Top 8 Reads of 2015

I'm not very good/experienced at writing book reviews, but I would like to post a list with some of my favorite reads of the year. In lieu of writing short reviews (and pretending like I'm more of an authority on the subject than I am), I'm including a quote or so from each book that have stuck with me.

1. Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson

Interesting people are interested people. Interesting writers are interested writers...As a writer, you should want to be interesting. The way to do this is by being interested.

Read like someone who can afford to forget most of what you read. It does not matter because you are still going to be shaped by it.

Real life duties should be preferred over real life tourism. Taking care of your preschoolers or being deployed with the Seventh Fleet is far to be preferred over purchasing a backpack and heading off to find America, or even worse, yourself...This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say.

2.  Rejoicing in Lament by J. Todd Billings

In giving this kind of testimony of God's providence, we should not rush in and victoriously shout "This is God's will!" in a way that suggests that this calamity was what God intended at the foundations of creation. The Triune God is King, but Christ's kingdom is not yet uncontested. On the other hand, one is not left with the impotent response of saying, "God understands your pain, but couldn't do anything about it." With the psalmist, this approach thanks God for blessing, and also puts the lack of blessing at the door of the Almighty. Suffering and calamity are still under the rule of God, the sovereign King. The sufferer is not subject simply to whims of "chance," yet on the other hand God is not capricious or the author of evil. Instead the sufferer is in the hands of a good and powerful God. 

3. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

She had come into her beauty.

I wanted, as I would say to myself, to be in her presence, as if her presence were a fragrance, or a light that was within her and shone around her.

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out--perhaps a little at a time.

The brief, laughing look that she had given me made me feel extraordinarily seen, as if after that I might be visible in the dark.

4. Letters to an American Lady by C.S. Lewis

One never has been "independent". Always, in some mode or other, one has lived on others, economically, intellectually, spiritually. Who, after all, is less independent than someone with "a private income"--every penny of which has been earned by the skill and labour of others? Poverty merely reveals the helpless dependence which has all the time been our real condition. We are members of one another whether we choose to recognize the fact or not.

5. Creation Regained by Albert Wolters 

Earthly creation preceding the events recorded in Genesis 3 is like a healthy newborn child. In every respect it can be pronounced "very good"; but  this does not mean that change is not required. There is something seriously wrong if the baby remains in  its infancy: it is meant to grow, develop, mature into adulthood. Suppose now that while the child is still an infant it contracts a serious chronic disease for which there is no known cure, and that it grows up an invalid, the disease wasting its body away. It is clear that there are two clearly distinguishable process going on its body as it approaches adolescence: one is the process of maturation and growth, which continues in spite of sickness and which is natural, normal, and good; the other is the progress of the disease, which distorts and impairs the healthy functioning of the body...There are weaknesses to every analogy...Nevertheless, it can serve to make a significant point: the ravages of sin do not annihilate the normative creational development of civilization, but rather are parasitical upon it...the Lord does not forsake the work of his hands. In faithfulness he upholds his creation order.

6. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community by Wendell Berry

The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous. 

...if you are dependent on people who do not know you, who control the value of your necessities, you are not free, and you are not safe.

But there is a higher, juster love of which the sign is the meeting of the eyes.

She is speaking joyfully and fearfully of the self's suddenly irresistible wish to be given away. And this is an unconditional giving, on which, she knows, time and mortality will impose their inescapable conditions; she will have remembered the marriage ceremony with its warnings of difficulty, poverty, sickness, and death. There is no "safe" about this. This love has no place to happen except in this world, where it cannot be made safe.

7. Being Human by Ronald MacAulay

The confusion here arises from forgetting the distinction between true knowledge and exhaustive knowledge, true language and exhaustive language. In saying we can know or say certain things about God, we do not claim that we have said everything about God which can be said, or that we know all that can be known. This is true not only of our knowledge of God but even of our knowledge of other people or of the material world. Though incomplete, our knowledge of God is accurate because he has made himself known to us in the Bible and there described himself for us.

The great value God gives to the body is best shown by the physical resurrection. We will be physical for eternity...We long...not to be "unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." Paul longs not for a less physical experience but for a better physical experience--one unmarred by sickness and decay.

8. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Of course the children's eyes turned to follow the lion; but the sight they saw was so wonderful that they soon forgot about him. Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing around him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. *

(My favorite part of this book was the whole scene where Aslan brings all of the animals who had been turned into statues to life. It is a wonderful picture of the ressurection.)

I love to watch
the wonder of a child
discovering the real world
full of flesh and blood
feather and fur
twig and leaf
right and wrong
good and bad

I love to watch
her fascination
as a ladybug's feet
brush over her hand
her adoring fingers
out to nurture and provide
nearly decapitating the thing

And I love to watch
his bubbly reverence
when a robin stops and
stares right back

Then there is the clumsiness
of maneuvering a small body
around sharp corners
and other moving things
every movement a journey
full of toils and snares

It is not long before the shock
of  injustice
and the way the body bleeds
begins to sink in
--even a paper cut
calls for the magic of a kiss and gauze

And far too many encounter
the deepest kinds of wounds
far too early
in their moving breathing lives

These are the wounds only heaven can heal
and I pray
to the Maker of the Sparrows
on behalf of the little ones
so fresh to the good creation
so fresh to the fallen world

All is Given

There are two basic approaches to life--one in which the world is a world of scarcity, given to us by the skinflint god, and the other in which the world is a world of endless possibilities, bestowed on us by a loving Father.

--Douglas Wilson

The older I get (which is not very old at this moment) the more I recognize how wrong my assumptions are about adulthood. I have a a hard time shaking off the feeling that my bootstraps must be given a hardy lift and I must become a lady of self-sustaining strength. Childhood is understood as a time of receiving and completely relying upon others. It's allowed and expected. But when the hour strikes twelve, then all must be labored for, all must be earned. Open hands are put to the plow. 

I think there's something to be said of the goodness of work. To work with your own hands and earn your own bread is a good thing. But in the process it's so easy to forget that every dollar you receive in exchange for your labor is still something given. It is manna from heaven supplied through the "mask" of your neighbor. 

I recently watched the new Cinderella movie. In a scene near the end, Cinderella's step mother exposes her own bitter view of the world. "Nothing is given," she snaps. In her eyes, all will be taken if she cannot snatch it all back, no matter what means she must use to do it. "Love is free," Cinderella interjects. And of course, she is right. Who can earn love? Who can earn relationship? Is the love of the Father not a gift we can simply humbly receive? Can we really make anything effective on our own? Can we really cause any seed we plant to bear fruit? 

All is given. All is of grace. The world we live in is one of abundance because we have a generous Father. We don't deserve or earn one drop of His good gifts. But He is a good God.

An environment of humility makes pride stick out as it should. Holiness is marked on the citizens of the Kingdom. Against a backdrop of love, selfishness is stripped of all its excuses and shown to be the implosion of a desire that eats you alive. When a life marked by the mind of Christ is the way of a People, sin is exposed as a leech to be crushed by The Heel. It is a deadly thing, but it is also very dull.

I recently picked up C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. While reading it, I noticed the dissonance between Edmund's behavior and those who follow Aslan. His behavior is distilled into the refrains of a child reaching out for all it can find while smugly screaming "Mine!" His mind is driven by the promise of more Turkish Delight and a position of power to hold over the heads of his siblings. He reasons away all warnings he has received about the witch in an effort to fulfill the desires and the dreams he has entertained about them. When he reaches the Witch's home, however, his visions of grandeur begin to fade. He is fed water and dry bread and commanded to join the Witch's hunt for his siblings in the snow.  Sin, the temptations of the Witch, promises to give glory and pleasure but only drains us dry. We become shrunk down and bent over, pinning after trinkets that dissolve into water and stale crumbs.

As the Witch and Edmund proceed on their journey, they are stopped by the emergence of Spring. Aslan has come "shaking his mane", breaking the silence of eternal winter with birdsong and crocuses. The Witch becomes frustrated as the mud forces them to get off her sledge and continue on foot, while Edmund's running siblings cannot contain their delight in the beauty of the changing landscape as they flee. The Witch held a degree of power over Narnia for a time, but Aslan is the real ruler over the land. Satan, like the Witch, has had some form of power over this land we inhabit. He would have us believe he is the true ruler, but we have the real King Jesus who came and will come again. He has brought the Spring of the New Kingdom, with a promise that it will be the "normal" of a New Heaven and a New Earth. The power of the enemy will melt away, and all who run to his castle will be disappointed. 

