A few years ago I instituted a new tradition for my family every year on Epiphany. If your church tradition does not celebrate Epiphany (mine doesn't), the nutshell version is that January 6th is 13 days after Christmas, and some churches take it as a day to celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men in Bethlehem. Want to know more? Check back to my original post about it, and you can read about how we've celebrated it every year since (except last year, when I forgot to blog about it) in this series of posts.
2018 was an interesting year for me - the launch of The Word Go Project brought to fruition years of preparation of my heart and my skills as a writer and musician. God's been teaching me a lot (I'll be blogging here about the experience in the next few weeks), and there's still a lot to process. Who would have thought an 80s kid would still be "growing up" in 2018? It just shows that there's always work to be done in each of us!
My family has been growing up, too. My son graduated high school and entered college, and my daughter is approaching junior high faster than I expected! As I see them grow and mature, I want to see their faith grow. Every year I try to find gifts that will meet my kids and my wife where they live, and become part of their lives. I hope I've managed the same this year!
Until he grew out of it, I used to read to my son every night before bed. I still do the same for my daughter, who is 11 and kind of on the edge of that (although she's a softie and probably will still want me to read her bedtime stories when she's 21!) so when I saw that Kara Dekker had collaborated with her father Ted on a children's series set in the same reality as her dad's "Circle" books and their offshoots, all of which I love, I knew I had to order it for my daughter. They are called The Dream Traveler's Quest, and you can find out all about them on Ted Dekker's web site. They are cheaper on TedDekker.com, but they are now available at Amazon.com as well.
My son is a fantastic trumpet player who loves music theory, and because he is a musician and also a fan of history, I wanted to share with him a book I got when I was in college, The Spiritual Lives of Great Composers. The edition I am giving him is expanded from the version I had in college, with more composers covered. I also replaced my copy, which had been damaged in some water a while back, and as I read back through it myself, I was also inspired. I think he will love it!
My wife isn't really a big book reader, but this year I felt like I needed to give her something with substance to dig into. What has more substance than Beth Moore, and what is easier to read than a short devotional for every day of the year? The book I selected is Believing God Day by Day. I hope she keeps it by her bedside (or somewhere handy) and spends a few short minutes with it every day this year. I think it will really help her!
I'm expecting amazing, fantastic things out of this year. I expect more music, more devotional podcasts, and maybe even the occasional blog post here, for old time's sake! And I hope these small gifts plant seeds in the hearts of my family that will grow into amazing trees of righteousness in their lives that will help them remain strong in God for years to come!
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Epiphany 2016
You know, year after year God has used Epiphany to effect our family in any number of ways. This year, as you will see, the Holy Spirit is clearly trying to tell my wife and me something! Read on for the details.
First off: if you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, you might want to review some of my past Epiphany posts. The short version of the story is that for the past five years, every year in my family we have a special tradition on January 6th where my wife and I, as the leadership in our home, give one gift to each family member which we hope will lead each of us to a closer walk with the Lord in the coming year.
In addition to that, every year I try to come up with something interesting to share with my family about the Wise Men, or the history of the church holiday, or whatever. Something relevant and edifying. Well, this year I realized that in my Logos Bible software installation I have access to lectionaries from several denominations, and those lectionaries contain Bible readings specifically chosen for use on any day of the year, especially holidays like Epiphany. I went through all of them to see what they have, and as it turns out, most of them had selected more or less the same Scriptures. And they were awesome.
For those from church traditions (like the one I come from) that don't use this kind of prescribed Scripture readings, generally there will be an "Old Testament" reading, a "Psalms" reading, a "Gospels" reading, and an "Epistles" reading for each date. The ones almost unanimously chosen for this date are:
Old Testament: Isaiah 60:1-6 which is a remarkably vivid prophetic description of a bright light rising and appearing over Israel and people (including kings) bringing caravans of camels laden with gold and frankincense.
Psalms: Psalm 72 in which David (who calls himself "the king" in his psalms) prophetically describes visitors from distant lands bringing gifts to one of his descendants (remember, Jesus was known as the "son of David").
Gospels: Matthew 2:1-12 which is of course the Gospel account of the coming of the Wise Men to see Jesus.
Epistles: Ephesians 3:1-12 The significance of the arrival of the Wise Men is that they were the first who recognized that Jesus was given not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles also (they were not Jewish). In this passage Paul explains that God has called him to share the message of Christ's salvation with the Gentiles as well.
Psalms: Psalm 72 in which David (who calls himself "the king" in his psalms) prophetically describes visitors from distant lands bringing gifts to one of his descendants (remember, Jesus was known as the "son of David").
Gospels: Matthew 2:1-12 which is of course the Gospel account of the coming of the Wise Men to see Jesus.
Epistles: Ephesians 3:1-12 The significance of the arrival of the Wise Men is that they were the first who recognized that Jesus was given not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles also (they were not Jewish). In this passage Paul explains that God has called him to share the message of Christ's salvation with the Gentiles as well.
I actually copied all of these passages into a Word document to print out and read to the family - if you'd like to see it or use it, I've shared it here. As in the links above, I used the New Living Translation, specifically because my daughter is still young and I didn't want to confuse or bore her with long Bible passages she couldn't understand.
So after we read through those passages and talked briefly about their significance, we moved on to the presents!
At my daughter's school, they make a point to have all the kids bring water bottles, on the theory that well-hydrated kids make better learners. This year my wife and I spotted a cute sports bottle covered with flowers that has printed on it "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Philippians 4:13". I explained to my daughter that sometimes there are hard things that people ask you to do - like a tough assignment in math class. God can strengthen you to complete that task. Then sometimes there are things that the Holy Spirit speaks into your heart - like showing love to someone who hasn't been nice to you. God can strengthen you to do those hard things too. She took it to school with her the next day - she really loved the multicolored pinwheel of a flower right in the middle!
My son was up next. This past year he expressed some interest in Sherlock Holmes, so when I saw a book called A Sherlock Holmes Devotional I was immediately interested! Basically, the book contains a synopsis of a Sherlock Holmes story, and then a kind of "personal application" kind of thing that goes along with it. When I handed it to him I explained that we chose it for two reasons: first, we thought he would enjoy using it. But second, we wanted him to remember that sometimes you have to search out the things of God, look for clues to find them. When he opened it he immediately started leafing through it with a smile on his face - I hope it makes a big difference for him!
My wife was next in line. We just moved into a new house this past year, and frankly we haven't had the chance yet to decorate it like she would like for it to be. I took a little bit of a chance (sometimes a woman's sense of taste is really specific) and got her a small piece of framed art with a quotation from C. S. Lewis, "You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream," and a partial quote from Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you to give you a future and a hope." She has often told me about certain choices she made as a girl that she has since regretted, and I felt it in my heart to let her know that it's never too late to pursue the dreams God has placed on your heart. She loved it! She found a perfect place for it as soon as we were done, and we hung it then and there. You can see a picture of it proudly displayed on our wall below:
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| The "Dream" framed art, proudly displayed in our new house! |
It's really cool to see that God has laid similar things on my heart and on my wife's heart for the upcoming year. If you read my blog post last year, my gift to my wife displayed a verse that says that God would back up her plans (conceived of course from a Godly heart), and this year her gift reassures her that God has His own plans for her. The gift I received last year said that I would be blessed if I put my trust in the Lord, and this year's gift lets me know that God's plans are for good things and not for disaster. How great is that?
Epiphany was on Wednesday this year, and my daughter wanted to bring the Wise Men with her to church. I let her bring the ones from our Little People Nativity set, along with the baby Jesus, but she also brought something else: a chest from her My Little Pony toy castle, containing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You can see it in the picture at the top of this post!
I write about our Epiphany every year, not to make us seem so cool and spiritual, but because it is a special time for us. I hope you make your own "plans" next year to follow our example with your own family. It's one of my favorite traditions from the holiday season!
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| "His Plans" on my desk at work |
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Epiphany 2015
My 7-year-old daughter has been asking about "Three Kings Day" ever since Christmas. She's been really excited about it! She really loved what we gave her last year, and she was looking forward to getting something else this year. How great is that, when your kids are excited to receive something which will remind them about Jesus? I was excited too... this is one of my favorite times of the year, when I get to speak things over each member of my family by giving them a special token of was my wife and I see in them. If you haven't yet tried it yourself... you really should!
This year when I sat everybody down (I always insist on sitting on the floor next to the Christmas tree) I wanted to explain a few things about the Magi. First, I read the verses in Matthew that talk about them:
Then I read this:
After explaining all of this, I told them that there are two things the Magi did that are what we want our Epiphany gifts to inspire us to.
First, my daughter opened her gift. Last year we gave her a storybook, and she and I read through all of the stories several times in the months after we gave it to her. After going through it a couple of times we went on to other storybooks, but my wife (who tucks the kids in at night) told me that our little girl still keeps the book by her bed, and every night before she goes to sleep she reads one of the Bible verses. We decided to get her a book called Little Miss Grace Promise Book which has several Bible verses on each page, so she would never run out! We also bought her a bookmark to keep her place (the book has a ribbon bookmark built in, but we loved the one we found). She was so excited! She even took it to show her grandma later that night.
Next it was my son's turn. This year he entered high school, and not only is he taking his studies very seriously, but he is taking his music very seriously. He plays trumpet, and he is among the best in the school band, even as a freshman. My wife and I are both musicians also, and we know that one of the worst enemies any musician has is his own self-doubt. We gave him a little token, roughly the size of a quarter, that he can carry around with him. It says "No Doubt" on it, and has a Scripture on the back to remind him to never doubt God, and never doubt himself. (I don't have a link for the token, but here's a keyring with the same design.)
Later, after we had all opened our gifts, my son said "Why is it that the best gifts are always so tiny?" It may sound like irony to someone who doesn't know him, but he was being very serious. That little token apparently meant a lot to him!
Next, I gave my wife her gift. Like many women, she loves roses, and I gave her this mug, which just inside the rim where you can hardly help but see it when you take a sip has a Scripture that I hope she reads hundreds of times this year.
