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On December 1, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children

Recipes and readings for Advent (1)

One of our members at Emmanuel in London, Lucie Brear, has compiled a fantastic collection of recipes and suggested Scripture readings for advent. If you want to discover a traditional English way to prepare for Christmas, then just read on! I’ll post them here one week at a time. Here’s the first:

Stir Up Sunday

The first Sunday before advent, which this year fell on November 26th, is traditionally known as Stir Up Sunday, when families gather together to mix and steam the Christmas pudding.

The term comes from the opening words of the collect for the day in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Christmas pudding would traditionally contain 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples. Practically, stirring the mixture is hard work, so as many family members as possible join in the task. The pudding mixture is stirred from East to West in honour of the Magi (three wise men) who visited the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. The customary garnish of holly represents the crown of thorns.

Most recipes for Christmas pudding require it to be cooked well in advance of Christmas and then reheated on Christmas day – but even though Stir Up Sunday has passed, there’s still plenty of time to prepare your pudding. You may even want to follow this traditional Victorian recipe, made with shredded beef suet.

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On November 21, 2023 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship

The Demands of Paedocommunion

One danger of any ritual is thinking it works for blessing standing alone. The water of baptism magically grants eternal salvation apart from faith. The bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper convey blessings no matter how you live outside of the church or if you participate in the worship service. The “sinner’s prayer” saves apart from participation in the body of Christ and without perseverance. No matter the ritual, there are always dangers of isolating them from a full life of faith, treating them as if they are magic spells.

Those of us who have the privilege of practicing full covenant communion (that is, welcoming our baptized children to the Table) are not immune from the danger. Just as some treat baptism as something of a finish line, so some parents and churches treat paedocommunion (child communion) as if eating the bread and drinking the wine of communion are all that matters for the children. They don’t have to participate in the rest of the service. They can be in a nursery or some other room in the building, cutting themselves off entirely from the rest of the congregation, but when it comes time for communion, they expect to be a part.

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On November 16, 2023 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship

Communion: It’s For Our Children Too

Once upon a time, God created a man and a woman and put them in a garden. In the middle of this garden were two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. From the latter, they were forbidden to eat. From the former, God welcomed them to eat. The man and woman would meet God at the trees, and God would give them the fruit of the Tree of Life and, through it, share his life with them.

God blessed the man and the woman at their creation and told them to be fruitful and multiply. In their original state of righteousness, the children born would be sinless, just like their parents. They would come to the sanctuary-garden with their parents, meet with God, and receive the fruit of the Tree of Life with them when they were able to eat solid food. As man multiplied in this state, he would be truly fruitful; his children would be faithful worshipers and have access to God’s sanctuary-garden and food.

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On November 8, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Women

Men, Marriage, and the Feminine Imperative

Gilder, George. Men and Marriage. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2023.*

By 1973, the hightide of second-wave feminism had flooded the beaches of American culture. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique eroded the shores of traditional female roles by naming and stirring up further domestic discontentment. Kate Millet wrote her dissertation-turned-book, Sexual Politics, which sought to overthrow the patriarchy with her Marxist revolutionaries through the National Organization of Women (313). Against the flood,, conservative George Gilder manned the dikes with Sexual Suicide in 1973. With the rise of intersectionality in third wave feminism, Gilder revised and re-titled the book Men and Marriage in 1986. Besides the 2023 Preface, Canon’s republication is the 1986 edition. While the stats are antiquated, his underlying principles and overall message are clear, and his prescience of future events based on trajectories have far exceeded what he probably imagined.

When Gilder first published Sexual Suicide and then doubled down in Men and Marriage, he infuriated all the right people, drawing the ire of the main players in the feminist movement and exposing the places in our culture where the latest iterations of feminism had taken root. Second-wave feminism fought for equality with men in the workplace and the sexual marketplace. Women wanted to be like men. While the elimination of the differences did not rise to the level that we see today, in which many are claiming that there is no such thing as a man or woman, the equality called for in second-wave feminism helped lay the foundations for what we are experiencing today. Women didn’t want the consequences of sexual promiscuity, and the creation of the birth control pill and swelling tsunami for the legalization of abortion gave their wombs the liberation to live sexually promiscuous lives.

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On September 21, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Wisdom, Women

Good Wife, Good Life: Courageous, Adorned, Wise, & Praised

Recently, Lauren Boebert, “conservative” Republican House Representative from Colorado, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Recently divorced from her husband, she was thrown out of a theater with her date for being obnoxious and publicly groping and being groped by her date. She’s a Bible-thumping, far-right-wing conservative. She has risen to some level of power and prestige on the national scene, but her seventeen-year marriage is left in the wake of her rise to power. Other conservative political women such as Christy Noem, governor of South Dakota, and Marjorie Taylor Green, Representative from Georgia, both have wrecked marriages while they try to manage the national “household.” If we were living in the time of Solomon, these women would be said to be “sitting in the gates of the city with the elders of the land.” The gates were the place where elders made judgments and enforced laws. They are movers and shakers, powerful women, and conservative feminists (is that possible?).

