"The Compassion of Christ"

I saved this link to a draft blog post a month ago, intending to highlight a paragraph and link to the original blog and thus have a neat little citation of an article I appreciated at one point.

Of the many articles I read, I only pick a few that I want to save to this blog. And of those few? I may remember them, sure, but really the exercise is precisely so I *don't* have to remember them but can find them again when the topic is relevant. This blog is supposed to function as my um, external hard drive, I guess.

However, since I often go a month or two before I format the links and actually publish a post, I often do forget why I selected a particular link as "blog worthy" and get to rediscover it when I actually go through my draft posts.

I have thought about the following quote and the original article many times in the last month and it's been really convicting, especially as I parent Isaac. I often have too little patience with him and his over-dramatization of the events in his life.

I need to remember Jesus and His care of His disciples and friends and ask myself:

Can I be a compassionate mother like that?  Can I look into my child’s eyes and tell her not to fuss about dinner, but with the same compassion of one who knows how hard it is to wait? Can I hold them when they have a bad dream, and tell them none of it is real, but with the kindness of someone who knows what it feels like to be afraid?  Or do I dismiss their fears and their worries and their struggles because I know they won’t last long?  Can I find a more compassionate way to exercise my authority and abandon the answer “because I told you so”?  Am I the kind of mother who tells my children to “get over it” because I know that a scratch on their knee isn’t going to kill them?  Or am I the kind of mother who can, like Jesus, compassionately kiss their hurts, understanding that their fears are real to them, and kindly tell them that they will heal?  Can I be kind like Jesus on the stormy waters when He asked His disciples be calm while He gently calmed the waves?  Can I be kind when nobody in the house is being calm?  Can I bring the calm?

[https://fenleyflat.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/the-compassion-of-christ/]

Sexual Abuse in the Church

For about the last two years I've been slowly researching sexual abuse, especially in the church. I haven't done a very good job of collecting the articles and memoirs and reports I've read, but here are three quick links to articles I recently read on www.challies.com.

A book review (by Tim Challies) of On Guard: Preventing and Responding to Child Abuse at Church by Deepak Reju

"The Tragic Prevalence of Sexual Assault" by Tim Challies

"6 Reasons Why Sexual Predators Target Churches" by Tim Challies

"Delighting in Death"

Death is the one insurmountable reminder of the power, or the tyranny, of our bodies over our personal being and humanity. Our bodies are testimony to the fact that we are not ultimately in control. We are not sovereign. We are not gods. We hate that and we energetically seek to deny it. Thus, the attempt to defy the limitations of our bodies and the desire to control life and death are really two aspects of the same thing.

[http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/04/delighting-in-death]

"The Honest Plea of Good Friday"

Read:

Nearly every day, I say in any tone, volume, or escalating degree, “Please. Please no. Isn’t there another way? Does obeying you really have to feel this lonely, make me this tired, cost me this much?”

[http://tricialottwilliford.com/2015/04/honest-plea/]

"Emotional Blackmail"

This was a hugely helpful quote for me to ruminate on these last few days. I needed to hear these words and have Seth convince me that the applied to a particular friendship/interaction with a friend. (But now to decide what to do in light of my realization I have been emotionally blackmailed...)

Emotional blackmail happens when a person equates his or her emotional pain with another person’s failure to love. They aren’t the same. A person may love well and the beloved still feel hurt, and use the hurt to blackmail the lover into admitting guilt he or she does not have. Emotional blackmail says, ‘If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.’ There is no defense. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jury. Truth does not matter. All that matters is the sovereign suffering of the aggrieved.

[http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/gospeldrivenchurch/2015/03/23/piper-on-emotional-blackmail-in-the-church/]

On Cutting

Ooof, how raw:

Cutting myself gave me my escape. It released pressure, stress, hurt, pain, embarrassment, deep shame. The time I knew I could stop was when it clicked- I realized that when God put Christ on the cross, He too experienced the pressure, the hurt, the pain, physical and emotional, he was betrayed, he was stripped naked, NAKED on the cross, beaten, whipped, he was shamed, and rejected countless times.

[https://merebreath.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/guest-post-pandoras-box/]