Finally, for the first time, this year I received a gift too! My wife had bought me the hugest coffee cup I have ever owned. It's a 20-oz mug, and it has a Scripture on the back of it (where you see it when you pick it up to drink). Because of things I've mentioned to her in recent weeks, she knew this particular verse would be meaningful to me. (If you stay with me in the coming weeks you will get to find out some of what she was thinking of when she bought it.)
Edit: Looking at this cup every day actually did inspire me to think more about the Word of God. See what I wound up learning months later here and here!
After everyone had received their gifts, we went over to my mom's house - Three Kings Day is also the start of the season leading up to Lent, and where we are from (Louisiana) there is a special kind of cake called "Kings Cake" that you can serve at parties this time of year. She had some ready for us, and we had something ready for her: we had gotten her a little insulated cup with a picture of the kids on it and a little note they had written her. (I didn't take a picture of it.) We had another little mini-party at her house, and that was our celebration!
By the way - I know I always post pictures of our Epiphany gifts here, but that's not done in order to brag. I describe our gifts and post pictures here hoping to inspire you, reader, to take some time to really think about the people in your life and what word from God you would like to speak into their lives. To do this right you really have to put some effort into it, and find something that is both meaningful and useful. If it's not useful, they won't have it out as part of their lives for the next year, and if it isn't meaningful, then it's just more clutter around the house. But if you approach Epiphany gift-giving with thoughtfulness and love, maybe you'll have someone who is still, after a year, reading her storybook every night before bed. Maybe your one little purchase will make a huge difference when they need it. Maybe you can start the new year off with something genuinely special!
This year when I sat everybody down (I always insist on sitting on the floor next to the Christmas tree) I wanted to explain a few things about the Magi. First, I read the verses in Matthew that talk about them:
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”I told them that we don't really know exactly where these "wise men" came from, but some think that they may have come from the region of Babylon, and perhaps they came because they were familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures. I read them this:
(Matthew 2:1-2 ESV)
Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.This is from a prophecy given to Daniel in Babylon. The "weeks" are actually weeks of years, not days. The angel was telling Daniel exactly when the Messiah was going to be born! A man of wisdom in ancient Babylon would certainly be familiar with the writings of Daniel, who was one of the wisest advisers any Babylonian king had ever had. Maybe they were looking at their watches and wondering when it was going to happen!
(Daniel 9:25 ESV)
Then I read this:
I see him, but not now;These were words given to a Gentile prophet named Balaam that talk about a future human person, but compare him to a "scepter" (meaning, he will be a king) and also a "star". This was widely considered a prophecy of the Messiah in those times. Assuming that these learned Gentiles knew about Daniel's prophecies and also about this one by Balaam, and assuming they had done the math and realized that Daniel's timing had elapsed, when they saw a "star" in the sky, of course they were going to go where it led them!
I behold him, but not near:
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
it shall crush the forehead of Moab
and break down all the sons of Sheth.
(Numbers 24:17 ESV)
After explaining all of this, I told them that there are two things the Magi did that are what we want our Epiphany gifts to inspire us to.
- The Magi knew the Word of God. They didn't have all of it that we have now, but they knew the parts of it that they had. We want our family to know the Word.
- They searched for Jesus. They physically went looking for Him! We don't go anywhere physically now, of course, and Jesus has promised He is always with us. But we want our family to seek out ways to draw closer to Him.
First, my daughter opened her gift. Last year we gave her a storybook, and she and I read through all of the stories several times in the months after we gave it to her. After going through it a couple of times we went on to other storybooks, but my wife (who tucks the kids in at night) told me that our little girl still keeps the book by her bed, and every night before she goes to sleep she reads one of the Bible verses. We decided to get her a book called Little Miss Grace Promise Book which has several Bible verses on each page, so she would never run out! We also bought her a bookmark to keep her place (the book has a ribbon bookmark built in, but we loved the one we found). She was so excited! She even took it to show her grandma later that night.
Next it was my son's turn. This year he entered high school, and not only is he taking his studies very seriously, but he is taking his music very seriously. He plays trumpet, and he is among the best in the school band, even as a freshman. My wife and I are both musicians also, and we know that one of the worst enemies any musician has is his own self-doubt. We gave him a little token, roughly the size of a quarter, that he can carry around with him. It says "No Doubt" on it, and has a Scripture on the back to remind him to never doubt God, and never doubt himself. (I don't have a link for the token, but here's a keyring with the same design.)
 |  |
Later, after we had all opened our gifts, my son said "Why is it that the best gifts are always so tiny?" It may sound like irony to someone who doesn't know him, but he was being very serious. That little token apparently meant a lot to him!
Next, I gave my wife her gift. Like many women, she loves roses, and I gave her this mug, which just inside the rim where you can hardly help but see it when you take a sip has a Scripture that I hope she reads hundreds of times this year.
Finally, for the first time, this year I received a gift too! My wife had bought me the hugest coffee cup I have ever owned. It's a 20-oz mug, and it has a Scripture on the back of it (where you see it when you pick it up to drink). Because of things I've mentioned to her in recent weeks, she knew this particular verse would be meaningful to me. (If you stay with me in the coming weeks you will get to find out some of what she was thinking of when she bought it.)
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(Next to a "normal-sized" cup for scale)
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Edit: Looking at this cup every day actually did inspire me to think more about the Word of God. See what I wound up learning months later here and here!
After everyone had received their gifts, we went over to my mom's house - Three Kings Day is also the start of the season leading up to Lent, and where we are from (Louisiana) there is a special kind of cake called "Kings Cake" that you can serve at parties this time of year. She had some ready for us, and we had something ready for her: we had gotten her a little insulated cup with a picture of the kids on it and a little note they had written her. (I didn't take a picture of it.) We had another little mini-party at her house, and that was our celebration!
By the way - I know I always post pictures of our Epiphany gifts here, but that's not done in order to brag. I describe our gifts and post pictures here hoping to inspire you, reader, to take some time to really think about the people in your life and what word from God you would like to speak into their lives. To do this right you really have to put some effort into it, and find something that is both meaningful and useful. If it's not useful, they won't have it out as part of their lives for the next year, and if it isn't meaningful, then it's just more clutter around the house. But if you approach Epiphany gift-giving with thoughtfulness and love, maybe you'll have someone who is still, after a year, reading her storybook every night before bed. Maybe your one little purchase will make a huge difference when they need it. Maybe you can start the new year off with something genuinely special!
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Epiphany 2014
Yesterday evening I sat my family down on the floor in our living room, as I have on January 6 each year for the past two. This year my wife knew what was going on (I got her help selecting the gifts!) but my two kids didn't know at first. "Today's a special holiday..." I started, and my 13-year-old son jumped in: "Oh, it's Three Kings Day!" Right he was! And his sudden understanding, appropriately, was an "epiphany" which is the other name for the day. Mostly for my 6-year-old daughter's sake (she's little, so she's going to need to full spiel for at least the next couple of years) but also for my son and wife's sake, I explained again this year that Epiphany or Three Kings Day is a day the traditional church celebrates the arrival of the Magi with gifts for the baby Jesus. I also explained something that hadn't really clicked with me until this year: the Wise Men are the first recorded Gentiles to come to Jesus. The holiday is called "Epiphany" because an epiphany is a revelation, and the arrival of the Wise Men was a revelation that Jesus was for everyone, not just for the Jews. How awesome is that?
My own tradition for the past few years has been to secretly purchase an inexpensive gift ($20 is about the max I spend on each gift) for each family member that I hope will inspire them to think about God more, or learn something about the Bible, or whatever. You can see examples of what I got them in the past two years here and here. The trick is to pick something that will truly speak to the heart of each person. This year was even more special because I invited my wife to pick the gifts for the kids with me. She was an awesome help! Frankly, I'm not sure I would have made the best choice for our daughter without her.
My little girl opened that gift first. My wife and I had spent a significant amount of time searching and searching through the stuff in the children's section at the Christian bookstore the Saturday before, trying to decide whether to get her a "real" Bible, some kind of Bible story book, or something else. We finally settled on a book called Princess Stories: Real Bible Stories of God's Princesses which is a book of Bible stories specifically of women and girls, told from their perspective. The artwork is very warm and inviting, and the stories are designed to give little girls characters from the Bible that they can think about and look up to. (Not many of them are technically royalty, but the point is that as daughters of The King, every girl and woman who comes to Jesus is a real live princess!) As a bonus, there is either a kitten, a puppy, or a bunny on nearly every page (on some pages you have to settle for a bird or butterfly, but that's OK.) My daughter was so excited to start hearing the stories that she didn't want to wait for bedtime to hear one! She begged to hear the one about the Bible character who has her same name... "Look, my name is right in the book!" she said. I think that counts as a successful choice!
Next, my son opened his gift. Since he is a newly-minted teenager, we thought we would give him something to help him really get a grasp on the "big picture" of the Word of God. I'd seen the "The Story" items when they came out a year or so ago, and I found the idea of formatting the Bible's grand narrative like a modern novel very interesting. The Bible can be so intimidating... it's long, things don't come in the right order, and most people barely know about what happens in a huge hunk of it. "The Story" is a whole series of books and materials focused for specific age groups - there is a The Story for adults, the Teen version we got my son, and even storybook-style versions for grade schoolers and preschoolers. The grander idea is that a church can launch a program where each age group studies the same section of their own The Story edition (there are 31 divisions in each book) every week, and the whole church learns the basics of the whole Bible together. Our church isn't doing the larger program, but hopefully my son will get interested in it using his own copy. He's actually a pretty big reader (when he's not playing one video game or another!) and he was surprisingly enthusiastic when he realized what he was holding. He was actually more excited than I thought he would be. He's a great kid! And my wife is actually so intrigued with the concept that we'll be getting the e-book (adult edition) for her to put on her cell phone so she can read through it as well.
(On a side note, at this writing ChristianBook.com is running a big promotion of "The Story", and they have the materials on deep discount. For example, the $20 adult edition of "The Story" is on sale for $5! Check the sale out at their "What Is The Story?" page.)