Proverbs 31 says there is a different way to be known and praised in the gates. It moves through personal character and care for the home. It’s the long game, but it is the wise game.

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On September 14, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Wisdom, Women

Good Wife, Good Life: Integrity, Industry, & Generosity

Despite what many masculine influencers tell young men today, marriage is good. There is no greater blessing in a man’s life than to have a good wife. While marriage has its own challenges, a good marriage makes life easier in many respects because you are facing challenges with mutual support and effort. A good wife makes a good life. (This, by the way, is very different than what is usually meant by “Happy wife. Happy life.” That’s another subject for another day.)

The good wife is described in rich, poetic detail in Proverbs 31. While not every woman will do exactly what this woman is said to do, women in general and wives in particular are to emulate the character of this woman.

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On August 24, 2023 By In Family and Children, Wisdom, Women

Lady Wisdom: By Me Kings Reign

“He who finds a wife finds good and obtains favor from Yahweh.”
“For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from Yahweh.”

Proverbs 18:22; 8:35

The parallels between a wife and Wisdom are apparent in Proverbs 18:22 and 8:35. The man who finds a wife and the man who finds Wisdom finds good, true life, and obtains favor from Yahweh. The image of Wisdom–the incarnation of Wisdom–is a good wife. Proverbs 18:22 leads us to reflect on the whole of Proverbs 8 as a description of Lady Wisdom. The parallels are detailed in Proverbs 31:10-31, but we start learning of the character of Lady Wisdom long before we reach the end of Proverbs.

One truth we learn about Lady Wisdom as a good wife from Proverbs 8 is that by her kings reign (8:15). Lady Wisdom is the glory of the king.

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On May 9, 2023 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Wisdom, Women

Letters To Young Women: Sexual Agency

Dear Young Lady,

King Solomon writes the book of Proverbs to his son, the prince. The king-in-waiting needs wisdom, the ability to see how the world is supposed to be combined with skills to put the world in proper order. This was the original man’s responsibility as well. Unlike the original man, Solomon’s son will have battles with sin that complicate and intensify the challenges that the first man faced.

While much of Solomon’s reign reflected the meaning of his name, “peace,” kings must always be prepared for battle. Because kings such as Solomon’s father, David, were great warriors, you might think that Solomon would spend a great deal of time instructing in the art of war, such as Sun Tzu teaches. Armies from other lands were constantly threatening the country’s integrity, and the king’s responsibility was to lead the armies in protecting the homeland. For example, we might expect battlefield strategies to take down the Philistines as David did. Solomon touches on that here and there, but that is not a significant focus. He prepares his son for battle, but it is a different sort of battle, a battle which, in some respects, is much more strenuous than a fight with a Philistine giant. This battle is with himself as he fights off the power of a woman. Solomon lost this battle. 1Kings 11.1-3 says that Solomon gave his heart in love to many foreign women who turned his heart from Yahweh. Whether he wrote his proverbial instructions before or after he repented in his later life, I do not know. But Solomon was obviously well acquainted with the power of women.

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On April 24, 2023 By In Church, Family and Children

The Coddling of American Sons

Raising boys is an adventure toward maturity. It’s a contact sport, including physical affection and discipline. It is the glory of kings to search things out and the role of little princes to enter into that discovery with them. But kings must draw their princes into that curious endeavor.

This does not take place unless the environment is suitable for discoveries. A young son cannot see his dad pondering whether he should search things out. He must see dad hungering and actively getting his hands dirty by seeking the concealed things hidden by God’s happy providences.

The young men I have seen excel in his vision and continue in the curiosity degrees have fathers who refuse to coddle them. For that matter, he also has a mother who refuses to coddle him. And speaking of the coddling of the American sons, we need a magna carta contra coddling young boys. Fathers and mothers must be equally committed to the task of being firm and loving but never hindering boys from the task of moving from glory to glory.

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On April 20, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Theology, Wisdom

The Glory & Shame of Family

God made man glorious and destined him for greater glory. Between these glories, he would move from glory to glory incrementally. Man’s glory is wrapped up in his calling to take dominion over the world. To obtain that glorious state of rule over the creation, man must become better than he is and more than he is. With this, his responsibility grows, and he becomes weightier.

Fundamental to this progressive glorification is the family. God initially made man more than he was by creating the woman and making her one flesh with him, adding to the man. Future children born from this relationship will continue to add glory, making man more than he was, better than he was, and expanding his rule over the earth.

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