If the URCNA were Superman, Mrs. Glenda Mathes would be its Lois Lane. She’s always in the thick of the URCNA’s action, always eager to report its latest exploits, and always providing clear updates on its latest news. Most importantly, Mrs. Mathes has shown time and again that she is brimming with love and loyalty to the Church (I capitalize the first letter of Church intentionally) because Mrs. Mathes’s extends beyond the little URCNA federation. Her passion for God’s people, the body of Christ, is shown repeatedly in her work.
I’m sure many of our readers are familiar with Mrs. Mathes’s body of work. Her reports on church news are frequently published in Christian Renewal, the Mid-America Messenger, and The Outlook. She diligently reports on classes (plural of classis), synods, graduations, ordinations, anniversaries, and other events of note in the Reformed world. More recently, she has written an excellent book, Little One Lost: Living with Early Infant Loss, a poignant and much-needed look at the sorrow and pain so many couples experience with miscarriage, stillbirth, and newborn loss. In this book, Mrs. Mathes demonstrated that she not only has a “nose for news” but also a heart for God’s people. She also recently released A Month of Sundays: 31 Meditations on Resting in God, in which she encourages readers to be true Sabbath keepers, understanding that God has called his people to develop daily the attitudes of worship and rest we enjoy on Sunday.
Mrs. Mathes has a blog titled Ascribelog (ascribelog.wordpress.com), which is noteworthy for not only its content but also for having a very clever name. Of the decision to begin blogging and the title Ascribelog, Mrs. Mathes told me:
I hesitated to begin blogging because I was intimidated by the intelligent and articulate writing of many other bloggers. I felt that blogging was a presumptuous activity that assumed someone, somewhere, would be interested enough in what you have to say to bother to visit and actually read your blog. I was afraid that my musings would degenerate into self-pitying litanies. But I kept feeling like God was nudging me in the blogging direction.
One morning about eight years ago, I was complaining in prayer that I was an incompetent and uncreative writer, that I couldn’t even come up with a good name for a blog. Immediately, the name Ascribelog popped into my head. As a writer, I am a scribe, and my goal in everything is to ascribe glory to God.
No longer having the “I can’t even think of a name” excuse, I bit the blogging bullet and gingerly entered cyberspace.
Ascribelog regularly features meditations, news items, and helpful links, all provided by Mrs. Mathes. I generally use Ascribelog as a “one-stop shop” for the latest news and uplifting thoughts from Scripture. It’s a good site to check out every two or three days. Mrs. Mathes described the site this way: “Ascribelog is a bit different from a lot of blogs because it’s more than personal reflections. Since my work involves different types of writing, my blog presents various kinds of posts . . . But they’re all united under a common focus: ascribing glory to God.”
Popular posts include her reports from synod, her previously published articles (she usually posts them a month or so after they appear in Christian Renewal), and her meditations on the Psalms.
Her purpose in blogging is simple. Mrs. Mathes writes,
The primary purpose of Ascribelog is to glorify God. I hope and pray it always does that. I’d like to see it help people study their Bibles more closely to become more genuine believers who love God and others with all their hearts. I’d like to see it help unify Christ’s church in North America and around the world. I’d like to see it help people think about literature from a distinctively biblical perspective. These sound like lofty goals, but I know that God can do whatever he wants with my blog, despite its inept author.
Of the future of Ascribelog Mrs. Mathes writes, “I’d love to see my blog go wherever God leads it. If he led it to draw more people closer to him and draw believers together in Christ, I’d be thrilled. If he led it to help people appreciate quality literature and read and write from more biblically informed worldviews, I’d be ecstatic.
Mr. James Oord is a student at Mid-America Reformed Seminary. He and his wife live in Dyer, Indiana.