Mustafa

written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay



"Mustafa and his family traveled a very, very long way to get to their new country."


We're not told where they came from, or where they settled; it's not important to this story.  What is important is that Mustafa is an immigrant, and we have a chance to learn from him.


Gay's beautiful illustrations begin the story from the copyright page, cleverly showing the long, somber journey with which she opens her text.  Fanciful details throughout the artwork suggest wonder and strangeness without compromising the essentially real story.

Composed in short, simple sentences, the narrative could seem stilted. Instead it is poetic, and effectively cryptic. Through it we experience Mustafa's fledging courage, his crippling shyness and increasing loneliness, and the security of his mother's love.  Gay also gently evokes Mustafa's alienation from everywhere - from both the old country, familiar but grim, and from this new home with its disorienting abundance and a language he doesn't know.  Perhaps this, more than anything, defines the immigrant experience.


The main thread of the story is the persistent, and ultimately triumphant, kindness of another child.  She's certainly an example for us to follow, if we're ever fortunate enough.

But there's also an underlying theme, culminating midway through story, that makes Mustafa himself our example. Because he's not familiar with changing seasons, the brilliant autumn foliage strikes Mustafa as magical.  Looking around, he spies a lady speaking with birds and concludes she must be the wonderful person responsible for such beauty.  What we see is, of course, a destitute old woman feeding pigeons.  We can smile at Mustafa's naivete; but perhaps he is actually wiser than we are.


Like Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pnin, this story for children moves us with compassion for the stranger, then moves us beyond compassion to respect and even awe. 

A Lady To Some Swordsmen

You pepper all your prayers with just.  
Who will make a manful thrust?

Boy + Bot

by Ame Dyckman; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

Boy + Bot is a story of unlikely friendship.  The concept is not new, but the effectiveness of Ame Dyckman’s simple text makes her story a treat for children and adults alike.

“A boy was collecting pine cones in his wagon when he met a robot.”

Right away we learn that this is the sort of boy who is happy loading up his wagon with pine cones, and he lives in the sort of place where pine cones are abundant.  It’s also the sort of place where stray robots crop up (because, as it turns out, it’s the sort of place where reclusive inventors live in castles somewhere up the winding road).  A story-world in fourteen words.

Quite matter-of-factly the boy and the robot become friends, and in two ensuing episodes one or the other of them is incapacitated (the robot is accidentally powered off; the boy falls soundly asleep), prompting his companion to attempt a rescue.  These parallel episodes are as poignant as they are amusing; each character is distressed for his friend and tries earnestly to help, but each is hopelessly locked into his own conception of ailments and remedies.  Their efforts are well-meant but futile. In the end the inventor straightens things out, the two friends are delighted at each other’s recovery, and we are assured that many happy adventures follow.

One one level, Boy + Bot is a sweet, and very simple, story for small children.  It’s fun to read the robot voice and look at the silly ways the two friends interact.  At the same time, Ame is showing us something profound – the possibility that friendship can triumph over disparity. 

We grownups are great skeptics, great cynics.  We need to read this story for our children, and for ourselves.

This Made Me Laugh (which is pathetic because I wrote it)

Journal: Volunteering at Little Hands On the Farm
August 18, 2011 at 8:38pm

It’s called The Garden.  The instructions are to grab a seed and a shovel, plant the seed in the dirt, then walk to the end of the garden and harvest it.  In reality kids are grabbing round plastic tokens bearing the image of a vegetable, burying them, grabbing a decorative Styrofoam vegetable from a basket, and moving on to The Grainery.  My job is to dispense instructions where needed, and occasionally use a garden rake to find and gather the buried seed tokens.  It’s a beautiful sunny day with a light breeze, so I have no complaints with being outside for a four-hour shift on a well-beloved exhibit at the Iowa State Fair.  Also the seed-planting part is not open due to rain earlier in the day…that’s mainly why I have no complaints.

12:30  Sky is blue, people are happy, job is easy, tomatoes look real enough to eat….life is good.

12:35 Exhibit supervisor comes by and declares the garden dry enough for planting.  There goes easy.  But it’s still beautiful out, and my co-gardener is wearing a bandanna like Rambo, so I still have no complaints.

12:45 Raking seed tokens out of the dirt.  Families really love this exhibit!

