er, but the real heavy installment payments, interest and dividends are done in a 20-year period. Our son, Rick, is seventeen and Laurie, our youngest, is fifteen now so I figure I’ve five more years left on the original contract. Eagerly I look forward to these last five years as one big absolute ly marvelous challenge. Because of these trying times, days of social and peer pressures, this commit ment will take every ounce of strength, intelligence and God-giv en wisdom I can pray into the lease terms. The children, yours and ours, are given to us as a gigantic trust fund from the Lord. Some of us enter in to the agreement irresponsibly; others with great seriousness of purpose. I think by carefully man aging our schedules, love, disci pline and fun times, God can and does give us far more than our original investment. When I've heard a young mother with three or four children say, “ I can’t stand this trapped, shut-away- from-the-adult-world fe e lin g any longer!” I have to remember all the times I would have given anything to just have eaten dinner once in a while without cutting up any body’s meat! But I have to call too, those days in the 20-year commit ment go by in a fast blur and soon you exchange the tired, never- enough rest problems for the jun ior higher’s conflicts and the high schooler's pressures. After the 20 years of praying, laughing, paying, shouting and lov ing have all grown up into men and women with commitments all their own . . . I plan to sign another contract! That’s right, the big sign up begins all over again! I figure if I was a good mother, I'll be a mar velous grandmother, with all that joy and no re s p o n s ib ility (pay ments)! So, I guess sign-ups are a way of life. I pray that the Lord may always remind me of the im portant ones. In the meantime, I’m enjoying to the fullest, my 20-year commit ment.
Joyce Landorf
T here's hardly a thing in life to day that doesn’t require our signing on the dotted line for a goodly portion of our lives: Buy a car and . . . sign up for two to three years’ payment. Find a house you really love and . . . sign a 25-year loan and a sec ond mortgage. Move in and . . . sign up for gas, water, electricity nd phone. Get your draft notice and . . . sign up two to four years of your life. Choose the college of your choice and . . . sign for four (or more) years. Shop in Penneys or Sears and an ambitious clerk asks . . . “ Sign up for a charge account” ? Deposit money at the bank and . . . you find yourself signing up for a give-away television. Open your front door and . . . sign a protest or petition regarding anything from politics to pollution. Go to Sunday school and . . . sign up for potato salad at the next potluck dinner. Go to church and . . . sign your annual pledge tithe card. Be a teenager and the only im
portant sign up is for driver's edu cation. Fall in love and somebody twists your arm to sign the marriage li cense. Fall out of love and (with the new instant laws) . . . sign up for a divorce. I suppose I’ve been thinking about the big drive to sign up every thing and everybody because this year (along with signing up for the bank’s T.V.) I've signed a 3-year recording contract with Vibrant, a book contract with Zondervan and a 13-week West Coast syndication of my radio b roadcas t “ Here’s Joyce.” It occurs to me that one of the most important sign-ups (beside the marriage license) is one that never really required my actual handwritten signature, yet it’s a binding and practically legal agree ment. I speak of my long-term lease involving our two children. I call it my “ 20-year commitment plan" and I signed up for it in the deliv ery room as each baby was being born. Actually, it runs a little long
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THE KING’S BUSINESS
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