Our Favorite Books by Women

Or at least the ones that we read in 2010.

Katelyn Beaty

Instead of pulling together a predictable "best of 2010" books list, we at Her.meneutics thought our readers would enjoy a list of our favorite books written by women that we read throughout the year. Enjoy our recommendations, and add your own in the comments section.

Embracing Your Second Calling, by Dale Hanson Bourke (2010)
This book doesn't cover every facet of mid-life, but does a terrific job exploring the emotional and spiritual transformation that must happen in our souls at midlife. This meaty book doesn't rely on shopworn Christian cliches; in fact, Bourke's transparency about her own ambitions, losses, bitterness, and stumbling steps into her own third act are a refreshing companion on the journey to surrendering to God's purposes for the rest of our lives. ~Michelle Van Loon

The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, by Judith Shulevitz (2010)
Sabbath, says Shulevitz, “is not only an idea. It is also something you keep. With other people." After spending my first 30 years keeping Sabbath with Seventh-day Adventists, I read quite a few Protestant books on Sabbath-keeping by people who liked the idea but had little experience of the practice. In Shulevitz, a semi-observant Jew, I finally found a contemporary author who gets it. Her survey, written as a memoir but packed with fascinating information, covers Christian as well as Jewish approaches to Sabbath-keeping. ~LaVonne Neff

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)
To tell the story of a generation of African Americans who migrated from the Jim Crow South to northern cities in search of a better life, Wilkerson follows the lives of three people who made the trek. You'll be immersed in their stories even as you gain a rich new perspective on the courageous, difficult, and often-misunderstood journey they made. ~Hannah Faith Notess

The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, by Leslie Leyland Fields, ed. (2010)
I don’t generally include an edited book among my favorites; this one is an exception, and I’ve been feasting and savoring it bit by bit for six months. Essays (most written by women) move between personal stories from their kitchens and thoughtful reflections, drawing me into deeper thinking about faith and food. We are invited to remember God’s bounty, our dependence on those mostly invisible laborers and processes that provide us with food, and to think about eating in ways that reflect good stewardship of all creation, including humans, animals, soil, plants, water, and air. Fields reminds us that an act so ordinary as eating is also deeply spiritual, and that eating well involves more than balancing nutrients and food groups. Essays end with a favorite recipe from each author; I highly recommend trying the perfect loaf of bread from the Sullivan Street Bakery. ~Lisa Graham McMinn

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi (2003)
This book recalls a clandestine book club in which the author and several other women read and discussed classic works of Western literature that had been forbidden by the Islamic revolutionaries during the Iranian Revolution. Nafisi’s story is a compelling testament to the power of literature and to the way in which the freedom to read is inextricably tied to political and religious freedom. ~Karen Swallow Prior

Every Last One, by Anna Quindlen (2010)
This novel, about a suburban mother of three dealing with family tragedy, breaks some of my normal rules for favorite books. I often avoid novels about mourning parents and threatened children, because I find it too easy to imagine my family in a similar situation. But my ability to identify with this novel's protagonist, Mary Beth Latham, is precisely why I loved this book. Quindlen's descriptions of Mary Beth's state of mind in the months just before tragedy strikes, as she ponders a settled and loving, if not terribly passionate, marriage, along with the joys, heartache, and daily annoyances of being a mother, made me feel that the author had seen right into my own thoughts. Ultimately, Mary Beth must cope with sadness and regret of terrible scope. While she comes apart in all the ways I imagine I would come apart under similar circumstances, the novel is ultimately hopeful, as Mary Beth calls on her deepest reserves of love to continue living after heartbreaking loss. ~Ellen Painter Dollar

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (2008)
I read the first book in Suzanne Collins's trilogy this year, and was shocked by the amount of violence in this book written about and marketed to young adults. The content of the book seems worthy of controversy, but the way Collins handles themes of murder, government oppression, rebellion and desperation — interweaving them with concerns of morality and finding a way to balance love with survival — make this book a worthwhile read. Narrated by a teenage girl named Katniss, the book does a fine job prompting questions about the meaning of character and how to sort out priorities. The series merits thoughtful discussion between younger readers and older ones, both of whom will likely find it entertaining and compelling. ~Alicia Cohn

Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand (2010)
The author of Seabiscuit delivers a page-turning story of heroism, suffering, and redemption in the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic contender who gets lost at sea during World War II. ~Sarah Pulliam Bailey

My Ántonia, by Willa Cather (1918)
A Midwestern girl, I read My Ántonia as much for the beautiful language and descriptions of my native landscape as for the story of Ántonia Shimerda, a Nebraska woman. Ántonia’s generosity, independence, and resilience inspire me, and I escape into the book every year or two. The novel is presented as Jim Burden’s memoir. Jim’s recollections of life on the prairie and his friendship with Ántonia are emotionally gripping. Here’s one passage that makes me think of twilight in rural Illinois when, driving past farmland and dilapidated barns, I can almost feel the presence of the sedulous pioneers who once worked the land: “As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. . . . In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall.” ~Jennifer Grant

Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr (2010)
After watching Mary Karr crack up a gymnasium full of book lovers at this year's Festival of Faith of Writing, I knew I wanted to read Lit, Karr's third memoir, about her improbable conversion to Catholicism in the wake of divorce and an alcohol addiction. With a writing style one part straight-shooting Texan, one part luminous poet, Karr recounts her topsy-turvy journey to Jesus with a fierce humor that shook me yet kept me enthralled. If you're looking for a spiritual memoir that leaves the harsh edges unrefined, jutting out like an elbow to the gut, I highly recommend this book. ~Katelyn Beaty

The Top 10 Her.meneutics Posts of the Year

The women's blog posts that most caught your attention in 2010.

Katelyn Beaty

If Her.meneutics acts as a virtual water cooler for today's evangelical women, then our workplace was abuzz this year with discussions about sex: unnecessarily steamy plots on TV, modesty on college campuses, and flirting on Facebook and other websites. That sexual ethics and ideals get evangelicals talking is not surprising. What was surprising, and refreshing to the editors, was the wide range of other topics discussed on the women's blog this year. Just scroll through our list of interests in the left-hand column of the page, or the list of tags in the right-hand column, and you'll see that our writers — of which we included many new ones this year: Amy Julia Becker, Ellen Painter Dollar, Rachel Stone, Margot Starbuck, and Gina Dalfonzo, to name a handful — can connect their Christian faith with seemingly any cultural trend, news development, pop culture artifact, or book. We are grateful for their words and wisdom.

And now to the list. If any of your favorite posts from 2010 are missing, mention them in the comment section. There, you can also mention what you'd like to see us cover in 2011. On the docket for the near future: when celebrities go public about miscarriage, a dating website exclusively for virgins, and book reviews of Kimberly Smith's Passport through Darkness and Lori Gottlieb's Marry Him.

(10) Virtual Flirting Comes to Christian Colleges, by Marlena Graves // Comments: 17
Is LikeaLittle.com, the newest fad in Internet dating, a fun diversion or an impediment to healthy community?

(9) Modesty: A Female-Only Virtue? by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 46
Scripture suggests that modesty means more than keeping the right parts covered.

(8) A New Message at the Strip Club-Church Showdown, by Margot Starbuck // Comments: 24
What happened when two Christian women entered the Fox Hole strip club in Warsaw, Ohio.

(7) Where Was God in the Earthquake? by Fleming Rutledge // Comments: 33
A theological response to the Haitian calamity.

