The Saving Life of Christ--Thomas

The Saving Life of Christ
by Ian Thomas
(Zondervan: 1961, 143pp)
4 stars—highly recommended!


I happened upon this unassuming looking little book recently, yellowed with age but packed with timeless spiritual wisdom for any generation—at least as pertinent now as when it was written.
Mr. Thomas is passionate that Christians discover the empowerment for life and ministry that God intended in sending Jesus not only to die for them but to live in them.  He is concerned with evangelistic efforts that produce converts oblivious to the source of their new life.  His words are challenging:

“Ignoring what they say, and what they sing, and what they pray, countless Christians live as though God were dead—and the Church of Jesus Christ needs above everything else to re-discover the fact God is alive, and to act as though He were! 
“Suppose that God were to die tonight!  Would it really make any difference to the way you live your Christian life tomorrow?  For all you really count upon Him as you go about your daily business…”(124)

The author’s own experience as a young believer was one of fiery zeal to do things for God but lacking in any real ‘fruit’.  Only when he had burned out did he come to understand that  Christ intends to live His life through the believer in a very literal sense—“Christ [who is] your life…”(Col.3:4).  His ministry was transformed.  Jesus Himself said, “Without me you can do nothing.” (Jn.15:5) and with his wry sense of humor Thomas amplifies: “How much can you do without Him?  Nothing!  So what is everything you do without Him? Nothing!  It is amazing how busy you can be doing nothing!” (142)

What I found most fascinating about this book is Thomas’ ability to illustrate New Testament truths with Old Testament types and stories.  For instance, using the Bible as its own commentary he traces the use of salt to heal a barren land (a type of the carnal Christian) (II Kings 2), to make meat offerings acceptable to God (Ezek.43:24), to be provided without limit for the service of the temple (Ezra 7) and to represent the believer’s impact on the world as he is filled with the true Salt— “the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus imparted to the true believer by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”(29)

The stories of the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings and conquests in Canaan are replete with lessons for the believer.  Thomas sees the ‘carnal Christian’ as one who has been saved from ‘Egypt’ but has failed to be filled with the Holy Spirit and enjoy the fruits of life in Canaan.  He suggests that the MANNA  represents the work of the Holy Spirit.  It has the ‘taste of fresh oil’ (Num.11:8) typifying the Spirit’s witness to the believer that he is God’s child, and the taste of honey (Ex.16:31), a picture of the Spirit whetting the believer’s appetite for what’s to come— ‘the land flowing with milk and honey’, as typifying the fullness of the Spirit every believer is called to enjoy.

Three excellent chapters discuss the enemy nation, Amalek, as a type of the sin nature in the believer and why it’s important to “Remember Amalek”.  A practical discussion is included of what it means to “walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” (Gal.5:16) It is NOT a matter of trying not to ‘fulfill the lusts of the flesh’ so that I am rewarded by a walk in the Spirit.  For this will keep me quite preoccupied with myself instead of with Christ.  “There is nothing quite so nauseating or pathetic as the flesh trying to be holy!”  This is self-righteousness and full of self-praise or self-pity, but either way preoccupied with the energy of the flesh, not the Spirit.  Thomas suggests instead that to ‘walk in the Spirit’ is to maintain ‘an attitude of total dependence on God, exposing everything to Him’, and that as a consequence you will not fulfill the ‘lusts of the flesh—for you will be enjoying through Him the victory that Christ has already won.’  To walk in the Spirit is the means to enjoy the Saving Life of Christ! (82)

This is not a long or difficult book to read but it is a book that you will want to read in increments (with a pencil in hand if you’re like me!) to fully appreciate and apply what is taught about the saving life of Christ.  “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” –(Romans 5:10)

[I’m happy to see it’s been reprinted with a more eye-catching cover and  is available from Amazon.com where you will also find some inspiring testimonies of those who have read it.]


