girlhood

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Choices Affect Our Attitude Toward God

1900s girlsHere are more pearls from my grandmother’s book.  (Once again, truth has a way of deflating the progressive thinker’s much inflated balloon.)

In What a Young Woman Ought to Know, Mrs. Mary Wood-Allen, M.D., writes that we are not only body and mind, but spirit (or soul).  Whether we’ve thought about this or not, the fact remains.  “No failure to recognize God as your Father changes His relationship to you.  No conduct of yours can make you any less His child.”

“Well,” you may say, “if that is so, what does it matter, then, what I do?  If disobedience or sin cannot make me less God’s child, why should I be good and obedient?”  Because… “your conduct changes your attitude toward Him.”

“The most worthy and dignified thing we can do,” wrote Dr. Wood-Allen, “is to recognize ourselves as God’s children and be obedient.  It is a wonderful glory to be a child of God . . . even the most ignorant or degraded have . . . divine possibilities.”

My grandmother’s choices and behavior evidenced that she was in a merciful relationship with her Heavenly Father.  And, no matter what anyone else thought of her, she knew she had “divine possibilities” because she was a child of God.

This woman physician from the late 1800s continues, “Being children of God puts on us certain obligations towards Him, but it also puts on God certain obligations towards us.  ‘What!’ you say: ‘God the Infinite under obligations to man, the finite?  The Creator under obligations to the created?’  Oh, yes.”

Human parents are under obligation to care for, protect, educate and give opportunities to their children.  In a similar way, God is obligated to do the same for His children.  The difference is, He fulfills these obligations perfectly.  All our earthly blessings are from Him.  Every good thing we have is a gift of love from our Creator and Heavenly Father.

Our life matters to God.  And, why wouldn’t it?  He created it!  He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for it!  And, as Dr. Mary Wood-Allen observes, “God takes such minute care of us that if for one second of time He would forget us, we should be annihilated.”  What does that say to you?  I know what it says to me.  And it pulls me down on my knees in humble, speechless gratitude.

But, if God is truly taking care of us, why does He allow failures, hardships and worries?  Sometimes, the things we call hard and cruel are actually little tumbles on our way to learning to walk.  A trial or difficulty in the school of life may be God’s way of opening our eyes to see that we need Him and can trust Him.

Our choices affect our attitude toward God.  The most dignified thing we can do is to recognize ourselves as God’s children and try to do those things that bring glory to Him.

It is a wondrous thing to be called a child of God.  It means we are heirs of God’s wisdom, strength, and glory.  It means that when we fail to trust and obey Him, we are still God’s child because of what Jesus did for us (Galatians 4:4-7).   Only a personal question remains:

As a child of God, how shall I choose to live?

First posted 2-9-2011 in Ezerwoman

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The Body Is Our House

body is houseYour body, wrote Mary Wood-Allen, M.D., is not you.  It is your dwelling, but not you.  It does, however, express you.

She explains: A man builds a house and, through it, expresses himself.  As someone else looks at the house and then walks through it, they will learn a great deal about the man.  The outside will give evidence of neatness, orderliness, and artistry or it may show that he cares nothing for elements of beauty and neatness.  His library will reveal the character of his mind.  Care of his house — preservation of its health — speaks of respect and value.

The author of the book found among my grandmother’s treasures notes that  many young people just want to have a “good time.”  Dr. Allen wrote that she heard many young people remark that it’s o.k. for the “old folks” to take care of their bodies and health, but “I don’t want to be so fussy . . . I’d rather die ten years sooner and have some fun while I do live.”

But, what serious pianist would neglect the care of his piano because it’s too “fussy” and then add, “I’ll treat it more kindly when it’s old”?  Dr. Allen observed that, too often, we prize the body far more after its use for us is at an end than while it is ours to use.   We don’t neglect the dead; we dress them in beautiful garments, we adorn them with flowers, we follow them to the grave with religious ceremonies, we build costly monuments to place over their graves, and then we go to weep over their last resting-place.”  I wonder: Do we treat our living, breathing bodies with such respect?  Do we treat the living, breathing bodies of others with such care?

There are those among us who consider themselves “progressive.”  A “progressive” would find no value in “going back” to a book from their grandmother’s collection.  But, in reading What A Young Woman Ought to Know by a woman physician published in 1898, I am more deeply committed to the Titus 2 style of mentoring.  Yes, there are trends.  There are new styles.  Technology changes, even improves.   But, care of our bodies is a truth that does not change with time.  What we do to and with our bodies, what we put in them, how we dress them, what environment we allow them to be in, and how we expect others to treat them matters today as much as it did yesterday.

Does it matter how we treat our bodies?  The answer to that question depends on what we believe about our origin.  Are we here by chance, just accidents of nature?  Or, are we “knit together in our mother’s wombs” by God Himself (Psalm 139)?  Is the value of our bodies determined by how we or others see them, or by the price that Jesus Christ paid for them?

Dr. Allen asks:

Is it not life that we should value?  Life here and hereafter, not death, is the real thing for which we should prepare . . . Life should increase in beauty and usefulness, in ability and joyousness, as the years bring us a wider experience, and this will be the case if we in youth have been wise enough to lay the foundation of health by a wise, thoughtful, prudent care of our bodies and our minds.

First posted 1-24-2011 in Ezerwoman