(6) My Lazy Christmas Wish, by Lynne Hybels // Comments: 28
At 29, 39, and 49, I couldn't imagine an unhurried holiday season. At 59, I have realized that very little matters.

(5) 'Hallelujah' Comes to the Food Court, by Rachel Marie Stone // Comments: 19
Why one performance of Handel's Messiah has attracted an audience of over 7 million.

(4) An Open Letter to Anne Rice, by Karen Spears Zacharias // Comments: 56
What I see when I look at the church.

(3) Avoiding Old Flames on Facebook, by Jenell Williams Paris // Comments: 50
That it's only a virtual friendship is all the more reason to stay away from it.

(2) Freed by Bill Clinton, Saved by Jesus, interview by Katelyn Beaty // Comments: 8
The World Is Bigger Now recounts Christian journalist Euna Lee’s imprisonment in a North Korean jail.

(1) Why Sex Ruins TV Romances, by Gina Dalfonzo // Comments: 35
And it's not for the reasons you think.

Other notable posts of 2010:
Ooh La La over Lady Gaga, by Jennifer Grant // Comments: 32

Why Should the Devil Get Halloween? by Caryn Rivadeneira // Comments: 38

Christian Female Musicians, Missing in Action, by Laura Leonard // Comments: 60

How Many Kids Should We Have? by Amy Julia Becker // Comments: 32

Little Girls and Single Ladies, by Elrena Evans // Comments: 13

The Best Ever Christmas Gift

Women in particular, it seems to me, have a hard time thinking of themselves as gifts.

Karen Swallow Prior, guest blogger

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is to re-read “In the Bleak Midwinter," a poem by Christina Rossetti (the sister of famous pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti). The poem is so lovely that it has been set to various musical arrangements since Rossetti wrote it in the late 19th century. The most recent musical recording is by Annie Lennox (yes, that Annie Lennox), and as a fan of both Rossetti and Lennox, I must admit, I’m thrilled with the result.

Rossetti’s poem has much to teach us about the overflowing nature of a loving God and the honor of worshiping him with the gifts that are most essential to our very being, to the selves God created us to be.

Yet we have a tendency — especially as women, I think — to recognize the gifts of others more readily than we recognize our own gifts. Likewise, it is also easier sometimes to value the gifts others are blessed with more than our own.

I remember one Christmas afternoon going to visit the home of a classmate and finding that her parents had spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on her presents (and that was many years ago). It was hard at age 13 not to be jealous of those gifts, even though just that morning, I’d been exceedingly excited about my own. I read somewhere once that “comparison is the thief of joy,” words that explain perfectly what happened that day and, perhaps, far too many other days in our lives.

Similarly, throughout life, not just on Christmas morning, we tend to compare our gifts. We compare our own performance in school with that of our siblings. We compare our successes at work with those of our colleagues. We compare our accomplishments and our cars and our homes and our lawns and our weight and our wrinkles and our children and grandchildren with those of our friends and neighbors.

Even within the church body, it is hard not to compare the gifts God has blessed us with to those he has given others. This tendency toward false comparison — again, a tendency that seems more prominent among women — is one aspect of the darkness and confusion of this fallen world, the image Rossetti’s poem opens with. Poor as we are on our own, we find ourselves, in our fallenness, in that very same midwinter bleakness, a world frosty, cold, and hard as iron.

Caught in this world of deadness, we have no gifts to give — that is, until heaven opens up and pours out upon us its gift of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A friend of mine, a Rossetti scholar, tells me that Rossetti, who was a high church Anglican, volunteered for many years at a Christian facility that helped prostitutes transition out of that trade into regular work and life. My friend suggests that Rossetti’s efforts in redeeming the lives of these “poor” women who had so little to give is reflected in this question in the poem:

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?

Yet, poor as we are, our God is of such an abundant nature, the poem says, that even “heaven cannot hold” him. So God cannot help but give out of himself, out of his overflowing nature. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. But that is not all: out of his abundance, God gives to us the gifts that we are to give here and now.

Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 12 that the gifts distributed to those in the body are the gifts of God’s choosing, not ours. We are who God created us to be, and God wants us to give out of who we are, just as he gives to us out of himself. It’s as simple as these lines in the poem:

If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

The most appropriate gift to the Christ child — indeed, the risen Christ — is the gift of our selves, the gift of who we are in Christ, who God created us to be. The shepherd gives what he has; the wise man gives of himself; Mary’s gift is in fulfilling the role God chose for her.

What gifts has God given you to offer to the Christ?

Nancy Pearcey: How to Respond to Doubt

The most effective way to prevent teens from leaving the faith is to openly discuss the reasons they want to.

Nancy Pearcey

“Critical thinking?” the radio host burst out. “Most people on the conservative Christian Right would say that’s one of the biggest dangers we have — this 'nonsensical' idea of critical thinking.”

I was talking with the arch-liberal Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. He had invited me on his radio program “Culture Shocks” to talk about my newly published Saving Leonardo. Yet when I explained that the book dissects secular worldviews to help people develop critical thinking, Lynn seemed incredulous. Conservative Christians discourage any questioning of their faith, he asserted.

He was painting with a broad brush, but admittedly there is some basis for such a negative stereotype. In fact, it has become one of the main reasons young people are leaving the church.

Drew Dyck, in a recent Christianity Today article, “The Leavers,” reports that when talking to someone who has left the faith (or is thinking about it), Christians rarely engage the person’s reasons for doubt. Typically they “have one of two opposite and equally harmful reactions”: Some “freeze in a defensive crouch and fail to engage at all.” Others “go on the offensive, delivering a homespun, judgmental sermon.”

My students say they encounter both reactions. One teen who is struggling to decide what she believes is discouraged because her parents’ primary response is, “Why can’t you just have faith, like we do?”

Another teen who is exploring alternative worldviews says his parents’ response is to denounce them: “You can’t prove that! You have no evidence.” As he tells me, “I need my parents to think ideas through with me, not just judge them.”

When parents and leaders react to questions by shaming or blaming, they may well drive their teens away. Both of my students have recently announced that they no longer consider themselves Christians.

They have become “leavers.”

I became a leaver myself at age 16. I was not rebellious. Nor was I trying to construct a moral smokescreen for bad choices. I was simply asking, How do I know Christianity is true? None of the adults I consulted offered answers.

Eventually I decided that the only intellectually honest course was to reject my religious upbringing and examine it objectively alongside all other religions and philosophies. After all, if I did not have good reasons for my convictions, how could I say with integrity that I affirmed Christianity — or anything else?

Fuller Theological Seminary recently conducted a study on teenagers who become leavers in college. The researchers uncovered the single most significant factor in whether young people stand firm in their Christian convictions or leave them behind. And it’s not what most of us might expect.

Join a campus ministry group? A Bible study? Important though those things are, the most decisive factor is whether students had a safe place to work through their doubts and questions before leaving home.

The researchers concluded, “The more college students felt that they had the opportunity to express their doubt while they were in high school, the higher [their] levels of faith maturity and spiritual maturity.”

The study indicates that students actually grow more confident in their Christian commitment when the adults in their life — parents, pastors, teachers — guide them in grappling with the challenges posed by prevailing secular worldviews. In short, the only way teens become truly “prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks” (1 Pet. 3:15) is by wrestling honestly and personally with the questions.

As the researchers put it, “Students who had the opportunity to struggle with tough questions and pain during high school seemed to have a healthier transition into college life."

