Summer is bookworm season!

When I was younger, I read a pile of books every couple of weeks during the summer. My mom took us to the library to check out books. I’d come home with as many books as the library limit would allow. This was all well & good until my dad decided I needed more “variety” in my reading selection. The next time my brother & I came home from the library, we were told to switch books. He was stuck with my fiction & biographies. I was stuck with his jet engine & science/how-to books. I don’t remember a thing I read from his pile (or did I even read them?).

It’d been a while since I’ve really been able to read “to my heart’s content,” but now that summer’s here, I’m finishing up all the books on my bookshelf that I haven’t yet finished.

I’m currently working on one of the last remaining unread books, The Christian Leaders of the Last Century by J.C. Ryle. Sweeeeet read on mostly English church history. It includes two chapters on George Whitefield! It’s the second volume though; I’ll have to order the first volume, too. More nuggets from this book in a later post.

Hopefully I’ll finish this book soon, because on the way in the mail are:
Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul Tripp
Holiness by Grace: Delighting in the Joy that Is Our Strength by Bryan Chapell

Right now is definitely a sweet time in my life, when I can easily devote a good number of hours to good reading. I thank God for it. (I do recognize the danger of merely reading & not living, if you know what I mean; part of me would be content to simply read & never face “real” life. And those like me do have to watch out for this tendency.)

But summer’s here! For those of us with more time, let’s spend some of that time reading up! And I’m more than happy to give & receive book recommendations! :]

Happy birthday, Gracie.

Tomorrow is one of my dearest friend’s birthdays. (I know, it’s a day early.)

A couple weeks ago, she told me about something she heard R. Kent Hughes wrote in The Disciplines of a Godly Man regarding David & Jonathan’s friendship in Scripture. Scripture says that Jonathan loved David as his own soul; theirs was a deep friendship that knew no rivalry (even for the throne). And Hughes said something along the lines of, “A friend is one who wants you to be king.” Even though Jonathan was the rightful heir to the throne (humanly speaking), he wanted David to be king (& God said he would be). Saul desired David’s death; Jonathan desired David’s preservation, even at the expense of himself.

Growing up, I prayed for a friend I could really trust — a likeminded friend. I really believe God answered that prayer when an upperclassman I met my freshman year of college in Crossroads Campus Ministries talked with me & suggested I meet this girl named Grace who was also a freshman. After talking to her & after talking to me, he thought we’d be good friends. He was right :]

Our friendship’s been compared to a lot of random friendships in literature since then — Anne Shirley & Diana Barry and Frodo & Samwise, to name a couple — but since a couple weeks ago, I like the David & Jonathan comparison better (she’s the David).

This is a video I made for her back in February (trying to make a video for the first time & wanting to encourage her at the same time). It semi-chronicles the 6 years of our friendship . . . only semi, because neither of us are huge on picture-taking ;]

Happy birthday, friend.

Me < David Livingstone < Christ.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks in terms of health. I feel like I’ve been hit by three waves of the most odd, unrelated illnesses. I’ve had a day of recovery, literally, in between each wave. I’m just coming out of the third one, & tonight, I’m feeling much better.

I’m not planning on a fourth one, so some of the posts I had in queue should be up this week.

I finished a biography on David Livingstone, 19th century missionary to Africa, yesterday. I was really dizzy while reading it, but I couldn’t put it down.

For about the last 15 years of his life, he suffered with severe, reoccurring river fever, persistent bleeding that eventually nearly drained all his blood, ulcerated feet, and other major health issues that required either bed rest or surgery, but he kept trekking through central Africa, looking for a river that would open up a way for “good” trade (as opposed to slave trading) & the gospel.

It wasn’t that he was ignorant of his health problems. He was a trained doctor. But he counted the cost, in his old age, of taking the years necessary to recover & the years he could spend still preaching the gospel to each new village he found & years he could spend searching for a pathway into central Africa. He chose the latter.

When I read of the things he did, the hope he maintained, & his strong resolve to keep moving forward even in spite of pain & weakness, I felt like such a weakling, sitting in bed and struggling to even walk to the kitchen. Sometimes, like the rest of us, I wonder if I’d be able to do what he did if I were in that situation, but again, the reminder came: we receive grace for the moment, not for what might or might not come.

I guess the question to ask isn’t, “Could I do what David Livingstone did if I were in his shoes?” The question to ask is, “Could the God of David Livingstone do in & through even a life like mine what He did in & through David’s?” The answer is, “Yes.” The God of David Livingstone, the God of Mary, the God of Job, the God of the Apostle Paul . . . God doesn’t change. He still speaks truth through His Word, the Bible. He still gives strength to the weary & grace sufficient to the weak humble.

David wrote, “I shall open a path into the interior — or perish.”

That’s intensity. But what more could you expect from someone who is passionate about his Savior & knows the immensity of an eternity apart from Him? He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was a man being perfected by Christ, his Righteousness.  He was a mere man used by Almighty God.

“The Wonder of ‘Idiotic’ Perseverance.”

Just got back from San Diego an hour ago.  Just read this on John Piper’s blog.  Just overflowing with gratitude for sweet sisters & friends He’s placed in my life.  Just want to joyfully persevere so as to glorify Him.  Just wanted to encourage you to do the same.