1:00  It’s interesting talking to Rambo.  Turns out he tilled up his backyard and planted it with corn, to avoid further maintenance, and is raising thirteen meat rabbits because it sounded interesting.  He cleared up my confusion about two heavy elderly women who were watching us from a bench in the exhibit.  They caught my interest because they were wearing official tags, and because they’d moved our water cooler off the bench onto the ground to make room for themselves.  (It’s the kind of water cooler that has to be on a bench to be used).  “Security,” he explained.  Their widespread Fareway ads certainly look ferocious.

1:15  Raking again.  The hardest thing about this job is dodging family photos.

1:30  Rambo and I joke about the obviously-local band playing nearby.  Kids are getting confused because they dig up three or four pepper seeds in their attempt to bury one potato, so I grab the rake and get back to work.  Our security detail has fallen asleep.

1:45 Raking.  Again.

2:00  Good idea: They should make the seed chips metal, so we can search for them with metal detectors.

2:30 We can hear a tractor pull going on in the main grandstand.  It fills the silences when the death metal band next door is taking a breath.  (Really, who scheduled that next to a kid’s exhibit?)

2:45 Still raking.  I overhear a father encouraging his son to “bury it real deep!”

3:00  Better idea: they should make this a rotating exhibit:  A garden for half an hour, then an archeological dig for half an hour. 

3:30  The tractor pull is still going on; inky black smoke billows into the blue sky above the exhibit that teaches children how natural and healthy Iowa agriculture is.  It sounds like one of the monsters is charging toward us.  I wonder: Once it breaks into sight, how many kids can I toss out of its path before I get pulverized?

4:00  Best idea: They should make the seed chips radioactive, so we can search for them with Geiger counters. 

4:15  I swear some of the boy children coming through are growing mustaches. 

4:25  What’s your definition of insanity?  Mine is raking a dirt patch free of plastic tokens and sorting them into baskets, so kids can grab them out of the baskets and bury them in the freshly-raked dirt.

Hymns as Lullabies

Having a baby at home has motivated me to learn songs and hymns by heart so I can sing them to her throughout the day.  Melody and rhythm are excellent for stimulating those tiny synapses - DIY Baby Einstein, if you like. Memorizing hearty Christian lyrics stimulates my thinking on several levels, promoting meditation and preventing the total onset of "baby brain."  And, if God wills, as Aletheia grows these hymns will lead to gospel conversations and the development of her own devotional theology.

The hymn "Abide With Me" is our most recent acquisition.  This might seem like an odd lullaby for an infant since the lyrics, reproduced below, are really a prayerful end-of-life contemplation.  You could say it's a lullaby for the elderly.  But then, I appreciate the perspective this hymn provides on any stage of life.  It reminds me that my baby, like my grandparents, is facing "death and decay."  It reminds me that I need daily grace to "foil the tempter's pow'r."  It reminds me how urgent it is for the cross to be held up before her mind's eye as well as mine.  And when I look at her tiny baby form and sing on her behalf "Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me," I'm reminded that she is in the care of the sovereign God.


Abide With Me

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see—
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;
Heav’n’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

How the Introduction to Hebrews Does Its Job

When I memorized the book of Hebrews, I saved the first four verses for last – a sweet reward for many months of working through extended argument and exhortation. It’s such a rich and beautiful introduction to the sermon!  But as I studied it more closely, I became confused by the meaning.

The two main statements of the section seem to be “God…has spoken” and “(Christ) sat down.”  But what do they have to do with each other?  When you add them together, what do you get? 

“Speaking + Sitting = x.  Solve for x.”

Like any good communicator, the speaker-writer of Hebrews is using his introduction to flag his main themes.  These two concepts make sense together when you see how each one plays out in the rest of the sermon.

God Has Spoken

The writer keys into the concept of God speaking when he gives his first exhortation: “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard” – that is, the message “declared at first by the Lord” (chapter 2).  It’s also prominent at the beginning of the main instructional territory, beginning with the quote “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (chapter 3). And it’s used wrap up the main part of the sermon at the end of chapter 12: “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.”

So in his introduction, the writer alerts to the fact that his entire message is one that originates from God Himself.

The Son Sat Down

Most notably, this second concept occurs at the climax of the speaker’s argument in chapter 10, just before he plunges into his most passionate plea: “when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God…for by a single sacrifice he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified”.  You can also find it referenced at the beginning of chapter 8, which highlights the infinite superiority of Christ’s priesthood; and the beginning of chapter 12, where the ending of Christ’s suffering compels us to endure until our suffering also ends.

