Status Report: June

Sitting…on the couch in the living room.

Drinking…an after supper cup of Earl Grey tea and eating chocolate sandwich cookies.

Longing…for a little summer weather. We’re still back in April, temperature-wise, and it’s a little depressing. Our summer is so short; we can’t afford lose any of it.

Waiting…for it to warm up a bit before I plant seedlings in the garden.

Hoping…the Twins keep winning. 

Enjoying…our long daylight hours. They almost make up for the short days in the middle of winter. (Want to know what the late night light is like? Here’s a photo taken two weeks ago at 11 pm.)

Planning…to take it easy this summer. No trips, no outdoor painting projects. I’m going to garden, enjoy my grandbabies, read, take long walks and see what else I feel like doing. The past year was a busy and sometimes difficult one, with several trips, one death, two births, three dental surgeries (two more yet to come), and one month-long illness. I’ve decided I need a bit of break. Besides, babies are more important than trips and painting projects, right?

Remembering…summers past: 

• the summer my oldest daughter was a baby and my mother bought her a kiddie pool.
• the summer my oldest son, then four, spent his days trying to catch grasshoppers in the bush behind the house. I don’t think he ever caught one. He says he caught one, but if he did, he didn’t get back to the house with it.
• the summer my oldest daughter was 6, and she brought home a jar of tadpoles from Paddy’s Pond so she could watch them turn into frogs. And they were turning into frogs until her younger brother reached up onto the counter to pull the jar over so he could peek at them, spilling jar, water, and tadpoles all over the floor. 
• the summer my youngest daughter’s best friend ended up in our backyard hanging from the monkey bars by the seat of her pants while we were all inside eating our supper. That’s the summer the same friend told me she had a new trick to show me and before I could react, jumped on the business end of a rake. You know how that ended. I was, after this, happy she wasn’t my daughter, but only my daughter’s friend.

Telling…these stories to youngest son as I write them. He’s not heard them before. He’s missed out on the family stories, I think, by not having his father around. 

Thanking…God for memories, stories, children, summer, pond life. Thanking him for his care through happy and sad, hectic and quiet, life and death.

Copying...Lisa. 

Sunday's Hymn: 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
And to take Him at His Word;
Just to rest upon His promise,
And to know, Thus says the Lord!

Refrain

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Him more!

O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to trust His cleansing blood;
And in simple faith to plunge me
’Neath the healing, cleansing flood!

Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just from sin and self to cease;
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life and rest, and joy and peace.

I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee,
Precious Jesus, Savior, friend;
And I know that Thou art with me,
Wilt be with me to the end.

—Lou­i­sa M. R. Stead

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• Let the Children Hear the Mighty Deeds at Field Stone Cottage
• Be Still My Soul at Jam and Books
• What a Saviour at The Happy Wonderer
• O Worship the King at Rosemary at Home
• Lord’s Day 23 at Tried With Fire 
• A Sunday Psalm: The Treasury of David - Psalm 5:1-2 at Theology for Girls
• Lord’s Day 23, 2012 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Faith Alone - June 3, 2012 at The Upward Call
• Your Weekly Dose of Spurgeon at Pyromaniacs: About those “Honest Doubts … “

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.

This Week in Housekeeping

I posted the term panentheism four years ago and thought I’d update the entry because there’s been a bit of discussion about it lately in my little corner of the internet. Most of the discussion centers around Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts, with some criticizing her alleged “panentheism.” 

My tentative take on it all is this: You know how the term “gnosticism” is sometimes used for a belief system that shares one or two elements with full-fledged gnosticism? I think something similar might be happening with panentheism. [Tim Challies is careful to say only that her mysticism sometimes seems “to border on the view that the divine exists within and extends to all parts of nature (a teaching known as panentheism).”] 

I’m no expert, but as I understand it, if Voskamp is saying that the being or essence of God exists in the material world, then that’s panentheism. If she’s saying that the material world exists because God is actively causing it to exist, and that’s the sense in which he is “in everything,” then that’s orthodoxy. I am open to correction, so please, if you know better, help me out.

I don’t know which of the above she’d agree with. I haven’t read the book and probably won’t because I find her writing style a bit difficult and I already have a long list of books I want to read. But even if I did read it, I’m not sure I’d know on which side of the line above she stands because her writing is poetic and not the sort of things that can be pinned down precisely doctrine-wise.

Enough of that. Here’s what I updated in my theological term entry on panentheism:

panentheism

• Added a link to Part Two of Norman Geisler’s Panentheism. 
• Added a link to Panentheism from Elwell Evangelical Dictionary.
• Added related terms aseity, creation ex nihilo, omnipresence, open theism.