They're back!

Kristin and Isaiah returned from Florida last night (direct flight!) after celebrating her grandfather's 90th birthday.

Grandfather Morey presented us with a self-published memoir of his life. It's very well done and a great way to pass on to the younger generations life in the early 1900s, his service in WWII, and how much things have changed. Another grandfather, who lived to 103, also left behind extensive memoirs of his life. What valuable insights and lessons learned these hold!

Me, too

Many blogs in the Reformed corner of the blogosphere are expressing thanks to God today for John Calvin who was born 500 years ago this day. This is my "me, too" post.

Kristin and I have been using Calvin's writings for our daily devotionals this year, and today's reading was especially helpful. It dealt with "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" passage where we are encouraged to watch and pray. When I'm home with the kids all day it doesn't take long for me to find that my flesh is indeed weak, no matter how badly I want to set a godly example before them. Calvin's comments encouraged me to go to Christ who knows my weaknesses and promises to hear and help in time of need.

Calvin's writings are still accessible today and a source of rich insight and encouragement.

Mom's gone until when?

Oh No! Kristin and Isaiah left this morning for Florida! It's just me and the fearsome four until Monday!

I predict these 4 days will be a mix of Survivor and Home Alone.

Family camp

We're signed up!


We hope to see our Providence friends there in August.


Let's go camping!

Other lovers

Samuel Rutherford on soulmates:

I know that other lovers beside Christ are in suit of you, and your soul hath many wooers. But I pray you make a chaste virgin of your soul, and let it love but one. Most worthy is Christ alone of all your soul's love.

This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one; and O what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely One is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand worlds of paradises like the garden of Eden in one; put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness in one. O what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less, to that fair and dearest Well-beloved, Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths.

O pity, that Fairness hath so few lovers! O, woe, woe to the fools of this world, who run by Christ to other lovers! But O that men would once be wise, and not fall so in love with their own hell as to pass by Christ, and overlook him!

Read Rutherford's letters here.

Trinity Hymnal now on-line

Here's the link to a listing of all the hymns in the Trinity Hymnal. You can also click a button to hear the tune.

This will improve our family worship time!

Raising our view of the pulpit

Christ the Center interviewed Rev. Glen J. Clary on John Calvin as a servant of the Word of God. The high view of preaching taught by the Reformers would be medicine to the souls of God's people who humbly and obediently sit under it.

Listen to the Christ the Center podcast to learn about preaching as worship, the real presence of Christ in preaching, and union and communion with Christ through preaching. A high view of preaching will make Sunday your favorite day of the week.

Getting kids ready for Sunday

5 steps to master to get kids ready for Sunday from Stuff Christians Like:

1. The Pre-Game
You know Sunday is coming. It's been in the same spot on the calendar for as long as you’ve been alive, so don't act surprised when your head pops off that pillow and you think, "Oh no, I have to get the kids ready today." Pre-game the night before. Lay out bowls and clothes and shoes. Make sippy cups the night before. (I can't wait to retire the words "sippy cup" and "tinkle" from my vocabulary.) Prepare before the day actually arrives so that you're ready for the storm.

2. Sell it to your kids
One of your biggest jobs as a parent is to play the role of studio audience or laugh track. In the same way that a studio audience will laugh on cue to let viewers at home know it's time to find a particular scene in a show funny, your job is to back up whatever your husband or wife says with raucous enthusiasm. Here's what it looks like in my house:

My wife: "L.E. and McRae, aren't you excited about Sunday School?"
Me (Immediately after she says that): "Yay Sunday School! You'll get to see all your friends and have goldfish and make a craft. Yay!"

Before they have a chance to even think about putting up a wall of resistance I piggyback what my wife has said, adding details, amping up the excitement, laughing on cue if that's what the moment requires.

3. Hustle them to the bathroom like a SWAT team.
I can't prove this, but I think my children have entered into a silent pact with each other to see who can use the bathroom the least amount of times in any given week. Roughly 72% of my creativity/energy at home is expended trying to convince them to use the bathroom. So, to avoid this "no bathroom liberation front" my wife and I try to shuffle our kids to the bathroom as soon as they wake up. Before they can give each other a secret handshake or a head nod and remind each other "viva la revolucion" we've grabbed them right out of bed like a SWAT team and marched them into the bathroom.

4. Distract them with stories.
It took me years to learn this, but if I want to get my kids to do anything, and this is for those rare times when they are refusing to instantly follow my Godly, fatherly advice as the leader of the house, I'll tell them a story. It usually involves an animal. And the plot unfolds as they acquiesce to what I need them to do. For instance, "And do you know what your grandfather did with that bullfrog when he brought it home? Go ahead and take another bite of Cheerios and I'll tell you."

5. Use a series of aerobic moves to get them dressed.
Is it lying if you tell your kids that you want to see how high they can raise their hands in the air just so that you can slip a dress over their head? Is it lying if you made getting on tights a jumping contest in which you bounce them on the couch as high as you can all the while pulling the tights up? Is it lying if you make putting on shoes a fun race? I hope not, because otherwise, I'm a wicked huge liar.

On most Sundays my wife and I are the first couple to drop our kids off at Sunday School when the classrooms open. Then we go sit in the sanctuary for 20 minutes and have a "mini date."

How about you?

Do you have any tricks you use to get your kids ready for Sunday School?

Eli's first business

This summer Eli started a pet watching service in our neighborhood. It's called "Eli's coming pet services" and business has been good. In the last couple of weeks he's watched a dog, two gerbils, one hermit crab, fish, a turtle ("Sonic"), and is scheduled to watch a cat soon. Even though he asks for only a small daily fee, people have been paying him a ridiculous amount of money. I guess it's a lot cheaper than a kennel!