So the message of Hebrews, encapsulated in the introduction, is this:  God has spoken authoritatively, revealing that Christ dealt with sin once and for all.  The only acceptable response is for us to place all our trust in him and live faithfully even through suffering and persecution.

Appendix (Enter At Your Own Risk)

Here’s how the original Greek grammar, represented as closely as possible in English, highlights the two main statements:

   Having spoken long ago, in many times and in many ways, to our fathers by the prophets,

In these last days God has spoken to us by his Son

    Whom he appointed the heir of all things

     Through whom also he made the worlds;                               

     Who, 

            being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his nature,

            Upholding all things through the word of his power,

            After making purification for sins

                   (He) sat down at the right hand of the Majesty 

                       on high,

Having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

                               

*I relied on the ESV for the translation of the words, but modified it somewhat to show more of the structure as it appears in Greek.

                               

The highlighted lines are the two main independent clauses.  They stand on their own; the surrounding phrases serve to either introduce them or explain them.   Or to put it more technically, these two are independent clauses, while everything else is a relative clause (who/whom) or a participial phrase (“-ing”).

This section has a really cool pattern.  The first main statement is that God the Father has spoken, but the focus quickly centers on the messenger, His Son, using three relative clauses to give us the credentials of this Son.  The third relative clause then expands into three participial phrases which detail activities of the Son, leading up to the other main statement – that the Son ultimately sat down – with one last participial phrase creating a segue into the next section.

On another note, the concept of Christ sitting down is fascinating.  I most strongly associate it with the finality of Christ’s sacrifice, but Peter O’Brien (The Letter to the Hebrews [PNTC]) emphasizes that this theme identifies Christ as the king promised in the Davidic Covenant.  I believe that the two concepts are inherently related, and hereby call dibs on that topic for a doctoral thesis (if I ever get to write one). 

Facing Bible Dragons

Is there a book of Scripture that you find both fascinating and terrifying?  You love to meditate on certain verses and feel guilty for avoiding the rest of it, but it just seems too hard to even try to understand?

Hebrews was like that for me.  This anonymous sermon-transcript contains some of the most beautiful, profound statements in the Bible, like "it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens;" but at the same time it contains some of the most doctrinally thorny passages.  What do you do with something like "if we go on sinning deliberately, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment"?!

When we're confronted with an intriguing but intimidating portion of Scripture, we should stop avoiding it and instead confront the challenge head on.  God gave it to us so we could know Him better and love Him more!  But if you're like me, simply reading through the whole  book doesn't do the trick.  By the time we're half-way through we've already forgotten key details, even on our second or third or tenth trip through. It's hard to remember all the  important dots, let alone connect them!

 

So here's an idea:  Memorize it!  Memorize all of it, not just your favorite bits.

 

A year and a half ago I committed to memorizing Hebrews as a 30th birthday present to myself.  I wanted to become familiar with the less attractive passages and better understand what God is saying through all the parts put together. And having committed the whole of it to memory,  I can testify that through memorization it is possible to hold more of the "dots" in your head at once and think through the connection between them.   Do I now have a perfect understanding of the Hebrews?  Definitely not!  But I have a much better understanding and much greater enjoyment of the text.  And that, friends, is well worth the effort.

 

P.S.

The little book His Word in My Heart is a great help and encouragement for the challenge of memorizing Scripture in bulk.  An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture also looks helpful although I've not read that one.

 

P.P.S.

Still reading?!  Then here's a little more about my Hebrews project. 

 

I memorized most of it backward, starting in chapter 13 and working up from there.  That way even if the memorization effort were aborted I would at least be more familiar with a part that I wasn't before.  (If you decide to try this approach, just be aware that it can mess with how you view the flow of the text.)

I exercise my memory by compiling indexes.  Hebrews in particular is rich with recurring themes, so as I continue to study the book I sometimes try to list on paper every occurrence of a certain key word or concept, only looking at the text to double-check my work afterward.  This is a great study tool as well as a way to help retain the memorized text.  (Another great exercise is creating an outline from memory.)

 

I leverage my memorization to hold proof-texts accountable.  That is, if a speaker or writer cites an isolated verse from Hebrews I make a habit of reviewing the context in my mind.  Sometimes it helps me better appreciate the speaker or writer's point as well as the meaning of the text.  It can also help me recognize when a verse has been kidnapped and used out of context.  Either way, this practice further reinforces the memorized text for greater retention.

 

 P.P.P.S

Seriously, if you're still reading this you need something better to do.  Go find a text to memorize and start working!