Couldn't Help Noticing

The seventh day

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. You shall not work at all. You shall not pick up a broom or a mop to clean your floors; you shall leave them for another day. You shall not do the laundry or clean the bathroom, even if you're running out of clothes and the shower recess is caked with soap scum. You shall not cook; instead, you shall eat leftovers, get take away or eat out, and you shall leave the dishes to someone else, or rinse them and leave them in the sink 'til morning.

You shall not turn on your computer to check your email, update your blog, surf the internet, or chat online with friends; you spend enough time on that machine and, if you don't need a break from it, it needs a break from you. If socialising with other people constitutes “work”, you shall see no one on your Sabbath, unless they are someone you can relax with. You shall not answer the phone; let the answering machine catch your calls and keep your mobile turned off. You shall not do the shopping or run errands that take you across the city. For that matter, you shall not tackle the traffic for it is not restful.

You shall enjoy sleeping in and taking a long hot shower, or a bath if you prefer. You shall go out for breakfast and enjoy bacon and eggs and mushy toast, even if it's lunchtime. You shall take as long as you like to read the paper. If it is a nice day, you shall take your family and the dog and go for a walk—no, a stroll—in the park or along a beach. You shall spend some time in patient prayer that is more than the just-before-you-go-to-bed or just-before-a-meal sort of prayer. You shall do some exercise in a leisurely kind of way, such as yoga or riding a bike.

You shall spend time poking around in your favourite bookstores, searching for nothing in particular. You shall curl up with a good paperback and a hot chocolate in some out-of-the-way café, or on a favourite couch, where you shall possibly drift off to sleep. You shall finally read a chapter of one of the Christian books that's been sitting on your bedside table since the last Christian conference or birthday, and use it as food for thought. You shall listen to The Marriage of Figaro with the volume set to Loud. You shall sing songs you normally sing in church while accompanying yourself on the piano without giving too much regard to the notes or who is actually listening to you. You shall write a poem about stars. You shall enjoy the sunset with your nearest and dearest. You shall spend the evening watching your favourite movie over popcorn. You shall go to bed early.

You shall not be tempted to check your work e-mail ‘just in case’. You shall not worry about the upcoming week. You shall trust God to run the world without you. You shall celebrate him for the goodness and the glories of his wonderful creation: “thank you Father for chai tea! Thank you Father for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy!”.

You shall rise early on the following day. You shall have energy to tackle washing and work and traffic. You shall be reminded that nothing bad happened because you left these things to themselves for one day. And you shall be ready to resume your labours once more.

Learning tolerance

Why is it that in dealing with ourselves many of us discover such deep reserves of tolerance?

Knit together

A couple of years ago, while putting together some shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, I thought, “Why don't I make something?” So I bought some yarn, broke out the old knitting needles, re-taught myself how to cast on and haven't stopped knitting ever since.

But I was surprised to learn that knitting is now cool (the Craft Yarn Council of America says that the number of women under 35 who have taken up knitting since 1998 has quadrupled)—and that celebrities like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Julianne Moore are compulsive knitters and unashamed of it, boldly posing with their half-finished projects in front of the paparazzi. What's the appeal?

After trawling around the Internet for a while, I've come up with the following reasons why more and more people are casting on:

• People like being able to make unique things that no one else is wearing including things tailored to their own size;
• People like the fact that they can make things for themselves (or for others) relatively cheaply; plus its a good outlet for artistic expression and creating beauty;
• Knitting allows you to connect to a previous generation of craftswomen who pass on their knowledge and skills (and needles) to the younger generation;
• It's not hard to learn the basics and if you want something more challenging, you can always find more complicated patterns to try, e.g. lace knitting;
• You can do it pretty much anywhere—noise and interruptions aren't a problem;
• Knitting is fun: it helps focus the mind (or distract you from things you don't want to be thinking about, e.g. if you've just quit smoking), it calms you down and helps to relieve your stress;
• In fact, Knitting has a wide range of health benefits for people with heart conditions, high blood pressure, chronic pain and even insomnia.

There's something cool about this—seeing people exercise God's gift of creativity with just a few sticks and a bit of string—making art—making socks and bags and scarves and shawls and jumpers and even prosthetic breasts for mastectomy patients—or making gifts—a scarf for your best friend in her favourite colour, baby clothes for an expectant mum ... even a womb which someone I know made for a friend who was about to undergo a hysterectomy.