Major Ian Thomas is the founder of Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers (CMFT), more recently known as Torchbearers International, an evangelical Christian educational organization with Bible schools throughout the world.
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Quotes not to be missed:

“Relate everything, moment by moment as it arises, to the adequacy of what He is in you, and assume that His adequacy will be operative.” (16)

“Pray without ceasing”(I Thess. 5:17)… here the word to pray does not mean to beg or to plead as if God were unwilling to give—but simply to expose by faith every situation as it arises, to the all-sufficiency of the One who indwells you by His life.” (16)

“…if you do not walk in the power of God the Holy Spirit, if your life is not abandoned to the indwelling sovereignty of Jesus Christ, then all the promises of victory in the Bible, all the promises of power by the Holy Spirit and of divine vocation will simply be texts, printed on so much paper, impersonal and irrelevant! Your mind will be filled only with memories of that which has been true to your experience in the bitterness of defeat.” (51)

“The challenge we hear so often today in the name of consecration is ‘Do more!  Give more! Be more! Go! Go! Go!’ But God says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’!  In other words, quit the panic! Just let God be God!”(59)

“It is comparatively easy to be sorry for what you have done and to recognize the sinfulness of sins committed, but we are by nature loathe to concede the natural depravity of what we are and the total spiritual bankruptcy of man without God.  We fall again and again into the error of estimating ourselves without due regard to the ultimate origin of righteousness and the ultimate origin of sinfulness.” (99)

“…we have become accustomed to the elaborate machinery of the church, as an organizational enterprise in which carnal activity on the part of Christians is not only tolerated, but solicited—often in sublime sincerity…”(101)

“When you come to know Jesus Christ in the power of His resurrection, you receive absolutely nothing new from God; you simply discover and begin to enjoy experientially what you received from God the day that you were redeemed; the tragedy is that you can live for ten, twenty, or fifty years or more, having all that God can give you in Jesus Christ, and yet living in self-imposed poverty…”(116)

“…every spiritual awakening and every mighty movement of God has been the consequence of a return to the basic teachings of the Bible, and inevitably, in reverse, such a genuine spiritual awakening has always produced Bible-believing Christians.” (120)

“Spirituality in man is his availability to God for his divine action, and the form of this activity is irrelevant.  if it pleases you, always and only, to do what pleases God—you can do as you please!” (134)

“That is the why and the how of all spiritual activity, and this is all you need to know.
Why?  God told me to.
How?  The God who told me to is with me.” (120)

The Second Coming—Percy

The Second Coming
by Walker Percy
(Farrar,Straus,Giroux: 1980), 360pp.

So, I’ve read my first Walker Percy novel! Here’s an author who takes his background as a devout Catholic and southerner, trained as a medical doctor, and combines it with his life experience of having lost both grandfather, father and mother to suicide, and weaves a story in quest of making sense of the nonsense of living in a crazy world.

Meet the two main characters: Will, a well-respected, well-to-do widower who finds himself depressed and increasingly suspect of the farcical nature of life as he sees it. The answer? Not suicide necessarily, for then one never finds the answers…and so he concocts a seemingly insane experiment to prove for himself once and for all whether God exists. The outcome surprises both Will and the reader.

In the process of pursuing his experiment, he meets Allison, a recent escapee from a mental institution, who has undergone too many shock treatments to remember much about how life works. She’s adept at reading facial expressions and stating the obvious but clueless when it comes to appropriate protocol in reacting to strangers. For instance, what is this expression: “Have a nice day.” Such a nice thing to say, so why is it said in such a perfunctory way like ‘goodbye’ ? Good question; she has many of these. She puzzles too over the meaning of “love”, having no better notion of it than that it ‘sounds like something dark and furry which makes a lowing sound.” (40)

This duo of characters give the author an unusual perspective from which to evaluate the meaning of life, language and relationships. With the perceptive diagnostic skill of a doctor and his own hard-earned life experience Percy Walker blazes a bizarre and sometimes humorous trail toward the best answers to life’s hardest questions. His is not a story of complex or gripping plot. It is even unbelievable in spots, but this is forgiveable in exchange for his expert handling of thought and conversation which so clearly mirror the reality of the human condition.

