BJU Press Writer

A Hope-Filled Christmas

December 21, 2017 by BJU Press Writer

Despite the festive, signature red and green of the Christmas season, I was blue—navy blue from head to toe.

It was my first Christmas as a newlywed and my first Christmas away from home.

It wasn’t that we were spending the holiday completely apart from loved ones. My husband’s family was driving eleven hours so that we could all be together. But it simply wasn’t my family. Life was just too expensive for us to travel coast-to-coast to spend the holiday at my folks’ house. So there would be no late-night wrapping marathon with my mom, no curling up with my siblings while Dad read Christmas stories, and no helping the little ones open their gifts and play with new toys.

How could I celebrate without them?

I never expected to ask myself that question. My family always focused on Jesus as “the reason for the season,” manger scenes figured prominently in our Christmas décor, and we read the account of Christ’s birth every year. But here I was feeling like it just wouldn’t be Christmas without my family.

Why was I celebrating Christmas?

In our fast-paced, materialistic society, the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season is the one time generally set apart for family gatherings. But if Christmas means spending time with family, how can our hearts be merry when the ones that make the season special are so far away?

The first Christmas was also spent with families scattered far and wide—for a census. How vulnerable Mary and Joseph must have felt, so very near the baby’s time of birth but packed nonetheless into a strange city overflowing with people. Squeezed into a stable with the animals of wealthier citizens, the young couple faced Mary’s labor and delivery alone, without the help of mothers or nearby neighbor women.

The Son of God faced a different kind of separation in leaving heaven and His Father’s side to come into the world as one of His frail creatures. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) was the cry that rent the heavens some thirty-three years after the night of the angels’ rejoicing outside Bethlehem. Pressed down by the weight of the world’s sins, Jesus Christ experienced the full agony of the separation from God that we deserved.

So why do we celebrate Christmas?

But the story doesn’t end with the separation of the crucifixion. We celebrate Christmas because the Son of God rose from that grave as our conquering Savior. The unbelief and derision from many of those Jesus came to save couldn’t diminish the hope inherent in His coming. The angel had told Joseph, “Thou shalt call His name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus doesn’t just offer hope to every hurting heart; He Himself is the hope people desperately seek. And Christmas is the season of hope because it commemorates the beginning of Christ’s work to reconcile us with God.

So how can we celebrate Christmas when our hearts are weighed down, either by grief over absent loved ones or simply by the stresses of life? We do it by finding joy in one, unchangeable truth—that God gave us Himself that first Christmas. He experienced our separation for us: “He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5).

The ache of my first Christmas holiday away from my family still lingers these many years later, but because of Christ, I can always have hope. Because of Christ, those who love Him will spend eternity together. And because of Christ, Home is waiting—the Home and family we’ll never be separated from again.

Shopping for Hope

December 7, 2017 by BJU Press Writer

Ever gone to the grocery store when snow is predicted? Not sure how it is in your neighborhood, but in the South you’ll likely find empty shelves—especially in the dairy aisle.

It doesn’t take an impending storm for my internal shelves to get depleted. Just the day-to-day interactions with fallen people on a fallen planet will clean me out of all reserves of hope, confidence, and energy.

Some days I feel the need for a semitruck to pull up to my backdoor and unload, among other things, a whole case of Reason-To-Go-On. I could also use an Expert to stock all the shelves of my heart so that each product is on just the right level for me to give to those in need.

But in reality, I don’t need a semi to pull up to my loading dock. My “store” is actually in the middle of the most complete warehouse anywhere because “in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). And He has provided me with an intercom that works perfectly without disturbing any of the shoppers who come to me for help. “Delivery needed, Father. Please send a fresh supply for the Hope Department.”

Even before we ask, the God of hope stands ready to fill us “with all joy and peace in believing, that [we] may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Romans 15:13).

Need more than hope? “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Feeling depleted in all areas? “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

Never hesitate to use your intercom. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

When your students, coworkers, family, and friends all seem needy; when everyone seems to want a piece of you, remember what Jesus told His followers: “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8).

Today—and every day—God’s warehouse is always open. And the intercom always works.

Expressing Great Gratitude to God

November 7, 2017 by BJU Press Writer

Plenty of men and women have gone down in history with “the Great” after their names. Have any of the following shown up in your homeschool history lessons?

Cyrus, the king of ancient Persia who’s mentioned by name in the Old Testament, is now known as Cyrus the Great. In the New Testament, the king who ordered the massacre of the baby boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16), is ironically called Herod the Great. And who hasn’t heard of Alexander the Great? Then there was Gregory the Great, a popular pope in the sixth century. Later on, the Russian Empire would be ruled by Peter the Great, Ivan the Great, and Catherine the Great. And the list goes on, reaching even to our day. Maybe your family has watched video clips of Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian hockey player known as the Great One.

These people and other “greats” have certainly done remarkable things, but as Christians, we know that no human is really great compared to our God. To declare ourselves great is something like a tiny spark (even though it can set ablaze a huge forest as the Bible says in James 3:5) claiming to be like the sun!