My wife had forgotten that she always gets a gift too... when I pulled out the gift I got her, she seemed embarrassed that she hadn't thought to get me something! I don't care whether I get a gift or not, but I suspect I will next year! I had gotten her The Duck Commander Devotional, a one-year devotional book written by the stars of the Duck Dynasty TV show, which she is a HUGE fan of. (I got her the girly pink one, of course, but there is a version with a green cover for the studly man in your life.) She was so excited that she almost decided to read the first six entries right away to catch up! I told her it was OK to wait and read those first few entries next January!
My daughter was so pumped about our Epiphany gifts that she immediately decreed that I should have one too, and she got out her art supplies and proceeded to make me the crown you see below. I was actually kind of surprised when she did the whole thing herself over the course of maybe 20-30 minutes, including designing the crown, cutting out all of the pieces, and gluing it all together! The end result is terrific! It's a little small for my big Daddy head, but it fits pretty well on one of my stuffed doggies at work. It will definitely be treasured for years to come!
Make a habit of watching this blog for the next year. Come late December, I'll be reminding my readers that Epiphany is coming up. It's a tradition that has been very meaningful for my family, and I have no intention of ever not doing it. (Heck, when my kids grow up and have their own families, they may be surprised to find something in their mailboxes on January 6!) And even though it's January 7, it's not too late to follow my lead! Stop by the Christian bookstore and pick up some little thing... a bookmark, a toy Bob the Tomato, a music CD. Something to encourage a loved one to draw closer to Christ. It's never a bad day to have the epiphany that Jesus Christ is a gift personally given to you!
My own tradition for the past few years has been to secretly purchase an inexpensive gift ($20 is about the max I spend on each gift) for each family member that I hope will inspire them to think about God more, or learn something about the Bible, or whatever. You can see examples of what I got them in the past two years here and here. The trick is to pick something that will truly speak to the heart of each person. This year was even more special because I invited my wife to pick the gifts for the kids with me. She was an awesome help! Frankly, I'm not sure I would have made the best choice for our daughter without her.
My little girl opened that gift first. My wife and I had spent a significant amount of time searching and searching through the stuff in the children's section at the Christian bookstore the Saturday before, trying to decide whether to get her a "real" Bible, some kind of Bible story book, or something else. We finally settled on a book called Princess Stories: Real Bible Stories of God's Princesses which is a book of Bible stories specifically of women and girls, told from their perspective. The artwork is very warm and inviting, and the stories are designed to give little girls characters from the Bible that they can think about and look up to. (Not many of them are technically royalty, but the point is that as daughters of The King, every girl and woman who comes to Jesus is a real live princess!) As a bonus, there is either a kitten, a puppy, or a bunny on nearly every page (on some pages you have to settle for a bird or butterfly, but that's OK.) My daughter was so excited to start hearing the stories that she didn't want to wait for bedtime to hear one! She begged to hear the one about the Bible character who has her same name... "Look, my name is right in the book!" she said. I think that counts as a successful choice!
Next, my son opened his gift. Since he is a newly-minted teenager, we thought we would give him something to help him really get a grasp on the "big picture" of the Word of God. I'd seen the "The Story" items when they came out a year or so ago, and I found the idea of formatting the Bible's grand narrative like a modern novel very interesting. The Bible can be so intimidating... it's long, things don't come in the right order, and most people barely know about what happens in a huge hunk of it. "The Story" is a whole series of books and materials focused for specific age groups - there is a The Story for adults, the Teen version we got my son, and even storybook-style versions for grade schoolers and preschoolers. The grander idea is that a church can launch a program where each age group studies the same section of their own The Story edition (there are 31 divisions in each book) every week, and the whole church learns the basics of the whole Bible together. Our church isn't doing the larger program, but hopefully my son will get interested in it using his own copy. He's actually a pretty big reader (when he's not playing one video game or another!) and he was surprisingly enthusiastic when he realized what he was holding. He was actually more excited than I thought he would be. He's a great kid! And my wife is actually so intrigued with the concept that we'll be getting the e-book (adult edition) for her to put on her cell phone so she can read through it as well.
(On a side note, at this writing ChristianBook.com is running a big promotion of "The Story", and they have the materials on deep discount. For example, the $20 adult edition of "The Story" is on sale for $5! Check the sale out at their "What Is The Story?" page.)
My wife had forgotten that she always gets a gift too... when I pulled out the gift I got her, she seemed embarrassed that she hadn't thought to get me something! I don't care whether I get a gift or not, but I suspect I will next year! I had gotten her The Duck Commander Devotional, a one-year devotional book written by the stars of the Duck Dynasty TV show, which she is a HUGE fan of. (I got her the girly pink one, of course, but there is a version with a green cover for the studly man in your life.) She was so excited that she almost decided to read the first six entries right away to catch up! I told her it was OK to wait and read those first few entries next January!
My daughter was so pumped about our Epiphany gifts that she immediately decreed that I should have one too, and she got out her art supplies and proceeded to make me the crown you see below. I was actually kind of surprised when she did the whole thing herself over the course of maybe 20-30 minutes, including designing the crown, cutting out all of the pieces, and gluing it all together! The end result is terrific! It's a little small for my big Daddy head, but it fits pretty well on one of my stuffed doggies at work. It will definitely be treasured for years to come!
Make a habit of watching this blog for the next year. Come late December, I'll be reminding my readers that Epiphany is coming up. It's a tradition that has been very meaningful for my family, and I have no intention of ever not doing it. (Heck, when my kids grow up and have their own families, they may be surprised to find something in their mailboxes on January 6!) And even though it's January 7, it's not too late to follow my lead! Stop by the Christian bookstore and pick up some little thing... a bookmark, a toy Bob the Tomato, a music CD. Something to encourage a loved one to draw closer to Christ. It's never a bad day to have the epiphany that Jesus Christ is a gift personally given to you!
My Epiphany crown. And, before you ask: YES, it is
right side up. (She corrected me when I turned it over.)
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Know The Author
But for me, the book is a little different than it might be for you, because I am actually acquainted with Danny and Darci. And not via emails, phone calls, or interviewing them for a Web site... my wife and I know them personally, and have for several years (even before Danny went on The Biggest Loser). We sang on a church worship team with Danny playing bass. My wife taught Vacation Bible School with their daughter; my son and their son are friends. We've had a chance to interact with them socially. We already have an idea of what they are like, so when we read the book, we see it a little differently. Because we know the authors.
As a Christian, I know a lot of people who read the Bible, or at least who are familiar with parts of it. I've discussed it with people, and I've read other books discussing parts of the Bible. I've blogged about it here, of course. But there is a problem with reading the Bible: you can't truly understand what it is trying to say unless you know the author. Okay, okay, I know that pen was put to paper by Moses, David, Solomon, Paul, various disciples, and maybe a couple dozen prophets and other people, but as a Christian, I believe that the whole of the Bible was inspired by one single author, God Himself. The Bible is one one level an anthology of writings by many writers, but the whole thing is a narrative about God's redemption of humankind. That bigger story cannot be fully appreciated, or maybe even comprehended, until you become acquainted with God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ.
I perceive Losing Big differently because I know Danny and Darci (by the way, Danny does speaking engagements quite frequently, so check his calendar and you may get a chance to meet him too!). I'd like to think that I understand their book a little better because I know them, and maybe I understand them a little better because I've read the book. The Bible is the same way, and this is why prayer and personal worship times are so critical: when you know Jesus, you can understand God's Word better, and when you know the Bible, you can understand God a little better. Either without the other gives you an incomplete picture. Experience without knowledge only goes so far, and scholarship without intimacy only goes so far. Both are critical to live a balanced and successful Christian life.
Have something to say about knowing "the author" of the Bible? Do you think personal communion with God is more important than Bible study, or vice versa? Have I been name-dropping Danny too much? (I probably should tell him I've been blogging about him!) Sound off by clicking the "Comments" link below this post!
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Happy Epiphany 2013!
Epiphany (January 6) is the traditional day to celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men (or the Magi, depending on who you're talking to about it) in Bethlehem. This year I learned another pretty exotic-sounding name for it: "Dreikönigsfest"! Well, last year I decided that this day, whether it happens to be Epiphany or Dreikönigsfest, would be a time that I found a small gift to give each family member that I thought would benefit them in their walk with Christ for the following year.
My wife was a little bit tougher. There were some things this past year that were hard on her, particularly some things that were going on in the news and in politics, and I wanted her to remember that Jesus' desire was for her to live in peace. Specifically, I wanted to bring John 14:27 to her mind; in that verse Jesus characterizes his peace as a gift He gave to us, and I wanted my gift to her to reflect that gift to her from Jesus. Surprisingly, it was a little difficult to find a gift with that verse on it, but I finally found this glass plaque, which when we got it out was more beautiful (and even a bit larger!) than I expected. She seemed to really like it; she put it in a prominent place in our apartment so she (and all of us, as a matter of fact) will see it often.
You know what? I feel a little self-conscious about this blog post. I don't want it to seem like I'm tooting my own horn. In fact, if I wanted to do some horn tooting, I probably would have spent more money than I did and tried to make myself look like a big shot... if you click the links, you can see that each item, before shipping, cost me less than ten dollars. But what I did want to do is share something with you, friends who read these posts: I felt God telling me to do this very small thing to love my family, to be like a priest to them, to maybe give them a gentle nudge toward the light of Jesus. Maybe to give them an "epiphany" of some kind. The gift I wanted to share with you was the inspiration to maybe do something similar with your family. Hijack my Epiphany gift idea next year (or even this year... delayed a day or two!) if you like. A small gift, inexpensive but inspired by the Holy Spirit, can make an impact that will last all year.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Heroes: Fictional, Past, and Future
I've been reading a story about a bunch of monsters.
Well, technically, I wasn't reading it; I was listening to an audiobook. And technically, it's not about the monsters; it just has a lot of monsters in it. It's called The Lost Hero, and it's the first book in the second series of books about Percy Jackson.
