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You may wonder what life is like with eight children.

It is like one unending, insane game of “Twenty Questions” mixed with the game, “Telephone.”  For example, child “A” might say, “I wonder if ice would float in water in space?”  Child “B” says, “Everything is floating in space.”  So far, so good.  But then child “C” enters the conversation.  “There’s ice floating in space?”  This is when child “D” walks into the room and demands, “I want ice in my drink too!”  It’s all downhill from there as my youngest starts crying that she doesn’t have any ice in her cup.  While I am trying to get ice for her, child “B” informs me that snow burns, (because of course he has tried this) and child “A” starts to move toward the ice and matches.  This is usually when I somewhat lose it and call for quiet which lasts exactly 34 seconds before someone starts the game up again!

This all might sound humorous, but remember, we play this game for approximately 12 hours a day.  The thing is, I don’t think this is something only my children do.  I think we end up doing this to God.  I know I can start questioning things like His provision, His goodness, or if He has really given me all I need in the way of patience and strength for the day.  Sometimes prayer can become more like twenty questions without a pause to be still and hear an answer.  Also, just like in the game, “Telephone,” where the message gets hopelessly jumbled, I can get confused, listening to all the wrong sources, trying so hard to figure out what God is doing in my life.

For now I am still the one with all the answers and the direction for my children.  Soon enough they will have to learn to hear God themselves and discern His will for their lives.  My requirement of them right now is the same one God has for us: be still and listen.  It’s amazing how clear things become when we make time for these two disciplines.  I may not always get a direct answer from God, but I do get the peace of His presence and the assurance that He has everything in His control.  Which is such a relief because I am still trying to figure out how snow burns!

“Be still and know that I am God.”  Psalm 46:10

“Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance.”  Proverbs 1:5

I have often wondered why it seems that God enjoys making what to me could be very short stories long.

Take for instance the fall of man. That could have been wrapped up by generation three. Adam and Eve sin, get kicked out of the garden, have kids, daughter conceives Messiah, Cain kills Him instead of Abel, Messiah rises from the dead, world redeemed, the end!

I am probably skating on very thin theological ice here, but you get my point. I had the privilege of doing a deep dive into Genesis this last year and then continuing some study into certain women’s lives in the Bible. The thing that struck me over and over was how messy and extremely human all of the people’s lives in the Bible were. I think sometimes people think that everyone in the Bible was perfect and it is just a boring book of laws and thou-shalt-nots. Believe me, no soap opera has more drama than the Bible!

The characters take twists and turns that even today are shocking in nature. And just when you think one of them is actually going to do something straightforward like obey God, they go so far off path that only a Holy redeeming God could, and did, bring them back. I have this visual image of their time lines being like a straight line that then veers up into a tangled spaghetti-like knot and then moves forward again.

I have a daughter that likes to use this method of relating stories. She comes up to me, usually when I am obviously busy and begins talking at me…quietly. It takes me a minute or two before I even realize she is there and by then she is well into her v–e–r–y long story about what she had for breakfast! I try to tune in and catch the heart behind her tale. I want her to know that what she has to say is valuable to me.

The same is true about God’s word. He wrote it to us for a purpose. One of my favorite purposes is so we could get to know His heart towards us. And what I see in the Bible is amazing patience for very messy people. People that in so many ways remind me of my own bunny trails and straying from the best path. He showed such mercy and grace and chance after chance for the people in the Bible and I know He still does the same for us today.

I can get impatient in my own life, waiting for what seems a very long time to find out how part of my story ends. I find myself asking God for an answer now, for a shortening of a growing process. He gently reminds me that His timing is perfect and His story-writing is for the best. And so, I nestle down in my Father’s arms, like my children at story time, and read again His short story of, “I love you,” made long in the Bible.

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promises, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” II Peter 3:8-9

At my house this is not a euphemism.  I scream this all day long in the summer months.  It is not because the air conditioner is on, it is because I HATE flies.  We live in the country, therefore we seem to have more of these pests than usual. 

One of the first things my children toddled around with was a fly swatter, trying to eliminate the enemy.  Sometimes, when there are just too many flies for me to handle, (more than one) I will put out a bounty, 5¢ per fly.  I do provide quite a bit of entertainment for my children all summer, chasing after the buzzing irritants myself.  I am somewhat surprised that none of my kids has ever bought me one of those electric fly swatters, the ones that zap them in mid-air, but then again my children are intelligent.

Just as I am vigilant about keeping the doors closed to flies, I am also as concerned about what else might zip its way into my home.  I have to constantly be on the lookout for evil that loves to come in when a door is left open.  I am not only talking about blatant evil either, sometimes the door is opened simply by my bad attitude.  Pretty soon all kinds of nasty things are flying around: hurtful words, ugly looks, unkind actions.

I have found the quickest way to squash that kind of infestation is with an apology for my hasty words.  If I can calm myself down, fairly soon things are back to normal.  Well, as normal as things ever are in a house with eight children and a mother running through waving a fly swatter!

“Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”  I Peter 1:13

Confession time again. After raising children for almost twenty years now, I am tired!