One November a couple of years ago, I was reading through Psalms and noticed how often the words great, greatly, and greatness crop up in those prayers—more than two dozen times! The psalmists were obviously convinced that not only is God great but so are His name, His works, and His attributes, such as His love, mercy, power, and goodness.

So I copied down some of their exclamations of praise to the Lord and about the Lord and stitched them together into what I called “A Psalm of Greatfulness.” Then on Thanksgiving Day, when my family gathered around the table, we read it aloud as a choral reading.

If you’d like to use it this year, feel free to download “A Psalm of Greatfulness” and print out copies.

You can adapt it for the number of family members and guests who’ll be present at your Thanksgiving meal so that everyone gets to participate. (Of course, it’s also suitable to use as part of your family worship time during this season—or any other time of the year for that matter.)

Our God is great, and we are grateful!

• • • • •

An editor at BJU Press until 2020, Dennis and his wife spent seventeen years homeschooling their three sons. Dennis occasionally teaches at their church and in his spare time enjoys running, playing racquetball, and interacting with their five grandchildren.

3 Tough Questions Kids Ask and How to Answer Them

October 26, 2017 by BJU Press Writer

“What happens to us when we die?” Do your kids ever ask you questions like this? You know, ones that are hard to respond to because they touch on really important topics? When a major London newspaper ran a story about the top twenty questions parents find toughest to answer for their kids, the “what happens to us when we die” question was listed as number 11. And number 13 was “Is God real?”

Hard Questions

It’s no surprise that people think spiritual questions like these are tough to respond to. But since we as Christian parents have a Book that gives us the answers, the most difficult aspect for us may be making our answers simple enough for younger children to understand. But when we give our kids Bible-based answers, we can be confident we’re teaching them truth. In contrast, according to the article, 25 percent of parents in one survey said if they were asked, “Where do you go when you die?” they would tell their child, “You become an angel.” This correlates with another finding of the survey: When parents don’t know the answer to a child’s question, 63 percent of them will give one anyway—even if they think it might be wrong!

Most of the other questions on the list were requests for scientific explanations, such as “Why is the sky blue?” and “How do planes fly?” These can be hard to answer on the spot because we’ve forgotten (or never really understood) the scientific or technical details. But that kind of factual data is easily accessible these days. The bigger challenge for us as Christian parents is how to answers our children’s questions in a way that reinforces the biblical worldview we want them to grow up with.

Teachable Moments

When children ask questions, especially why questions, it can be a perfect opportunity to engage in biblical worldview shaping—helping them to learn to see the world and everything in it from God’s perspective. The Creation-Fall-Redemption metanarrative of the Bible has multiple layers of significance, yet it’s simple enough for even a young child to grasp:

Creation: God made the world.

Fall: People have messed it up.

Redemption: Someday God will fix it.

The key is to answer kids’ questions by telling them a small story that fits in with the big story of CFR.

Victoria Klein wrote an article in Parents magazine about questions kids often ask and how to answer them. For each of nine questions, she suggests an answer and quotes an expert’s advice on how to talk about the topic. Here are three of the questions and my suggestions for how to answer them to help kids think biblically.

1. “Why aren’t there any more dinosaurs?”

Klein cites the standard evolutionary scientific answer based on the secular worldview: Eons and eons before humans existed, dinosaurs evolved from simpler lifeforms. Then, 65 million years ago a huge asteroid crashed into the earth, resulting in climatic changes that the species couldn’t adapt to, and so they died out. But some of them “were the ancestors of today’s chickens, pigeons—even ostriches.”

The Bible tells a very different story: On the sixth day of creation, God made dinosaurs along with all the other land animals as well as Adam and Eve. So humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. Then about 4,400 years ago, there was a worldwide Flood that wiped out almost all the land animals of every species. The animals that survived had to adjust to living in a very different habitat. Climate change brought about by the Flood (e.g., the Ice Age), disease, competition from other animals, and other factors eventually resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs.

To give a more theological answer, you might explain that the main reason dinosaurs (and other species) have gone extinct is the Fall. The Flood was God’s judgment on human sin.

2. “Why are there so many languages in the world?”

Again Klein accepts the evolutionary explanation that language developed as humans evolved and assumes that the reason for different languages is that the process occurred simultaneously in various places that were isolated from each other. The fact that the English of today is so different from the English of five hundred years ago is cited as evidence of this evolution.

In contrast, Scripture indicates that language was a gift God gave Adam and Eve when He created them. There was only one language until about a hundred years after the Flood. But then people rebelled against God at the Tower of Babel, and He punished them by dividing them into groups and making it so that they couldn’t understand each other. Those separate languages developed into the ones in use today. The existence of various languages is actually a strong argument against the notion that language evolved as an aspect of the transition from ape to human.

3. “Why do people get sick?”

Klein’s answer focuses on germs and the difference between contagious diseases and other medical conditions.

The CFR perspective on disease emphasizes the idea that in the world as God created it there was no sickness, pain, or death, but once people sinned against God, the door was opened to all of those. So in that sense, all disease is a result of the Fall—we get sick because of sin. That doesn’t mean that there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between a particular illness and a specific act of disobedience. Job didn’t get boils because he had sinned, nor was the man in John 9 born blind because of his own or his parents’ sin. But any lack of good health confirms that we live in a fallen world.