The marvel is that the true King has been the most humble one. While we were making fools of ourselves, fighting over moth and rust, Jesus came to earth and made us stick out. We were the grumbling selfish children, He was the selfless perfect servant. In His light, we are shown to be the blind, sick, deaf, and lost people we are. We would walk into our own destruction.  Except for when He comes to our rescue. Except for when His holiness exposes us, and instead of condemning He comes to cleanse and to cover with His blood and His righteousness. 

 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, 

did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, 

being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the 

point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is 

above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:3-11 ESV)

But your fulfillment in life will not come from how well you explore your freedom and keep your options open. That’s the path to a frazzled, scattered life in which you try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.

Your fulfillment in life will come by how well you end your freedom.

-David Brooks

Come and hear, all who fear God,

And I will tell of what He has done for my soul...

But certainly God has heard;

He has given heed to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God,

Who has not turned away my prayer

Nor His lovingkindness from me.

Psalm 66:16, 21-22

This life is one of waiting, standing in the tension of the already-but-not-yet, but there are moments when God releases us from some forms of the waiting. For two years I have been waiting for God to give me some direction and give me some tangible target to pursue. I have not reached the target, but God has graciously given me a sphere to shoot at to start moving in the right direction. If you know me you know that I am painfully slow at making decisions, seeking to glimpse every possible angle and then some before I consider dipping my toe in the shallow end. But despite so much "new" being thrown in my direction the past few months, God has given me incredible clarity with my "yes"s and "no"s. Along with this has come a confidence of God's presence in the process--without that reassurance I would probably despair of any progress at all. 

I am thankful for these seasons where it becomes undeniable that His promises are true and His loving care and sovereignty are present. Clearly He loves me. Clearly He has heard my prayers. Clearly He loves me as the good Father and Shepherd that He is. I think these are seasons when God calls us to worship Him, write them down to remember them, and share them with others so that they may be encouraged. 

So much of life is full of fog. But Jesus is alive, my friend. And He has ears that hear and a hand full of power to tenderly and meticulously guide you along the path He's paved for you. You are not a forgotten sheep. He does not tell you to wait in vain. 

Being Led by the Shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd to feed, guide, and shield me,

I shall not want.

Your rod to protect and Your staff to guide, they comfort me.

Ever since graduation, I have convinced myself that because God's will is for my sanctification, and because that so often translates into suffering and dying to self, I must prepare myself for a career in something I don't like. It has been a battle to resist running to what is available and seen as least risky. And those options have a kind of holy sheen to them--after all, we want to be faithful servants, and being one does not always look romantic. But somewhere in the midst of this sorting through the will of God I have found myself believing that God intends to serve me a banquet of crumbs. He tells me it is good for me, so I subject myself to scooping up the dry morsels.

I believe I have missed something in this. Sometimes He tells us to drink a bitter cup, to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but there must be some good in the wanting and gifting He's placed in me. If the talents He's given to me are really from Him, then I must seek out where and how to use them. Some of the gifts He's given to me have been expressed here and there, but I'm coming under the impression that He wants me to be more generous with them. I have fearfully held them and kept them mostly to myself, self-protecting myself from any failures by only letting them air out when the stakes are low. But I have begun to sense Him prompting me out of this place that feels undangerous and a little less insane. This movement feels a lot more like faith than a naive God-is-my-genie kind of movement. It feels more like holding the hand of my Father so I can be who He has made me to be.

 I do not trust myself in this, and like everyone else, I do not know what I am doing. My story is not so different from every other Christian's story. I do not have anything new to say--I can only say everything that's been said before, because there is much that has been said that we need to hear again and again. Some is new to us. Some are made new by old words. I will gladly join the choir of the ages, singing the same old hymn being sung with millions of tongues in a million ways, centered around the One who we will never tire talking about. Those are the words worth speaking.