When my first son was born, I tried hard to make sure he had nutritious, healthy food. I very rarely gave him any sugar and tried to stay away from processed junk food. I kept this healthy eating pattern for my children for a very long time. However, in the last few years, I have slowly given up.

It is difficult to stay positive when the dinners I spend so much time on are constantly met with disapproval and outright disgust by my youngest three. Also, as my older children have become busier and more independent, they have tended toward making their own meals more often. So healthy breakfasts have become cereal more frequently, homemade bread for sandwiches has become store-bought and dinners have become simpler and quicker.

I have often wished that there was simply dogfood for kids. An all-in-one bag of something they could and would eat three times a day! We come close with breakfast cereal, although I still consider it junk food and I would definitely not feed it to them three times a day. (But I could see there being seasons in life that that could become necessary!) My youngest son has also stumbled across something that he seems to believe he could live on and we jokingly call it his “dogfood.” (The huge bags of tortilla chips from Costco.) However, we all know neither of these would be great for kids to live on long term.

It is always comforting to me as a parent when I realize that God as a Father, has had similar experiences with His own children. When He brought the Israelites out of Egypt into the wilderness, they too complained about food. They sounded just like my kids whining! I am slightly jealous of God though, because He did get to take the “dogfood” solution. He decided that they would live on manna for the entire time they were in the wilderness, with some quail sprinkled in.

I am of course being rather facetious about all of this. The bottom line is that my children need to mature and learn to be grateful for the food they are given and I need to not throw in the towel because I still have many years of parenting left! God in His miraculous mercy, provided food in the wilderness and He has faithfully provided “manna” for my family all this time. In the same way, He will provide the strength I need to patiently teach my younger children healthy eating habits even when I wish I could just pour them a bowl of kidfood!

“I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” Exodus 16:12

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:51

I don’t know if you remember this from the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alice In Wonderland. Instead of washing the dishes or cleaning up, the characters simply moved down to clean spots at their large tea table.

I am uncertain whether my youngest daughter even remembers this scene from the book, but she has taken it to heart! Because we are such a large family, we also have a long table. To avoid arguments and to separate the more contentious of the siblings, everyone has their assigned place at the table. This does nothing to deter my daughter. She begins her day at her own place with her first breakfast. Once she has spilled enough milk, yogurt etc. to make her own spot unusable, she simply moves to the next place down! If we are not paying attention, by the time she has had second breakfast, snack, elevenses and possibly more, she has worked her way down an entire side of the table, making a complete mess as she goes.

As frustrating as this is, I know she will eventually grow out of this behavior and become a mostly responsible person. In the Bible however, Jesus was far more concerned with a different type of cleaning, one that we do not simply grow out of or mature from.

Again, this goes back to the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus frequently found Himself surrounded by. They continually only thought about their appearance. Unfortunately, they neglected their inside, namely their hearts, motives and intentions. Jesus compared their behavior to only cleaning the outside of a cup or a dish, without washing the inside. He told them in no uncertain terms that they were full of greed and self-indulgence. In fact, they were not dissimilar to my five-year-old who does not care whether she is dirtying up someone’s place at the table as long as her own desires are met!

These people were in grave spiritual danger, but Jesus did tell them how they could change. He told them to first clean up the inside of their lives and He said the outside would follow. We all tend to get this backwards. We think we have to work so hard to clean ourselves up on the outside so that we will be “good people,” when all the time, if we would put Jesus first in our hearts the rest would follow.

So as I am teaching my little girl to clean up after herself and to respect other people, I am going to also teach her, (and remind myself) how important it is to be spiritually clean on the inside!

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” Matthew 23:25-26

For some unknown reason, my children hate to part with their clothes. From my oldest to my youngest, they cling to worn out garments with a strange fierceness. Even when I buy them new clothes, instead of the excitement you would expect, they act almost hostile to their new garb and soon have it stashed at the bottom of their drawers. I am not kidding, some of my kids are wearing clothes they have owned for FOUR years. Most of my kids are the size of toothpicks, so they just grow straight up and not out, so the clothes simply get shorter. When I point out the fact of the gaping holes, or stains, they usually want me to mend the clothes. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that it won’t work to sew old, thread-bare fabric, and that stains are, well, stains!

Jesus was familiar with this attitude towards clothing while He was here on Earth. He was surrounded by people, (scribes and Pharisees) who were quite happy with their filthy rags. These guys were especially deceptive, however, because unlike my children, they went about in nice, “long robes”* all the while, “devouring widows’ houses.”*

Isaiah 64:6, describes any righteous thing that we could perform from our own humanness as a filthy garment. Unfortunately, the religious leaders of Jesus’ time were only following their own rules and laws and not allowing God to transform them. Jesus had some strong words to describe them in Matthew 23:27, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are all like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” They could not see that they were clothed in rags.

Jesus came to take all of our useless, human works, all of our sin and shame, and transform it all through the cross and His resurrection. When we receive Him as our savior, we are clothed in new, spotless garments. We no longer need to cling to our old ways of life, like my kids cling to their old clothes. We can happily throw away all the old habits, thoughts and lifestyle for a brand-new start!

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” Isaiah 61:10

*Luke 20:46 “Beware of the scribes, who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts, who devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation.”