In fact within the story’s first handful of pages the reader is faced with the possibility that something might be wrong with life, not only with that of the depressed epileptic main character, but also with life as he knows it. Is it possible for a majority of people “to deceive themselves into believing that things are going well when in fact they are not, when things are in fact farcical. Most Romans worked and played as usual while Rome fell about their ears.”(4)


This is not just another mindless novel to pass the time of day, though it is very readable. There is much food for thought in its pages on such diverse themes as belief vs. unbelief, real love vs. ‘doing it’, evidences for the existence (or not) of God, sanity vs. insanity, and the quandary of needing relationship when people are so tough to get along with! And yes, there’s reference to the Second Coming of Christ, but this is only a fragment of the meaning in the book’s title. The title’s full significance is in fact more food for thought!
--LS
______________________

A review would be incomplete without a sampling of quotes from THE SECOND COMING that give a taste of Walker Percy.


“If one person is depressed for every ninety-nine who are not or who say they are not, who is to say that the depressed person is right and the ninety-nine wrong, that they are deceiving themselves? Even if this were true, what good would it do to undeceive the ninety-nine who have diverted themselves with a busy round of work and play and so imagine themselves happy?” (5)

“Peace is only better than war if peace is not hell too. War being hell makes sense.” (21)

Lewis [a golfing friend], to Will : “The trouble is you and I share something that sets us apart.”
--“What’s that?”
“We’re the once-born in a world of the twice-born. We have to make our way without Amazing Grace. It’s a lonely road but there are some advantages along the way. The company, when you find it, is better. And the view, though bleak, is bracing. You see things the way they are. In fact, don’t you feel sometimes like the one-eyed in the land of the blind?”
He frowned. Why was Lewis’s unbelief so unpleasant? It was no better than the Baptist’s belief.
If belief is shitty and unbelief is shitty, what does that leave?
No, Lewis was even more demented than the believers. Unbelieving Lewis read Dante for the structure. At least, believers were consistent. They might think Dante is a restaurant in Asheville but they don’t read Marx for structure.” (151)

“Two more problems:
One: How to live. How do you live? My life expectancy is approximately another fifty or sixty years. What to do?”
Two: Memory. It’s coming back…Speak memory. Why? Only because I have to know enough of where I’ve been to know which way I’m going.” (93)

“Is there another way? People either believe everything or they believe nothing. People like the Christians or Californians believe anything, everything. People like you and Lewis Peckham and the professors and scientists believe nothing. Is there another way?” (132)
“Is it possible for people to miss their lives in the same way one misses a plane? And how is it that death, the nearness of death, can restore a missed life?....Why is it that without death one misses his life?” (124)

“…people notice very little indeed, ghost-ridden as they are by themselves.”(174)

“A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it? And if the good news is true, why are its public proclaimers such ### and the proclamation itself such a weary used-up thing?”(189)

“As unacceptable as believers are, unbelievers are even worse, not because of the unacceptability of unbelief but because of the nature of the unbelievers themselves who in the profession and practice of their unbelief are even greater ### than the Christians.

“The present-day unbeliever is a greater ### than the present-day Christian because of the fatuity, blandness, incoherence, fakery, and fatheadedness of his unbelief. He is in fact an insane person. If God does in fact exist, the present-day unbeliever will no doubt be forgiven because of his manifest madness.” (189)

“Are people necessary? Without people there are no tunneling looks. Brooks don’t look and dogs look away. But late afternoon needs another person.
“What do I do if people are the problem? Can I live happily in a world without people? What if four o’clock comes and I need a person? What do you do if you can’t stand people yet need a person?” (239)

“Must one have a plan for the pursuit of happiness? If so, is there a place where one looks up what one is supposed to do or is there perhaps an agency which one consults?
Who says?
Who is doing the supposing?
Why not live alone if it is people who bother me? Why not live in a world of books and brooks but no looks?” (241)

“Death in the guise of belief is not going to prevail over me, for believers now believe anything and everything and do not love the truth, are in fact in despair of the truth, and that is death.

