On Hold?
By Scott Harrup | October 19, 2009
Driving to work this morning, I heard a local radio host play a clip of Dr. Phil’s advice to couples who are considering parenthood. I’ll say up front that Dr. Phil made a number of solid points, but one of his remarks really seemed at odds with my take on parenting.
“Are you willing to make the sacrifices of money, emotion and energy, and put your life on hold?” Dr. Phil asked his audience.
Sacrificing money, emotion and energy is part and parcel of parenting, but that last clause in his question grabbed my attention.
Parenting is anything but putting your life on hold. Children powerfully shape and immeasurably enrich who you are. When Lindsay, Connor and Austin were born in 1992, 1996 and 2000, respectively, Jodie and I were propelled into new dimensions of our own lives. We can’t imagine our home without the love and vitality and humor each of our children brings.
Are there things I was doing before becoming a parent that I am no longer doing? Sure. But everything in life takes time. Any goals that find fulfillment after my children are grown will have benefitted from the experiences of my parenting years.
And parenting really continues throughout life. At 45, I’ve been out from under my parents’ roof for more than 23 years. But I still feel their influence and value their wisdom. They are both within shouting distance of 70, but remain very involved parents and grandparents. I hope to have the same kind of relationship with my children when they are adults.
Is my life on hold? No way. It’s been in overdrive for nearly 18 years. And the fun is just beginning.
If you’re contemplating parenthood, I agree with Dr. Phil that it’s a big decision. I doubt you and your spouse will ever make a bigger one. But if you commit that decision to God, and if He blesses you with a child, you can count on it — you’ll look back and realize your life was really on hold up till now.
Topics: Family Life | 2 Comments »
Words
By Scott Harrup | October 8, 2009
It’s the age-old question — which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Or, as I’ve been wondering, do the media negatively influence our culture’s use of language or does a degenerating culture create the foul-mouthed media it consumes?
Last night I was watching a documentary on dams and hydroelectricity when an ad popped on for a product that wirelessly charges various gadgets.
The actors are so stunned by the product that their dialog devolves into a series of bleeped expletives. Listeners familiar with the English language can readily insert the intended obscene word.
Other ads in the promotional array use the same idea with different actors and settings. The company has even named the ad campaign “What the Bleep?”
A generation ago, I lived with a virtual soap bar floating over my head. I came home from the first grade and shared with Mom the bon mot so carefully highlighted by its omission in these ads. Mom lovingly informed me I would be eating a cake of Irish Spring if I ever decided to repeat that word in her hearing.
Times have changed. Jodie teaches preschool and deals with spontaneous vulgarity from 2-year-olds.
Despite my renewed disappointment in our nation’s degenerating sense of decency, I realize that nothing is gained from cursing the darkness. Rather, that brief commercial last night motivates me to watch my own choice of words. As offensive as I find such bleeped innuendo to be, there are plenty of things I can say in “refined” English that cut someone far more deeply than simple vulgarity.
Without a hint of profanity, I can allow my anger or impatience to vent, leaving in the wake of my destructive emotions my wife, my child, a neighbor or friend.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14, NKJV).
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The End Is Near… Again
By Scott Harrup | October 5, 2009
Another disaster movie is scheduled for release — of all times, right around Thanksgiving. 2012 offers up scenes of worldwide destruction tied to some cataclysm apparently predicted by the Mayans centuries ago. I guess the Thanksgiving season release makes sense if we’re all supposed to walk away grateful that we’re still alive.
All right, true confession here; I’m a sucker for disaster movies. I like to root for the survivors. And nobody really dies anyway. These days, computer effects cook up apocalyptic eye candy without anyone, even stunt actors, getting hurt. So it’s the classic idea of catharsis ratcheted up another notch.
Looking at the online trailer for 2012, I noted several concepts that crop up in popular treatments of the “end of the world” scenario.
“Spiritual truth is universal”: When you’re talking the end of the world, religion always comes up. But Hollywood usually takes the position that all religions — illustrated in 2012 by Mayan temple ruins, the Sistine Chapel, a Tibetan monastery, praying throngs of Muslims, etc. — have a shared legitimacy.
