we do need to visit sometimes.

I expect to hear more about that kind of visiting and shoveling during your sermon dealing with confrontation, because confrontation is one thing that drags us helter-skelter to the compost pile.

I don’t expect ever to enjoy shoveling the compost. But it helps to know that over time, with proper shoveling and mixing, our stinky, rotting manure becomes compost. Yes, composting and fertilizing is hard work, but the whole field of our relationship is richer and greener and sweeter for it.

I returned recently from 10 days in Cameroon, West Africa. A team of 14 was sent by Bethlehem Baptist, with the help of Joni and Friends, to distribute 100 wheelchairs through one disabilities ministry in Yaounde and one in Bamenda. There were 4 occupational or physical therapists, 4 handymen/mechanics, and the rest of us were support/go-fers.

From almost the beginning it was clear that we would fare better if we said the words, “If the Lord wills. . .” and if we really meant it.

We should have been saying, “If the Lord wills, we will arrive in Yaounde at 7:05 pm, Monday.” Instead, our plane had mechanical problems so our take-off and arrival were delayed. We arrived 26 hours later than planned.

We should have been saying, “If the Lord wills, we will rest Monday evening, check emails, and post on our team blog.” Instead, on Tuesday, when we finally got there, our arrival night was filled with unpacking and re-planning our schedule to fit our work into one less day. And for some reason, the blog that had been set up never accepted the posts we tried to enter. And most times throughout the trip, it was hard to use email for various reasons—electrical outage, no time, etc.

We should have said, “If the Lord wills, we will have a lighter schedule the first day, as we get into the swing of things.” Instead, since we arrived a day late, we packed 2 days of work into 1 day (until 1 am), so the rest of the time could remain pretty much on schedule (if the Lord willed!).

By then we knew that we were on the Lord’s schedule. And he gave us his strength to do what he gave us in each day. If any of us had been tempted to think we had things planned and under control, he showed us from the beginning that this was his mission, not ours.

At the human level, we were bringing wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches to 100 children and adults—just a handful of the Cameroonians who can’t afford them—and thus giving them mobility to participate in their communities. At a deeper level, we prayed that their families and churches would be more and more open to see that every person in their community is created in the image of God, no matter how their bodies or minds may be different.

Each person we worked with received a Bible and/or other Christian literature and spent time with one of the local pastors who gave their time the days we were working. We were so thankful for this partnership. As I heard our team leader, Bob Horning, express it: We gave equipment that will last for a few years, and that is good. But way more important is what the pastors offered—eternal life with Jesus.

Now, back at home, if I can just remember in the midst of my everyday routine, it still is all “If the Lord wills . . .” – not just during extraordinary times.

(Wheels for the World is one of the outreach ministries of Joni and Friends International Disabilities Center. Our mission was similar to a Wheels for the World outreach, but we had fewer team members, distributed fewer chairs, and we were sponsored by Bethlehem Baptist, rather than by JAF. But visiting their sites will give you a better idea of what we were doing.)