“Death in the guise of unbelief is not going to prevail over me, for unbelievers believe nothing, not because truth does not exist but because they have already chosen not to believe, and would not believe, cannot believe, even if the living truth stood before them, and that is death.” (273)

“Is she a gift and therefore a sign of a giver? Could it be that the Lord is here, masquerading behind this simple silly holy face?” (360)

__________________________________

And lastly, Walker Percy’s writing is perhaps best understood with reference to his own sense of calling as an author. Here are his own words:

“To the degree that a society has been overtaken by a sense of malaise rather than exuberance, by fragmentation rather than wholeness, the vocation of the artist, whether novelist, poet, playwright, filmmaker, can perhaps be said to come that much closer to that of the diagnostician rather than the artist's celebration of life in a triumphant age.

Something is indeed wrong, and one of the tasks of the serious novelist is, if not to isolate the bacullus under the microscope, at least to give the sickness a name, to render the unspeakable speakable. Not to overwork the comparison, the artist's work in such times is assuredly not that of the pathologist whose subject matter is a corpse and whose question is not "What is wrong?" but "What did the patient die of?" For I take it as going without saying that the entire enterprise of literature is like that of a physician undertaken in hope. Otherwise, why would be here? Why bother to read, write, teach, study, if the patient is already dead?––for, in this case, the patient is the culture itself.

[I]t is the primary business of literature an art . . . [to be] a kind of finding out and knowing and telling, both in good times and bad, a celebration of the way things are when they are right and a diagnostic enterprise when they are wrong. The pleasures of literature, the emotional gratifiction of reader and writer, follow upon and are secondary to the knowing.”

["Diagnosing the Modern Malaise," in Walker Percy, Sign-Posts in a Strange Land 204-221, at 206,207 (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1991)]

I hope you will dip in and try Walker Percy!  Incidentally, the main character of The Second Coming(1980) is first featured in Percy’s book: The Last Gentleman(1966), which I have yet to read!

--LS

A Prayer for Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany
by: John Irving(William Morrow and Co: 1989, 543pp.)

***4 stars***



“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” (13)


So begins the first-person account of a friendship between two 11-yr. old boys coming of age in a small New Hampshire town in the Vietnam War era.

Owen Meany, the hero of the narrative is very small for his age and bears the stigma of a freakish voice that never changes. But he possesses a strong belief in destiny. For him there are no accidents. Everything serves a purpose, including his tiny stature and his voice. When the mother of his best friend (John, the narrator of the story) is ‘accidentally’ killed by a baseball he hits, Owen is all the more committed to the idea that his hands are God’s hands to do with as He pleases. His belief is corroborated by key visions and dreams of what he will accomplish in his life. He lives to fulfill this destiny, which the reader doesn’t picture in its entirety until the final pages of this 543 page book, where Owen’s stature and voice play a key role in the heroic saving of others’ lives.

Along the way Owen’s faith mystifies and challenges all he meets. His unconventional re-enactment of the Christ child in a nativity play confirm the reader’s suspicion that this character is a type of Christ—coming into the world to sacrifice himself for others. His wordless but authoritative role as ‘the ghost-of-Christmas-yet-to-come’ in Dicken’s “Christmas Carol” play establish him as something of a prophet in his own community. He becomes known as ‘The Voice’ as he takes on an editorial column in the local school paper, intent on exposing injustices, challenging the status-quo and fomenting change. Through this character John Irving exemplifies the stubborn vision and courage that typify a person of strong faith.

His best friend, John, is by contrast skeptical. His view is captured in this quote: “You’re always telling me I don’t have any faith,” I wrote to Owen. “Well—don’t you see?...that’s a part of what makes me so indecisive. I wait to see what will happen next…because I don’t believe that anything I might decide to do would matter.”(446 ) As narrator, John is artfully portrayed in both the present action of the story and in his future life as an English teacher in Toronto, Canada where he ends up after ingenuously avoiding the draft, thanks to Owen’s courage and foresight. As an adult, he is critical of American politics, opposed to the War, and cautiously committed to belief in God as he reminisces about Owen’s miraculous life. This retrospective point of view enables the author to interject statistics and describe political tensions of the times surrounding the Vietnam War and the Iran-Contra affair of which the young friends would not have been fully aware, making the book a not-too-subtle platform for his rants on these and other issues, including TV!

