January 2010 Lower Family Newsletter

[Chad T. Lower]

December was a whirlwind of activity.  As mentioned in the last newsletter, it did snow the Wednesday of the week I was giving finals, so my 8am final was rescheduled for Saturday.  In total, I gave 4 finals between Friday 8am and Saturday 11am.  Grades were due Tuesday at noon, so the rest of the weekend and most of Monday was spent grading.  I have been busy trying to prepare for the upcoming semester since then and am still not ready.  I do have one more week to finish before classes begin again.  I am only teaching 5 classes (16 credits) this semester, which is a lot less than I have the last few semesters.  I am also teaching an evening class for the first time, but don't need to get up as early since I don't teach until 10 at the earliest on any given day.  I only teach one class on Tuesday and Thursday, but all 5 on Monday and Wednesday.

 

Although I have a week until my classes resume from the Winter Break, both Bella and Chi will go back to school this week.  Before the break, Malachi's class made gingerbread houses and had a visit from Santa Claus in the classroom.  Ali normally doesn't stay, but the school invited the families that day and she made a gingerbread house and received a gift from Santa as well.

 

Bella's Brownie Troop made centerpieces for the Christmas dinner held by St. Anthony's.  They will also be selling Girl Scout cookies this month.  If you are needing to get your fix and want to order any, just let me know.  During a ceremony in November, she earned her Brownie pin and 3 Try-It's (badges).

 

The weekend before Christmas, we travelled back to Chambersburg (the same place we stayed for Thanksgiving) for my family's Christmas celebration.  We left Friday after Bella got out of school and arrived in Chambersburg just before it started snowing.  That night, we went to a place called "Tiny Town."  One of the local residents made a tiny town.  The houses were about as tall as Ali and each house was decorated for Christmas on the outside and had furniture and the like on the inside.  It was cold, but the kids really enjoyed seeing each of the different houses.  It snowed from Friday night until Sunday morning dumping about 14 inches over the area.  Christmas gift exchange was to be held Sunday afternoon, but due to the weather, there were many families that weren't able to make it.  My cousin, Jen, and her partner, Barb, were flying in from Greece and made it to the states just before the airlines started delaying and cancelling flights.  Those that came had a good time, though, although we would have preferred for everyone to be there.

 

Christmas day was spent at our house in Williamsport.  The kiddos enjoyed opening their gifts and played most of the day.  That evening, we had a family friend Gretchen, her children Tyler and Symphony, and her brother George over to our house for some good food and fellowship.  Right before they arrived, there was an accident in front of our house (the roads were icy) and they shut down the road on our block.  Fortunately, everyone was able to walk away from their vehicles.

 

The day after Christmas (Saturday), we travelled to Suzy's parents' house for their Christmas celebration.  We were originally supposed to com home Monday, but the weather took a turn for the worse which caused us to stay until Wednesday.  Even though we were there an extra few days, it was good for the kids as Suzy's parents watch her brother's 3 kids during the week.  Add our three, and we had a houseful of 6 kids playing with each other and creating timeless memories.

 

For New Year's, Suzy and I were, in typical parent fashion, in bed at 10:30.  To be honest, I don't think it fully clicked in Suzy's mind the next day that we changed the year to 2010.  Later this year, Suzy and I will celebrate a decade of married life together.  One advantage to getting married in 2000 is that we always know how long we've been married just by truncating the current year.

 

Suzy is still writing.  She created a vehicle maintenance log and a weekly planner (Tuscany themed) for family as Christmas gifts.  She is still waiting to hear back from the publisher about the story as well. I still encourage you to check out her blog (www.susanlower.com) and read her eHow articles.  Her newest articles include:

How to Create a Meal Planner Book

How to Create a Vehicle Mileage and Maintenance Log Record Book

 

In keeping with the theme of I Corinthians 13 and the definition of love, the next part we come to is that Love is Not Proud.