“Technology will save us”: No matter what, humanity will be able to pick itself up by its bootstraps. (Or, at least that portion of humanity selected by the governments holding the technology.)
“All you need is love”: A plucky family whose members really love each other can survive, even in the midst of earthquakes, meteor showers and tidal waves.
I’m still entertained when a director reshuffles the above themes, but here’s the mental grid I use to process them.
“Spiritual truth is universal” makes no sense at all, even to most of the religions portrayed. People wouldn’t call themselves Muslims, Hindus, Christians or much else if they really believed all religions were equally valid. As a Christian, I openly claim a firm belief in the tenets of my faith to the exclusion of all others.
“Technology will save us” does appeal to my sci-fi sensibilities. But going back to the above paragraph, I’m reminded there is only one true Source of salvation. Everything else is contingent on His plans for the universe.
As for “all you need is love,” I believe the most life-giving love must be built upon a relationship with God — again, a relationship I believe He offers us through a very specific living Truth.
2012 will certainly entertain, but I hope viewers with access to a Bible will review the “end of the world” predictions on those pages and reflect on Scripture’s basic claims: 1) God started history, and He has a plan to wrap it up. 2) He hasn’t enlightened us as to when our calendars will cease to matter. 3) He expects us to accept each day as a gift and use it accordingly — whether that takes us into next year, the next decade, or into centuries to come.
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113 or 13 — It’s in God’s Hands
By Scott Harrup | September 25, 2009
Walter Breuning of Great Falls, Mont., turned 113 on Monday. He is the world’s oldest man.
Breuning has many memories of life in early-20th-century America. Kerosene lamps for lighting. Having to walk just about anywhere he needed to go. Simple, frugal meals, sometimes of bread crust when times were hard. His grandfather’s stories about fighting for the Union in the Civil War.
Reading about Breuning at usatoday.com and greatfallstribune.com, I realized his birthday falls the day before our son Connor’s. Connor turned 13 on Tuesday. It’s a little mind-blowing to imagine a century and a day wedged between the arrivals of two living human beings.
In a 2007 interview with the Great Falls Tribune, then-110-year-old Breuning made a simple statement: “The Good Lord, I guess, has just allowed me to live this long.”
Our family would agree with Breuning, minus any guessing, and would strongly apply that truth to Connor. At 13, he’s already outlived early medical predictions by about 10 years. With severe brain bleeds after his birth, he wasn’t expected to make it to kindergarten.
What about all of us who fall somewhere along the century between Connor and Breuning? I believe God’s plans are at work in each of our lives. People come at that truth from different angles, to be sure. Some claim there is absolute divine control of each lifespan, while others factor in human choice. I fall into the latter category, but readily admit the subject creates plenty of shades of meaning.
Breuning cites his careful two-meal-a-day diet as a deciding element in his century-plus on Earth. On the other hand, he didn’t give up cigars until 1999. Go figure.
To whatever extent our choices impact our longevity, I believe it’s vitally important to dedicate each day to God’s service. And the Bible most often expresses that idea in terms of serving other people. Jodie and I are doing our best to teach that principle to Connor, Lindsay and Austin. And to live by it ourselves.
Which comes close to something else Walter Breuning has said: “A lot of people think they’re born for themselves; I don’t think that. I believe that we’re here to help other people all the way through.”
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Blowing Smoke
By Scott Harrup | September 14, 2009
I ran across an ad for an electronic cigarette today. This device and others like it allow users to “smoke” by inhaling a nicotine-laced vapor. The cigarettes are battery-powered and even have a little orange light on the end to create the glow smokers expect with each inhalation. Promotional Web sites emphasize their products’ elimination of tar and other cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke.
But that remaining ingredient, nicotine, is far from benign. You can make insecticide with nicotine. A 2001 article put out by Stanford University researchers showed that nicotine may fuel cancer and coronary artery disease. Talk about “picking your poison”!
The marketing tactics behind electronic cigs remind me of some “marketing” that goes on in the spiritual realm. The Bible offers two particularly telling descriptions of Satan. On the one hand, he presents himself as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). But Peter warned, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Satan offers you a “sales pitch” designed to lure you into actions that might seem harmless at first but will destroy you in the end.
Peter’s solution at the beginning of that verse? “Be self-controlled and alert.”