Sadly, most churches and Christian schools do not encourage “tough questions.” In Dyck’s interviews with leavers, most reported that “they were regularly shut down when they expressed doubts.” They were ridiculed, scolded, or made to feel there was something immoral about even asking.

Instead of addressing teens’ questions, most church youth groups focus on fun and food. The goal seems to be to create emotional attachment using loud music, silly skits, slapstick games, and pizza. But the force of sheer emotional experience will not equip teens to address the ideas they will encounter when they leave home and face the world on their own.

A 2009 study in Britain found that non-religious parents have a near 100 percent chance of passing on their views to their children, whereas religious parents have only about a 50 / 50 chance of passing on their views.

Clearly, teaching young people to engage critically with secular worldviews is no longer an option. It is a necessary survival skill.

Hostile radio hosts may not get it, but Scripture itself encourages humans to use their minds to examine truth claims. As Paul writes, “Test everything, hold on to the good” (1 Thess. 5:21). It turns out that you have to practice the first part of the verse — testing and questioning — in order to build the wisdom to recognize, choose, and hold on to what is good.

To adapt a line from Wordsworth, the questioning child is father to the truly committed man.

Nancy Pearcey is a columnist for Human Events and editor at large of The Pearcey Report. Her earlier books include How Now Shall We Live? (co-authored) and Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. She has just published Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning.

What Is the Stay-at-Home Daughters Movement?

What the branch of the Christian Patriarchy Movement believes about family and young women.

Karen Swallow Prior, guest blogger

The blogosphere has been agog recently over one feminist journal’s feature-length article, “House Proud: The Troubling Rise of Stay-at-Home Daughters.” If you are like me and hadn’t heard of the stay-at-home daughters (SAHD) movement, here’s a primer.

SAHD is connected to what detractors call the “Christian Patriarchy Movement,” a phrase popularized by Kathryn Joyce's 2009 book, Quiverfull. In it she examines the lifestyles of a group of evangelical Christians who reject birth control and adhere to rigid gender roles they believe are scripturally based. The locus of these teachings, along with the SAHD philosophy that stems from them, is Vision Forum Ministries.

When a movement is said to be "rising" yet is essentially tied to a single organization, albeit one of considerable influence in some circles, perhaps the aforementioned journal doth protest too much. It seems that reports of the Christian Patriarchy Movement are greatly exaggerated — as are the rise, “troubling” or not, of stay-at-home daughters.

Nevertheless, the concept is intriguing. In all fairness, some might argue that having a woman who is a university administrator and professor (and childless to boot) analyze stay-at-home daughters is something like asking the fox to critique the henhouse. But I’ll do my best to be fair.

Essentially, adherents of SAHD believe daughters should never leave the covering of their fathers until and unless they are married. One SAHD father writes:

While they are preparing to be keepers of their own homes one day, until our daughters are married, they should serve as keepers at home in the house of their father. They are to be helpers to their mother and blessings to our entire family, as well as to our local church and community. Our daughters are to be busy preparing themselves to be helpers to their own husbands by developing their skills, continuing their education, enhancing their talents, and glorifying God right here where He has them – at home.

The SAHD movement disdains contemporary college life, but it highly values education. Even as a college professor, I would be hard pressed to disagree with Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin's assertion (SAHD pioneers since the publication of their 2005 book, So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God) that colleges “do not have the monopoly on higher learning, higher qualifications, and proper training." Rather than attend college, the Botkin sisters “encourage girls to strive for a broader, higher and more intellectually honest education than is available at most colleges today.” Not only is this a worthy aim, it is one these young women seem to have achieved admirably.

In fact, the SAHD girls, along with their fathers, take great pains to show that these young women are educated, empowered, and strong — as far from denim-jumper-wearing, hair-hung-to-the-hips stereotypes as east is from west. The Botkin sisters well represent their comrades when they list their interests as “film making, orchestral harp, history, music theory and composition, theology, the reconstruction of the West, hospitality, classical piano, the persecuted church, and home-making.” Such a list of accomplishments makes me want to stay at home, too.

But the real issue is less “to stay or not to stay” than the underlying principle for doing so. While SAHD advocates cite ample scriptural passages to support their orthopraxy (the practice of their orthodoxy), the principle underlying that practice seems to me to lack explicit scriptural support. This principle is what they claim is a clear divide between “public and private” (terms less connected to biblical language than to Enlightenment concepts) or separate “spheres of dominion” for men and women. Vision Forum Ministries states that “men are called to public spheres of dominion beyond the home,” and “the God-ordained and proper sphere of dominion for a wife is the household and that which is connected with the home.”

It’s possible that this bipartite division is more a social construct than a biblical one. If separate spheres were extrapolated from biblical language and principles, it is more likely such realms would fall along a more complex, tripartite division like family, church, and society. Such a trinity of spheres complicates neat alignments with the God-given binary of male and female.

Perhaps this helps explain some of the problem. For while the SAHD movement calls for daughters to “be helpers to their mother and blessings to [their] entire family,” their attentions appear largely focused on the ministry and business of the fathers. (By the way, none of the fathers, apparently, work at the local automotive plant.)

A post by Douglas Phillips, president of Vision Forum, quotes a letter from a stay-at-home-daughter named Kelly. It illustrates what is confusing about the movement. The girl writes,

As I observe the convictions and the passions for the things of God in my earthly father, I begin to make myself available more, in helping him. Walking beside him in his ministry; asking for ways I can help him, and pray for him. I want to know more about what he believes. I want to know why he believes, the things he does . . .The beautiful thing is, that as I begin supporting my father in his God given ministry, I find that his convictions, are becoming my convictions, his passions, my passions . . . After ending a conversation, people began telling me how much they heard my father in me. “I can hear your Dad talking when I listen to you, Kelly!” They laugh, and inside, I feel ten inches taller. I want to sound like him. I want to be like him.

A funny thing has happened on the way to the Forum: The lives of stay-at-home daughters — their goals, desires, passions, their very identities — ultimately seem to orbit around their fathers, rather than their mothers, as might seem more in line with the movement’s stated principles.

Lynne Hybels: My Lazy Christmas Wish

At 29, 39, and 49, I couldn't imagine an unhurried holiday season. At 59, I have realized that very little matters.

Lynne Hybels

It’s 4 on a Thursday morning. I'm wide awake because my 4-year-old grandson, Henry — enjoying a “sleepover” with Nana while Mom and Dad are out of town — woke up at 3 with a sore throat. After a trip to the potty and a few sips of juice, he has drifted back to sleep. If he wakes up cured in the morning, he can go to preschool, as planned, then enjoy his afternoon play date with cousin Mikayla. My day, too, will go as planned. But if Henry’s middle-of-the-night sore throat greets the morning, the day’s priority will immediately shift: together we willl snuggle up under a fuzzy blanket and watch The Velveteen Rabbit — again. My morning meeting will be cancelled, and I’ll have to bow out of the fancy-schmancy luncheon I’ve been invited to.

No big deal.

At age 29, 39, or even 49, I might have been undone by a last-minute change of plans. Especially in December. The crazy month. The season of peace and joy during which I have often been frustrated and miserable.

But not this year. Several weeks ago I celebrated my 59 birthday. I find this shocking, and for the most part I would rather be younger. But I have to admit there is something to be said for the perspective (dare I say wisdom?) that the years have given me.

Here’s the main difference between me at 29 and me at 59: I used to think that everything mattered. Now I realize that very little matters.

