Pious Living

This year has been full of good reading, i enjoy sitting with the children and reading aloud, though now my audience is getting smaller, since most of them are over 7 years old and reading themselves....but here and there they also join in the coach and share the rest time after dinner. We started the year with the Laura Ingalls series, such a beautiful way to start the year as we follow the family and Laura in their learning. When spring was approaching we read Tom Sawyer and also the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,  two classics of Mark Twain that remind us of something we all long for, a Home. Finally we have been enjoying Rudyard Kipling and his Jungle Book. Now that in Wisconsin it seems summer is short and fading away, I am considering reading aloud again Heidi, every chapter brings tears to my eyes and my heart gets filled with compassion, a good idea to break the hardness of the hot season.

One of the things of good books is that you can apply its lessons to your everyday life. For example, in the Jungle Book, the second chapter when Mowgli is captured by the Monkey People, has been giving me ideas on how Christians and Heathen alike are under the same circumstances, yet they respond so differently. the Jungle people, law abiding people can be liken to the Christian, whereas the monkey people to the Heathen. How is my life daily in these terms, am i responding to human nature and circumstances here on earth as heathen or as christian?

I am still looking into how the schedule is going to work, to adapt to my husband I thought I should wake up later, and not lead the household in the first hours of the day, but alas, then i observe my spiritual life also sinking backwards and unclean thoughts coming loudly....Somebody told me: Early rising is a virtue, do not abandon it, yet in the Bible it also says: Those who lose their life will gain it. It will take time to define our lives together as a family, a family such as God intended. I am patiently waiting for the next step to take.

Lately i have found these beautiful: Rules for a Godly Life, which consist of 20 pages of rules for pious living.

The first part consists on training your thought life. One example is : Keep free from wicked, idle, or unclean thoughts. Prov 4:23. For as your thoughts are so is your speech, your conduct, and your entire way of life.

The second part dwells in our words. One example is: Seek to avoid therefore, all non-edifying talk; let your words be thoughtful, few and true.

The last part focus on works. One example is : Stand firm, with all your strenght , against your bosom sins, those which your personal nature, more than any other sin, has a tendency to commit.

 I am so grateful to have found them, I wish I had somebody to be accountable for each other. Perhaps my husband. I am aware of these rules for monastic order and other religious, yet in the lay people i haven't found them, why is so? is it because the serving of each other in Godly marriage brings sanctity enough? Perhaps. But as I look around and at myself I see the need of more, more training to be walking the path of Jesus.