service. loving sacrifice – The Thinking Christian Woman

Cinder Ella

Disney, kindness, righteousness, service. loving sacrifice, Taking Disney Captive to Christ 1 Response »

Mar 192015

Taking Disney Captive to Christ – No. 6

In 1697, Charles Perrault wrote a French once-upon-a-time called Cendrillon, based on a well-known oral tradition in which a young girl, who is as good and kind as she is lovely, endures severe hardship and heartache before her long dark storm of injustice clears and her rainbow comes shining through.

Cendrillon’s inner strength of character will not be overcome by the evil around her. Even when she finally has the power of revenge over those who have cruelly mistreated her, she chooses rather to forgive them.

Nearly 300 years later, in 1950, Walt Disney released an animated version that many view as the iconic retelling of that beloved tale.

Now, 65 years later, Disney Studios offers us a new Cinderella. My brother Donn (who attended USC film school with George Lucas, and appeared in one of Lucas’ student films) describes it as, “A stunningly beautiful live-action update that remains surprisingly faithful to the original, with just enough changed to keep it interesting!”

Uncle Walt (Disney) would be pleased!

Cinderella’s strength and resolve come from her commitment to honor her parents (Exodus 20:12), particularly her mother, who said, “I want to tell you a secret that will see you through all the trials that life can offer: Have courage, and be kind.”

MovieGuide reports that one of Cinderella’s producers, Allison Shearmur, who also worked on The Hunger Games, said Disney was keen to present a “strong and contemporary” heroine for girls around the world. “Ken [director Kenneth Branagh, who also directed Thor in 2011] had a very clear point of view of what was important to him,” Shearmur added. “I remember the first time we met with him, he said,

“Let’s make a story about kindness as a super power.’”

The Thinking Christian Woman knows that kindness IS a superpower. Kindness is not only one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) but the law of kindness is to rule the tongue of every virtuous woman (Proverb 31:26). And for the princes, “What is desired in a man is kindness, and a poor man is better than a liar.” (Proverb 19:22)

Cinderella 2015 is as right as Maleficent 2014 was wrong. Cinderella is a principled heroine that girls, and women of all ages, can look up to and emulate in many ways. MovieGuide critic Diana Tyler, in her, “Cinderella has a message for girls that might shock you,” likens Cinderella to Old Testament heroine’s Ruth and Esther.

Cinderella has been in theatres less than a week, so no plot spoilers, but, if you enjoyed the 1950 animated version, please stay through all of the credits. You will not be disappointed!

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Better than a pot ‘o gold

God's love, Gospel, holidays, life purpose, love neighbor as self, prayer, service. loving sacrifice, Witness Comments Off

Mar 172015

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Many will celebrate this festive day by wearing green, decorating with 4-leaf clovers and leprechauns, and maybe even a good bit of drinking, but is that all there is to be known and celebrated today?

Who is St. Patrick?

Patrick was born to a wealthy Roman/British family. At 16, Irish raiders dragged him off to serve 6 years as a slave in Ireland. Patrick found God while a slave, and in prayer, God told him to flee for freedom. After becoming a priest in what would later become England, Patrick responded to God’s leading to return to Ireland and share the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. It is said that Patrick often used the 3-leaf clover to help explain the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Patrick died on March 17, 461, and is buried in the homeland of his servant’s heart – Ireland.

A reason to celebrate

Patrick became Ireland’s patron saint because of his love for the Irish people. Patrick’s heroic obedience to God’s call, and his courageous self-sacrifice to return to the land of his captivity, brought the penetrating light of God’s love and truth to clear the spiritual fog engulfing Ireland. Heroism, courage, self-sacrifice, love and truth – all good reasons to celebrate!

So, even though this has become a day for dyeing the Chicago River green, drinking green beer (perhaps to excess), and laughing at the antics of leprechauns, YOU know the real meaning of this day, and YOU can celebrate better than ever based on that deeper, richer, more fulfilling knowledge.

As the Good Book says, “…add to your faith, virtue, to virtue knowledge…” (2 Peter 1:5)

Better than a pot ‘o gold!

Folklore spins a tale about leprechauns secreting away a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. Folklore also says that if you catch a leprechaun, it can grant three wishes in exchange for release. But are leprechauns really as silly, playful and harmless as portrayed in our common culture?

First of all, leprechauns are not real, they are not part of God’s creation. Secondly, leprechauns were understood to be the offspring of evil spirits (demons) and mischievous fairies. Current depictions of leprechauns are based on derogatory 19^th century stereotypes of Irishmen.