Isaiah's 7th!

For Isaiah's birthday parties usually we just invite Joshua Overbeek over and we're set. But with their departure we told Isaiah he could plan a party and send out 7 invitations. After much deliberation and vetting of all options he settled on Hinkle Family Fun Center and invited 7 families (around 25 people!).

He had a great time playing putt-putt and lazer tag with everybody. Here are a few shots.

Eli's first song

Eli's been working on a song he wrote this week. In his premier performance Grace supplies back-up vocals.

Young Peacemaker re-visited

We finished our second pass through The Young Peacemaker this week. We first read it together in 2007. This time we went through it during family worship and found it to be a really useful training resource for working through sibling rivalry and other forms of conflict. Many of the ideas in the book are probably too much for a child under 6 to grasp, but all of the children enjoyed the role play and stories.

This is a great resource for a family to use and re-use. We'll probably go through it every other year or so for many years to come.

"My wife and children are killing me" and it's the best thing that could happen

This is an excellent post for fathers and those who love them. It's an excerpt from Andrew Peach's post at First Things's On the Square blog.

Most fathers-to-be suppose that their old ego-centered lives will continue more or less unabated after the child arrives. With the exception of a few more obstacles and demands on their time, their involvement with their children is envisioned as being something manageable and marginal. Nothing like a complete transformation—an abrupt end to their former life—really enters men’s minds.

But then the onslaught begins, and a man begins to realize that these people, his wife and children, are literally and perhaps even intentionally killing his old self. All around him everything is changing, without any signs of ever reverting back to the way they used to be. Into the indefinite future, nearly every hour of his days threatens to be filled with activities that, as a single-person or even a childless husband, he never would have chosen. Due to the continual interruptions of sleep, he is always mildly fatigued; due to long-term financial concerns, he is cautious in spending, forsaking old consumer habits and personal indulgences; he finds his wife equally exhausted and preoccupied with the children; connections with former friends start to slip away; traveling with his children is like traveling third class in Bulgaria, to quote H.L. Mencken; and the changes go on and on. In short, he discovers, in a terrifying realization, what Dostoevsky proclaimed long ago: “[A]ctive love is a harsh and fearful reality compared with love in dreams.” Fatherhood is just not what he bargained for.

Yet, through the exhaustion, financial stress, screaming, and general chaos, there enters in at times, mysteriously and unexpectedly, deep contentment and gratitude. It is not the pleasure or amusement of high school or college but rather the honor and nobility of sacrifice and commitment, like that felt by a soldier. What happens to his children now happens to him; his life, though awhirl with the trivial concerns of children, is more serious than it ever was before. Everything he does, from bringing home a paycheck to painting a bedroom, has a new end and, hence, a greater significance. The joys and sorrows of his children are now his joys and sorrows; the stakes of his life have risen. And if he is faithful to his calling, he might come to find that, against nearly all prior expectations, he never wants to return to the way things used to be.

You can read the whole thing here.

Celebrating that blissful day

A dozen roses, an exchange of cards, a quiet dinner (to be followed by a quiet night we hope), this is how we celebrate our 15th.

Worship without the "kickin' band"

The popular internetmonk blog received a loud response when he lamented the approach to corporate worship found within much of evangelicalism--"an approach that demands ridiculous levels of musical, technical and financial commitment and resources".

His points are worth serious reflection; here are a few.

"We have a lot of happy people right now. They have no idea what Biblical worship is outside of the context of their favorite songs played by a kickin’ band."

"We have tied ourselves to the Christian music industry and its endless appetite for change and profit.

"We have accepted that all of our worship leaders are going to be very, very young people."

"Worship is now a major audience event, led by skilled entertainers, aimed at a demographic and judged by the audience reaction."

"Let’s worship means the band will play. We need to give more time to worship doesn’t mean silent prayer or public scripture reading or any kind of participatory liturgy. It means music."

"Even singing is getting lost in this. As the volume and the performance level goes up, who knows who is singing?"

The elders at our church would be the first to tell you that our corporate worship has room for improvement. But what we are after is better congregational singing (i.e. more joyful and reverent). We're very thankful that our congregation isn't interested in the approach found in most evangelical churches today.

Parenting older children

Here's a link (audio and notes) for the best talk on parenting of older children (tweens and up) that I've heard. The speaker, Bob Kauflin*, manages to condense the wisdom of several great parenting books into one address and weave in stories from his own experience raising six children.

I highly recommend the audio.

*Bob Kauflin is a pastor and worship leader in a Sovereign Grace church.

Growth in grace

Here's a pretty helpful syllogism:

1. The #1 goal in life is to grow in grace.
2. Growth in grace happens by increasing the use of the "ordinary means of grace" (Word, sacraments, and prayer).
3. Therefore I should always want more of the ordinary means of grace.

Darth Double Dogs

Zeke is not the only one in the family to relish hot dogs (...forgive me). Isaiah has been enamored with a Star Wars cookbook recipe that turns a couple of dogs into Darth Maul's weapon of choice. (You're not really surprised, are you, to hear that there is a Star Wars cookbook?)

The good thing about 8 AM swimming lessons

Daddy & daughter tea

Grace and I enjoyed an afternoon tea at St James Tea Room near Old Town Albuquerque.

The two hour reservation allows plenty of time for conversation, tea, and enjoying the kitchen's creations. We were delighted to discover that the art in this little nook was from the brush of Lynn Hartenberger, a friend from church!

With Grace's 10th birthday coming up I was able to lay some important framework on modesty, dating, and peer pressure before she forms her own opinions (with the culture's help). The tea room website even offers some talking points to help us dads along.