Trustworthy Authority

What’s so important about answering from a biblical worldview frame of reference? The goal is not for children to comprehend all the whys and wherefores of the factual information we give them, but for them to absorb the way our worldview works. When they see that we examine every question in the light of Scripture, they will begin to understand that the ultimate authority is God’s Word not scientific evidence, historical documentation, or popular opinion.

What tough question has your child asked recently? Were you able to answer it from a biblical worldview perspective?

• • • • •

Learning to Trust God for Your Harvest

October 12, 2017 by BJU Press Writer

We think of autumn as the season of harvest. Even with the conveniences of grocery stores and restaurants, we all look forward to the cooler weather that brings fresh apples, blackberries, sweet potatoes, squash, and pumpkins to the produce aisle. For all the difficulties that a life on a farm involves, it must be rewarding to gather in the harvest. Imagine finally seeing the results of all the effort you’ve put into planting and maintaining the fields for those long months!

Tending to Your Family

Don’t we sometimes think about homeschooling and parenting the same way—wishing that the family were like a garden plot so that our diligent work throughout spring and summer would yield the satisfaction of tangible results by autumn? But tending a family is a year-round occupation. Homeschooling never ends—not even when the yellow school buses make their rounds at the end of the school day. We may hand out final grades to our children as the school year closes, but rarely do we get to see a final assessment or “harvest” of our work—there’s no concrete evaluation of our overall success level.

Instead, our harvest comes in bits and pieces as our children grow. When a daughter finally understands multiplication, when a son learns to ride his bike without training wheels, when brothers and sisters help each other and unselfishly share their toys (OK, so maybe we’re still working on that one!)—these are the things that show us that the time and effort and prayer we have put into our children’s lives are bearing fruit.

The difficulty comes when not all the plants in our home garden flourish. With some of our children, we can’t help but wonder whether we will ever see a harvest ripened and ready in their lives. “Where did I go wrong?” we wonder. “Did I use the wrong seed? Overwater? Hurt the roots when trying to pull the weeds?” Sometimes we plant, tend, and do everything we can think of, but instead of the fruit of the Spirit, we see only self-centeredness, pride, and rebellion. What can we do when the seeds we’ve tried so hard to cultivate seem to lie dormant or dead in the soil—when instead of producing godly fruit, a child prefers to sow “wild oats,” heedless of the harvest they will yield?

As much as we would like it to be, Proverbs 22:6 is not an ironclad promise—a guarantee that if we hold up our end of the bargain, God will make sure our children turn out all right. Instead it is an exhortation, wisdom we will never go wrong in following. “Train up a child. . . .” Plant, plow, tend, weed, water. Do everything we can to help these plants grow and flourish. And then? Step back in prayer and watch the Lord give the increase (1 Corinthians 3:7).

Waiting for the Harvest

Of course, stepping back to watch is never easy. But the farmer can’t be constantly digging around the roots of his wheat to see whether it is growing right. He can’t pull back the husks from every ear of corn to see whether the kernals are forming properly. No, the farmer has to wait and trust that the God who grew the Garden of Eden is also watching over his fields. And we have to watch our children make decisions for themselves daily. We can and should guide, sometimes even override, those decisions while the children are young, but there comes a point when they must answer for their own actions.

Search your own heart. Are you are walking with God as He requires? That’s all you can control. Don’t carry the weight of guilt for their actions when God doesn’t ask you to bear it. We all make mistakes. We sin. He knows—He died to save us from sin. And He also chose each one of us specifically to parent our specific children. Even when hopes, goals, personalities, and tastes seem to clash horribly between parent and child, God has a good purpose in store.

One of the dictionary definitions of harvest is “a supply of anything gathered at maturity and stowed.” None of us has reached full maturity yet. Do you feel ready to stand before God today, or would you like time to grow more? The same is true of our children, whether they appear to be flourishing, yielding a bumper crop of the good things we hope to see, or they are simply alive, tenaciously clinging to the dirt. We must give them—give ourselves—time to grow.

Trusting the Lord of the Harvest

The harvest we wait for may take much longer to ripen than autumn’s golden pumpkins. It’s possible that we won’t even get to see or share in the fruit of our love-labors. But that’s all the more reason to trust the Lord of the Harvest. He knows each unrolling leaf and bud, each bug and blight, and every different season that will be a part of our children’s growth. We may sow the seeds, but it’s God who gives the rain, sun, and life. Don’t give up hope in times of drought. Don’t uproot the browning stems even when plants appear dead—you don’t know what life still flows despite the brown leaves.

Trust the Lord of the Harvest. And in your trusting, give thanks that He has the greatest stake in the harvest for which you’re both waiting. Hasn’t He even given His Son to bring it in? Give thanks that He knows the outcome and that whatever the harvest yields, God is still and always will be good. And He delights in helping His children—of every age—to flourish “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season” (Psalm 1:3).