Tidy Up Time!

Today I want to talk about the phenomenon that is Tidy Up Time.

I'm not talking about what we say to the children in the classroom before lunchtime, I'm talking about that moment, especially in my family, when Grandma announces she's coming for a surprise visit and you whizz around the house, making sure everything's clean, tidy and in a proper order.

As a more extreme example, imagine if the Queen suddenly decides to use your house as the setting for a TV broadcast, followed by an entourage of security guards, assistants and film crew.

What would you do first?
What would be the first thing you move out of sight, brush under the rug or stash in a cupboard?
What would you be so embarrassed or ashamed for her to see that you actually remove it from the house?

Perhaps it's a DVD or a magazine you don't think they'd approve of. Maybe it could be a diary or journal that you're not comfortable in sharing. It could even be your internet browsing history; don't you think the security guards will vet you before allowing the Queen to come in?! Some of you might throw your cigarettes down the toilet or pour that alcohol down the drain.

My question for you is this:
If Jesus were to walk into your house today, what would you not want Him to see?

What would you try to hide from Him and would you put on those "airs and graces" in order to appear better, more "holy"?

My second qusestion is this:
WHY BOTHER?!

God is omniscient; He is all-seeing and all-knowing. There is absolutely nothing that you can hide from Him. You only have to open the Bible and there are over one hundred confirmations of this:

Job 31:4 - Does He not see my ways, and count all my steps? (NKJV)

Jeremiah 23:24 - Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord. (ESV)

Psalm 44:21 - Would God not discover this? For He kows the secrets of the heart. (AMP)

I could go on and on, but I won't. I think these examples make my point. 

You can't hide from God, people! He sees everything. He understands everything. Even those things which you have expertly concealed from your friends, family, perhaps even from yourself.

If there's something in your life that you don't think God would approve of. If you're already convicted in your own spirit that it's not in line with God's Spirit, then why is it in your life at all? 

As it says in Matthew 6:24, "No one can serve two masters, either you will hate the one and love the other, or you can be devoted to one and despise the other." - of course, this scripture is relating to money and wealth, but I think it's transferrable to anything that we can put on a pedestal or spend a large amount of our time and energy on.

This brings me to the topic of idol worship. Now I'm not going to get on my high horse here, because I think it's a topic worthy of its own discussion, however, it is worth a mention. 

If Jesus were to walk into your house, would you take down that framed poster of the rock star you love, and replace it with a crucifix? Would you switch out your rap CDs for worship music? Would you put away the autograph books you painstakingly collected and place a pristine Bible on the coffee table?

If you are putting anything, or anyone, on a pedestal higher than Jesus; if you're spending more time pursuing the works of a celebrity than you are in the Word; if you fantasise being the most powerful or revered in your field. Then I believe you are guilty of idolatry. God was very clear when He gave the Commandments to Moses in Exodus 20. His first and most important commandment is to "love the Lord your God", secondly, to have "no other gods". These gods can be anything, from posters, statues, tchotchkes, even your own thoughts and dreams. As is says in Matthew 6:21, and again in Luke 12:34, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Friend, where is your treasure?

If it's not something you'd be proud of, something you'd have no qualms about showing your Grandma, or Jesus, then does it really deserve a place in your life at all?

Is it time for the Spring Clean of your life?

Best get the dusters ready!

-Lisa

Women

Now we all know that I'm proably the least feminist person in the world. In fact, we were at the butchers one day and I gave the bag of meat to Riki to hold, saying it was too heavy for me - he's used to me being pathetic and laughed as he took hold of it, with me joking, "but I'm a girl, you have to hold it!"

The woman behind the counter couldn't believe it and said to me, "We burned our bras for you, you should be proud" or something to that effect. To which I replied, "I didn't burn my bra, nor would I have done. I am not a man; I know my limits and I am allowed to be feminine and ask my partner to help when I need it! There's nothing wrong with that!"

Well, I might not have said all of that, or quite as eloquently, but that's the basic jist. It really bothers me when people, usually women, go on and on about women's rights. Where are the men's rights activists? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for equality but I think we've gone way past that stage now.

I could go on about this for days, as it really does offend me, but that's not what I even wanted to write about - I don't even know why i included it. Maybe I just needed to get it out and let it go!

I did want to discuss women and how we're portrayed, though. I've had this on my mind for a while now and I've finally got some good points noted down and so I thought I'd share.

I'm going to talk about women in general, it would have been easier to split the post into "Women in the workplace" or "Women in church", the latter I think I could really sink my teeth into, in fact  I think I have some notes stashed away for a post on that sometime in the future! But no, what I have in mind is just the way that women are portrayed in general. I'll touch upon how we look at ourselves; how the media portrays us; how the Bible and the church portray us; and how Jesus portrayed us.

I was at work the other day and a young woman came up to our desk to chat to some other colleagues. They were talking about Halloween - I have strong feelings on this one but I'll save them for now - apparently they were going out and were discussing fancy dress outfits. One woman decided she was going as a Burlesque dancer with a bashed-in face, and the other said, "Oh I dunno. I might just go as a slutty ghostbuster".

No word of a lie, you could park a bus in my mouth, it was gaping so much! I was gobsmacked!

