Gardener

This is what your mother told me: Some time back, when your (Christian School) teacher was talking to you about politics, she said, “Christians vote Republican.”    This upset you because, as you said to your mom, “Grandpa’s a Christian and he votes for Democrats.”   You were right on both counts, and I want take a little time to explain why I as a Christian vote for Democrats most of the time.   First of all, let me say that I am glad you and your friends and teachers are talking about politics. American citizens should be talking politics, and you are a citizen.   In a democracy like America we believe that the ordinary citizens are the people who govern the country.   When we vote, we elect people to be public servants .   That means that they must do things for the citizens, that is, for the public weal.   (That’s a good old-fashioned word you should get to know.)   They must serve the public.   But it also means that the ordina...

     Lester De Koster (1916-2009) was a Calvin Professor and later, the editor of The Banner, the weekly magazine of the Christian Reformed Church.  As a Calvin prof he was sometimes considered liberal because of his politics, but as a Banner editor he was sometimes considered conservative, especially because of his opposition to Kuyperianism as developed by Dooyeweered. It is also worthy of note that De Koster had a deep and profound knowledge of the writings of John Calvin.      I am interested in his political ideas because of an essay he wrote in 1958 that attempts to answer a question that I am asked to answer from time to time, "Can a Christian be a Democrat?"  For example, when my grand-daughter was told by her Christian School teacher a few years ago that Christians are Republicans, she asked her mother (my daughter) "If Grandpa's a Christian, how can he be a Democrat?" (Or maybe she put it the oth...

I Recognized the Mitten   as soon as I saw it, gray fuzzy leather and a wide wristband (to keep snow out) stitched with gold thread, horizontal lines crossed with V’s going up and down around the band. I must have dropped it there sixty years ago while checking to see if my glasses were in my pocket (they weren’t, they were lost again) as I walked home from school in mid-December.   Of course it’s not really the one I dropped—one of the many   I lost over the years— it was dropped by some kid, some forgetful kid whose mind was so full of plans for a snow fort or the plot of a Hardy Boy book or the wonder of sailing ships like the three Columbus sailed, some kid, one of hundreds all over the state who lost a mitten yesterday after the first snowfall of winter, kids who are constantly driving their mothers crazy because they lose their mittens and glasses and forget to take out the trash or f...

     An enterprising employee in an office area near my office has a small cache of candy and other goodies that he sells. The little business depends upon the honor system; you put your fifty cents in a plastic container and choose your sweet. The sign at the top says “Snoops Are Us,” and as I read it, I wonder if people who are not of Dutch background would understand, for snoepen is a Dutch word for sweets, candy especially.      They might, for when I check the Oxford English Dictionary, I discover that the first definition of snoop is “to appropriate and consume dainties in a clandestine manner.” And apparently there’s something sneaky about eating those sweets. For it is from that usage that the more common American use of snoop has developed: A snoop is “someone who goes about in a sly or prying manner.” He pokes his nose in where it does not really belong—but in a sneaky way. Sometimes, in fact, the snoop is an eavesdropper. ...

In Frederick Buechner’s first of three short autobiographies, The Sacred Journey, he writes, “Deep within history . . . is sacred history, is God’s purpose working itself out in the apparent purposelessness of human history and of our separate histories, is the history, in short, of the saving and losing of souls, including our own.   A child is born.   A friend is lost or found.   Out of nowhere comes a sense of peace or foreboding.   We are awakened by a dream.   Out of the shadowy street comes a cry for help.   We must learn to listen to . . . our lives for the holy and elusive word that is spoken to each of us out of the depths.” (4-5).   Identifying those moments where God was and is at work in his life, recalling the holy and elusive words he has been able to hear in his history, is the focus of this little book.   And in the book he advises readers to examine their lives to discover God working in their own sacred journey.   “Take...

I am serving on a committee at my church whose mandate it is to create a worship statement.  And my particular assignement is to construct a statement about the purposes of worship.  So today I remembered this word from my book of words, Angling in the English Stream: Flabbergast is a word whose origin no one speaks about with certainty, though one source suggests that it might be a combination of flabby and aghast.   That works for me since it brings to mind a picture of a person with flabby mouth wide open looking totally aghast at what has just happened.   Flabbergasted.   As I researched this word, I discovered a related word: Flabbergastation, “the state of being flabbergasted.”   It’s a wonderful word, but it ought to refer to a place where one can go, a sort of service station, that pumps you full of high octane amazement.   Perhaps that’s one thing a church service should do—pump us full of amazement, the kind St. Paul ...

A few years ago my college library replaced its old style bookshelves with new electronic shelves that run on tracks—three feet to the right, three to the left—and snuggle up to the shelves on either side so that when they all are parked properly, there is a solid wall of shelves for about fifteen feet and a single three foot aisle down which a reader might walk in search of a book.   It is a marvel of efficiency enabling the library to nearly double the number of books it previously housed in the same space.   With a push of a button, I can move as many shelves as I wish, enabling me to get to any shelf I desire.   Of course sometimes I have to move four or five shelves to get to the aisle where the book I am after resides.   But then I push the button and off the shelves go on their three foot journey.   What power! With my index finger I move a thousand books as if they were weightless. One of the small pleasures of my life from the time I was seven or ...