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Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Hard to believe we’re at the end of another month, but this has been a hot one, so I am glad for it to go and bring us one step closer to fall and cooler weather. 🙂 Here are some of the best parts of the last week:

1. Sunday dinner prepared by my daughter-in-law. They had guests that came in late Sat. night and then left too late for them to get ready for church. So they came over to our house and made lunch while we were at church. So nice to come home to great smells and good food and company!

2. FaceTime with my little grandson. It’s nice to touch base during the week. He’ll chatter and show me things in his room and blow kisses. ♥

3. A new storage solution. I found these stamp storage bags at Hobby Lobby actually while looking for a different kind that I had seen on Pinterest. The ones I was originally looking for were more expensive and just opened on one side. These were cheaper and unzipped all the way around, making it easier to get to the one you want. I don’t stamp too very much any more, but having them organized and out of shoe boxes will encourage using them more than I have been. And, I still have balance on my Hobby Lobby gift cards, so they were free to me.

4. Another storage solution. I was looking for a plastic bin I could put on its side on a closet shelf to keep the items there from getting dusty. I couldn’t find anything plastic that would fit in that space, but I did find an oversized tote that fits just right. It has these wire things that go down the side to keep the sides firm, so it’s not collapsing like something made of fabric normally would. I like it!

5. Sweet comments on my 10th blogging anniversary post. The people I’ve met and friendships that have formed have been some of the best parts of blogging.

Happy Friday and Happy End of July!

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10th Blogging Anniversary!

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Ten years ago today I published my very first post to begin this blog!

Wow, a lot has changed in 10 years.

If I am calculating correctly, my youngest was in junior high, my middle son had just completed his freshman year in college, and my oldest had just graduated. Now they are all young men, out of school, and working (well, except one got laid off recently but hopefully will find a new job soon).

We’ve added a sweet, beautiful daughter-in-law and the world’s cutest and smartest grandson to the family. After a rough start in the NICU due to arriving 10 1/2 weeks earlier than his due date, he’s doing just great.

We moved my mother-in-law from ID to SC to live near us in assisted living, and just three years ago moved her into our home.

We moved from SC to eastern TN.

My husband and I have enjoyed another decade of marriage and our hair is ~~a little~~ greyer than it used to be. We’ve helped each other through his kidney cancer surgery and detached retina and my heart rhythm problems.

But a lot has remained the same. I wonder sometimes if I should change my blog, with all the talk of “branding,” platforms, and niche in the last few years. But I have always felt comfortable with this hodgepodge of “stray thoughts,” just sharing personal life, amusing or interesting observations, and what God has been teaching me along the way.

Earlier in the year I anticipated this anniversary coming up and thought about doing some kind of big giveaway or planning some kind of hoopla. I forgot about it and just now remembered that today was the day.

So I’ll just quietly observe it without a virtual party. But as an anniversary gift to me, I’d love for you to say hello in the comments! Tell me something about yourself or how you came here.

Thank you for reading. You make this a lot more fun than if I was just talking to myself. 🙂 I treasure the friendships I’ve made along the way.

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What’s On Your Nightstand: July 2016

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Barbara Harper

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the last Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

There are a few days left in July, but the fourth Tuesday is here, and that means WOYN!

Since last time I have completed:

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Pamela Smith Hill. Finally! And enjoyed it very much. A very thorough and exceedingly well done resource. Reviewed here.

Eight Twenty Eight: When Love Didn’t Give Up by Ian and Larissa Murphy, nonfiction. They were engaged when Ian was in a serious car accident and suffered brain trauma. Reviewed here.

City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell, audiobook, reviewed here. Lovely novelization of the author’s grandparents’ time as missionaries in China in the early 20th century.

The Methuselah Project by Rick Barry, fiction, reviewed here. WWII American pilot shot down in Germany is experimented on by Nazi doctor trying to accelerate the body’s healing and prolong life. Excellent!

Thin Places: A Memoir on by Mary DeMuth, nonfiction, reviewed here. God’s grace in healing from childhood trauma including drug-using parents and rape.

They Almost Always Come Home by Cynthia Ruchti, fiction, reviewed here. Libby and Greg’s marriage is crumbling due to blame, guilt, and emotional distancing, and Libby is planning to leave, but then Greg goes missing and she must find him.

Great British Short Stories: A Vintage Collection of Classic Tales, audiobook, reviewed here. Not my favorite, but not unpleasant.

C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children, reviewed here, in conjunction with Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge. Enjoyed it quite a lot.

I’m currently reading:

Ten Fingers For God: The Life and Work of Dr. Paul Brand by Paul Brand. A reread from 20 or so years ago.

