by
Chet
11. October 2011 22:13
Last week I was able to get an advance copy of John Eldredge's new book, Beautiful Outlaw. They'd of course love for me to write a review as the book comes out this week, and I am doing so... even though I haven't finished the book yet. I actually had this whole thing written up and then clicked "close" instead of "save" so round 2 will probably be a bit shorter.
I remember when I was back in college that we read the book Knowing God by J.I. Packer. This was an amazingly well written book about the attributes of God, and I found myself feeling like I was really coming to know Him as I learned more about him. I truly did come to know God better during that period, but I don't think it was just the facts that did it. Being surrounded by believers and truth at a small town Christian college will do wonders for your image of God; the only thing... it comes to an end after a few years, and if all you gained was facts about God, you're going to be in a world of hurt when real li...
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by
Chet
19. August 2010 11:51
Jeremiah 29:11. An often used verse of hope for the future:
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
How nice. Plans for a future. Hope in the future. But what about today? It wasn't until I read the book Run With The Horses by Eugene Peterson that I saw this verse in it's context.
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: "Do not let th...
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by
Chet
4. May 2010 07:28
Does the journey from boyhoood to manhood need to be recognized? Or will it just happen? Do we, as fathers, brothers, mentors, and sons ourselves, need to usher boys into the life of a man?
That's the question that Raising a Modern Day Knight seeks to answer, both in concept and in deed. I'm almost done with the book, actually, but the chapter I read this morning titled "Commemorating a Transcendent Cause" really connected with me. The previous several chapters had outlined several ideas for ceremoneously bringing young men into the world of men. The point wasn't that you have to grab them on their 18th birthday or their college graduation - the point was, they need to be grabbed. Whether it's a lonely walk through the woods that is interupted by significant men in the boy's life, or a steak dinner with a father and his comrades sharing their own journeys, boys need to be welcomed into this world. It will not happen accidently. It will not happen on it's own, unless you really, real...
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by
Chet
29. March 2010 10:30
"Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo... the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ."
- Malcolm Muggerridge, A Twentieth Century Testimony
I'm reading a book by Eugene H. Peterson (translator of The Message) titled Run With the Horses right now... I don't know if it's int...
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by
Chet
5. March 2010 07:57
We come into the world with a longing to be known and a deep-seated fear that we aren’t what we should be. We are set up for a crisis of identity. And then, says Frederick Buechner, the world goes to work:Starting with the rather too pretty young woman and the charming but rather unstable young man, who together know no more about being parents than they do the far side of the moon, the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather. (Telling Secret...
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