Kim

Anderson

“To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of y our life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground…”(

Genesis 3:17-19 Close Genesis 3:17-19 And to the man he said,"Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree  whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,the ground is cursed because of you.  All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you,  though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow  will you have food to eatuntil you return to the ground  from which you were made.For you were made from dust,  and to dust you will return." OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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Wicked men are pictured as thorns; men whose fruit is pain.

“Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.” (

Judges 2:3 Close Judges 2:3 So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides,* and their gods will be a constant temptation to you." OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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Lent begins a time when many Christians prepare to celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death by reflecting on our own sins which pierced Him. We have been the thorns in His crown. But Lent is not a time of mere remorse. The message of Easter is that those cursed thorns aren’t allowed to choke out life. Christ enlivens us to become “like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season…” (

The fasting aspect of Lent is designed not just to encourage us to beat our breasts over our failings, merely bruising our sinful habits. It is intended to provide a power-surge that will allow us to root them out altogether. Lent is when we can collectively get serious about killing off the sins that hold us back. For example, we aren’t just ‘giving up chocolate for Lent’. We are giving up eating as an emotional crutch – for good! Lenten fasting isn’t about slumping around with long faces, feeling deprived. It is a discipline of pursuing with deadly intent the things that deprive us of deeper fellowship with God. Ultimately, it is the pursuit of more abundant life.

At our house the day begins with a worship time and Bible discussion. On Ash Wednesday (or as soon thereafter as possible), we prune our rosebushes and bring in bouquets of thorns. As we decorate the house with these sharp reminders of our sin, we ask God what chokes our growth, what starves our fruit. And we ask Him to show us what He would be pleased to help us to root out this year. And then we ask each other to help us to discipline ourselves to mortify those things, not to wring our hands feebly over them, but to cut them off entirely.

On Good Friday we hold a bonfire. As we lay the thorns to the flame, we remember that God's firey wrath was poured out on Christ to consume our sins. And we rely in faith on Christ's finished work for assurance that we need never be choked by those sins again.

Adapted from the original article on www.mother-lode.blogspot.com on Feb 27, 2006.  Copyright held by Kim Anderson & released for CBN network.

God’s Creation is set up especially to speak of Him, and the rhythms of time are no exception. The week is explicitly established as a pattern of seven with the cadences of work danced in demonstration by God Himself. Ever wonder who came up with a seven-day week? Why not a neat ten? Genesis 1 and 2. The first work week in history.

When God established a Sabbath day one day out of seven, He explained that this was intended to be the pattern for our imitation of Him.

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work,…For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hollowed it.” (

And in so doing, He invites us to look carefully at the rest of His work week to discern other patterns of work that we should imitate in order to be effective.

Can we arrange our time so that our schedules reverberate with God’s messages to us? So that our work patterns remind us that there is a greater Work that we imitate? So that even washing dishes takes on a beautiful dignity? Oh yes!

James B. Jordan, in his book, Primeval Saints, has a wonderful study of the manner in which worship transforms our work and enables us in turn to transform the broken, ugly and unformed into something more and more glorious.

Jordan points out that God models for us again and again the six-fold pattern for our work.

1. We lay hold on the world.
2. We give thanks.
3. We break it up and restructure it.
4. We distribute it to others.
5. We evaluate it.
6. We enjoy it.

Does this look familiar? When Jesus was demonstrating how we are to remember His work,

“Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, ‘Take and eat.  This is my body.’ Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them saying, ‘Drink from it all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins…’ When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mt of Olives.” (

It is the pattern of the Creation Week, of the Old Testament sacrificial system, of the Communion service, and (except for the thanksgiving part) it is a pattern that we cannot help but follow. Jordan maintains that if we, as believers, discipline ourselves to give thanks, it is the pattern for dominion and for cultural revitalization.

This can be the pattern for daily life. As you sit down on a Sunday to imitate God in the arranging of your coming week,

1. Lay hold of your lists and calendars.
2. Give thanks for the time you have been given and for the help you have in your children (or co-workers)
3. Divide your work into manageable tasks.
4. Distribute them to the days and hours at your disposal, and, if you have children, to those small helpers at your knee.
5. Consider whether you can really do all that. Does something need to move or be re-assigned to another worker? Or maybe it just needs to be ditched. Leave room to be interrupted. Leave room for God to re-assign His work to you in the measure of the dance.
6. Enjoy the rest brought by knowing your work will be done decently and in order.

Your life will never be the same. This week, I hope you dance!

"Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work ..."

Deuteronomy 5:13-14 Close Deuteronomy 5:13-14 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the LORD your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your oxen and donkeys and other livestock, and any foreigners living among you. All your male and female servants must rest as you do. OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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The initial giving of the Law cites as the reason for this command that we are made to imitate God's work of creation:

"… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day ..."

Exodus 20:11 Close Exodus 20:11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

(NASB)

Deuteronomy 5 goes on to give a further reason:

"Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm ..."