I’m alert to the dangers of nicotine, so I’m exercising self-control and refraining from cigarettes of any variety — electronic or otherwise. On the spiritual front, I need to remain alert and self-controlled in a host of other areas.
It’s comforting to know I don’t have to do that alone. As God has promised through the prophet Isaiah, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it’ ” (30:21, NIV).
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Chain Reaction
By Scott Harrup | September 8, 2009
School is in full swing for our family, and Austin’s discovering that third grade is more complicated than he expected. Several tests and a poster project are in the pipeline already, as well as Spanish lessons.
But Lindsay is coming alongside Austin in a big way. She has her own syllabi and weekly deadlines to meet, but she’s working with her brother to help him organize his tasks and keep the big picture in view while focusing on each day. I told her this morning how much I appreciated all that she’s doing.
A couple of grades ago, health complications made Lindsay’s school year a nightmare. Once she was finally back in class, the catch-up homework seemed endless. Algebra II was the most daunting subject. Lindsay and I spent hours in the evenings going over equations and applications. Lindsay eventually pulled through with flying colors.
Now, Austin’s in a bind, and Lindsay’s doing her part to get him over a rough patch.
Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (1:3,4, NIV).
God has done so much for us. He expects us to serve others in love as an expression of our gratitude toward Him, and as a means of spreading the message of His divine love as far and wide as possible.
We can live out that truth in even the simple tasks of life. I helped Lindsay with some algebra; now she’s helping her little brother with spelling and memory work. Someday, Austin’s going to help someone else.
And whenever any of us offers a helping hand out of reverence for our Creator, He creates a chain reaction of eternal proportions.
How can you create the next link in that chain today?
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Mystery Month
By Scott Harrup | September 1, 2009
So I’m updating my blog, and it dawns on me that an entire month shot by while I wasn’t looking. Here we are in September, and August was a blur.
There was plenty going on. The Assemblies of God held its biennial national conference, General Council, in Orlando the first week of the month. I joined Pentecostal Evangel Editor Ken Horn and his wife, Peggy, and manned our magazine’s booth there. Then, a week of playing catch-up at work, a scramble to Indiana for a last-minute family vacation, and August wrapped with the kids heading back to school.
A vanished month? How about all the years that seem to have evaporated, leaving Jodie and me with a senior who drives herself to high school, a middle-school student and a third-grader?
Here we all are in another September, looking ahead less than a score of weeks until 2010 arrives.
“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalm 39:4,5, NIV).
Maybe now would be a good time to plan my next set of New Year’s resolutions.
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Just How Big Is That Problem?
By Scott Harrup | July 30, 2009
I got to thinking about angular dimensions today. I’m sure there’s a math textbook or Web site that can give a more precise definition, but basically an object’s angular dimension is the degrees of angle it occupies in a visual field. An object measuring 180 degrees would completely fill your field of vision from one side to the other. That’s like a brick wall you put your nose to.
You divide an entire field of view into 180 degrees of arc, and then divide each degree into 60 arc minutes and each minute into 60 arc seconds. By the time you’re talking about an arc second, you’re thinking of something so thin, visually, it’s like looking at the edge of a coin from a couple of miles away.
Last night, Austin and I were watching YouTube Lego videos on an iPhone. We were holding up this tiny screen about a foot from our faces. Looking past the screen to the opposite wall, I realized if we had a giant-screen TV, the picture wouldn’t be any bigger than the iPhone we were watching up close. The angular dimension of the iPhone so close to our faces was the same as that of an uber-TV across the room.
I think many of life’s problems are like that iPhone screen. They really aren’t that big, but when you’re going through them they seem huge because they’re so close. Once you weather a bad spot and move along through time, you look back and realize it wasn’t such a catastrophe. The distance helps you put it into perspective.
And the more time you can inject, the smaller that problem becomes. Imagine how small today’s problems will be when you see them interwoven with the rest of your life from heaven’s eternal perspective.
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Fuel Shortage
By Scott Harrup | July 27, 2009
Australian Craig Alexander won the 2008 Ford Ironman World Championship with a time of 8:17:45. In the equivalent of a day at the office for the rest of us mere mortals, Alexander swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles and then ran a 26.2-mile marathon.