I used to think that festive yet elegant Christmas decorations mattered. I used to think that hosting big parties mattered. I used to think that buying gifts for everyone who might possibly expect a gift mattered. I used to think that sending Christmas cards mattered. And that beautiful wrapping paper mattered. And that sophisticated holiday menus mattered.

But no more.

This year I’ve hit an all-time Christmas-decorating low. Last night Henry and I dug through boxes in the basement and found what we were looking for: two small nativity scenes, both handcrafted in African villages, and one olive wood carving of Mary and Jesus, made by Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem. We also selected a Waterford angel given to me years ago by a kind church member and a Saint Nicholas figurine from my sister-in-law. I have an aesthetic bias against Santa Claus decorations, but I love this old-fashioned Saint Nick. I may also get a $4 mini evergreen for Henry to decorate. Maybe not.

Part of the decorating pressure of previous years was driven by The Party. For years, on December 23, Bill and I hosted a party for a random (and large) assortment of friends, many coming in from out-of-state to attend a Christmas service at our church. After the service a parade of cars would inch through the snowy neighborhood to our driveway. The house would be shimmering, the table heavily-laden, and the standing-room-only crowd in a festive mood. It was a lot of work, but it always seemed worth it — until recently. The past few years, as schedules have become more frantic, we have felt that we might serve our friends better by giving them a December night off rather than another party to attend. Nobody complained when we decided not to host the event this year.

But I have several dates scheduled with close friends, and I can’t wait for those. Next week a group of women I’ve been meeting with for years is coming for dinner. (Bill will be hiding out in some corner of the house.) I’ll prepare my favorite comfort-food: a simple cassoulet made with white beans and sweet sausage. Christine will bring an appetizer, Aliece green beans, Mindy a salad, Leanne a loaf of warm bread, and Linda dessert. Lisa and Dee, if they can sneak away from previous commitments, don’t have to bring anything at all. We will be thrilled to see them.

I gave up sending Christmas cards years ago. I love reading the cards and Christmas letters I receive from friends, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how they manage to get them done. I haven’t given up on gift-giving altogether, but I definitely land on the minimal side of the continuum. And I focus as much as possible on fair-trade buying: Trade As One has become my online choice for everything from coffee and chocolate to jewelry and scarves. Tom’s Shoes also gets my vote as an excellent way to give meaningful gifts.

I haven’t bought Christmas wrapping for several years. I managed to make do with odds and ends of ribbon and paper left from previous years. The odds and ends are gone now, so I have to get creative this year. I’m considering a long roll of pale brown postal paper. I have a great “Peace, Joy, Love” rubber stamp and a red ink pad. It won’t be fancy, but I think peace, joy, and love on pale paper will work.

Peace, joy, love. For so many years, these qualities eluded me, especially in December. It’s taken me half a century to learn that I was allowing things that didn’t matter to rob me of what matters most: nurturing internal peace so I can be a peacemaker, living with a depth of joy that spills joy onto others, and experiencing the fullness of God’s love so I can love freely. Only if I slow down long enough to let the Spirit of Jesus be born anew in me each day can I manifest the peace, joy, and love he offers to me and to a frantic, frenzied world.

As it turns out, Henry was fine when he woke up this morning, so I dropped him off at preschool. That means I can attend my meeting, then dress up for my fancy-schmancy luncheon. But honestly, I was getting excited about the thought of spending the day snuggled up with Henry and The Velveteen Rabbit.

Lynne Hybels is an advocate for global engagement at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. She is the author of Nice Girls Don't Change the World and blogs at LynneHybels.com. She has written for Her.meneutics about dangerous women. Lynne and her husband, Bill, have two adult children.

Holiday Shopping for Jesus

How women — who have begun to out-earn men in the U.S. business sector — can use their holiday spending to glorify God.

Amy Julia Becker

The statistics aren’t available yet, but the questions proliferate: After two years of “anemic” spending in December, will the retail market rebound? Will Americans prop up an ailing economy by spending lots of money on Christmas presents?

Wherever the numbers end up, women will make the majority of the decisions surrounding purchases throughout December. As Belinda Luscombe recently reported in Time, “[Women] make 85% of the buying decisions or are the chief purchasing officers of their households.” Further, as women control more than 50 percent of private wealth in America, and as women — in certain age groups and metropolitan centers — begin to outearn men (see “The Growing Buying Power of Women”), Luscombe comments, “The more money women earn, the exponentially more money they manage. And women are increasingly making the calls where men have traditionally held sway.”

Questions about how and where we spend money are relevant at all times. But December marks a time when we spend money in disproportionate amounts compared with the other eleven months of the year. As Christmas approaches, how should Christian women think about spending money on gifts, and food, and decorations?

A number of Bible passages highlight the significance of money to our spiritual lives. Jesus warns that worrying about money can choke spiritual growth (see Matt. 13:22). He warns about the difficulty of rich people entering the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:24). The Epistles similarly demonstrate the problems caused by money. 1 Timothy 6:10 sums it up: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Spending money becomes a spiritual problem when it leads to idolatry, materialism, and/or wastefulness. Pastor Tim Keller identifies money as a cultural idol in Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power - and the Only Hope That Matters. He writes about greed as a form of idolatry and remarks that this idol “can’t be removed, only replaced. It must be supplanted by the one who, though rich, became poor, so that we might truly be rich.”

Perhaps we should demonstrate our solidarity with Christ, therefore, by spending as little as possible. But not spending money poses its own problems. Not spending can become hoarding or lead to self-righteousness. The Bible extols generosity and even, in certain cases, riches, when used to glorify God. Think of the woman described in Proverbs 31, for instance, who works hard, profits from her work, and gives generously to the poor. A biblical approach to money, especially as we seek to celebrate the Incarnation, neither spends wantonly nor disdains spending altogether. Rather, a biblical approach to spending understands money as a tool to facilitate generosity, hospitality, and celebration.

Paul Miller, author of A Praying Life, once pointed out to me that Americans typically use money to divide. Money allows us to build bigger houses farther apart from our neighbors. It enables each member of a family to have her own room, her own car, her own computer, her own television. Money, in other words, can contribute to a sense of entitlement, and can lead to isolation. But a righteous use of money brings people together. It facilitates community. It glorifies God. As women find themselves with more and more choices regarding money in general, and as we approach the Christmas season in particular, how can we use money to worship the one who became poor? And how can we use money to bring people together rather than divide?

First, we can be generous. As sociologists Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson point out in Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money, American Christians give 1 to 2 percent of their income away each year. Christian and non-Christians alike treat the holidays as a “season of giving.” For Christians, charitable gifts become one way to express gratitude and respond to God’s love for us.

Second, we can be hospitable, to neighbors and strangers alike. Hosting meals, throwing parties, and bringing people together costs money. According to the Bible, these gatherings can be money well spent. After Jesus called Levi to “leave everything,” Levi invited Jesus and his disciples over for dinner. He also invited his own tax collector and “sinner” friends (see Luke 5:27-32). “Leaving everything” entailed using money differently than Levi had in the past, but in his case, it did not involve giving all his money to charity. Similarly, we can use money to bring people together, particularly around the holidays.

Third, we can use money to celebrate. The Incarnation of Jesus invites a celebration of the material world. God comes into the physical world and, in so doing, blesses and promises to redeem the physical world. This blessing does not give license to greed or hedonism, but it does mean that Christians can enjoy beautiful things and celebrate materiality by giving good gifts at Christmas.