Deuteronomy 5:15 Close Deuteronomy 5:15 Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, but the LORD your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the LORD your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day. OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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We are made for rest in the midst of work. Further, God has purchased a holiday for us one day in seven as a part of our freedom from slavery to sin. The Sabbath is a constant reminder that where merely human strength cannot bring our work to fruition, God's might can - even without us. God's people ought not to be slaves of the urgent.

But we ought not to be slaves to a slate of Sabbath-Day do's and don'ts either. The rhythms of God's work and the dance of our Sabbath worship ought to be teaching us music that we can embellish, rather than merely repeating. Sadly, our anything-goes age has forgotten most of the steps, so here is a brief of the dance.

In worship we:
1) Come near and know our unworthiness
2) Confess our sin and receive forgiveness
3) Respond with thanks and praise
4) Receive God's nourishment in Word and Sacrament
5) Go out rejoicing in God's strength and commissioning

So rightly, the Sabbath could properly contain so much:
1) Reflection, journaling, scrapbooking
2) Letting others off the hook in various ways, including letting yourself off the hook (He has), napping
3) Singing, making music, writing thank you notes or calls
4) Feasting, discussing the Scriptures and their applications in our day, exercising hospitality, seeing a movie or reading a book that will flesh out the implications of God's Word...
5) Planning the coming week in light of the Biblical admonitions we received from worship, laughingWe are not called to the rat-race, but to a dance. God invites us to learn the steps of His dance in little weekly lessons, so that when we come at last to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, we will spin and dip with the best of them. Leave the rat-race. Join the dance!

Revised from the March 7, 2006 article on www.mother-lode.blogspot.com titled “Liturgy for Living.”  Copyright by Kim Anderson, released for CBN publication.

The six weeks before Easter are designated in the ancient Church calendar as a time of preparation for celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection, called Lent. Sometimes the deprivations recommended by various denominations during Lent are viewed as a way to become contented with less. But this attitude really has more in common with the eastern idea of contentment than with the Christian concept of it. In Buddhism indifference is contentment. Numbness is serenity, a sort of death in life.

Some days this idea looks like a good alternative to feeling the longing and disappointment that are part of living in a fallen world. You know the days I mean. The days of caring for a demented aging parent while the relatives, who should be helping, criticize. The days of plodding through routine and relatively meaningless work for managers who are never happy. The days of training a child who refuses to seize on anything or who rejects God's ways. The days of loving someone God has irrevocably placed in your life whose needs and demands are never satisfied. The days of praying without seeing an answer.

Eastern deadness, eastern stoicism provides a way to endure with patience trials of this sort. "I can stand it because nothing matters." "I can stand it because everything is an illusion." But it is just that - death. Escape from reality.

But that is not what we have learned from Jesus.  He came as our passionate lover, ready to suffer every torment to rescue His Bride. Psalm 22 details the horrors of the cross:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?...O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent…All who see me mock me…I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax…My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth…” (

Psalms 22:1-15 Close Psalms 22:1-15 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?  Why are you so far away when I groan for help? Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer.  Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief. Yet you are holy,  enthroned on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted in you,  and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved.  They trusted in you and were never disgraced. But I am a worm and not a man.  I am scorned and despised by all! Everyone who sees me mocks me.  They sneer and shake their heads, saying, "Is this the one who relies on the LORD?  Then let the LORD save him!If the LORD loves him so much,  let the LORD rescue him!" Yet you brought me safely from my mother's womb  and led me to trust you at my mother's breast. I was thrust into your arms at my birth.  You have been my God from the moment I was born. Do not stay so far from me,  for trouble is near,  and no one else can help me. My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls;  fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed me in! Like lions they open their jaws against me,  roaring and tearing into their prey. My life is poured out like water,  and all my bones are out of joint.My heart is like wax,  melting within me. My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.  My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.  You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead. OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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As Roman soldiers were about to nail Jesus to the cross, the soldiers offered Him a drink of wine laced with myrrh, a painkiller. Christ on the cross refused the draft that would have numbed His sensibilities and lessened His pain. He refused to escape from reality. He endured because He had a larger sense of reality. This present suffering is not the last word. It's not the whole picture. 

Even Psalm 22 doesn’t end with the cross. Jesus looked beyond the suffering to the joy and glory that would only follow if He fully entered into that agony.

“I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you…The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the Lord will praise him…All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations will bow down before him…” (

Psalms 22:22-27 Close Psalms 22:22-27 I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters.*  I will praise you among your assembled people. Praise the LORD, all you who fear him!  Honor him, all you descendants of Jacob!  Show him reverence, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy.  He has not turned his back on them,  but has listened to their cries for help. I will praise you in the great assembly.  I will fulfill my vows in the presence of those who worship you. The poor will eat and be satisfied.  All who seek the LORD will praise him.  Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy. The whole earth will acknowledge the LORD and return to him.  All the families of the nations will bow down before him. OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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Christian contentment does not consist of going numb. We’d miss the joy as well as the sorrow. It does not consist of minimizing reality. It consists of affirming that there is more. There is a heaven and an eternity in which longings will be fulfilled and sufferings will not only make sense, but will bear fruit that could not be seen from here.