I started thinking about how knitting could be used to further the kingdom of God and I came up with the following ideas:

• Broaden your circle of friends to include more non-Christians by joining a knitting circle. Knitting is a very social activity and it always gives you something to talk about: “What are you knitting?“, ”Who is it for?”, etc.
• Start a knitting circle to reach out into the community (based at church or based in your home). (Most knitters are women but there are more and more men who are taking it up so you might get a few coming to your group. You might even get enough men to form a men's knitting circle!) Over time, as you build up relationship with people and start talking about God with them, you could suggest spending part of your meetings listening to a gospel talk/watching a gospel video (activities that can be done while knitting) which you can then talk about later (as you knit);
• Knit nice things to sell to raise money to give to various ministries, eg. missionaries, AFES, FEVA. You could hold a knitting show in the church hall. Works could even be auctioned off like these knitters did for Hurricane Katrina relief;
• Teach people in your church to knit and get them to knit for charity—e.g. Operation Christmas child—as a group bonding activity and to encourage them to be generous and unselfish. Perhaps you could combine this sort of thing with a series of studies on a topic like “God's sovereignty and Social Justice” to push people think about how to be Christians in the world;
• Knit gifts for people in your congregation to show them you love them, e.g. baby clothes, a beautiful poncho for someone's birthday, etc. You could also make little things to give to people in between special occasions to do things like cheer them up if they feel down and are going through a rough time.

And I'm sure you could think of more!

A Ban on Fellowship

I've heard it said, “There is no use saying something if you know you are going to be misunderstood.” I agree with that statement. It is the reason why Christian teachers and preachers are always defining words for their audience. The audience comes to the lesson or sermon with a certain amount of cultural baggage connected to specific words. When these words are brought up there is always a great risk of being misunderstood unless the word is properly defined. Obvious examples are words such as ‘love’ or ‘faith’ or ‘prayer’ or ‘church’.

It is tremendously important for teachers to keep allowing God to define the words he gave us in Scripture. However, lately I have been wondering if there is a point that a certain word has been damaged beyond repair? Is there a time when a word has lost all its speaker-intended meaning that it is no longer worth using anymore unless that person wants to be greatly misunderstood?

The word that immediately comes to my mind is one that has been particularly misused within the Christian community. It is the word ‘fellowship’. I've heard the word used so many times in so many situations that it is hard to figure out what it actually has come to mean. But I have worked out a common definition that suits almost all contexts: getting together with other Christians in order to do and/or discuss anything except that which relates to the gospel.

Three Christian guys getting together for lunch—working Christian men's fellowship. A church event where dinner is served—a church fellowship dinner. A home group going bowling together—home group fellowship night. The list could go on and on. Not that there is anything wrong with these types of activities. The problem comes in when it is proposed that men get together to discuss ways to get the gospel out at their workplaces or to chat about their struggles with sin. That can't be called ‘fellowship’ according to a vast majority of church members. Fellowship, by its newly-given definition, must not be serious or demanding. It is to the point that if a Bible study is advertised as ‘fellowship night’ people would accuse the leader of false advertising.

Unfortunately, church calendars are filled much more with ‘fellowship’ events than they are with Bible studies, evangelism training, and book clubs. Why? Christian fellowship is easy. It is quite easy to feel like you are participating in ‘the fellowship of the saints’ when you go to the types of events labeled ‘Christian fellowship’. Who wouldn't rather chat about the weather, sports, and music over a coffee than be challenged to grow in faith through God's Word or through a book? To make matters worse, most church-sponsored fellowship nights have little about them that is distinctively Christian in substance.

So, I am proposing a short-term ban on the word ‘fellowship’. This will call for some creative thinking about what we call our Sunday services and other events that rightly deserve the label. It is a shame to have to do this, for ‘fellowship’ is such a good word. However, it is worth not using this marginalized word so that we won't always be misunderstood when we propose, for example, to gather in fellowship to hear the apostles' teaching (Acts 2:42). Try not using the word for a week. It will be hard; yet, it will be a wonderful opportunity to explain what the church of Christ is really doing.

Letters from the sub-editor VI

Why give 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 the heading “The Lord's Supper”? At least this time the words “The supper of the Lord” do occur in v 20, although not, we may notice, with a capital ‘s’ (not in English—every letter was capitalized in the original Greek). But if the Corinthian supper was anything like what some Christians today call “The Lord's Supper”, then I'll eat my hat and call it dinner. The sub-editor's heading, however, with it's capital L ‘Lord's’ and capital ‘S’ Supper has already suggested the link. With it, in the process, comes several tonnes of accumulated baggage about how the passage should be interpreted and applied.

Once again, the sub-editor oversteps his authority.