Well, technically, Percy Jackson's not even in it, so I guess it's not about Percy Jackson, either.
Anyway, I've been listening to the audiobook version this time (I read it last year) because now I have about a 40-minute drive in to work, and I don't have as much time to read now as I did when I rode the bus for the same amount of time. But I wanted to refresh my memory on where the series had left off, because the sequel (The Son of Neptune) just came out and I wanted to remember where the plot was going when I get around to audiobooking that one.
The Percy Jackson novels take place in a world where the gods and goddesses from Greek and Roman mythology actually exist, along with lots of other beings, some nice and some monsters. As in those old stories, the gods and goddesses sometimes get a little bit hot and bothered, and wind up producing children with human mortals; these children are called "demigods" because they are half-god, but they are not immortal. (Remember Hercules? In the ancient myths, he is a demigod whose father was Zeus.) The demigods in the Percy Jackson stories are teenagers, but they go on quests, battle monsters, and generally do a bunch of heroic stuff, just like the demigods in the legends. It's a very exciting fantasy world, and the books are quite popular.
A key plot point in this second story arc is that the gods and demigods find that they have to work together in order to defeat their enemies. In one pivotal scene (mild spoiler here, BTW, in case you haven't read the book), one of the demigods is able to defeat an almost invulnerable enemy by praying to Zeus and then attacking the enemy, knowing that if Zeus doesn't back him up somehow, he will be killed. Zeus does send lightning to assist him, and the enemy is defeated. Isn't that interesting? The boy prays to a god, acts in faith even though he cannot see his solution yet, and then the god backs him up. Isn't that so much like what the Bible asks us to do? Pray in faith and don't doubt, knowing that what you are praying is God's will and not just yours, and God will do His part and the answer will be there when you need it.
The book series that begins with The Lost Hero is called the "Heroes of Olympus" series; a demigod who goes on quests and succeeds at them is known as a Hero. When I've been between audiobooks lately, I've been listening to a music CD called Music Inspired by The Story which is a series of songs performed by a pretty amazing group of Christian rock, pop, and even rap artists, sung not about Bible characters, but in their voice. These songs imagine what thoughts might have gone through the mind of David, or Paul, or Moses, or Mary the mother of Jesus, or about a dozen more Bible characters. Characters? Let's call those guys what they are: they are also Heroes. Except these Heroes didn't battle cyclopes and storm spirits; the Heroes in the Bible fought the fight that each Christian faces every day. They trusted, and they doubted. They succeeded, and they messed up. They got confused, nervous, frightened. They didn't understand what was going on sometimes. But ultimately, when their lives were done, the Holy Spirit saw fit to inspire someone to write their stories out for future generations to read. And because of that, I can have Joshua or Daniel or Esther or Joseph, who lived thousands of years ago, as an inspiration. A role model. A Hero.
Do you ever wonder if somewhere, God's still writing our stories into the Bible? What if the Acts of the Apostles actually isn't finished, and won't be finished until this world ends and all of us who follow Christ cease to do our "acts"? What if what we have in our Bibles is the very first few pages of a scrapbook God's been keeping about His children ever since? What if thousands of years from now, someone gets to read in the Bible about... me? What if God is recording my quests... I mean, my "acts"... in a sequel to the Acts of the Apostles? One day I might get to be a Hero!
You know, though, if you let God speak through you, you are a Hero. When I lead my household in a Godly way, I am a Hero to my family. When I share something from the Word with someone by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I am the Hero that person needed to deliver that message to them. When I pray in faith and God adds His power to the situation, incredible, impossible things happen. It's not because I'm a powerful human; it's because He is the powerful God.
I'm not a demigod. Both of my parents are human beings, and I'm pretty sure yours are too. Mine aren't from Olympus; they're from Louisiana. Demigods aren't real, but Heroes of the Faith are. And today is your chance to be one! Accept the quest you are offered today, and be the Hero God has created you to be. Like Esther, you were created for just this time, just this situation. The challenge isn't too hard, because God equips you. Get out there and do something worthy of God's scrapbook! Maybe one day, weeks or years or decades or centuries or eons from now, your acts will be an inspiration for others!
Well, technically, I wasn't reading it; I was listening to an audiobook. And technically, it's not about the monsters; it just has a lot of monsters in it. It's called The Lost Hero, and it's the first book in the second series of books about Percy Jackson.
Well, technically, Percy Jackson's not even in it, so I guess it's not about Percy Jackson, either.
Anyway, I've been listening to the audiobook version this time (I read it last year) because now I have about a 40-minute drive in to work, and I don't have as much time to read now as I did when I rode the bus for the same amount of time. But I wanted to refresh my memory on where the series had left off, because the sequel (The Son of Neptune) just came out and I wanted to remember where the plot was going when I get around to audiobooking that one.
The Percy Jackson novels take place in a world where the gods and goddesses from Greek and Roman mythology actually exist, along with lots of other beings, some nice and some monsters. As in those old stories, the gods and goddesses sometimes get a little bit hot and bothered, and wind up producing children with human mortals; these children are called "demigods" because they are half-god, but they are not immortal. (Remember Hercules? In the ancient myths, he is a demigod whose father was Zeus.) The demigods in the Percy Jackson stories are teenagers, but they go on quests, battle monsters, and generally do a bunch of heroic stuff, just like the demigods in the legends. It's a very exciting fantasy world, and the books are quite popular.
A key plot point in this second story arc is that the gods and demigods find that they have to work together in order to defeat their enemies. In one pivotal scene (mild spoiler here, BTW, in case you haven't read the book), one of the demigods is able to defeat an almost invulnerable enemy by praying to Zeus and then attacking the enemy, knowing that if Zeus doesn't back him up somehow, he will be killed. Zeus does send lightning to assist him, and the enemy is defeated. Isn't that interesting? The boy prays to a god, acts in faith even though he cannot see his solution yet, and then the god backs him up. Isn't that so much like what the Bible asks us to do? Pray in faith and don't doubt, knowing that what you are praying is God's will and not just yours, and God will do His part and the answer will be there when you need it.
The book series that begins with The Lost Hero is called the "Heroes of Olympus" series; a demigod who goes on quests and succeeds at them is known as a Hero. When I've been between audiobooks lately, I've been listening to a music CD called Music Inspired by The Story which is a series of songs performed by a pretty amazing group of Christian rock, pop, and even rap artists, sung not about Bible characters, but in their voice. These songs imagine what thoughts might have gone through the mind of David, or Paul, or Moses, or Mary the mother of Jesus, or about a dozen more Bible characters. Characters? Let's call those guys what they are: they are also Heroes. Except these Heroes didn't battle cyclopes and storm spirits; the Heroes in the Bible fought the fight that each Christian faces every day. They trusted, and they doubted. They succeeded, and they messed up. They got confused, nervous, frightened. They didn't understand what was going on sometimes. But ultimately, when their lives were done, the Holy Spirit saw fit to inspire someone to write their stories out for future generations to read. And because of that, I can have Joshua or Daniel or Esther or Joseph, who lived thousands of years ago, as an inspiration. A role model. A Hero.
Do you ever wonder if somewhere, God's still writing our stories into the Bible? What if the Acts of the Apostles actually isn't finished, and won't be finished until this world ends and all of us who follow Christ cease to do our "acts"? What if what we have in our Bibles is the very first few pages of a scrapbook God's been keeping about His children ever since? What if thousands of years from now, someone gets to read in the Bible about... me? What if God is recording my quests... I mean, my "acts"... in a sequel to the Acts of the Apostles? One day I might get to be a Hero!
You know, though, if you let God speak through you, you are a Hero. When I lead my household in a Godly way, I am a Hero to my family. When I share something from the Word with someone by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I am the Hero that person needed to deliver that message to them. When I pray in faith and God adds His power to the situation, incredible, impossible things happen. It's not because I'm a powerful human; it's because He is the powerful God.
I'm not a demigod. Both of my parents are human beings, and I'm pretty sure yours are too. Mine aren't from Olympus; they're from Louisiana. Demigods aren't real, but Heroes of the Faith are. And today is your chance to be one! Accept the quest you are offered today, and be the Hero God has created you to be. Like Esther, you were created for just this time, just this situation. The challenge isn't too hard, because God equips you. Get out there and do something worthy of God's scrapbook! Maybe one day, weeks or years or decades or centuries or eons from now, your acts will be an inspiration for others!
Friday, June 17, 2011
Dopple Ganger Chronicles: The Great Mogul Diamond
For the next couple of weeks, I'll be featuring a book review every Friday morning. The books are pretty different from each other, but if you have eclectic tastes like I do, or if you're just curious what weird stuff I've been reading, stop back every week for Book Review Fridays!
At the end of this post I mentioned that my tween son and I were both looking forward to devouring the next installment of The Dopple Ganger Chronicles, The Great Mogul Diamond. Shortly after that, a review copy arrived in my mailbox! We were stoked! My son was so excited that I actually let him read it first, and that's saying something!
This series is visually one of the most strikingly original sets of novels to come out in some time. They combine traditional textual narrative (like in your Huckleberry Finn book) with graphic novel sections (like in your Batman comic books) to form a hybrid that is hard for either kids or adults to resist! The graphic novel sections don't interrupt or repeat the narrative sections; they actually carry the story forward, so if you skip a GN section (you won't, because they're great, but if you did) you would be missing part of the story. And the stories are of course terrific, but I'll get to that in a minute.
The Great Mogul Diamond is a little different than the previous two books. In the first two installments, The First Escape and The Secret of Indigo Moon, the setting is fairly static... within a short drive of Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children. This story starts in that area, but quickly develops into a traveling mystery that takes Sadie, Saskia, Muzz Elliott, Erik Ganger, and Dorcas Potts on a trip from England all the way across France to Cannes in the French Riviera. The girls and Muzz travel by train; Dorcas and Eric follow by car. On the train ride, Muzz and the girls meet up with a friendly but mysterious man who seems to know an awful lot about them, and then they discover that someone is acting out scenes from the mystery novels Muzz has written in order to intimidate and frighten them. Dorcas and Eric, meanwhile, are chased, caught, imprisoned, helped to escape in a mysterious way, and finally meet back up with their friends in Cannes. I enjoyed the story maybe more than I enjoyed the other two, because the sense of travelogue seems to propel the story along in a way the more static settings in the other books do not. I enjoyed having Muzz Elliott back in this story, too; in Moon she is almost completely absent from the story.