When it comes to spending money, women wield much power. With that power comes the responsibility to give, to welcome, and to rejoice in the gift that was given to the world on Christmas morn.

'Happy Holidays' in Church?

While some Christian groups continue the battle over seasons-greetings language, I wonder if many churches are forsaking the reason for the season.

Michelle Van Loon, guest blogger

Nothing helps us remember the reason for the season like a Walgreen’s store clerk who remembers to say “Merry Christmas” when she hands us change from our last-minute Snuggie purchase.

The culture-war frontier has been littered with the debris of yearly Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas throw-downs as a noisy segment of American Christendom have elected themselves to serve as defenders of a perfect Christmas past. This year, First Baptist Church of Dallas is encouraging visitors to their Grinch Alert website to help make a list of naughty and nice merchants. The litmus test for niceness is simple: Nice merchants say “Merry Christmas.” (Tattling on retailers who don’t say the magic words on the Internet apparently counts as nice behavior as well.) Not surprisingly, this website has gotten a fair amount of news attention in recent days.

I would like to suggest that we’d be doing our non-Christian friends a huge favor if we used some of our culture war weapons on ourselves during the Christmas season. Instead of savoring the delicious jolt of affirmation some of us get from the words “Merry Christmas,” what if we engage in a little self-analysis of how we celebrate the holiday within our churches?

Many congregations craft sentimental, gingerbread-scented ways of celebrating the season without giving our programming’s message much thought. “It’s all about Jesus,” we say, while filling our church calendars with 1brunches, sanctuary decorating parties, children’s cantatas, and “Secret Angel” Bible study gift exchanges.

Before you rush to enter my name on the Grinch Alert list, please hear me out. I am not saying that any of these activities are bad. What I am saying is that a lot of these events are designed to create some “Happy Holidays” fun for ourselves and our guests. Where it gets confusing is when a cookie exchange is branded with the “Real Meaning Of Christmas” religious imprint.

I grew up in a Jewish family, and my knowledge of Christmas came solely from various holiday cartoon TV specials. I dismissed the day as some red-and-green holiday celebrated by Gentiles. I came to faith in Christ in my teens, and once I was able to attend church freely as an adult, one of the first messages I got from the church was that one of the best ways to celebrate the birth of my Savior was to show up at the church’s women’s Christmas tea. It took me a good while to figure out that some of what passed for Christmas celebration in the church had more to do “Happy Holiday” culture than church leaders might have been willing to admit.

That isn’t to say that the church didn’t also present me with a heaping platter of worshipful responses to the Gift in the manger. The churches of which I’ve been a part over the years have focused on beautiful offerings of gold, frankincense, and myrrh-scented acts of outreach, justice, and mercy during this season. The giving has included filling the shelves of local food pantries, funding clean water initiatives on the other side of the globe, creating economic opportunities through microfinance loans and gifts, and lots of one-on-one “invisible” ministry initiatives to the homeless, sick, aged, grieving, or lonely in their communities. Those acts taught me what Merry Christmas meant.

You’ll offer a great service to those from other faiths and cultures, as well as those who’ve grown up in completely secularized American culture, if you can show them you understand the difference between “Happy Holiday” and “Merry Christmas” in the way you talk about how you do Christmas at church. It can be as simple as leading into an announcement about a youth group “Bad Christmas Sweater Christmas Bash” with a word of explanation: “This is one way our church community shares the fun of the holiday season."

Believe me. A few simple words that clarify your purposes will make it a happier holiday for your unchurched visitors and friends, and will make it easier for them to find their way to the manger.

If you’re in search of a more radical rethink of how your congregation approaches Christmas, bookmark the Advent Conspiracy website and make a note to revisit it next July, at about the time the first holiday commercials hit the airwaves. Though cherished traditions in churches die hard, the site offers churches and individuals accessible suggestions about how to downshift from seasonal hyper-drive into grace this season.

In any case, it is important to remember that we who follow Christ are the only ones who can communicate the message of Christmas. Even when we say “Happy Holidays” in church.

'Tangled,' Kate Middleton, and Modern Princesses

Why Disney's newest fairy tale — and England's real-life one — give me hope for my 6-year-old niece.

Alicia Cohn

It's a case of ironic timing: while media are enthralled by the prospect of another royal wedding, the Los Angeles Times reports that Disney's newest animated feature, Tangled, marks the end of its fairy tale era. (Disney countered that “the Disney fairytale,” at least, is alive and well.)

According to writers Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller, young girls aren't that interested in playing princess anymore. The ideal of "femininity" has been supplanted by TV "tweens" such as Miley Cyrus and striving to be "cool" or "hot." Chmielewski and Eller say such ideals have replaced the princess tropes, which revolve around "finding the man of your dreams."

In my opinion, the modern pop starlet is just the less-clothed equivalent of the fairy princess, since little girls who dream of becoming Miley Cyrus are rarely thinking about the work involved in her job. So this doesn’t seem like a step forward to me. And even though idolizing a princess for marrying a prince doesn’t seem healthy, idolizing Lady Gaga is no better.

Disney’s attempt in Tangled to reinvent the tale of Rapunzel resulted in a much more traditional romance than Disney classics Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, which were about finding love while vanquishing evil. Mourning the possible "end of fairy tales," pastor Mike Cosper notes at The Gospel Coalition that they introduce children to the idea of meta-narrative. He writes, "Maybe the idea of being part of a larger story (like the redeemed kingdom of Sleeping Beauty) doesn’t connect to a world of narcissism, where the story is all about us (like Hannah Montana)." Likewise, First Things notes that Tangled effectively loses the moral context of the traditional fairy tale, in part by “streamlin[ing] its heroine, who still lives in a medieval tower, into a girl of contemporary spunk, daring, and godlessness.”

But is this modernization or just updated myth-making? Tangled hues closely to a more recent prototype: the sheltered, straight-arrow female loosened up by the worldly male (i.e., the “slacker-striver romance”). The “prince” in Disney's version is a thief — he steals Rapunzel away, get it? — who introduces the literally sheltered Rapunzel to the outside world. Even though Rapunzel magically rescues her love interest later in the movie, the prince essentially saves her soul from its previously desolate existence.

Lois Smith Brady noted in The New York Times that while modern teen girls aspire more toward pop stardom than princesshood,

Kate Middleton might make being a princess cool again. Unlike Diana, who was plucked from her already privileged life, Miss Middleton, a commoner (who looks uncommonly good in a bikini), has not been passive. She has worked for her fairy tale, which makes it more of a fairy tale.

In all fairness to Cinderella — who at least had the initiative to go to the ball and meet her prince — and to Middleton — who has to deal with the British press calling her "the oldest spinster ever to marry a future king" — we’re still talking about women distinguishing themselves according to whom they marry.

But I’m not satisfied recommending what has become simply another movie cliché: the female hero who “saves herself.” As a Christian, the idea of anyone saving herself is pretty ludicrous. Like Rapunzel in Tangled, we all need help sometimes taking the first step or trying new things. But fixating our dependence on one fallen person is the last thing little girls need to learn. And shifting that dependence from a future-tense hypothetical prince to a larger-than-life female pop star isn’t the answer.

It’s interesting to contrast the fiction of Tangled with Middleton. While Middleton should not have to set an example to us all, she does represent the reality of a (soon-to-be) princess. Middleton took eight years to make the decision to marry into the royal family. Judging by the media scrutiny and precedent, she’s probably marrying into more trouble than out of it.