The strength of A Prayer for Owen Meany is in its well-formed characters and dialogue. Irving’s attention to life-like details in presenting his characters and his method of moving the story-line along by interjecting realistic conversations between them, make the less believable and bizarre events of the story more credible. The story-line is unfortunately plagued with content of a sexual nature, which arguably is a real-life factor in a teenager’s life but is excessive in this reviewer’s opinion and may be offensive to some readers.

John Irving’s story is clearly based on first-hand research and life experience, allowing us to see inside the varied occupations of quarry workers, English professors, and even Army body escorts while drawing from his own childhood in New Hampshire and teaching career.  He keeps his readers well-tantalized with unanswered questions that make the lengthy 543 pages slip by. His reflections on faith as inspired by Owen’s life and death make this a story you won’t soon forget.

--LS

How to Ruin Your Life by 40--Farrar

How to Ruin Your Life by 40
by: Steve Farrar
(Moody: 2006, 143pp)

Don’t mistake this for a trivial book based on its facetious title. Steve Farrar addresses the 20’ish crowd with refreshing candor and relevance based not only on his own life experience but on his extensive interactions with people who have struggled and/or derailed their lives by the age of forty. What are the common denominators? The groundwork for a successful life at age forty is laid in the decisions that are made in the twenties. Sobering counter-examples are woven through chapters dealing with finding life’s purpose and one’s unique calling, finding and being the right mate, pursuing God’s will and guarding the heart. A ‘blow out’ at age 40 comes about because of errors in judgment and poor choices before then.

A particularly effective chapter (9-‘Honest Struggles’) discusses the critical need to deal honestly with the struggles of life before they erupt into full-blown disaster. The heart cannot be merely ignored or hidden, it must be guarded. “It is the struggle to guard you heart that will determine what happens to you by the time you are forty.”(125)

Farrar concludes with a recommendation he calls one’s “minimum daily requirements”, suggesting that the reading of Scripture is to the health of the heart what adequate nutrition is to the body. “You can’t fight off temptation when you are malnourished.” (138) He suggests a chapter of Proverbs a day, read and put into practice, as a safeguard against ruining your life by forty.

I appreciate Farrar’s obvious passion and insight. His Bible-based counsel is both pointed and practical. This book will be a timely encouragement to young adults and even to those of us who are older, but still intent on living our lives to their fullest potential.

--LS


“The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God, and after conversion to keep it with him.”—Charles Bridges

As Easy as Drinking Water--Javid

As Easy as Drinking Water: A Muslim Forgiven
by: Afshin Javid
WinePress Publ., 2010, [Beware this publisher. More info via 'google']144pp.


WARNING: Contents no longer endorsed by ghost writer as authentic! (Feb.2012)*

“As easy as drinking water” is the Persian expression Afshin Javid uses to summarize his own story of finding forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  His riveting and inspiring testimony  commences with a brief synopsis of his childhood in Iran.  He was a zealous and committed Muslim, the pride and joy of his grandfather who commissioned him to go to the West and make converts for Islam.  His illegal immigration attempts land him in a Malaysian prison where hope of ever being freed is slim.  Here he comes face to face with the reality of Jesus Christ and his life is forever changed.  

His conversion reads like a modern-day Isaiah 6 story of God’s revelation of His holiness, Javid’s sinfulness and His offer of cleansing, followed by His commissioning of Javid to tell the Good News of salvation.  The miraculous, though not sought, is woven through his testimony much like it was in the days of the New Testament church.  God’s incredible interventions in Javid’s life and subsequent ministry are an awe-inspiring reminder that God is alive and well in our day, and is still a wonder-working God.  Javid’s own passion coupled with his candid retelling give this story a refreshing and empowering vitality.  His example of simple trust and obedience are inspiring reminders of the life of discipleship every Christian is called to.