The visuals are augmented, in this third book, by photographs, which lend a sense of realism to the story. Don't get me wrong: the illustrations in the first book are wonderful, and they certainly draw you into the story; those illustrations are present here as well. But scattered throughout the book are a dozen or two actual photographs, tweaked a bit to fit into the style of the rest of the artwork. I liked them a lot, although I did find it a bit jarring that the photograph of a "Restaurant" on a page opposite some narrative about the characters going to a "café" has a sign next to the door clearly showing that the name of the place is not the name in the story. That particular photograph does evoke a sense of going to a French café, and for that reason I love that it is there, but you would think that a half-hour with Photoshop could have reworked that picture so the café name in the story could have appeared on the sign. All nitpicking aside, though, the photos are a cool addition to this volume.
In the first two books, Sadie and Saskia have encounters with a mysterious figure known as Madame Raphael. The implication in the story is that she is an angel, although she won't directly admit it to them. In this book, Erik gets his chance to meet Madame Raphael, who helps him and Dorcas get out of a sticky situation mid-book. She also mentions someone else to Erik: The Man of Good-Bye Friday, who is mentioned to the twin sisters in the last chapter of Moon. Erik's "chance" meeting with this man, who is easily as mysterious as Madame Raphael, fills in some important blanks in Erik's knowledge of his past. He also appears on the very last page of the book, having a conversation with Madame Raphael, and the last sentence of the book actually brought tears to my eyes. (To avoid spoiling it for you, I won't tell you why... you'll know when you get there!)
My eleven-year-old son loved this book, as he has loved the other two. We actually never bought a copy of book one of the series (we checked it out from the library); when he finished this one, he asked me if we could buy and have a copy of it at home! I will certainly be making that purchase. I think it's fascinating to begin to see the patterns that author G. P. Taylor is weaving into the series: there is always a mystery to solve; the twin sisters always get temporarily separated somehow; there are always two plots happening at once, one involving Erik, with or without one of the sisters, and the other involving one or both of the girls; one character always has an encounter with the mysterious Madame Raphael and/or Man of Good-Bye Friday. The last chapter always contains a clue as to what the next story will be about. The villains keep popping up from previous books, too, and it's fun to continue to sketch out their history and find out what they've been up to since the last time we've seen them. Each book has a simplicity and straightforwardness to it, but the series as a whole is developing a more complicated mythology than any of the books on its own. Like any good book series, you don't have to read the first or second books to enjoy this one, but if you go back and read them and then read this one again, you'll understand things you didn't understand before. I think the simplicity of each story draws you in, but the multiple connections between the stories, and the larger spiritual story arc involving the two (so far) mysterious characters, are the hook that keeps you coming back for the next in the series.
The worst part about reading these books is that eventually, you come to the most recent book in the series, and then the wait for the next one seems to take forever! I wasn't able to find a projected publication date for the next in the series, but I did find an indication that there are at least three more books planned, which is great news! If your tweens love graphic novels but traditional novels not as much, pick up one of these books - any of the three would make a good entry point - and see what happens. But beware: you may wind up buying all three before you're done! They're that fun to read!
I was provided with a review copy of The Great Mogul Diamond by Tyndale House Publishers. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Dopple Ganger Chronicles: The Secret of Indigo Moon
I don't actually remember how I first ran across The Dopple Ganger Chronicles by G.P. Taylor about a year and a half ago. I probably either found it in the Christianbook.com catalog or the Lifeway Christian Stores catalog. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like these books before. They're not a novel in the traditional sense; many parts of the story are told in graphic novel format. But they aren't strictly graphic novels either, because there are many pages that are filled partly or completely with standard text, like a novel. If you flip through one of them, it almost looks like a very stylish novel with cartoon-style illustrations, but if you think you can read the story and skip the pictures, you're wrong. When the narrative ends at a cartoon section, it actually picks up in the cartoon! It's a great format for a book targeted at tween readers, even ones who are reluctant to read for pleasure. My then 9-year-old son enjoyed the first one very much! (He hasn't read book #2 yet, but he's planning to very soon!)
Book #1, The First Escape, introduces us to the main three characters: twin girls named Sadie and Saskia Dopple, and their friend, a boy named Erik Ganger. I should explain, for anyone who doesn't get the joke here, that "doppelgänger" is a word meaning a double or an alter-ego, so there's a "double meaning" to the series title. The girls are "Dopple" and the boy is "Ganger," and the girls are mirror-image twins so each is a doppelgänger of the other. All three of the children are orphans; they live in an orphanage for girls called Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children (Erik lives there as sort of a part-time janitor; all of the other "wayward children" are girls.) The First Escape also introduces us to some other characters who turn up again in the second book: some of Sadie and Saskia's schoolmates, cranky and slightly shady headmistress Miss Rimmer, tyrannical cook Mrs. Omeron, an odd and threatening magician named The Great Potemkin, and, key to the first book, famed author Muzz Elliott. A very mysterious, ghostlike woman named Madame Raphael also appears quite briefly; her part is small in Escape but she plays a more important part in book #2, The Secret of Indigo Moon. I suspect her character will become more and more important as the series continues on.
I enjoyed The First Escape very much... so much that I actually blew through it probably a little more quickly than I should have, maybe missing a few details in the process. These books lend themselves best to reading at a leisurely pace, particularly in the graphic novel sections. The artwork is very stylish and, in some cases, quite detailed; the comic format is often used for action sequences where a lot is going on at once. The first book is sort of a mystery with some ghosts thrown in (most notably a seance which turns out to be a hoax). There's lots of action and lots of peril; the villains spend a lot of time chasing the heroes around in an attempt to kill them, but at the end, things basically turn out fine (more or less). The things that I don't like about the first book are that the story seems a bit unfocused, with two plot streams going on at once but never really dovetailing in a satisfying way, and that the children don't ever come upon an adult that they can truly trust. Madame Raphael almost qualifies, but her part is so brief and her character so unearthly and mysterious that she barely counts. It turns out that Muzz Elliott was probably the adult that the children could have trusted the most, but Muzz is so self-focused and unavailable that the children wind up having nobody to turn to except each other. It's not that there are no grown-ups; there are lots of grown-ups. It's just that most of them are bad guys, or at best, unreliable good or neutral characters.
The Secret of Indigo Moon does better on both counts. At the beginning of this second installment, the two girls have (sort of) been adopted by Muzz, or at least they have a family-style relationship with her, although they still spend a lot of their time living at Isambard Dunstan's School. Muzz does not appear in this story, but her presence as a trustworthy figure, sort of a safe home base, runs throughout. There are other sympathetic adult characters, too: a newspaper reporter named Dorcas Potts, and her uncle, Lord Gervez. I was happy that the young hero and heroines had finally found some people they could trust. It's important that kids understand that adults are not the enemy, and in the first book it almost felt like that to me. Some of the villains from the first book return in the second book, and some new bad guys appear. And Madame Raphael has a much more important part to play; I'll get back to her in a minute.
I enjoyed how this book deepens the characters and their relationships with each other; the world they move about in seems more real and nuanced in Moon than in Escape. Like the first book, this story is about a band of thieves; the girls get separated, Sadie with Erik and Saskia on her own. But the individual stories seem to merge back together in a more satisfying way in book #2 than in book #1; Sadie and Erik's side adventure serves to advance the plot this time, where in the first book it seemed almost contrived, like a way to get the twins separated so Saskia was out on a limb by herself with nobody else to turn to. But to me, the biggest difference has to do with Madame Raphael and her increased role. Before I go into the details I will mention that her identity is left mysterious at the end of the first book, so if you want to avoid spoilers, you might want to quit reading now and return to this review once you've enjoyed the books on their own merits.
In Escape, Madame Raphael doesn't do very much. She mysteriously appears in Saskia's room, gives her an etiquette lesson, leaves her a key with no real explanation, and disappears, and that's pretty much it. But her appearance obviously made a big impact on Saskia, because in book #2, Saskia seems to think of her in religious terms, to the point of praying to her. But she actually appears several times, and by the end of the book she has implied that she is an angel (one of the angels who was present at the birth of Jesus, in fact) and told Saskia that she should not pray to Madame Raphael, but to someone she refers to as The Companion. The approach is soft-spoken and almost mystical, inviting without being demanding, and I think it's quite effective in a book that is as enjoyable for a tween with no religious upbringing at all as it is for a tween who grew up in church. I look forward to finding out how that character develops over time.
G. P. Taylor, authorBoth books contain a quote from a BBC show calling G. P. Taylor "the new C. S. Lewis." I'm not sure there is a direct comparison; the work of both is compelling, but Lewis was never much of an action scene writer, and Taylor doesn't seem to be that much for symbolism, which was a big thing for Lewis. Like Lewis, Taylor is Anglican (although I don't think C. S. Lewis was actually a minister, while Taylor is). Taylor rolls out fiction much more regularly than Lewis typically did; Lewis also wrote many scholarly works and works of apologetics. But Taylor certainly has a gift for engaging and holding his audience's attention, and the hybrid novel/graphic novel format is quite exciting. I have recommended these books to children's librarians, and I would recommend them to any parent of a child who enjoys books containing fantasy elements (Narnia, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc.) But I would even recommend these books to parents of children who do not like to read. The pacing is fast, but the plots are complex enough that they invite you to participate in the story. This is good stuff. I'm looking forward to book #3, The Great Mogul Diamond, scheduled for release in May!
After I wrote and posted this review, I gave the book to my 11-year-old son. He read it immediately, and at the end of two days he had finished it... TWICE! He can't wait for book #3 (and he wants me to buy him the first one, which we got from the library)!