“Miss Middleton is 28 and has had a great deal of time to ponder the potential consequences of marrying into a family not known for its high levels of emotional intelligence,” noted Sarah Lyall, also at The Times. Lyall makes an interesting point, because fairy tales and “happily ever after” endings don’t tend to take into account the consequences. Instead, they’re means of escape from the consequences: even in Tangled, the girl still needs rescuing. The movie aims for equality of the sexes by having the princess and her thief take turns saving each other, but doing so just models a new cliché.

There is an equal danger for us “modern women” to lean on our own ability to achieve. To me, one of the most intriguing struggles of the modern woman is the reconciliation of feminism and femininity. My six-year-old niece, who originally told me that superheroes were "for boys," will now (after years of subtle prompting) pretend to save the world with me — often while wearing a tutu. I don't discourage her from pretending to be a princess if she wants: not only because female superheroes have the downside of dressing about as modestly as a pop starlet, but because I finally understand that princesses have their place.

True equality — for man and wife and in other relationships — demands the give-and-take blueprint of yielding and obeying outlined in Ephesians 5:21-33. Princesses and superwomen both have to count the cost of their decisions. Their lives are made up of actions, not titles. I think that’s a lesson worth highlighting to young girls, who tend to learn a lot while playing pretend. And for me, it’s been a way to leave room for princesses, pretend or otherwise, in the land of “what if?”


CT Movies reviewer Todd Hertz gave Tangled three-and-a-half stars.

Virtual Flirting Comes to Christian Colleges

Is LikeaLittle.com, the newest fad in Internet dating, a fun diversion or an impediment to healthy community?

Marlena Graves

A few weeks ago, a student at Cedarville University tipped me off to the latest craze to hit college campuses: LikeaLittle.com. She only half-jokingly ended her e-mail to me with the warning to “creep with care.” LikeaLittle is a new website whose tagline is, “dangerously exciting anonymous flirting experience.” Currently it targets college students, but it appears that anyone can post a comment, including faculty and staff.

Although LikeaLittle debuted on October 25, 2010, it appears it's about to go viral. Site statistics show that the number of Facebook “likes” increased by ten thousand since I started researching it two weeks ago (jumping from 2,000-plus to 12,395 upon last inspection). At Cedarville, where I work, Facebook “likes” and “shares” have increased by over 100 percent in the past five days (from 129 to 245).

The website, the brainchild of 2009 Stanford alum Kevin Reas, allows students, in tweet-like fashion, to anonymously and publicly post flirts about people they encounter or hope to encounter. Reas and the other founders say the site functions as a “flirting facilitator platform.” He explains that it "was born at Stanford in part due to my lack of game with women.”

Once students sign in to their college’s LikeaLittle site, they can anonymously post flirts. Upon posting, a student is randomly assigned the name of a fruit, such as "Kiwi" or "Strawberry." Each time a student starts a new comment thread, he or she receives a new fruit name in order to ensure anonymity.

Here are two comments that I plucked from the LikeaLittle pages of several Christian campuses. (The site has arrived at Calvin, Biola, Gordon, Indiana Wesleyan, Grove City, Houghton, and Geneva.) These range from the seemingly harmless:

Male, Brunette. I like how you walk soooo slowly. It's mysterious. And you have cool hair.

to the downright explicit (referencing a Bloodhound Gang song):

Male, Brunette. You and me baby aint nothing but mammals so lets do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Although LikeaLittle’s administrators are adamant that the site is to remain “a fun and positive community,” a place to anonymously flirt, comments can quickly deteriorate into the perverse — and even into sexual harassment and online bullying. To be fair, the site has taken steps to filter out such posts. They state, “If you see a comment that you think is inappropriate, you can either report it to us and we will review it or if [sic] you can immediately remove a comment if you click on abuse and then put in your email.”

The other day in Cedarville's cafeteria, I ran into two sharp students, Kim Prijatel and Daniel Sizemore. The conversation quickly turned to LikeaLittle. We all agreed that while the idea of LikeaLittle seems innocent enough, in practice it can nurture destructive habits and mindsets. Kim pointed out the handmade sign she was toting around campus that particular day. It read, Female, Brunette. Already image-obsessed. Please sexualize/objectify.

Elaborating on her reason for protest, she said, “This website is harmful to our university on two accounts. First, it makes our students image-obsessed. Second, the people who are able to use this website are sexualizing and objectifying their brothers and sisters in Christ. The community is now encouraged to focus on sexuality and image and our ability to relate to one another in a genuine way is hindered.”

Indeed, there seems to be a new paranoia developing on campus. I have talked to many students who have become increasingly self-conscious because of the popularity of this website. They find it hard to suppress the suspicion that as they walk across campus, somebody is posting something about them. In a follow-up e-mail concerning our conversation, Dan explains this new phenomenon:

Sexual innuendo, misogyny and blatant objectification hide any positive aspects this service might have had. I have to admit . . . the allure of this website initially got to me. When I first got on, I browsed through a few pages trying to find out if any of the posters were writing about me. The thought of someone possibly finding me cute enough to spend a few minutes writing a sentence about me was slightly enticing. If comments like these continue to spread, people who are susceptible to body image problems will have the idea that they are constantly being judged by those around them reinforced . . . . wherever they go they will continually be judged by how good/appealing they look.

Because of the potential pitfalls associated with LikeaLittle, some have suggested that Cedarville block access to the site. After thoroughly reviewing the matter, school officials decided against it. They maintain that blocking the site will not successfully stop use because students just as easily access the site via smart phones. In addition, school officials believe that the onus of social responsibility rests on the students. Recently, the school cautioned students not to waste time on this site. But if students choose to, they are to monitor the site themselves while seeking to live out their “values as a Christ-centered community.”

We are now in the season of Advent. It strikes me as ironic that as we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord — his putting on flesh to dwell among us — we have found yet another disembodied way to interact. Then again, it’s not clear that those using LikeaLittle will even ever virtually interact with those they direct their posts toward. While some consider it a cute and hilarious concept, it doesn’t seem to positively contribute to life together. Instead of wasting time on LikeaLittle, I think it more beneficial for us to practice being fully present to one another and to reflect on what it means to live incarnationally.

A Peter Singer Sympathizer Changes His Mind

After his infant son, August, suffers irreparable brain damage, professor Chris Gabbard re-thinks what makes a life worth living.

Karen Swallow Prior, guest blogger

The Chronicle of Higher Education, the primary news source for university and college faculty and administrators, recently published a remarkable opinion essay by a University of North Florida English professor about life with his 10-year old son, a legally blind quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. The essay was taken from a new book, Papa, Ph.D.: Essays on Fatherhood by Men in the Academy.

There is no dearth of moving stories of the sacrificial love shown by countless parents caring for severely disabled children. After all, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1 in 33 infants each year is born with birth defects, while 2-3 out of 100 have major disabilities.

Yet The Chronicle’s publication of this piece, “A Life Beyond Reason,” is startling, to say the least.

For one thing, the essay offers an unapologetic affirmation of the inherent value of human life, one that is not typical of academic publications. But even more arresting than the essay’s conclusion is the starting point of the journey described within.

Before the birth of his son, Dr. Chris Gabbard likely would have viewed the life that his child, August, is fated to live as one not worth living. Gabbard explains that his own upbringing was immersed in a culture defined by the intelligentsia. He “grew up prizing intellectual aptitude . . . and detesting ‘poor mental function’.” The credo that guided his life was that of Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Even his own academic specialty is on the period known as the Age of Reason.

