EQUIP Book Club Feed

Over the past month, for the majority of mothers, motherhood has stepped up a notch in intensity. Not only are mothers unable to work, socialise, shop or serve as they once did, mothers of school-aged children have also become teachers of their children, educating them at home. At a time when many mothers are feeling stretched, overwhelmed and more anxious than they once may have been, now more than ever we need to be looking to Jesus as we seek to be gospel-centred mothers. So, it is perfect timing that we look at Emily Jensen and Laura Wifler’s recent book “Risen Motherhood: Gospel Hope for Everyday Moments. (2019, Harvest Hope).”

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Have you ever wanted to explain to someone you know what marriage is really about? Or why it is important to take ‘being unevenly yoked’ so seriously? Heidi Johnston’s wisdom and patience come through with clarity and conviction as she gives biblical and common sense advice to girls and women who are looking for love. In the second half of the book she does have ‘the sex chapter’ but the one that she really wants you to read, even if you don’t read any others, is chapter eleven about finding satisfaction in God.

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What do you wish that you had known about love before you made many mistakes and learned many lessons the hard way? This is a book about preparing our hearts to think rightly about love. You can tell from the pretty flowers that it is primarily aimed at young women, but I think that whatever age or stage we are at, this would be a helpful book to read to remind us of biblical truths about love. And then when you give it to the young people you know, you can be ready be ready to discuss it with them.

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On the curved edges of my brother’s gravestone is an attractive symbol carved out of the ice grey marble. It’s called a triquetra. I like to run my fingers over it, feeling the smoooth raised pattern of the stone. It’s a tri-cornered shape made of three overlapping arcs with pointed outer sections like a three-cornered knot.  You see it used in jewellery and clothing and as far back as the Book of Kells (a Scottish illustrated manuscript of the four gospels from the early 8th-century). It’s sometimes referred to as an Irish Celtic knot or a trinity knot. With my little fingers there in the rock I think about what it means that our family belong to this God. This God of three interlocking strands, three persons in one, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)  We worship Him, an eternal God, and our dead have gone to be with him, and us too one day. Walking through the cemetery I see this symbol on a lot of other graves. It’s a symbol that even today still means something potent. 

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What does it look like to take faith seriously? Christian bookshops are stacked at this time of year with devotionals as presents for growing Christians, but do they grow all Christians? Not everyone feels full after the experience. If you’re a person who finds devotionals don’t do much for you, consider this confession from C. S. Lewis, “I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.” 

So, pencil in hand (pipe left behind in the past), let’s explain two key terms as we enter Bray’s meaty book: theology; and doctrine. Stay with me, because they’re not as scary as they sound.

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The best news ever at Christmas time is that God is love. At a gingerbread event this December I heard a story that really gets to the heart of Godlike love. In the bushfires a firefighter approached a bird that had been burnt, totally charred. Feeling sad, the firefighter tried to move it away with a stick and was shocked to see little alive chicks pop out from under it's wing. The firefighter stood there a moment. The mother bird had sacrificed herself to keep her babies alive. She let herself burn up to protect them.  That’s love. And that's what Jesus does for us on the cross. He goes there to protect us, covering us from the wrath that we couldn’t endure. Just like that mother bird in the bushfire. Because through and through everything God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit does is motivated by love.

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I have a twelve year old daughter on the cusp of becoming a teen. She’s three weeks away from saying goodbye to primary school, and one shoe size away from mine. That beautiful dark haired baby I pressed my face into in the hospital is not too far away from being a fully grown woman. There are all kinds of things she wants for Christmas: new clothes, technology, but the thing we desire for her most, as Christian parents, is for her to grow in godliness. I don’t ever want her to stop growing in this.

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The other day I was listening to my kids play when I heard my eldest turn to her younger brother and say in a very stern, cranky voice “BE KIND OR YOU WILL HAVE A TIME OUT!”. My heart sank. Is that what I actually sound like? That’s not what I hoped they would learn from me when I imagined how I would parent my kids and help them know and love Jesus... Maybe you’ve had a similar time when you’ve thought, I’m a Christian, but is my parenting really Christian?

“Give Them Grace” has been a great encouragement, and a

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Jaquelle Crowe’s This Changes Everything is an insightful book, calling teenagers to truly live out their Christian faith.

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I’m not sure if you have many, or even any, books about death written for children. It’s something we tend to shy away from, perhaps because we somehow want to protect them from being exposed to suffering. But we know that being part of this fallen world will mean that at some point children will have to face the big questions that death and suffering bring. It is incredibly valuable to give them a framework for understanding the place of suffering and God’s goodness through it, before it happens.

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I’m now about halfway through Part 2 of Reinke’s ‘Lit’, and really enjoying getting stuck into the practical side of how to read books well. In some ways it feels like going back to school! It’s been many years since I consciously thought about my own disposition as a reader. But this takes it to a deeper level, rather than the purely academic: how can I derive more spiritual benefit from what I’m reading?

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I’m writing this blog from beautiful Byron Bay, where we are gathered along with family to celebrate a wedding. Both my husband and I come from non-Christian backgrounds and, to our great sadness, remain the only believers in our entire extended family on both sides. Whenever we gather with them, it further underlines how great a chasm lies between us. On the surface, the shape of our lives may look similar. We dress in similar clothes, we eat similar food, we all have work, we’re raising or have raised children, we all have home duties and shop at the same kind of stores, we go on holidays, we have health concerns, interests and hobbies. The list goes on. But the way my husband and I approach all of those things, by God’s grace, has been transformed by the gospel. We are now seeking to do all of those things to the glory of God. We no longer consider that life consists in those things, we no longer worship those idols.

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