I was provided with a review copy of The Secret of Indigo Moon by Tyndale House Publishers. I read The First Escape before requesting the review copy of Moon. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
Book #1, The First Escape, introduces us to the main three characters: twin girls named Sadie and Saskia Dopple, and their friend, a boy named Erik Ganger. I should explain, for anyone who doesn't get the joke here, that "doppelgänger" is a word meaning a double or an alter-ego, so there's a "double meaning" to the series title. The girls are "Dopple" and the boy is "Ganger," and the girls are mirror-image twins so each is a doppelgänger of the other. All three of the children are orphans; they live in an orphanage for girls called Isambard Dunstan's School for Wayward Children (Erik lives there as sort of a part-time janitor; all of the other "wayward children" are girls.) The First Escape also introduces us to some other characters who turn up again in the second book: some of Sadie and Saskia's schoolmates, cranky and slightly shady headmistress Miss Rimmer, tyrannical cook Mrs. Omeron, an odd and threatening magician named The Great Potemkin, and, key to the first book, famed author Muzz Elliott. A very mysterious, ghostlike woman named Madame Raphael also appears quite briefly; her part is small in Escape but she plays a more important part in book #2, The Secret of Indigo Moon. I suspect her character will become more and more important as the series continues on.
I enjoyed The First Escape very much... so much that I actually blew through it probably a little more quickly than I should have, maybe missing a few details in the process. These books lend themselves best to reading at a leisurely pace, particularly in the graphic novel sections. The artwork is very stylish and, in some cases, quite detailed; the comic format is often used for action sequences where a lot is going on at once. The first book is sort of a mystery with some ghosts thrown in (most notably a seance which turns out to be a hoax). There's lots of action and lots of peril; the villains spend a lot of time chasing the heroes around in an attempt to kill them, but at the end, things basically turn out fine (more or less). The things that I don't like about the first book are that the story seems a bit unfocused, with two plot streams going on at once but never really dovetailing in a satisfying way, and that the children don't ever come upon an adult that they can truly trust. Madame Raphael almost qualifies, but her part is so brief and her character so unearthly and mysterious that she barely counts. It turns out that Muzz Elliott was probably the adult that the children could have trusted the most, but Muzz is so self-focused and unavailable that the children wind up having nobody to turn to except each other. It's not that there are no grown-ups; there are lots of grown-ups. It's just that most of them are bad guys, or at best, unreliable good or neutral characters.
The Secret of Indigo Moon does better on both counts. At the beginning of this second installment, the two girls have (sort of) been adopted by Muzz, or at least they have a family-style relationship with her, although they still spend a lot of their time living at Isambard Dunstan's School. Muzz does not appear in this story, but her presence as a trustworthy figure, sort of a safe home base, runs throughout. There are other sympathetic adult characters, too: a newspaper reporter named Dorcas Potts, and her uncle, Lord Gervez. I was happy that the young hero and heroines had finally found some people they could trust. It's important that kids understand that adults are not the enemy, and in the first book it almost felt like that to me. Some of the villains from the first book return in the second book, and some new bad guys appear. And Madame Raphael has a much more important part to play; I'll get back to her in a minute.
I enjoyed how this book deepens the characters and their relationships with each other; the world they move about in seems more real and nuanced in Moon than in Escape. Like the first book, this story is about a band of thieves; the girls get separated, Sadie with Erik and Saskia on her own. But the individual stories seem to merge back together in a more satisfying way in book #2 than in book #1; Sadie and Erik's side adventure serves to advance the plot this time, where in the first book it seemed almost contrived, like a way to get the twins separated so Saskia was out on a limb by herself with nobody else to turn to. But to me, the biggest difference has to do with Madame Raphael and her increased role. Before I go into the details I will mention that her identity is left mysterious at the end of the first book, so if you want to avoid spoilers, you might want to quit reading now and return to this review once you've enjoyed the books on their own merits.
In Escape, Madame Raphael doesn't do very much. She mysteriously appears in Saskia's room, gives her an etiquette lesson, leaves her a key with no real explanation, and disappears, and that's pretty much it. But her appearance obviously made a big impact on Saskia, because in book #2, Saskia seems to think of her in religious terms, to the point of praying to her. But she actually appears several times, and by the end of the book she has implied that she is an angel (one of the angels who was present at the birth of Jesus, in fact) and told Saskia that she should not pray to Madame Raphael, but to someone she refers to as The Companion. The approach is soft-spoken and almost mystical, inviting without being demanding, and I think it's quite effective in a book that is as enjoyable for a tween with no religious upbringing at all as it is for a tween who grew up in church. I look forward to finding out how that character develops over time.
G. P. Taylor, author
After I wrote and posted this review, I gave the book to my 11-year-old son. He read it immediately, and at the end of two days he had finished it... TWICE! He can't wait for book #3 (and he wants me to buy him the first one, which we got from the library)!
I was provided with a review copy of The Secret of Indigo Moon by Tyndale House Publishers. I read The First Escape before requesting the review copy of Moon. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Planet Narnia
When I read The Narnia Code a month or so ago, I found myself convinced but vaguely unsatisfied. I saw that Michael Ward had a good case on his hands, but it seemed somehow incomplete to me. But I had heard that his earlier book, Planet Narnia, was a "more scholarly" work that covered much of the same ground. That statement is correct... it is more "scholarly" and it does cover a lot of the same ground... but boy oh BOY is it more than just a wordier version of the same thing! Planet Narnia goes places that The Narnia Code wouldn't dream of going.
I covered the basics of Ward's planetary theory about the Chronicles in my review of The Narnia Code, so I won't go through all that again here. Much of the material is exactly the same between the two books; if you read both you will even recognize some of the sentences they have in common (I understand that NC is a revision of PN). But the two books approach the subject from different directions. NC treats the whole thing kind of like a mystery story; the first chapter is actually called "The Mystery," and Ward goes to great lengths making the point that people have wondered about a common theme in the Chronicles but have not been able to figure it out. PN gets right into the meat of the matter, not making a big deal out of the mystery but diving right into the scholarship of the matter. It's not necessarily a better or worse approach; I think the NC approach is probably more appealing to someone who does light reading for pleasure, since it has that air of a good mystery story about it, and the PN approach is going to be more engaging for someone who maybe has a more comprehensive knowledge of Lewis' body of work and who wants all the details.
And if you're looking for details, Planet Narnia certainly delivers! NC touches briefly on the planets in some of Lewis' other writings, but PN covers all of the connections, from Lewis' poem called "The Planets" to his non-fiction work The Discarded Image to his Space Trilogy and even to some more obscure (even unpublished) works. Ward even occasionally takes a look at works from other authors that Lewis was very likely to have been influenced by. The information is much deeper in PN; the chapters are much longer (I would estimate that it took me at least twice as long to read one of the PN chapters about one of the planets as it took me to read the corresponding chapter in NC, and in some cases maybe three times as long) and the vocabulary is more complex as well. Take this sentence from page 45 as an example: "This focus upon the aestival aspect of Jove's influence was derived, in part, from Lewis's observation of the development of the Criseyde story in post-Chaucerian English poetry." Sometimes I had to read a sentence twice or three times to get the point! If you absolutely don't like three-dollar words, you might stick with NC. You certainly won't breeze through PN; it will take you some work to get through it. But I found the effort rewarding; it was worth every "appurtenance" and "ichneutic" to get to the greater wealth of information in the more detailed book.
I've read an awful lot of C.S. Lewis' work. I've read some books about his writings, too, and I even have the book containing the unfinished story fragment called "The Dark Tower" and some other obscure stuff. I'm familiar enough with his corpus that reading this was like seeing for the first time a road through territory with which I was already basically familiar. If you're not as big a fan as I, you may not enjoy it so much. In fact, if you've read the Chronicles but haven't read the Space Trilogy (Out Of The Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) I would recommend taking in the Space Trilogy before tackling Planet Narnia; Ward talks quite a lot about the Space Trilogy in PN, seeing in it some of the seeds of the idea of writing a whole series with the planets as an underlying theme. Taking a look at The Discarded Image might be helpful too, but I would consider that less of a prerequisite than the Space Trilogy. Once you're familiar with the Chronicles and the Space Trilogy, though, if you're ready for a wild ride through the imagination of C.S. Lewis, dive right in! For true C.S. Lewis fans, this book is a real eye-opener and a lot of fun. Give it a look!
Web links:
My review of The Narnia Code, both the book at the DVD
PlanetNarnia.com - buy the book
NarniaCode.com - buy the book - buy the DVD
MichaelWard.net (the author)
I covered the basics of Ward's planetary theory about the Chronicles in my review of The Narnia Code, so I won't go through all that again here. Much of the material is exactly the same between the two books; if you read both you will even recognize some of the sentences they have in common (I understand that NC is a revision of PN). But the two books approach the subject from different directions. NC treats the whole thing kind of like a mystery story; the first chapter is actually called "The Mystery," and Ward goes to great lengths making the point that people have wondered about a common theme in the Chronicles but have not been able to figure it out. PN gets right into the meat of the matter, not making a big deal out of the mystery but diving right into the scholarship of the matter. It's not necessarily a better or worse approach; I think the NC approach is probably more appealing to someone who does light reading for pleasure, since it has that air of a good mystery story about it, and the PN approach is going to be more engaging for someone who maybe has a more comprehensive knowledge of Lewis' body of work and who wants all the details.
And if you're looking for details, Planet Narnia certainly delivers! NC touches briefly on the planets in some of Lewis' other writings, but PN covers all of the connections, from Lewis' poem called "The Planets" to his non-fiction work The Discarded Image to his Space Trilogy and even to some more obscure (even unpublished) works. Ward even occasionally takes a look at works from other authors that Lewis was very likely to have been influenced by. The information is much deeper in PN; the chapters are much longer (I would estimate that it took me at least twice as long to read one of the PN chapters about one of the planets as it took me to read the corresponding chapter in NC, and in some cases maybe three times as long) and the vocabulary is more complex as well. Take this sentence from page 45 as an example: "This focus upon the aestival aspect of Jove's influence was derived, in part, from Lewis's observation of the development of the Criseyde story in post-Chaucerian English poetry." Sometimes I had to read a sentence twice or three times to get the point! If you absolutely don't like three-dollar words, you might stick with NC. You certainly won't breeze through PN; it will take you some work to get through it. But I found the effort rewarding; it was worth every "appurtenance" and "ichneutic" to get to the greater wealth of information in the more detailed book.