You may or may not be aware of the news late last year, with Godfrey Bloom of UKIP (right) calling the women at a conference, "sluts", but there was a massive uproar about it, in fact it's still ongoing (if you care enough, you can read about it here). I'm not in any way defending him here, although I do personally think it was a case of word misuse, he made a joke which was taken in the wrong way. The point is, how can people be so offended by the word when we hear women throwing it around so much about themselves and their friends?!

It brings to mind a scene from the movie, Mean Girls, where all the girls in the class had been called to some kind of emergency intervention session due to something called a "burn book", a book in which there were nasty comments and gossip about each girl in the school. The teacher, played by Tina Fey, has a strong point when she says, "you all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores. Who here has ever been called a slut?" and almost everyone raises their hand...

Actually, talking about Mean Girls, they too take the opportunity to dress in lingerie and call it a Halloween costume! Must be a common thing!

The media would have us believe that we're all either loose women, who wear nothing but lingerie and sleep our way to the tops of our careers, or we're dowdy women living in the shadow of our husbands, brothers or other male members of society as they go out to work and we stay home and look after the house and kids. There's no happy medium!

I was reading a paper written by my childhood minister, on women in leadership. He gave me a copy as I was struggling with Acts 2:17. If you recall, I posted about it here - I was struggling with the fact that the scripture says that the young men will have visions and old men will have dreams. It seemed to me that it wasn't open to women. After chatting to some Christian friends and reading the paper I had been sent, I felt a lot better.  He wrote about the way that women were portrayed in the Bible, how women were often seen, throughout history, as carnal tempretesses, and because they were formed out of a bent rib, twisted in the wrong way, they were not to be trusted. I personally can't find any scripture to back up the fact that the rib God used was bent out of shape. God created Eve out of Adam's rib (the same substance as man) to be his equal - He didn't want man to be alone so He created a helper; someone the man needs. The article also discusses how in Romans 16, Paul affirms a huge list of women, many of whom were in the ministry: Prisca, Aquila, Junias, Phoebe, Mary, and more.

I had a discussion with a man at work, who told me that the Bible is the most anti-women book in the world. He told me that the Bible has no regard for women and that it basically encourages people to consider them as second-class citizens. Now you all know that I'm very open-minded and respectful of others' beliefs but I couldn't let this one get by without correcting him. I told him he was wrong and immediately he stood up, towering over me in my seat, fingers pointing in my face, telling me that I was wrong. My Bible was a "load of crap" (his words) and then challenging me to name one woman who is portrayed in a good light. I started reeling them off: Ruth; Esther; Naomi; Elizabeth; Hannah. He stopped me and said, "Yeah but none of them have a book named after them". I was perplexed as he said it with some kind of authority as if he'd looked into this. I still had my fingers poised from counting the women and pointed at Ruth and Esther. At this point he retorted, "Oh well, you can have that then" and our colleagues high-fived each other that the man who can't stand to be wrong had just been owned. By a woman. A Christian woman.

Sometimes it's appropriate for a woman to stand up and be counted. Jesus literally drew a line in the sand for a woman, a sinful woman at that.

I have no issue with standing up for myself and I'm no stranger to the jobs deemed "mans work" - in fact in our house, I am the DIY-er; my husband tries, bless him, but he's hopeless with a hammer and I enjoy it!

On the other hand, just because we are modern women, it doesn't mean that we have to be strong all the time. I believe that God created women to be the weaker sex, in terms of emotion and strength. That's controversial, I know, but I've said it now! I believe we balance the scales for each other. Where men can be strong and stoic, women can be vulnerable and empathetic. That's not to say that occasionally the roles can't be swapped. I've seen some wonderfully emotive men, as well as some of the strongest women I've ever met, in emotional or spiritual terms.

I guess it just really gets my back up when I feel that I have to apologise for being the way God made me. I know my boundaries and that's why God blessed me with a husband to help me, as he has been blessed with a wife to help him!

Don't apologise for crying, or for not being able to carry a sack of potatoes. Don't apologise for standing up to your tormentors. Just be yourself. And don't apologise for being you!

Until next time,
Lisa

Images:
Bra Burning - from GirlsJustWannaHaveGuns (here)
Godfrey Bloom - from BBC (here)
Mean Girls gif - from Sarah Wooley (here)
Passion of the Christ image - from SamFindsFaith (here)

Poem - Only Now

Only Now

So now that I am different

I realise my own mind

I realise the thoughts I once had

Were not my own

They belonged to others

They were thoughts that were

Embedded in my mind

Masquerading like a foreign spy

Pretending to come from my own heart

When all along they were the result of

A brainwashing

That I had come to know as my life.

And it is only now

When I look back on my past thoughts

That I can see.

I can see how different I was

How much has changed

Since that time when I was

Too scared to be myself

I was too afraid to step out in my own beliefs

For fear of rejection or ridicule

It is only now

That I have come to learn about myself

I have come to know who I am

That I can accept my own thoughts

As the truth.

I can understand the yearnings in my soul

And no longer have to hide them

Behind the ideas of others

I can speak out for myself

And do not have to be afraid

I have been given this gift

Of freedom

Copyright - Lisa Davies, July 8th, 2010.

If you use or distribute this work, please keep it in its entirety, and link back to this page so that the appropriate credit can be given. Also, please let me know if you do use any of my work, just as a courtesy. It's great to have feedback :)