 

In 1 Corinthians 8:1b, Paul writes that, "Knowledge makes people proud.  But love builds them up." (NIRV)  The NIV states it, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."  My favorite translation of this verse is the Worldwide English (WE) version, which reads, "Knowledge makes us proud.  Love is the real teacher."  We may know some information, and we may be correct in our knowledge, but we don't want to use that knowledge to make us think we are better than others.  In my own life, I am a teacher and I love gaining knowledge and then imparting that knowledge to others.  Sometimes I we come across some information that I think Suzy would be interested in reading, so I email it to her.  On more than one occasion, she has been offended by my emails even though that was never their intent.  She felt that because I sent that email, I don't feel she is doing an adequate job in whatever the subject of that article happens to be.  Most of the time, that is not true; Suzy is doing wonderfully as the status quo.  Often, the articles are a different way of thinking of a topic that she may not have considered or a way to tweak what she is doing to make her great efforts even better.  As we have grown in our relationship, I am sending less articles unless I preface them with love.  (On the other hand, Suzy is also being more tolerant and not assuming the worst when she received this knowledge from me.)  When we love, we don't think of ourselves as better than others.

 

Looking in a thesaurus, an antonym to proud is modest.  Where as being proud means thinking of ourselves as self-important, we should be modest in our attitude and behavior.  I mentioned Philippians 2:4 in an earlier post, but I want to share the verses before and after that one as well (2-8).  Using the WE version again, "Then make me very, very happy. Live in happiness with one another. Have the same love for each other. Think the same way. Agree together about things. All have one purpose in mind. Do not try to prove you are better than others. Do not be proud of yourselves, but be humble. Think of other people as being better than yourselves. Each one of you should not think only about himself, but about other people also. Think the same way Jesus Christ thought. He was in every way like God. Yet he did not think that being equal to God was something he must hold on to. He gave this up and became a servant. He was born a baby. And when he was a man, he was humble. He was even willing to die, yes, to die on a cross."  By definition, God IS self-important!  Yet, he came to this world as a baby -- an infant -- who was born in a barn and took his first naps in a feeding trough.  He was born to a poor family, to an un-wed teenager, and nearly killed by the King's orders.  Growing up, he was trained to be a blue-collar worker (carpenter).  His spent time with fishermen, tax collectors, the physically handicapped...  Yet we still celebrate his birth every year, over two millennia later, because his modesty gave us all an example we should desire to follow.

 

One more example of Christ's modesty can be found in John 13:14-15.  "I am your Lord and Master and have washed your feet. If I do that, then you should wash one another's feet. I have shown you what to do. Now you do as I have done."  Almost every church/denomination I have ever had the privilege of attending or learning about has two common tenets of their faith.  These are outward, physical acts that Christians do to show their relationship with Jesus Christ.  One is baptism by water.  John baptized with water and prepared the way for Jesus's ministry.  Although different denominations will argue as to the proper method of baptism (sprinkle vs. immersion) or age of appropriateness, this is a tenet they all hold.  Another tenet is the act of Communion (or partaking of the Eucharist).  Jesus broke bread and passed it to his disciples, then shared with them drink from a cup as part of his Last Supper.  Again, different denominations will argue as to what is partaken (transubstantiation, wine or grape juice), but it is a consistent practice among Christians.  My wife and I have been attending the denomination Church of God since shortly after we were married.  The CoG adds one more important tenet to the above two--foot-washing.  They take Jesus's words, "Now you do as I have done." to still apply to us today.  The first time I experiences this act, the men were in a room (the women were in a separate room) and we pair up to wash one another's feet.  It just happened that the Senior Pastor at our church was the person who washed my feet.  Then I washed his feet.  Sometimes I feel like Peter did 2000 years ago.  You are my Senior Pastor.  You shouldn't be washing my feet.  If anything, I should be washing yours.  But I think that is the exact reason Jesus washed their feet.  He was not arrogant.  He was not overbearing.  He went to them in love and said, "Let me serve you in this most humbling way."  His example was just one more way to show that he was not proud.

 

Go and do likewise.

 

Chad T. Lower
a.k.a. Chopper
http://chadtlower.tripod.com/

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Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others.
Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.
Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
                              Philippians 2:3-4