To accomplish that feat, Alexander relied on years of training, his genetic giftedness (or, as others might observe, his God-given athletic ability) and … calories. Lots of calories.
Everyday activity usually requires a diet of 1,500 to 2,000 calories. Athletes may burn through three times that amount during training. Without the right nutrients in the right amounts, no one’s going to be breaking any records.
What about nourishment for the soul?
Look closely at the life of a committed Christian — the follower of Christ who serves others, consistently lives to honor God, and takes every opportunity to communicate the gospel — and you’re sure to observe a regular intake of God’s Word.
Without the Word, anyone “running the race” for God will soon be falling behind. Without the Word, you’re left with hazy memories of the last sermon you heard, your own limited grasp of who God is and His plan for your life, and all the human conventions that make up “church life.” Sermons, church attendance and your personal meditations on God are all well and good. But the Bible gives the one effective foundation for all of the above.
If you feel spiritually weak, find life’s temptations just a little more tempting than usual, or are on the fringes of your church’s communal life, take a look at your scriptural “diet.” Ramp up your intake of those God-inspired nutrients. You’ll be back in shape in no time.
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The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, and …
By Scott Harrup | July 8, 2009
The Pentecostal Evangel bids farewell to Managing Editor Kirk Noonan next week, so Kirk and I enjoyed a farewell lunch of our own yesterday at a local Indian restaurant. The buffet offered a variety of creatively spiced sauces over some light Basmati rice.
The rice got me to thinking of the following story.
Where the Gem of India’s rice was the picture of fluffed purity, our family’s rice while living in Sierra Leone in the ’70s was a minefield … or a mine. Tiny rock-hard husks and even tinier rocks littered the uncooked rice we purchased at market. Mom would carefully sift the rice she prepared for our meals, but you still wanted to chew your food as meditatively as a monk.
I guess Dad was in more of a hurry than usual the day he chomped into a rice dish over lunch and heard as much as felt his molar crack. We were 300 miles inland in Koindu, a large but medically unequipped village. Dad had no choice but to immediately get behind the wheel and drive the 10 to 12 hours to the capital, Freetown.
Meals became a painful obligation to be avoided for as long as possible. After his fateful lunch, Dad didn’t pass any nutrition over his fractured molar the rest of the day and late into the night as he made his marathon drive. Arriving at some missionary friends’ home in Freetown, he turned down the offer of a midnight supper and even breakfast before his emergency visit to the dentist the next day.
This was during the Cold War, perhaps explaining Dad’s insistent detail that the dentist had been trained in Russia. Whether or not it was a veiled plot by a godless communist against a Christian minister, the fact remains, the dentist managed to blunder around with some pliers and break the afflicted tooth into several shards.
Even with local anesthetic, the pain went off the scale for Dad as his white-coated tormenter began to root around in his jaw for the pieces of tooth. Dad passed out.
How long he traveled below the veil of unconsciousness, we’ll never know. He awoke to the slapping sound you hear during the Foley enhancement of a boxing movie. Someone was yelling, “Chicken!”
Then Dad realized the slapping sound was his cheek being impacted by the dentist’s meaty palm. The name-calling was an attempt to get Dad mad enough to wake up.
“We thought we’d lost you,” the dentist said far too apologetically for a KGB asset. He looked genuinely relieved when Dad came to.
Dad looked like he’d been in a prizefight.
He made the long drive back to Koindu the next day, showing up in the evening with the side of his face still swollen tight. Mom listened to his speech-impeded narrative with a mix of shock and awe. A lady missionary in neighboring Liberia had died in a dentist’s chair just months before. Dad had barely missed becoming a second footnote in international dental malpractice.
“He has broken my teeth with gravel,” the prophet Jeremiah bemoaned in Lamentations 3:16. “He has trampled me in the dust” (NIV).
Dad never attributed his broken tooth to divine judgment. But we all deal with our share of “broken teeth” in life and wonder if we’re targets of some heavenly plot. Whatever you encounter today, give a thought to another pondering of Jeremiah’s.
“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:21-26).
And while you’re waiting, be sure to chew your food slowly.
Topics: Bizarre, Family Life, Bible | 2 Comments »
