Light Duties

40th birthday meditations on Psalm 90. The brutal crust peels back, giving consolation.

With recent articles about the limitations and temporariness in view, Psalm 90 is a good place to linger.

The fact that so much of mothering is a temporary work done with perishable materials often leads us to feel it is meaningless. This isn't helped by the language of Christian "priorities". 

LImitations make ideals seem further away. But Jesus is Lord of all and that means he is Lord of all the ins and outs of motherhood too.

Limitations and fear take us low, and that is God's gift to us.

What might change if parents were taught how, and did, their God-given duty in the spiritual discipleship of their children?

We've been considering how a lot of our trouble with motherhood comes from our ideas about marriage. This episode traces a few of the difficulties which happen.

A little of my own backstory.

Protecting our exit strategies changes how we do marriage and mothering.

Whether they know it or not, fathers are responsible for raising their kids to know God. 

"Jesus changes husbands into men who lead well and he changes wives into women who help divinely. Helping is not a role we’re rescued from, along with our sin. It’s a role we’re redeemed to mature into."

Why are men and women given different instructions in passages like Titus 2? Let's think through the architecture which leads to the differences.

Since we're not disembodied beings, marriage and mothering don't happen in a vacuum. Perhaps the Apostle Paul's outdated instruction to be "busy at home" has more in mind than we suppose?

Good motherhood loves and pursues what God says is good, in the situation a mother and her children are in. It can happen even when situations are not good.

Desperation for happiness is driving most of what we do. And that's exactly as it should be.

When we take Jesus' gospel seriously, we can end up talking as if goodness is a bad thing. This leads to a whole lot of weirdness in our mothering.

Happiness and goodness belong together because they both come from God. Pursuing goodness is a far happier situation than avoiding it. 

Jesus brings us into the very goodness and happiness we don't deserve. This changes how we approach motherhood.

Happiness sneaks up on us while we're getting on with what's good.

Jesus saves us out of parental passivity, into optimistic courage.