[Unfortunately Mr. Javid has not been candid or honest in the telling of his story.  It is very impressive, very inspiring but not altogether factual.  As of February,2012, the ghost writer, Dan Holmes, has rescinded his endorsement of this story as true and lays out some of his objections at his website: 2peter2.blogspot.com
Mr. Javid has been required to step down from his pastorate following multiple allegations of immoral behavior and cult-like leadership.]

As Easy as Drinking Water  will inspire fresh faith and worship of the God who is worthy of all we are and have.  I highly recommend it!

--LS   I have retained this book review as a sobering reminder to all of us to beware of false teachers and of the 'deceitfulness of sin' in the times in which we live.  I commend to you to read instead: 2 Peter 2, I Tim 6, II Tim.3,4.  The Word of God is forever to be trusted.


P.S. I had opportunity to hear Afshin Javid tell his own story at Missions Fest, Vancouver this year.  He is a dynamic speaker with a passion for the lost, be they Muslim or any other 'stripe', and a passion for believers to live the Word they claim to believe.  He reserved the writing of his own story for twenty years--so that his life would have opportunity to prove that this was no passing 'phase' but a lasting transformation!  He is currently a pastor in the Vancouver area. This was the 'alleged' reason for waiting to tell his story.  Sadly, he was already deeply involved in scandalous behavior when the book was published.  May God's goodness lead Mr. Javid to repentance. --LS


*For more information visit 2Peter2.blogspot.com

The Great Divorce—Lewis

The Great Divorce*
(A fantastic bus ride from hell to Heaven—a round trip for some but not for others)
--C.S.Lewis
(MacMillan: 1946, 128pp.)

*Divorce: “a separation, especially one that is total or complete”

This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read and I am hesitant to attempt a review. It is first of all an allegory but one staged with the minimum of context. From the start the reader is waiting with the first person narrator to discover where he is and where he is headed. The setting is some sort of run-down town in a dismal twilight zone. A scrappy collection of restless individuals are waiting for a bus to somewhere. The narrator joins them for want of anything more compelling to do.

Soon they are airborne and within a chapter’s space, have landed in a bright, large place, presumably outside our solar system. The bulk of the ‘storyline’ consists in conversations held or overheard, and in observations about the changing atmosphere and its effect on the passengers. As this new world of brilliant light is approached the faces take on ugly distortions of themselves—“full not of possibilities but of impossibilities”.
For the remainder of the book the reader accompanies the narrator in his exploration of this new place, which seems to be a sort of ‘trailhead’ to the path toward Heaven. The place they’ve come from seems to be a type of hell and it seems that this bus ride is their opportunity to determine if they are interested in proceeding or if they prefer to go back to hell.

I should clarify here, for those like myself who have a ‘problem’ with allegory in that it can paint a false picture of what is true: C.S. Lewis makes quite clear in his introduction that his imaginative suppositions of ‘transmortal’ conditions are purely fantasy and not to be construed as real speculation as to what will await us after death. Rather this sparsely detailed setting has given him a place to explore the mindsets of those who are hell-bound. The text is largely a matter of conversations and interactions observed by the narrator between the former bus occupants and the larger than life ‘real’ beings that inhabit this new world and are assigned to conduct those who are willing to Heaven.

Surprisingly, each one has an objection to going on to Heaven and one by one each chooses to retain the mindset that excludes him from Heaven and even to despise the thought of Heaven. The narrator is in a different category but I will not give away the clever story ending.

Each conversation represents a type of person whose way of thinking has misled them. There is the ‘intellectual’ who has dismissed all literal truth and feels entitled to his ‘honest opinion’, having drifted from faith and lost all sense of real reason in the process. Fact and God cannot not co-exist in his mind. When invited to ‘the land not of questions but of answers’ where he will ‘see the face of God’ his response is an air-headed “Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For me there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow through the mind, must it not?”

Another character is the cynic who doubts everything and assumes everyone’s a liar and out to deceive him. A great depression has come over him and he is unable to believe that heaven is even a desirable destination, or hell one to be avoided. He has become a mocker beyond redemption.

Pride and pre-occupation with oneself is another obstacle typified. The thought of being seen for who she was terrifies this character. She despairs of having been born and cries, ‘What are we born for?’ The answer: “For infinite happiness”. But first there is the shame of being exposed for who we are. “If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing.” She refuses the offer, not willing to be exposed.