As a college literature major, I learned that fairies, elves, trolls, genies, etc. were invented in literature to represent actual spiritual beings. Those that do good represent the angels who remain loyal to God. Those that do evil or mischief represent the fallen angels whose aim is to destroy mankind. What do you think? Were leprechauns invented to represent benevolent spiritual beings? And if not, do we really want to populate our homes, cubicles, or even church fellowship halls with them?

The Good Book says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

As we think about St. Patrick today, we don’t have to settle for drowning our sorrows, or hoping for leprechaun wishes or their gold. As the warm light of God’s uncommon love and truth burn away the spiritual fog perpetrated by common culture, we can celebrate this fun day with knowledge and wisdom and genuine faith, all of which are much more valuable than gold! (Psalm 19, 1 Peter 1:7)

And if there is sadness, heaviness, worry on this day, the Thinking Christian Woman can take it to God in prayer (James 5:13), and throw it over onto Him, because He cares for her (1 Peter 5:7). And as for wishes, I believe God when He says in Psalm 37 verse 4, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

I won’t settle for anything less! How about you?

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Rich toward God

God's love, Gospel, life purpose, mercy, power of God, praise, service. loving sacrifice, spiritual journey, stewardship Comments Off

Oct 212014

Fifty-nine years ago today, baby “Wayne” (as his family called him) was born in Reid Memorial Hospital, Richmond, Indiana, home of the Purdue Boilermakers, due east of Indianapolis near the Ohio border.

It’s a rare and wonderful experience to meet and interact with a “famous” person, without knowing who they are. That’s how I met Wayne, forty years later, in March of 1995, in the Navajo Nation near Window Rock, Arizona, during a week-long stay at Hilltop Christian School on the reservation with my mother and father, Christian author and film maker, Ken Anderson. Our purpose: to collaborate with local Navajo believers on an exploratory Teen Missions video script with the working title, “Forgiveness.”

I was alone at the guest house one morning when he burst in like a prairie twister, looking for someone who wasn’t there. We talked briefly. He looked scruffy, wearing only a white t-shirt and tattered denim shorts (even though it was snowing outside). He seemed uncomfortable, nervous, distracted, and out of place. I had no idea who he was.

Over time, I learned he was a fellow Hoosier, just two years older than I, and, more significantly, that he was Richard Wayne Mullins, better known as Rich Mullins, the extremely gifted musician through whom God had produced such classics as Sing Your Praise to the Lord (Amy Grant’s first hit), Awesome God, and Step by Step (Sometimes by Step).

What I didn’t know, was that Rich was actually living in a hogan on the reservation. Though nearly 40, he was about to graduate from Friends University with a degree he pursued just to officially qualify to teach music education to the native children at Hilltop.

One evening, I sat on the living room floor at a small youth group gathering as Rich talked about writing Awesome God, and Step by Step (with Beaker), then played guitar and led us in those, and other, worship songs.

I noticed him several times that week, working on various service projects around the compound with college students who had come to minister on spring break.

The last night of our stay, Rich generously played piano and shared from his heart for about a hundred people in the school auditorium. It was my first exposure to the more innovative spiritual insights and incisive music and lyrics of this agitated, eccentric, poet-prophet. Rich seemed ill-suited in his own skin and misplaced on the planet. I found his spiritual transparency and musical talent alarming and magnetic. As a delightfully childlike treat, he divided us into sections and taught us to “make rain” using just our hands to produce simple sound effects, which, when combined, did sound remarkably like rain.

Though his music made millions, Rich gave everything away to Christian ministries and the poor, except for an allowance equal to the average American salary. Following in the bare footsteps of St. Francis, he literally accepted the same invitation Jesus gave to the rich young ruler in Luke 12:15-21, to give up everything and become rich toward God.

When I learned of his death in a traffic accident two and a half years later, my first reaction was relief. It seemed he didn’t really want to be here anyway, and now he was released to explore the boundless love of God unfettered by earth’s limitations.

Once when a friend told him that the friend’s grandmother had just died, Rich simply replied, “Good for her.”

In his own words, from the song “Elijah”:

When I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire
And when I look back on the stars
It’ll be like a candlelight in Central Park
And it won’t break my heart to say goodbye

Be sure to check out Ragamuffin, the 2014 movie on the life of Rich Mullins. As of this posting, it can be found on Netflix, Amazon, and Google Play. Also, here’s most of a Wheaton College chapel concert at my alma mater, just 5 months before he died.