I've read an awful lot of C.S. Lewis' work. I've read some books about his writings, too, and I even have the book containing the unfinished story fragment called "The Dark Tower" and some other obscure stuff. I'm familiar enough with his corpus that reading this was like seeing for the first time a road through territory with which I was already basically familiar. If you're not as big a fan as I, you may not enjoy it so much. In fact, if you've read the Chronicles but haven't read the Space Trilogy (Out Of The Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) I would recommend taking in the Space Trilogy before tackling Planet Narnia; Ward talks quite a lot about the Space Trilogy in PN, seeing in it some of the seeds of the idea of writing a whole series with the planets as an underlying theme. Taking a look at The Discarded Image might be helpful too, but I would consider that less of a prerequisite than the Space Trilogy. Once you're familiar with the Chronicles and the Space Trilogy, though, if you're ready for a wild ride through the imagination of C.S. Lewis, dive right in! For true C.S. Lewis fans, this book is a real eye-opener and a lot of fun. Give it a look!
Web links:
My review of The Narnia Code, both the book at the DVD
PlanetNarnia.com - buy the book
NarniaCode.com - buy the book - buy the DVD
MichaelWard.net (the author)
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The Narnia Code - Book & DVD
I know I'm in good company when I say that I've loved the Chronicles of Narnia ever since I was a little boy; I'm guessing that a majority of the people reading this probably have similar stories. I was a young teenager when I first discovered them, and I still have my original set of the seven books. I remember being so excited by what most people would consider a clear allegory of Christ's death and resurrection in the first book, and then puzzled when the rest of the books really contained very little that resembled any stories or characters from the Bible. But I loved the books anyway, and as I grew older I read more and more of C.S. Lewis' work... actually, I read everything I could get my hands on, from the Space Trilogy to his amazing works of apologetics to The Screwtape Letters and even a few things he wrote before becoming a Christian. In college I literally read everything by him that they had in the university library.
I've always been so impressed with how methodical and thorough of a thinker Lewis was. That's one reason the Chronicles seem to be a little bit of an anomaly; they seem to be related mostly by the geography of the world of Narnia and the person of Aslan Himself, and frankly, in a few of the books Aslan barely even appears. And then there are other odd things in the books... Father Christmas, for goodness sakes? What's with that? Why would they even know about Christmas in Narnia anyway? I think I basically just sort of wrote those things off, thinking that Lewis was writing the books to entertain children, or maybe just sort of to blow off steam, and that there was not too much rhyme or reason to the whole thing.
That is, I thought that way... until now.
Michael Ward's new book The Narnia Code presents a theory of what holds the books together which rocked my whole concept of the series, and which, to a fan of C.S. Lewis' entire body of work, has a ring of truth to it. When I started reading, you could have colored me intrigued; by the end, you can color me convinced.
Basically, Ward believes that Lewis, who was a professor of medieval literature, used the medieval concept of the universe as a framework for the series. Before Copernicus came along with a whole different idea of the way the universe was organized, it was believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and there were seven "planets" that circled around it in concentric orbits (the "planets" were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn... our understanding of the moon and sun as different from those other planets didn't appear until a bit later, and planets past Saturn were not discovered until the invention of the telescope). Each of the planets was associated with a mythological deity, and those gods was associated with certain things. Each book is based around the superstitious and mythological concepts surrounding one of these planets/gods. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is, for example, the "Jupiter" book, because Jupiter was considered the god of joviality (which explains why when joy begins to return to Narnia as winter breaks, the jolly Father Christmas appears), and Prince Caspian, which is all about war, is based on Mars, who was the god of war. The planets and books line up quite nicely; if you're interested in finding out more details, I'll refer you to the official Web sites at the bottom of this article, and to the book itself (click here to purchase it from ChristianBook.com).
The Michael Ward book itself was, if I understand it correctly, based on the BBC film of the same name (discussed below), and the BBC program was based on Ward's earlier book, Planet Narnia. I have not yet read Planet Narnia (I plan to take a look at it very soon), but my understanding is that it is a more scholarly book, while The Narnia Code is more targeted at the layman. The first few chapters lay out the way Ward came to make his discovery of the link between the books and medieval astronomy, and then it goes straight into explaining the thematic elements of each book, one at a time. I found the initial few chapters a little long for my taste; but once he finally got into the themes of the individual books, I was so hooked! In addition to being a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, I've long been a fan of ancient Greek/Roman mythology, and the connections seem obvious once they're pointed out. It made me want to go back and re-read the Chronicles themselves again, to sort of sniff out the links for myself. The book is an enjoyable read for any fan of the series; you'll want to read it a chapter at a time and digest the information before moving on to the next one.
(For the record, Ward makes it clear, as Lewis did, that the books are most definitely about Jesus Christ; Ward is not trying to say that Aslan is Zeus or anything like that. The idea is that Lewis used the planets and their mythological associations to create the atmosphere for his stories and to point up different aspects of Christ's character, not that Aslan represents a different pagan god in each book.)
Shortly after I read the book, I was at the Christian bookstore near my house, and to my surprise, I spotted the DVD of the BBC program on the shelf! My understanding was that it would not be available until early 2011, but there it was! I snagged a copy and watched it with my family. Surprisingly enough, the DVD contains very little information about the whole "planets" idea; most of it is a biography of Lewis himself. The main program doesn't even give the whole list of "this book matches this planet" associations (although you can find that in the DVD bonus features). I was expecting more about the planets theory, but I found the biography of Lewis interesting and, in a few cases, it even presented information about Lewis that I had not heard before (and I've read quite a bit about Lewis over the years). I enjoyed the DVD just as much as I enjoyed the book, although in a different way; the two complement each other nicely.
If you love the Chronicles of Narnia books, you will at least find The Narnia Code interesting. You may agree with Ward, as I do, or you may think he's a crackpot trying to make a buck off Lewis' legacy, and you may even find the idea that Lewis drew part of his inspiration from stories of pagan gods and goddesses vaguely offensive. But the theory is compelling and the evidence is extensive, and as a Narnia fan, you owe it to yourself to look into these books. It will change the way you see the series forever.
I was provided with a review copy of the book version by Tyndale House Publishers. I purchased the BBC DVD on my own. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
Web links:
My review of Planet Narnia
NarniaCode.com - buy the book - buy the DVD
PlanetNarnia.com - buy the book
MichaelWard.net (the author)
I've always been so impressed with how methodical and thorough of a thinker Lewis was. That's one reason the Chronicles seem to be a little bit of an anomaly; they seem to be related mostly by the geography of the world of Narnia and the person of Aslan Himself, and frankly, in a few of the books Aslan barely even appears. And then there are other odd things in the books... Father Christmas, for goodness sakes? What's with that? Why would they even know about Christmas in Narnia anyway? I think I basically just sort of wrote those things off, thinking that Lewis was writing the books to entertain children, or maybe just sort of to blow off steam, and that there was not too much rhyme or reason to the whole thing.
That is, I thought that way... until now.
Michael Ward's new book The Narnia Code presents a theory of what holds the books together which rocked my whole concept of the series, and which, to a fan of C.S. Lewis' entire body of work, has a ring of truth to it. When I started reading, you could have colored me intrigued; by the end, you can color me convinced.
Basically, Ward believes that Lewis, who was a professor of medieval literature, used the medieval concept of the universe as a framework for the series. Before Copernicus came along with a whole different idea of the way the universe was organized, it was believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and there were seven "planets" that circled around it in concentric orbits (the "planets" were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn... our understanding of the moon and sun as different from those other planets didn't appear until a bit later, and planets past Saturn were not discovered until the invention of the telescope). Each of the planets was associated with a mythological deity, and those gods was associated with certain things. Each book is based around the superstitious and mythological concepts surrounding one of these planets/gods. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is, for example, the "Jupiter" book, because Jupiter was considered the god of joviality (which explains why when joy begins to return to Narnia as winter breaks, the jolly Father Christmas appears), and Prince Caspian, which is all about war, is based on Mars, who was the god of war. The planets and books line up quite nicely; if you're interested in finding out more details, I'll refer you to the official Web sites at the bottom of this article, and to the book itself (click here to purchase it from ChristianBook.com).
The Michael Ward book itself was, if I understand it correctly, based on the BBC film of the same name (discussed below), and the BBC program was based on Ward's earlier book, Planet Narnia. I have not yet read Planet Narnia (I plan to take a look at it very soon), but my understanding is that it is a more scholarly book, while The Narnia Code is more targeted at the layman. The first few chapters lay out the way Ward came to make his discovery of the link between the books and medieval astronomy, and then it goes straight into explaining the thematic elements of each book, one at a time. I found the initial few chapters a little long for my taste; but once he finally got into the themes of the individual books, I was so hooked! In addition to being a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, I've long been a fan of ancient Greek/Roman mythology, and the connections seem obvious once they're pointed out. It made me want to go back and re-read the Chronicles themselves again, to sort of sniff out the links for myself. The book is an enjoyable read for any fan of the series; you'll want to read it a chapter at a time and digest the information before moving on to the next one.
(For the record, Ward makes it clear, as Lewis did, that the books are most definitely about Jesus Christ; Ward is not trying to say that Aslan is Zeus or anything like that. The idea is that Lewis used the planets and their mythological associations to create the atmosphere for his stories and to point up different aspects of Christ's character, not that Aslan represents a different pagan god in each book.)
