# 19 My Heavenly Citizenship

I started reading Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer this evening and this paragraph caught my attention.

“We were odd, belonging and not belonging, and odd is an uncomfortable thing to be; we did not want to belong but were humiliated that we did not.”

As foreigners in Japan we know this feeling. But to be honest, I knew it long before. Even as a child my faith set me apart.

Peter says we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession” but the other side of this truth is that in this world we are “foreigners and exiles.”

When my children struggled with identity issues (their father was Canadian, their mother was American and everyone else was Japanese) I used to tell them that they were “Tengokujin” because as the Apostle Paul wrote, “Our citizenship is in heaven.”

恵美里 (Emily)

Our granddaughter Emily’s name reflects this. The first two characters are grace and beautiful but the third character is city. Hebrews 11 says Abraham “made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country… For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

And why is this sense of foreignness a blessing?!

Because it helps me (and my family) to do right even when all the world is doing wrong. And this is blessing indeed!

# 18 The McAllister Prayer

Today as I was leaving the Refectory I paused for a moment to speak Dr. Taylor’s wife.

Dr. Glen Taylor with Josiah Elliot

Dr. Taylor’s mother was an Elliot from the famous McAllister-Elliot connection.

Four of the McAllisters’ thirteen children married four of the Elliots’ eight children producing 60 double cousins. (So the martyr Jim Elliot’s father was my husband’s grandfather’s double cousin.)

Saved in middle life, the McAllisters took Psalm 78 very seriously:

       … we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.

He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.

Their prayer was that “the children yet to be born” would in turn tell their children about God and his praiseworthy deeds.

# 17 OMF Prayer Meetings

Tonight we attended the monthly OMF prayer meeting on Avenue Road. What a flood of memories as I walked in with the son I had carried there in my arms so many years ago. This time he carried his own son in his arms!

But what warmed my heart the most was the greeting, “Have you got a car? We’ve been praying for a car.” 

We don’t have a car yet. And to be truthful I’ve been really discouraged. Our son, his wife and four children have no car just now – and believe me, anyone trying to do deputation in Canada needs a car. In fact, anyone with with four children needs a car!  But how can I pray for a 6 seater for them AND a seven seater (our oldest daughter is coming from Japan with her family) for us ?!  How can I pray for something this big?!  But our senior colleagues cheerful greetings reminded me:

Ebenezer…     "Thus far the LORD has helped us."

Jehovah Jireh…  “The LORD will provide.”

# 16 My steady, quiet in-laws

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.

Daughter # 4 has been indulging her penchant for Robert Service’s poetry again. And I was particularly struck by “The Men Who Don’t Fit In”

Perhaps its because I’ve been listening to Jane Austen (“Mansfield Park” this week) while I rock the baby and/or keep the little ones in bed. (Judah is a little night owl.) Miss Austen takes a dim few of idle men!

But what comes to mind is Dickens’ novel “Bleak House” (one of my favorites!) and the contrast drawn between Esther Summerston who settles down to make the most of her unpromising circumstances and ends so very well and Richard Carstone who will never do what he can do because he’s waiting for his ship to come in …and ends very sadly.

I like that phrase in the third stanza Robert Service’s poem:

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.

That would be my husband’s parents. “The steady, quiet, plodding ones” … Their example and their loving support over the last 36 years  has enriched my life more than I can tell.

I thank God for them and their steady ways.

 

THE MEN WHO DON’T FIT IN

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

3rd Sunday of Lent - 3/11 Memorial

But I missed it all…

I still have a bum knee so I was going to stay home and go to the Mandarin Church meeting in Wycliffe College Founder’s  Chapel.

Instead I stayed home and threw up all morning and slept most of the afternoon.

The kids are also a bit under the weather. Colds I think but definitely not their usual cheerful selves. So the three older kids went to Knox with their father in the morning as usual but came home and Yuko went alone to the afternoon service at the Japanese Church which included a half hour memorial service for the March 11 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. A lot of tears as some members had lost friends.

Daughter # 4 says that back in Ajigasawa the Lenten meditation was :  

“I am the gate;
whoever enters through me
will be saved.
They will come in and go out,
and find pasture.”
- John 10:9

And my husband sent a photo of Elisha taken after the service. He was sitting up in a high chair for the first time!

We have experienced so much loss in the last year that we sometimes forget. There has been a lot of gain and a lot of joy as well.

# 15 Hope

It is one year since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami …and tonight I’m glad to be alive.

 … but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;  perseverance, character; and character, hope.     

- Romans 5:3,4.

# 14 Well Trained Children

 

Tonight Yuko was out shopping in Kensington Market when the time came for Evening Prayers in Founder’s Chapel. So I took the 4 children by myself.

Faith conked out immediately but Grace and Judah were full of wiggles. I ended up balancing Judah on my lap with the baby. But even so, it was blessed half hour for me.

As everyone was departing after the service a professor leaned over and remarked that it wasn’t every grandmother that could bring her four grandchildren to chapel – that these were well trained children.

He’s right. it made me think of Proverbs 29:17

“Discipline your children, and they will give you peace; they will bring you the delights you desire.”

Robbie Castleman’s Parenting in the Pew: Guiding Your Children Into the Joy of Worship, which I’m reading it this week, is a good resource. But it’s a new bookk. When I was raising my  children I got a lot of my ideas from Larry Christenson’s classic The Christian Family.