In fact, Gabbard so revered the life of the mind that he came to espouse the utilitarian, humanist views of Peter Singer, the Oxford-educated philosopher who has been a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University since 1999. Singer is most famous for his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, which established him as a founder of the animal rights movement. But he is infamous among Christians for basing personhood (in his book Practical Ethics) on the capability “of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future,” or having a sense of one’s “own existence over time.” Singer asserts the right of society to exclude those who have no such sense (including infants and the severely disabled) by ending their lives, passively or actively.

Real life, however, has a way of exposing cracks in the foundations of flawed theories. Thus Gabbard invites readers to imagine his surprise when, during the birth of his first child, the baby’s breathing failed, resulting in permanent brain damage. Gabbard writes,

After his birth, as I entered the intensive-care nursery, I was deeply ambivalent, having been persuaded by the Princeton philosopher Peter Singer's advocacy of expanding reproductive choice to include infanticide. But there was my son, asleep or unconscious, on a ventilator, motionless under a heat lamp, tubes and wires everywhere, monitors alongside his steel and transparent-plastic crib. What most stirred me was the way he resembled me. Nothing had prepared me for this, the shock of recognition, for he was the boy in my own baby pictures, the image of me when I was an infant.

Even with this recognition, of his own image stamped into his newborn son, Gabbard and his wife, understandably, embarked upon their new lives as parents to a severely disabled child in what he calls “the tragic mode.” "My son's birth initially cast me into a wilderness of perplexity, doubt, and discontent," he writes.

But several years later, the death of Terry Schiavo (whose condition, Gabbard explains, was not very different from his son’s) following the court-ordered removal of the tube that delivered her food and water compelled Gabbard to seriously re-examine his serious questions. Ultimately, he joined the disability rights group Not Dead Yet, which was founded in response to Jack Kevorkian’s 1996 acquittal in the assisted-suicides of two disabled women.

The significant public support for assisted suicide (46 percent of Americans find it "morally acceptable," according to a 2010 Gallup poll) hits close to home for Gabbard. “Many such well-meaning people would like end his son’s suffering,” he muses in the essay, “but they do not stop to consider whether he actually is suffering. At times he is uncomfortable, yes, but the only real pain here seems to be the pain of those who cannot bear the thought that people like [my son] exist.”

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Gabbard’s story is that in making a strong stand for the inherent value of life — his son’s life — Gabbard makes no appeal to religion or a faith foundation. Indeed, he bristles at those who would attempt to tie his son’s condition to the will of God or to any larger, cosmic purpose.

Even so, those of us whose framework of faith upholds us during life’s tragedies can take heart in this powerful testimony that the image of our Father God inheres in all of us, even apart from our recognition that we inhere in Him.

Karen Swallow Prior is English department chair and associate professor of English at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. She has written for Her.meneutics about her parents as well as for sister publication Books & Culture.

Christ Lifts the Widow's Veil

In The Undistracted Widow, Carol Cornish says her husband’s death opened a door to dependence on God that marriage had not permitted

Lynn Roush, guest blogger

“How do you celebrate a wedding anniversary with only half of a couple?” asked Margaret Nyman only 26 days short of being wed to Nate for 40 years. Her husband, who had succumbed to pancreatic cancer six weeks after his diagnosis, passed away surrounded by his wife and seven grown children. Like many of Margaret’s widow friends had already realized before her, losing her husband to death turned Margaret's life upside-down and brought uncertainty at every turn.

The unwelcome transition into widowhood is traumatic and often misunderstood by those who have not been affected by such a loss. But since most women will outlive their husbands, it is reasonable to anticipate that many of us will be widows in our lifetime. And despite the fact that many mental-health professionals gauge the death of a spouse the number one stressor a person will face in their lifetime, most women are caught unaware of the significant challenges they must navigate once their husbands are gone.

Carol Cornish, in The Undistracted Widow: Living for God After Losing Your Husband (Crossway, 2010), provides hope and direction for widows who desire to remain devoted to God despite the harsh storms that accompany their new season of life. Even though scriptural encouragement for widows is plentiful, Christian widows are often scrambling for resources that speak to their specific pain and heartache. Grief and bereavement groups may provide social support and connection, but the woman seeking to embrace her widowhood from a God-honoring perspective may easily come up short or be led astray by worldly counsel about where to find comfort in a time of loss.

Cornish, who lost her husband to lung cancer, offers widows a biblical perspective that grew out of her own heartache and grief. The emotional shock of saying goodbye to her lover and friend of 40 years started her on a journey toward knowing God in a deeper, more trusting way. Through her study of Scripture and a heightened need to see God as sovereign over her loss, she began to collect her thoughts, prayers, and insights into a book that has become a treasure of wisdom for anyone struggling to trust and obey God in difficult circumstances.

The first step in Cornish's journey hinged on her willingness to understand her state of widowhood as “not simply a problem to be solved or a circumstance that must somehow be overcome,” but as a calling for her life that had been arranged by God. The notion that “God designed our widowhood . . . [and] all God’s designs flow from his love for us” seems incompatible with the suffering that accompanies such loss. But her desire to yield to God’s will instead of nursing an angry grudge or bitter suspicions about his goodness became the foundation for her healing and growth. The many biblical promises that God gives to widows, including that he will protect, uphold, maintain, and execute justice for the vulnerable and defenseless confirmed that God had not abandoned her. Over time, she discovered that her husband’s death opened a door to dependence on and devotion to God that marriage had not permitted.

But what would tempt a Christian widow away from this kind of undivided attention to God? There are many challenges to face, including loneliness, fear, self-pity, and the desire to seek comfort outside of God’s will. These struggles are universal but are intensified when a relationship that once brought fulfillment and joy has ended through the finality of death. Cornish is able to speak directly to such temptations and how she found ways to combat them, primarily through time in God’s Word, the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and a constant reminder that Christ was the treasure that she could never lose. Paul’s admonishment that the unmarried woman should “promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord” in 1 Corinthians 7:34-35 guides her assertion that “loving God and living for him is the key to honoring him in widowhood.” Her own experience confirms that God’s sufficiency in the midst of hard, even devastating circumstances manifests the beauty of Christ to a world that is terrified of death and seeks any possible distraction to quiet the restless, aching soul within.

Although this book has a specific audience in mind, Cornish communicates gospel truths that are not just for widows. She writes plainly and unwaveringly about the hard topic of grief and loss by acknowledging sorrow but not indulging it. As believers, we should grieve differently than the world does, but what that looks like realistically and practically is often mysterious. The Undistracted Widow removes the mystery by offering biblical wisdom, compassion, and honest answers to women who have found themselves on this path, and to those who want to walk beside and support them. Cornish conveys with first-hand authority and biblical conviction that beneath the frowning providence of widowhood lies a storehouse of spiritual blessings to any woman willing to look for such a treasure.

Lynn Roush is a counselor at The Crossing, an Evangelical Presbyterian church in Columbia, Missouri. She received her master's degree in counseling psychology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She has written about New Year's resolutions and Jon and Kate Plus 8 for Her.meneutics, and reviewed What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage for Christianity Today magazine.

'Hallelujah' Comes to the Food Court

Why one performance of Handel's Messiah has attracted an audience of over 7 million.