. . .

The Wonder of “Idiotic” Perseverance

June 9, 2008  |  By: John Piper

In his book, Passion, Karl Olsson tells a story of incredible patience among the early French Protestants called Huguenots.

In the late Seventeenth Century in… southern France, a girl named Marie Durant was brought before the authorities, charged with the Huguenot heresy. She was fourteen years old, bright, attractive, marriageable. She was asked to abjure the Huguenot faith. She was not asked to commit an immoral act, to become a criminal, or even to change the day-to-day quality of her behavior. She was only asked to say, “J’abjure.” No more, no less. She did not comply. Together with thirty other Huguenot women she was put into a tower by the sea…. For thirty-eight years she continued…. And instead of the hated word J’abjure she, together with her fellow martyrs, scratched on the wall of the prison tower the single word Resistez, resist!

The word is still seen and gaped at by tourists on the stone wall at Aigues-Mortes…. We do not understand the terrifying simplicity of a religious commitment which asks nothing of time and gets nothing from time. We can understand a religion which enhances time…. but we cannot understand a faith which is not nourished by the temporal hope that tomorrow things will be better. To sit in a prison room with thirty others and to see the day change into night and summer into autumn, to feel the slow systemic changes within one’s flesh: the drying and wrinkling of the skin, the loss of muscle tone, the stiffening of the joints, the slow stupefaction of the senses—to feel all this and still to persevere seems almost idiotic to a generation which has no capacity to wait and to endure. (116-117)

In my Father’s keeping.

I picked up Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, her life story welded together with an account of the Holocaust from her perspective.

She wrote about certain experiences she had as a child that prepared her, whether in a small way or a great way, for the horrors she would see later in her life as an adult — experiences that would sustain her hope in Christ even when she saw nothing but despair, cruelty, and seemingly God-forsaken people all around her in Holland, in prison, and in the concentration camp.

One experience, a lesson from her godly father, happened when she was 10 or 11 years old . . .

Seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked [him about what a certain word meant, a word that I had heard at school that Mother and Tante Jans would not tell me the meaning of].

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise, he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.

“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said.

I stood up at tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.

“It’s too heavy,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied — wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions — for now I was content to leave them in my father’s keeping.

And that we would be content to leave our hard questions in our Father’s keeping, too. That it’d be enough to know that He knows.

. . .

I’ll be in San Diego ’til Monday morning. Congratulations Kevin & Mabel, soon to be married!!!

Blaming God.

I’ve been taking my time studying through Genesis lately. A couple days ago, I was rereading Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve are deflecting the responsibility for their sin; and as I was journaling about Adam’s response, God kindly but directly exposed sin in my heart, too.

Adam told God, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12)

Nothing I haven’t read before; he’s blaming Eve for his sin toward God, right? But then I read it again.

“The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Whoa. He was ultimately blaming God — God who created the world & who, with deep pleasure over His creation, said, “It is good.” God who, with compassion towards Adam, said it was “not good” that man should be alone. God who, in His kindness, fashioned a companion, a suitable helper, for Adam (Eve, woman).

And now, after sinning and sabotaging the creation that had made God’s heart swell with pleasure, Adam basically throws the blame back in God’s face, saying, “You . . . You gave me this woman. Ultimately it’s Your fault that I sinned in this way. Eve gave me the fruit, but You gave me Eve. So You God are culpable. God, You have done this — not me.”

I thought Adam must have been crazy & must have considered his life to be worthy very little to point the finger at the holy God of the universe & say, “You are responsible for my sin.”

But immediately, the thought came: Do I blame God like that? God, the circumstances You gave me? The family or home You gave me? The mother or father You gave me? The personality You gave me?

I do that, too. It makes me tremble to think of it. I take the weight of my sin, thrust it in God’s face, & say, “God, You’ve sovereignly given these things to me. Why did You give them to me? It’s Your fault. You’re responsible for my sin . . . so it’s not fair that I receive sin’s wages or punishment. If anyone, You should.” (I couldn’t help but tremble writing that out even now.)

Terror. Grief. That’s the order of emotions as I reflected on the passage. Terror to think what God’s just response should have been to my defiance and treachery. Grief to know I had been blaming my sin on the perfect One who imputed my sin to Himself & His righteousness to me.

I had to repent, praying for forgiveness and for the grace to root this sin out of my heart (and I will probably need to do this again & again as I continually seek to put off the flesh & put on Christ).  He forgives even this sin, not because it’s a light thing, but because Christ paid the full price for sins on Calvary.  Amazing grace . . . how can I understand it?  It is high; I cannot attain it.

Searching questions to ask myself often:
- Am I blaming God for sinful habits in my life by saying I picked them up from the loved ones He placed in my life?
- Am I blaming God for placing me in situations and in circumstances that “force” me to respond in sin?
- Am I blaming God for the consequences of my sinful choices?
- Am I blaming God for the hardness of my heart, for my lack of trust, by saying that He is distant or ambiguous or unclear?
- Am I blaming God, saying He made love and obedience too difficult?