Intense 2 of 9: Bad Advice

Of the three passages that mention "intense" specifically, Thessalonians speaks of a very strong brotherly love, Revelations speaks of a horrible burning punishment and 2 Samuel speaks of the unholy lust that Amnon felt for Tamar.  Who is this guy Jonadad?  He is Amnon's cousin and is not mentioned again is Scripture.

2 Samuel 13:1-6  Amnon and Tamar
1 In the course of time, Amnon son of David fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David. 2 Amnon became frustrated to the point of illness on account of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her. 3 Now Amnon had a friend named Jonadab son of Shimeah, David's brother. Jonadab was a very shrewd man. 4 He asked Amnon, "Why do you, the king's son, look so haggard morning after morning? Won't you tell me?" Amnon said to him, "I'm in love with Tamar, my brother Absalom's sister." 5 "Go to bed and pretend to be ill," Jonadab said. "When your father comes to see you, say to him, 'I would like my sister Tamar to come and give me something to eat. Let her prepare the food in my sight so I may watch her and then eat it from her hand.' " 6 So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. When the king came to see him, Amnon said to him, "I would like my sister Tamar to come and make some special bread in my sight, so I may eat from her hand."

Here is the whole chapter on Crosswalk.com.

     If we focus on the horror and injustice of this story, we might conclude that God is not just and does not hear a young girl when she cries for help.  Instead, let's take Amnon's point of view and consider that God puts all kinds of safeguards around us when we feel obsessive desires.  Amnon felt a healthy restraint.  Tamar wore special clothes.  She had people around her all the time.  Virgin girls in the Middle East have rights, despite what western women think.  He could face severe punishment.  Getting his sister alone seemed impossible and rightly so.   Think how this scene might have played out.  If Jonadab had been a cheerful housewife, he would say,  "You are in love!  How lovely!  You will marry the beautiful princess, rescue her from her arrogant, scheming family and protect her from the king's many enemies."  Alas, no.  Casual sex, then as now, is about gratifying one´s own desires, not about loving and protecting the other person. Instead, Jonadab unfastened the safety restraint and let Amnon spin away to disaster. Jonadab said, "Why are you sitting around moping?  It's just sex.  Arranging it won´t be hard at all and nothing bad will happen to you."  Amnon followed his advice down to the letter.  Such is the power of friendly advice, for good and bad.
     We also have friends who give us good and bad advice.  Our friends are there to take our side and love us no matter what.  Imagine this friendly advice.  "You resent that your new husband spends all his time at the gym?  You deserve better.  He´s treating you so badly.  After everything you do for him, he should be home in time for dinner. You should put your foot down and demand more time for yourself.  It worked for Karen."  Never mind that Karen's husband gained 30 pounds and people snicker about them. Or this scenario:  "That dress is perfect for you!  I know you weren't going to buy anything, but you deserve it.  Nothing bad will happen to you."  At least not until your husband gets the bill, and even that can be smoothed over with lingerie.  When we want something so desperately, even good things, we are willing to bend the rules, to downplay sin, and to discount how it might hurt other people.  Our friends can unwittingly push us towards self-pity or overspending or thinking we deserve more for ourselves.
      We have safeguards to keep us from gratifying ourselves at the expense of others.  We have parents and husbands and families and budgets.  Amnon´s story is a good reminder to choose our friends wisely.  Most importantly, we have God´s word, Jesus´s example and the prompting of the Holy Spirit to guide us in our own decisions and to help us give godly advice.

Intense 1 of 9: Making sense of "Intense"

Moving every two years means that you have to keep meeting new people.  As exciting as that is, you also have to keep being confronted with your own failings.  I know that I come on too strong and I want to dial down the intensity.  Now that I think about it, my whole life is one intense experience after another. I wonder how I have survived.  Some things are intense by nature, like surviving cancer, and others are intense for us alone.  For example, teaching a preschool Bible study for five years was painfully intense, though I couldn't tell you why.  Language training was intense, mostly because I had to talk about news and politics every day.  The setting was hostile to say the least. When I gave my opinion, as a Texan (conservative, in other words) the teacher actually asked me, "What would be your opinion NOT as a Texan?"  As if I could magically imagine myself in Vermont and have the opinions of the rest of the class.

2 Samuel 13: Amnon hated Tamar with intense hatred.
1 Thessalonians 2:17, Paul longed intensely for absent friends.
Revelations 16:9, During the apocalypse, the sun burns people with intense heat.

So intensity can be good and bad.  I going to think and write about these verses for a few days.  Who knows, maybe it will turn into a book and a healing phenomenon. Send me a comment :-) but be patient please while I update my page.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are all set for Thanksgiving. The washers game is finished, the guests are invited, the turkey is retrieved from the butcher. 

Our Spanish teacher is coming. The Spanish are not into DIY, so when Troy says he is constructing something, she asks why.  Troy's answer is, "It's tradition in my family."

I tried that line at the butcher about the turkey, but I still didn't get liver and giblets.  Poultry always comes cleaned out. 

We took the kids out of school for the day. 

As an added bonus, it snowed!  I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving. 

A new take on grafitti

The boys' school pictures came with ready-made Christmas cards. Here is Wyatt writing his Christmas cards to his grandparents. 

Here is Wyatt's class picture. At first I was surprised and saddened at the obvious ill-will towards the classmates whose faces are scratched out. While Winston gets into fights on a daily basis, Wyatt seems to get along and has lots of people calling out and waving to him as we walk by.  The worst thing he has ever said is that one one boy is annoying. He takes Wyatt's things without asking and dumped out all of his white-out.  So, I was surprised.  Then, I was very briefly angry because we paid %^*# euros for those pictures! Wyatt is front and center.

You may remember my post about the grafitti at the university.  I was carrying on to my Spanish teacher about how depressing it was and how it doesn't hurt the government but only the students who have to study in such a dismal environment.  She had a different take on it.  She said that it was a form of protest and something that the students are proud of.  

So there you have it.  Wyatt defacing his class picture is an acceptable form of protest.

City of Charms

  You will all be relieved to know, I finally (10 months later) got rid of my Arabic blog title.  The new title is "City of Charms" and the URL is cityofcharms.blogspot.com.  You might think I chose the new title because Madrid is SO charming and because I am going to write a travel blog about all the great things here.  You would be wrong.  I chose the title because an agent who represents writers liked the title.  I met him at a writer's conference.  THE City of Charms from the writing conference was actually Houston.  Shhh! Don't tell anyone.  The professionals at the conference said I absolutely could not set a story in Houston.  It would be the kiss of death.   So now my stories are set in a fictional place called Poxum Crossing.  That's how people think of Houston, right?  Swampy, backwards and boring if not pestilential.

  I have loved every place I have ever lived, more for the small details of living there than the big tourist attractions.  Right now the sun has broken through the clouds to shine on the first snow of the season on the mountains.  I can see it from my window.