Rachel Marie Stone, guest blogger

Bored mall shoppers eat in a food court that could be anywhere in North America. Innocuous holiday music plays in the background. Suddenly, a woman poking at her fast-food tray, cell phone held to her ear, stands up and begins to sing: Hallelujah! A man in a gray hoodie and a few days' stubble joins her, as does a couple who appear to be in line for food. Suddenly, the entire food court is alive with singing, utterly ordinary people rising to their feet and belting out, The Kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

Some of the non-singing shoppers look embarrassed; some look enchanted. Some have risen to their feet, keeping alive the tradition of King George II, who, at the London debut of Handel’s Messiah in 1743, stood for the Hallelujah chorus, which praises Christ as the King of Kings. Tradition dictates that one does not sit in royalty’s presence.

"I'm curious to know what it is that intrigues people so much," says Robert Cooper, artistic director for the Ontario-based Chorus Niagara, referring to the millions of times their flash-mob performance has been viewed on YouTube. AlphabetPhotography.com hired the choral group for the stunt as a way to convey a creative Christmas message to their customers. But the video has gone viral, and both Cooper and Alphabet Photography have been receiving "heart warming thank you letters from all over the world explaining how the video has touched people in a positive way." What is it that makes the video so appealing? I suspect it's not just the novel form of the performance, nor its fantastic content, but a creative and surprising juxtaposition of the two.

The shoppers were just sitting there, eating their fast-food lunches, expecting nothing like what they got. In that mundane setting, a place marked by consumption, not creativity, and from people who appeared totally unexceptional, indistinguishable from those around them, came a piece of music so beautiful it is said to have brought its composer to tears, feeling he had seen the face of God in it. Some of the people look misty-eyed, some cannot stop smiling. A teenage boy appears to mouth, "That was good!" Children stare with eyes beautifully widened in a way only children’s eyes can look.

What intrigues them so much? Perhaps the performance, in all its unexpected glory, did what Jesus did when he came to earth: bring light and wonder to people in places that were far less than lovely. He touched the unclean, fed the hungry, and said shocking, disturbing things to the prideful and self-righteous. He was masterful at comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

Some will say the food-court performance is an embarrassment to Handel's creation, performed in a crass environment with not a bow tie in sight. Yet this is what’s most beautiful about it: In the midst of an utterly earthly part of the world, a bit of the glory of Christ's kingdom, an unexpected bit of grace, broke in. And that's what keeps the viewers coming again and again. Some will hear only the genius of a great composer. Yet some, surely, will hear in it the greatness of our glorious Creator and King of Kings, who made himself flesh and walked this earth among ordinary people like you and me.

Rachel Stone has written for Her.meneutics on fathers, eating disorders, and miscarriage, and for Christianity Today on living in Germany, and has also contributed to Flourish, catapult/*cino, and Creation Care magazine. She lives in Greenport, New York, with her husband, two sons, extended family, and assorted cats.

Steve Johnson's Genie-in-a-Bottle God

The Buffalo Bills' wide receiver blamed the Lord via Twitter after he dropped the winning touchdown pass in a 19-16 loss to the Steelers.

Karen Spears Zacharias, guest blogger

Steve Johnson was having a very bad, horrible, terrible day. The 24-year-old wide receiver had the opportunity to give the Buffalo Bills one of their sweetest victories: an unexpected win against the Steelers in overtime.

But he dropped the ball, in the end zone of all places.

My husband, whose passion for sports knows no boundaries, could be heard screaming in Trenton, New Jersey. We live in Oregon. I know one of these days I’m going to be kneeling over his body as paramedics arrive to treat him for an ESPN-induced stroke. You know that fellow in Wisconsin who shot his TV because he didn’t like Bristol Palin’s dancing? If we had guns in the house, I’m pretty sure my husband would have shot somebody on ESPN by now.

Johnson said he will never get over dropping that pass. No matter how long he lives, no matter how many winning touchdown passes he caught before this one, or how many he’ll catch after this one, his obit is going to mention that dadgum dropped ball.

In his frustration, Johnson sent out a tweet not long after the losing game:

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!!“AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…”

Johnson sent that message to God.

God has an iPhone?

God tweets?

The dangerous thing about Twitter is that it's too often used a recording tool for stream-of-conscious thinking. If God had intended for us to vocalize our every conscious thought, wouldn’t he have given us bubbles over our heads the comic strip folks do? That way we could just go around reading each other’s bubble. We wouldn’t need an iPhone.

Bloggers and columnists and talking heads across the country are on a full-blown rant, chastising Johnson for blaming God for his dropping the winning touchdown. One commentator noted that God has “unfollowed” Johnson. CNN ran a spoof about Johnson by highlighting that appalling moment when Kathy Griffin raised her Emmy heavenward and yelled, “Suck it Jesus, this is award is my god now.”

That takes some kind of arrogance to blame God when we fail, or in Kathy’s case wins. But win or lose, wrongheaded thinking is behind it all. It’s the result of exalting ourselves above God. We treat God as if he’s the Genie in the Bottle we found. He owes us.

Griffin’s remarks are so offensive a God-fearing person ought to think twice before standing within a football field of that woman. That girl is going to get her comeuppance one day. People laugh at Griffin because they assume it takes one ballsy woman to call God out like that. Frankly, such arrogance isn't courageous at all. It's just gussied-up idolatry.

While Johnson wasn’t as crass toward God as Griffin was, the deception that compelled him to blame God is the flip-side of the same coin. It’s an arrogance ingrained in Americans, nurtured by a corrupt theology, and taught by Sunday school teachers, camp leaders, Bible school professors, misguided preachers, and self-serving politicians.

That theology says that as long as we work hard, live rightly, and remember to thank God for the wins, we will keep winning. So sure are we that this theology works, we’ve built a nation upon it. And many have built a mega-fortune on dispensing a message that says God’s sole intent is to reward us.

You ought to wake up every morning expecting the favor of God on your life, they tell us. Work hard and you’ll reap the fruits of your labor. God wants to bless you. We have to open our hearts (and usually pocketbooks) to receive all the abundance God has for us. The blessings of the Lord brings wealth. Lazy hands make a man poor but diligent hands bring about wealth. It is noble to seek after wealth. Only a foolish man remains poor.

It’s a wonderful theology for the haves who are encouraged to believe that everything they have is the result of their own hard work and effort. It makes it easier for such people to look down on those without and to say, “Well, they don’t work as hard as me. I deserve all the good and goods that I get.”

When we catch the ball and win the game and are lauded like kings, it’s easy enough to raise the trophy high and tell the world, “God has blessed me. Thank you God. I owe it all to you.”

But for the have-nots, such a theology is a coal heap of condemnation. When we fumble the ball and fanatics the world over mock our failure, this kind of theology leaves us feeling both guilty and angry. That’s why Johnson said, “I will never get over this. Ever.”

He can’t forgive himself because Johnson’s theology, shared by so many of us, teaches him that failure is a result of two things — some sin on his behalf, and/or the withdrawal of God’s favor on his life.

This theology of the Genie in the Bottle God works great as long as everything is going our way, but in that moment when we lose our home, our job, our spouse, our kid, or the winning touchdown, we often find that the God we once worshipped is nothing more than an image crafted from smoke.

Is it any wonder that we rail against such a God?

Karen Spears Zacharias is author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? (Zondervan, 2010), and blogs at Patheos, from which this post was adapted. She can be reached at karenzach.com or via Twitter @karenzach.

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