In this way, C.S. Lewis presents much thought-provoking dialogue to demonstrate the nature of the choice that confronts every soul. At one point the narrator meets one of Lewis’ favorite authors, George MacDonald and discusses how souls could possibly choose to go back to hell. To this MacDonald replies:

“Milton was right, the choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality.”

It is from this dialogue with MacDonald that the well-known quote emerges: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ ” The extension of that quote is less well known but summarizes the moral of this story: “All that are in Hell, chose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”(pp.72-73)


I encourage readers of all sorts to wade in and find these rich and insightful conversations, even if the fantasy genre is not your ‘cup of tea’. And bring along a pencil; there are too many good lines to leave unmarked!

--LS

One Thousand Gifts -- Voskamp

One Thousand Gifts
Ann Voskamp
Zondervan: 2010, 237pp.
           *****

Ann loves beauty and she loves words.  She also loves her God, as is evident in this book--a thank-offering all strung together with words poetic and fragile as blown glass--words that sing and ache and cry.  One Thousand Gifts is Ann's testimony of learning to give thanks in everything--the bitter, the ugly, the painful, and the mundane; and in so doing of seeing it metamorphosed into a beautiful gift entrusted in love and offered back as a thank-offering.  Her own life is vulnerably woven through the pages right from first page: "...and I enter the world like every person born enters the world: with clenched fists...Vermix-creased and squalling, I am held to the light."  Ann's name means: "full of grace" and introduces the underlying question answered in the book's unfolding: "What does it mean to live full of grace? To live fully alive?"

The ensuing pages are poetic reflections of finding grace in every experience by offering thanks to God for it.   This book may not be for the reader that prefers a cut-and-dried storyline, spelled out in plain prose.  The summary for you would be: learn to give thanks in every moment for everything by making note (literally) with pen on paper, of the blessings great and miniscule that cross your path each day.  Keep a running count.  The initial goal for putting the habit in place is enumerating 1,000 gifts.

Your list may look quite different than Ann's which has such picturesque entries as:
 "Morning shadows across the old floors"
"Cry of blue jay from high in the spruce"
"Hoarfrost flaking off tree limbs"
"Salvation of sinners, me, chief"
"Barns"
"Pinky skin of newborn pigs"
but the point is to recognize the good and beautiful things that God is doing in your life continuously--the custom-made moments that give evidence of a Lover wooing His beloved. Your list need not be poetic; it is your own trail of thanksgiving.

But rest-assured that even Ann's book is not so poetic that it misses real life! She is a farmer's wife and mother to a quiver-full of young growing farmhands.  Her writing flows from this full and down-to-earth life.  It is a bouquet that is bound to inspire the reader's own flowering of thanks!  Ann has pointed the way by her own hard-earned habit of gratefulness.  She shows us how to look at life, even in the very hard seasons, as a continuous flow of good and perfect gifts, custom made for us by the Lover of our souls.

In addition to her own experiences, Ann's book gives evidence of deep and thoughtful reading, first and foremost of the Bible.  Her meditations and wrestlings with Scripture are the grist which shapes her thoughts.  In addition she pulls timely quotes and observations from a wide range of gifted writers ranging from C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Dorothy Sayers in the not so distant past, to Saint Augustine, Teresa of Avila, and Julian of Norwich further back, and modern writers such as John Piper, Annie Dillard and Brennan Manning.  These gleanings are skillfully woven into her own life observations enriching them and connecting them to the life of the Bride of Christ down through time.  Gratitude is not a new practice, but is here given a refreshing face lift that invites us all to be intentional about noticing God's gifts in our generation.

I hope you'll enjoy this gift of well-worded wonder as much as I have and move from it to be a more intentional giver of thanks.

--LS

If you enjoy Ann's writing you won't want to miss her regular blogs at http://www.aholyexperience.com/ which are embellished with her own artistic photography.  They are the notes from which this book has grown, and are likewise excellent and inspiring.