Shortly after I read the book, I was at the Christian bookstore near my house, and to my surprise, I spotted the DVD of the BBC program on the shelf! My understanding was that it would not be available until early 2011, but there it was! I snagged a copy and watched it with my family. Surprisingly enough, the DVD contains very little information about the whole "planets" idea; most of it is a biography of Lewis himself. The main program doesn't even give the whole list of "this book matches this planet" associations (although you can find that in the DVD bonus features). I was expecting more about the planets theory, but I found the biography of Lewis interesting and, in a few cases, it even presented information about Lewis that I had not heard before (and I've read quite a bit about Lewis over the years). I enjoyed the DVD just as much as I enjoyed the book, although in a different way; the two complement each other nicely.
If you love the Chronicles of Narnia books, you will at least find The Narnia Code interesting. You may agree with Ward, as I do, or you may think he's a crackpot trying to make a buck off Lewis' legacy, and you may even find the idea that Lewis drew part of his inspiration from stories of pagan gods and goddesses vaguely offensive. But the theory is compelling and the evidence is extensive, and as a Narnia fan, you owe it to yourself to look into these books. It will change the way you see the series forever.
I was provided with a review copy of the book version by Tyndale House Publishers. I purchased the BBC DVD on my own. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone.
Web links:
My review of Planet Narnia
NarniaCode.com - buy the book - buy the DVD
PlanetNarnia.com - buy the book
MichaelWard.net (the author)
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The more things change...
In 1956, a very unusual wedding took place. The groom was C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia books as well as many other works of Christian fiction and apologetics. He was nearly 60 years old, and had never before been married. The bride in the hospital bed next to him was a 40-year-old American divorcee to whom he had, in the eyes of Great Britain, been married for quite some time. It's not unlikely that you've heard this story before; it was written about by Lewis himself after her death a few years later from bone cancer several years later, and the story, under the name "Shadowlands", has been made into a movie twice.
It turns out that the woman in this story, Joy Davidman/Gresham/Lewis, was an amazing thinker and author in her own right. I learned this when, out of curiousity, I checked the catalog at the library to see if anything she had written was in the collection. Sure enough, there was one book, These Found the Way: Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity, which contained her autobiography up to a few years before her divorce from Douglas Gresham (his story is in the book as well), and a book she wrote called Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. I checked out both (they were so old that the library had them in storage!) The former, which is a compilation of the life stories of a number of people who came to Christ later in life (Joy and Douglas had previously been atheists and Marxists), really opened my eyes to some of the ideas and attitudes of Christians midway through the 20th century. Joy's chapter especially stood out to me, not only because it was the part of the book that I initially checked it out to read, but more importantly because she wrote with passion and emotion that I didn't feel in the other authors' chapters. I was hooked!
But even though her chapter in that book knocked my socks off, the idea of reading a book about the Ten Commandments sounded dry at best. In fact, for that very reason I had left both books on my "to read someday" lists for quite some time before I finally requested them. Frankly, I thought that her book about the Ten Commandments was going to be BORING. But boy, was I wrong! Smoke on the Mountain is anything BUT boring. It is interesting, challenging, and amazingly current... especially considering it was first published in 1953!
Joy takes each of the Ten Commandments, one chapter for each, and examines it in historical context to try to determine what the command might have meant to the original listeners... ancient Arabs, recently freed from slavery, wandering around in the wilderness. They didn't think the same way you and I do. As someone from the middle of the United States, I don't even fully understand the mind of a modern inhabitant of the Middle East, much less one that lived over 3000 years ago. Joy does a great job of providing that background, and then translating those ideas into a modern context.
The fact that her interpretations hit amazingly close to home proves, however, that people haven't changed as much in the nearly 60 years since her book was written as you might expect! Ms. Davidman, a Jew by nationality but (by this time) a Christian by religion, thought things through thoroughly and reached sometimes startling conclusions. For example, in the chapter on "graven images" (idolatry) she brings a hypothetical individual through several levels of idolatry... from a non-churched worshipper of things like the nice television in his living room, to a church attender whose idol becomes the idea that he can "save the world" through buying a TV for the youth room at his church, to a person who sees the church not as an instrument of social change, but as something that is valuable in and of itself.
"And I [the hypothetical person who has made this journey] am still an idolater," Joy Davidman writes. "I have fallen into the last and subtlest trap; I bow down to wood and stone, in the shape of a church building. Through regular attendance, through handsome financial contributions, through raising the minister's salary and redecorating the altar and improving the organist's technique and encouraging the foreign missions, I expect to be saved. To put it bluntly, I have forgotten that the church itself is not God."
Have you ever thought that your church itself might become an idol to you? I never have before, but that is a pretty interesting perspective on why ministers and church volunteers become burned out. They are serving their idol, and idols are cruel taskmasters.
How about the prose-poetry of this passage about giving up your own desires and plans and "loving the Lord your God with all your heart": "...we fear that if we give up the self nothing will be left of us but a dry, empty husk like a dead snail shell. It seldom occurs to us that the Holy Spirit is only waiting until the self is out—waiting to rush in and fill us with luminous splendors. Throwing away the self is like squeezing the water out of a half-drowned man's lungs, not because you want his lungs empty but because you want the air to get in so that he can live. For the self is asphyxiating and killing us; the only air we are designed to breathe is God."
Have I squeezed enough "self" out that the Holy Spirit can fully enter in? Well, I hope I've squeezed enough out that He feels comfortable as the central figure of my life, but I know there's always more work to do. There's always just a little bit more heart to love the Lord with! Joy Davidman's way of expressing spiritual truths is often as much emotional as intellectual, and I like that a lot... it makes the whole thing so much more vivid and memorable. It's the reason I liked the book. It's the reason I wanted to share it with you here!
I had to give the book back to the library (after renewing it the maximum two times and letting it go overdue a couple of days!) but I plan to buy a copy of it for my own library and study each chapter for a whole week. It's available in paperback from ChristianBook.com and from Amazon.com (if you insist on a hardback copy, you may wind up paying "a little" more!) The ideas are startling and potentially life-changing. I highly recommend it!
It turns out that the woman in this story, Joy Davidman/Gresham/Lewis, was an amazing thinker and author in her own right. I learned this when, out of curiousity, I checked the catalog at the library to see if anything she had written was in the collection. Sure enough, there was one book, These Found the Way: Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity, which contained her autobiography up to a few years before her divorce from Douglas Gresham (his story is in the book as well), and a book she wrote called Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. I checked out both (they were so old that the library had them in storage!) The former, which is a compilation of the life stories of a number of people who came to Christ later in life (Joy and Douglas had previously been atheists and Marxists), really opened my eyes to some of the ideas and attitudes of Christians midway through the 20th century. Joy's chapter especially stood out to me, not only because it was the part of the book that I initially checked it out to read, but more importantly because she wrote with passion and emotion that I didn't feel in the other authors' chapters. I was hooked!
But even though her chapter in that book knocked my socks off, the idea of reading a book about the Ten Commandments sounded dry at best. In fact, for that very reason I had left both books on my "to read someday" lists for quite some time before I finally requested them. Frankly, I thought that her book about the Ten Commandments was going to be BORING. But boy, was I wrong! Smoke on the Mountain is anything BUT boring. It is interesting, challenging, and amazingly current... especially considering it was first published in 1953!
Joy takes each of the Ten Commandments, one chapter for each, and examines it in historical context to try to determine what the command might have meant to the original listeners... ancient Arabs, recently freed from slavery, wandering around in the wilderness. They didn't think the same way you and I do. As someone from the middle of the United States, I don't even fully understand the mind of a modern inhabitant of the Middle East, much less one that lived over 3000 years ago. Joy does a great job of providing that background, and then translating those ideas into a modern context.
The fact that her interpretations hit amazingly close to home proves, however, that people haven't changed as much in the nearly 60 years since her book was written as you might expect! Ms. Davidman, a Jew by nationality but (by this time) a Christian by religion, thought things through thoroughly and reached sometimes startling conclusions. For example, in the chapter on "graven images" (idolatry) she brings a hypothetical individual through several levels of idolatry... from a non-churched worshipper of things like the nice television in his living room, to a church attender whose idol becomes the idea that he can "save the world" through buying a TV for the youth room at his church, to a person who sees the church not as an instrument of social change, but as something that is valuable in and of itself.
"And I [the hypothetical person who has made this journey] am still an idolater," Joy Davidman writes. "I have fallen into the last and subtlest trap; I bow down to wood and stone, in the shape of a church building. Through regular attendance, through handsome financial contributions, through raising the minister's salary and redecorating the altar and improving the organist's technique and encouraging the foreign missions, I expect to be saved. To put it bluntly, I have forgotten that the church itself is not God."
Have you ever thought that your church itself might become an idol to you? I never have before, but that is a pretty interesting perspective on why ministers and church volunteers become burned out. They are serving their idol, and idols are cruel taskmasters.
How about the prose-poetry of this passage about giving up your own desires and plans and "loving the Lord your God with all your heart": "...we fear that if we give up the self nothing will be left of us but a dry, empty husk like a dead snail shell. It seldom occurs to us that the Holy Spirit is only waiting until the self is out—waiting to rush in and fill us with luminous splendors. Throwing away the self is like squeezing the water out of a half-drowned man's lungs, not because you want his lungs empty but because you want the air to get in so that he can live. For the self is asphyxiating and killing us; the only air we are designed to breathe is God."
Have I squeezed enough "self" out that the Holy Spirit can fully enter in? Well, I hope I've squeezed enough out that He feels comfortable as the central figure of my life, but I know there's always more work to do. There's always just a little bit more heart to love the Lord with! Joy Davidman's way of expressing spiritual truths is often as much emotional as intellectual, and I like that a lot... it makes the whole thing so much more vivid and memorable. It's the reason I liked the book. It's the reason I wanted to share it with you here!
I had to give the book back to the library (after renewing it the maximum two times and letting it go overdue a couple of days!) but I plan to buy a copy of it for my own library and study each chapter for a whole week. It's available in paperback from ChristianBook.com and from Amazon.com (if you insist on a hardback copy, you may wind up paying "a little" more!) The ideas are startling and potentially life-changing. I highly recommend it!
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