Christian contentment is a journey to a larger world. There is more...

Adapted from the original article on www.mother-lode.blogspot.com on Feb. 6, 2006.  Copyright held by Kim Anderson & released for CBN network.

We moderns have stripped this question to its most mechanistic, petty level. It is only about stopwatches and timetables, never about meaning. If you feel trapped on the treadmill of endless, breathless busy-ness, maybe it’s time for you to stop asking, “What time is it?” and begin asking, “What is it time for?”

God did not create us to be the slaves of a time-clock or of a tyrannical schedule. He has redeemed us from slavery of every kind, and has established examples for us showing how we can live and work as free men.  Creation Week in Genesis 1 and 2 reveals God’s own work rhythms. The account of that busiest of work weeks even contains an invitation to consider that week as the pattern for the times of our lives:

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.  And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” (

Genesis 2:2-3 Close Genesis 2:2-3 On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested* from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation. OPEN VERSE IN BIBLE (nlt)

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As God continued to train His people in living, He set up a cycle of feasts so that His people would not forget their blessings, so that they would enter into the joy of all that God had done for them. The Christian Year or Church Calendar is much the same sort of exercise. It asks us to consider the meaning of time. It asks us how we will "redeem the time....for the days are evil..." (

Historically, Christians have appreciated the value of reminding ourselves on a yearly basis of the great things God has done. Modern evangelicals have largely forgotten the old Church Calendar. (Didn’t that go out with Indulgences?) But it gives Christians a joyful and disciplined way to remember, to reflect and to revive in hope and strength.

The Christian Year sets up seasons of contemplation, which focus in sequence on the vast workings of God on our behalf throughout history. This is enormously different from the pagan calendars, which focus on the cycles of nature. There is no sense of progress in the natural cycles. Everything that will happen has already happened for thousands on thousands of years without significant variation.

It is also vastly different from the secular calendar, which is dominated by State holidays.  There’s nothing wrong with celebrating State occasions, but if that’s the only calendar we recognize, it implies that the State has the first claim on our time.

But the Christian Year points us to the progress of Redemption, the cycle of Promise, Longing & Development, Passion & Atonement, Resurrection, and Contemplation/Kingdom-building. These are the patterns not only of a history that has a center and a climax; these are the patterns of our personal walks with God.

There are several ways to calculate the year, but whether you use the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant version, the basic pattern is the same. Here in a nutshell is the Christian Year:

• Advent (four weeks leading up to Christmas, which focus us on anticipating Christ’s coming in our lives and in our world)
• Christmas (not just one day, but twelve!)
• Epiphany (six weeks, beginning on Jan 6, the Twelfth Day of Christmas. This is the season of contemplating what kind of kingship Jesus exercised.)
• Ordinary Time (the weeks between Epiphany and Lent, which vary with the year, since Easter is a moveable feast)
• Lent (six weeks leading up to Easter or Resurrection Day, focusing on repentance)
• Easter (six weeks beginning with Easter Day, celebrating the great reversal: Jesus conquered sin and death, light engulfs darkness)
• Ascension (the Sunday before Pentecost, commemorating Jesus’ return to heaven to rule at the Father’s right hand.)
• Pentecost (the Sunday closest to 50 days after Easter, marking the day when the Spirit was poured out on Jesus’ disciples, writing His Law on our hearts. This ends the Feast section of the year.)
• Trinity (all the rest of the year until Advent, encompassing most of June through November. This is the season for general contemplation and Kingdom-building.) Note that in the United States, the last week of Trinity is Thanksgiving - very appropriate.

What time is it? It's not enough just to answer, ‘3 o’clock’ or even, 'I have a report due next week.' We really need to weigh, 'If I finish the report on time, what will I have accomplished, for whom and for what purpose?' It’s about time we re-discovered time. It really is on our side.

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Adapted from the original article on www.mother-lode.blogspot.com on Oct. 2, 2006.  Copyright held by Kim Anderson & released for CBN network.

In the course of her career as a mother, Kim Anderson has home-schooled her three children; trained kitchen table lobbyists for Concerned Women for America; founded a homeschool college prep cooperative and provided international educational consulting with her husband; and produced summer-stock Shakespeare and award-winning independent film with her children. Kim has written about her parenting adventures in Countdown to College: a Homeschoolers’ Guide to Winning Scholarships and Quests & Homecomings.  Active in her local church, Kim’s passion is to develop a Christian arts community. Kim blogs about college prep at www.countdown2college.net/blog and about family life at www.mother-lode.blogspot.com