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Leading through open doors

dying to self, service. loving sacrifice 2 Responses »

Jun 062012

There are hundreds, probably thousands, of good books on leadership. This post doesn’t presume to improve on those, but simply to share a dream.

While investing a week at the Optimum Health Institute recently, (eating only raw food in proper combinations, drinking at least half my body weight in ounces of water and other fluids, juicing/drinking wheatgrass twice a day, colon cleansing, and other spiritual, mental/emotional and physical transformation practices), I remembered the following dream one morning.

A square-jawed, crew-cut, battle-scarred, muscular, seasoned old sargeant is in the face of a skinny, wide-eyed, fresh-out-of-the-box young officer barking gruffly, “You wanna be a great leader, Andy?!” (One of the founders of the church camp I attended as a child affectionately called me Andy as short for Anderson, but I never liked it because it was a boy’s name.)

The old Sarge continues without waiting for an answer, “it’s more than encouragement, character, and strength…ya gotta open doors for people!”

Then he swings open the metal gates and ushers herds of civilians through, barking, “Keep it movin! Keep it tight! Let’s go people, keep movin!”

I’ve thought about that scene alot since then. It makes so much sense. If a door that I want to enter is closed to me, and someone opens it and steps through ahead of me, I will follow them through, not necessarily because of their great leadership skills, but because they are making a way for me to go somewhere I want to go but haven’t been able to on my own for whatever reasons.

Jesus is our pathmaker to salvation and eternity. He has stepped through the open tomb door and invites us to follow.

To whatever degree I’m entrusted with leadership from this point forward, as a thinking Christian woman, I have purposed to remember that it’s mostly about opening doors for people, with a servant’s heart.

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The Thinking Christian First Lady

life purpose, service. loving sacrifice 3 Responses »

Oct 302011

Former First Lady Laura Bush addressed a full house of 2,600 at the Grace College Orthopedic Capital Center in Winona Lake Indiana earlier this month. I was excited to be in the audience.

I was impressed by the causes, such as literacy for all the world’s children, and freedom and education for oppressed woman everywhere, in which Mrs. Bush invests her life. She has a unique position of influence, largely because, as she puts it, “I wanted to marry someone who could make me laugh.”

Mrs. Bush talked humorously about, what she calls, “the afterlife,” in what her husband calls, “the Promised Land.” Her quips about the Bush family were delightful, such as “when you’re married to the President of the United States, you don’t worry about him leaving wet towels on the floor, but now that we’re back in Texas, it’s a different matter!”

I was moved and inspired by her account of President Bush throwing out the ceremonial first pitch of World Series game 3 in Yankee Stadium on October 30, 2001, just a little over a month after 9-11. Knowing danger could come from any direction at any time, she was a worried wife, but so proud of her husband for standing alone and standing strong. At that moment, she realized, “this is not just the job of the president, it is the job of every American who has the urge to take a stand, and to face failure, humiliation, or any mortal danger.”

President and Mrs. Bush visited war wounded in San Diego back in 2005. I waived my support as they left Navy Hospital, then called a local radio station to laud the quality of her character. I wrote her a letter, and received a gracious reply.

Mrs. Bush has proven herself to be strongly moral in many ways, and very likely has a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but, unlike her husband, seems reticent to speak much of her spiritual life.

This could be traced to the time with she, as a teenage driver, ran a stop sign and collided with a popular fellow student. In her book, Spoken From the Heart, she remembers: “The whole time, I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,’ over and over and over again.”

The other driver died, and she shares candidly in her memoirs about how that affected her.

“I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years,” she says. “It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard.”

It is the sign of an honest seeking heart to acknowledge the times when our mysterious God seems out of reach. Of course, genuine faith is not affected by what we can see, or by what happens to us.

We walk by faith, not by sight

(2 Corinthians 5:7)

I can’t imagine what that must have been like for her, nor my response had I been in her position, but I’m sad that the enemy of our souls used those tragic circumstances to deceive her into hardening her heart and walking away from faith for many years.

Perhaps that is part of the reason why the former first lady continues to holds her own opinion, contrary to God’s word, about such things as abortion and homosexual marriage.

Even so, I have found Laura Bush to exemplify several attributes commendable for every Thinking Christian Woman – humility, grace, poise, humor, intelligence and compassion. I pray that God will continue to bless her and woo her, and each of us, into a more and more deeply satisfying relationship with His heart that has only perfect love for us all!

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