Holy, holy, is our Lord God Almighty

     God is holy{specially recognized as or declared sacred by religious use or authority; consecrated: holy ground. 2.saintly; godly; pious; devout: a holy life.3.having a spiritually pure quality: a holy love.5.entitled to worship or veneration as or as if sacred: a holy relic}
   
     I could be done with this before I began, if human beings didn't live for the steady flow of explanation. The Separation and Nonconformity Colloquy at Faith Builders revolved around the holiness of God and its shaping of history and present time. Anabaptism, that disciplined system to which many of us adhere, attempts to make the holiness of God practically manifest in us.
   
     The clothes, the cars, the houses. "People say that they believe, but do not show it in their dress," Menno Simon wrote. Is this where it ends? Wendell Heatwole, Nathan Yoder, and Val Yoder, often addressed the wondrous state of transformation that every true new believer experiences. Dress is not the end of this issue. The change in our hearts, the unscientific and miraculous change wrought by the Holy Spirit when we call on Him, is the foundation for our separation from the world. Once this transformation is begun, the dress and conduct will follow.
   
     Several brilliant points were made that Saturday, and one of them was the positiveness of separation. When we play word association with separation, we find division and isolation. It is vital, however, not to forget that Deuteronomy 7:6 speaks of separation unto God. We are holy people unto Him, not only away from the world. Romans 12:2 says, "...be ye not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind..." Transformation is the positive side of nonconformity. We really should call it Separation and Transformation. When transformation is taking place, separation from the world is inevitable.

     Here's a hard idea, and I'm not saying it without crushing my own toes: If that transformation is taking place in our lives, we are recognizing our place as temples of the Living God(II Cor. 6:16-18), and attempting to demonstrate to the world human examples of God's holiness, then how do we struggle so fiercely against standards and disciplines that have been placed over our lives? We can expect our children to follow in our footsteps as we leave disciplines behind. Why is it so hard to give up earthly things and cover ourselves with things, when we are attempting to embody God's holiness? We can never do enough. When our own glory is the focus of our lifestyle, God's holiness is profaned. His temple is scandalously vandalized, and the world will scoff at His Name.

     God didn't create us to torment us with our own inadequacy. He sent Jesus to set us free. Brother Val spoke on the beauty of holiness. Along with our salvation, God gives us the loveliness of holiness, and the freedom of a higher standard. No longer are we forced to search for fame, beauty, and short-lived pleasure. We are free from the world's mind-set. Our future dreams, our habits, the way we live our lives: these are all lifted to the level of the holy. We have the blessing of God, and when hardship comes, we have His everlasting arms on which to lean. This is what attracts nonbelievers to us, and precisely why I love to be an Anabaptist Mennonite. It's hard to live in this freedom and try to reach those still in bondage, but God makes it possible.They don't know why, but they see what they have. Mennonites are known for their families that last, modest women, respectful men, and obedient children.
And of course, nice houses. Something to work on, American Mennonites. :)
My point is, do you think these things are hereditary, without the passing on of disciplines? It's illogical to think that we can try to maintain the beauty of holiness without do anything that separates us from the world. We must not profane the temple of the living God, the only living God.

     I challenge all of you. Reach for holiness. Ask God to show you how. Don't be ashamed to give up things that others think are fine, if you feel Him speaking to you. I don't know how it will happen individually, but we must clutch holiness if we want to retain our freedom. Look at teenagers in public highschools if you need motivation to protect your future children. Make decisions now that will keep your grandchildren searching for holiness. What you decide now, even before you're married, will change everything. Don't mess around with it, please. We don't have long on this earth to be like God. Make Him proud.

   

I found a free writing contest in my Writer's Magazine that I got at the library, so I had to try it. A personal essay on a work that affected me, 600-800, for 11-12th graders. It was perfect for me. I was already dredging up my old Cancer Ward book review, when I happened to see the deadline...and it was tonight. I still did it, just for fun. The review was the right length. I just made it more personable and trucked it off. Now I'm seeing the point of writing book reviews for school. I might put it up.
So, here I am, writing a blog. I've decided to go ahead a do it, because Tosca Lee does. Don't expect anything as funny as that. I'm just going to whine about my writing problems and how my characters won't behave and occasionally give you Enya lyrics that have taken me higher.

Last Time by Moonlight 

The winter sky above us
was shining in moonlight,
And everywhere around us
the silence of midnight.
And we had gathered snowflakes;
Remember the soft light
of starlight on snow.

Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way love goes.
Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way life goes.

We walked the road together
one last time by moonlight,
as underneath the heavens
the slow chimes at midnight,
but nothing is forever
not even the starlight
at midnight not even
the moonlight...

Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way love goes.
Oooh, remember this,
for no-one knows
the way life goes.

Roma and Enya

There's the first one. I suggest you look that up and listen to it.

     Sheila turned sixteen today. We've showered her with presents, and now we're going to Bombay Sitar, a warm little Indian place in Belden Village.

Oh, and the other point of this. I am officially protesting a loveless world. So I'll bring little nuggets that I've learned about love.

Here's the essay. I know, I said it was personable, but it's really not. I hate it when I do that. It's as harsh as Solzhenitsyn.

                                                                 Cancer Ward

     If you were dying, what would you do? Alexander Solzhenitsyn asks this question many times in his tragic novel, Cancer Ward. Would you be noble, read books, and determine to help the world before you were gone? Or would you argue and fall in love and despise those around you? Solzhenitsyn has rendered the livings and deaths of big hearted men in broad, yet subtle strokes. He composes their stories with typical Russian frostiness, freezing the tears on my eyelids, but leaving me moved all the same.

     Kostoglotov, a victim of neglected medical care in the past, is a lanky and wild exile, angry with his lot and ready to prove his worth to the world, or at least to the women in it. He was taken from his home, and even if they did let him return, his mind is seared with prison camps and hard, hungry labor. His cynicism chills me even now, forcing a tender mind to decide whether life can be good or not. Is there hope for a happy ending, when he is afflicted with such pain and loneliness? He knows that he will die, someday. What will he do before then, in the short time left?

     The important nurses, the feminine ones, are Voya and Vera. Voya is a round little blonde, nothing you could commit your life to, but Vera is slender and faithful. Oleg Kostoglotov is confused between the two of them, and chooses neither in the end, but still they rouse him from his dead, self pitying sleep. They were so lively and hardworking they made me sit up and blink.    

     Rusanov is too important to have cancer. Since the disease didn’t ask his opinion, he occupies himself with reassuring everyone that it is certainly not fatal. He has a family: a cold, brilliant daughter, respectable wife, and a son that is too kind for his father’s tastes. Rusanov is a man that sits before his crackling fire, but is unaffected by the heat. He lives to please the People, but he has forgotten who the People are. He teaches me to remember that life is built on love, not respect.

      It’s a long and complicated exposure of human nature, and hope is given to some, but taken away from many. Ludmila Afanasyevna, a talented diagnostician at the Medical Center, discovers a tumor in her belly. Her flailing human emotions are agonizing to observe, and I wonder how much I can really know about this ravaging disease until I get it myself. Dyomka is a young boy who painfully submits to amputating his leg and the cancer inside it. The cancer is gone, and he feels cured, but he only has one leg. What would I give up to live?

     The doctors in this book are horrendous sometimes. They let the hopeful go, uninformed of the nearness of death. “I’m free to go?” the patients will say. “Of course,” comes the answer from a bustling heavy figure in a too-tight white overcoat.  I never ceased to ask why they wouldn’t tell them, allow them to prepare for death, which comes like a freight train with no brakes. Why keep them hoping when they’re only to be snuffed out? Perhaps the doctors know too well that we will all die, one day or soon.  

     I know the answer to my question. Hope cannot be killed with the body, or the soul will die as well. The story is only concerning hope and its results. So many of the patients were in great pain, yet they kept a smile on their faces and a kind word on their lips. How is it that those who suffered least were the least resilient? Because the greater the trouble, the more necessary the hope.

     Dormidont Tikhonovich, Ludmila’s favorite doctor, at least approached the hallowed ground of the reason for life as he pondered the illness of Ludmila:

     “At such moments an image of the whole meaning of existence---his own during the long past and the short future ahead, that of his late [meaning does seem to falter at the word late] wife, of his young granddaughter and of everyone in the world­---came to his mind. The image he saw did not seem to be embodied in the work or activity which occupied them [here lies the crux of it for the patronizing Rusanov], which they believed was central to their lives, and by which they were known to others. The meaning of existence was to preserve unspoiled, undisturbed, and undistorted the image of eternity with which each person is born.

Like a silver moon in a calm still pond.”

There is the answer to Alexander’s work. What is life if it ends here? Eternity awaits us.

Ms. Byler (just to be official)