Leaving Oxford by Janet W. Ferguson. Just started this one – not sure what I think yet.

More Things in Heaven and Earth by Jeff High. Ditto.

Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

Be Mature (James): Growing Up in Christ by Warren Wiersbe

Up Next:

Home to Chicory Lane by Deborah Raney. I know I have listed that several times, and it keeps getting pushed back, I think partly because it’s the first in a series, and I think I am going to want to read the series straight through once I start it.

I’m Still Here: A New Philosophy of Alzheimer’s Care by John Zeisel, HT to Lisa’s review.

June Bug by Chris Fabry

Waiting For Peter by Elizabeth Musser

Happy Reading!

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Book Review: C. S. Lewis Letters to Children

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I rediscovered C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children, edited by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, on my bookshelf when I was trying to rearrange the books to make room for more. I had forgotten I even had it and had never read it, so I decided to save it for Carrie’s Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge this month.

The book was published after Lewis’s lifetime: my copy was published in 1985, about 20 years after Lewis’s death, but I am not sure if that is when it was first published. It’s a short book: 114 pages not counting the bibliographies at the back. The book opens with a forward by Doug Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, a brief introduction, and a short overview of Lewis’s childhood. The editors note that the letters are only representative samples: there were way too many to include all, and many of them answer the same questions.

What the editors don’t say is how they obtained the letters. He wrote most of them “in longhand with a dip-pen and ink” (p. 4), telling a correspondent in one of the letters, “You can drive a typewriter, which I could no more drive than a locomotive (I’d sooner drive the locomotive too)” (p. 77) (fascinating article on other reasons why he did not use a typewriter is here). Did he make carbon copies, or did some of the correspondents send their letters back to his estate? We’re not told, but we are told that “Originals or photocopies of the letters in this book are housed in either the Marion E. Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Illinois, or the Bodleian Library, Oxford” (. 7).

When reading the Narnia series, I have often marveled that a man with the education and brainpower Lewis had, and with so little real-life experience with children, could communicate so effectively with them. He’s neither condescending or cloying. In “On Writing to Children,” Lewis said, “The child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man.” That same perspective is reflected in his letters.

Many of the children’s letters ask about the Narnia series: questions about specific characters, when the next book would be out, why wasn’t he going to write more than seven, etc. Some of them carried on regular correspondence with him for years (as many as twenty years in one case), sending him pictures they made or bits of their own writing, which he critiqued honestly. Most are very short and to the point. One of the longest and most touching was to the mother of a boy who had written to him because the boy was afraid he loved Aslan more than Jesus.

Sometimes he shares just a glimpse of his home life and responsibilities: when the people he was caring for had problems, when his wife was ill, when he himself was ill. On a sad note, to his goddaughter, a few months after his wife died: “I couldn’t come to the wedding, my dear. I haven’t the pluck. Any wedding, for reasons you know, would turn me inside out now” (p. 94). And a funny one: “I’ve been having a…cyst lanced on the back of my neck: the most serious result is that I can never at present get my whole head & shoulders under water in my bath. (I like getting down like a Hippo with only my nostrils out)” (p. 37).

Assorted notes and quotes:

When one girl wanted to know Aslan’s “other name,” he didn’t tell her directly but gave her several clues.
When one girl questioned why the Pevensie children grow up in Narnia but are still children in our world: “I feel sure I am right to make them grow up in Narnia. Of course they will grow up in this world too. You’ll see. You see, I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12: so I don’t feel it very odd that they grow up in Narnia while they are children in England” (p. 34).
He tells several that the books are not an allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress in which everything represents something. They’re a “supposing” of what it might be like if there was another world with people that needed saving and Jesus came in the form of a lion rather than a man. “Reepiceep and Nick-i-brick don’t, in that sense, represent anyone. But of course anyone who devotes his whole life to seeking Heaven will be like Reepicheep, and anyone who wants some worldly thing so badly that he is ready to use wicked means to get it will be likely to behave like Nick-i-brick” (p. 45).
A bit of humor: “I never saw a picture of a baby shower before. I had to put up my umbrella to look at it” (p. 47).
On what happened to Susan: “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end–in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense'” (p. 67).
“A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it’s idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc) can do the journey on their own!” (p. 72).
“American university teachers have told me that most of their freshmen come from schools where the standard was far too low and therefore think themselves far better than they really are. This means that they lose heart (and their tempers too) when told, as they have to be told, their real level” (p. 84).
“You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort. At present it only encourages you to write prose not so good as your ordinary prose and type it like verse. Sorry to be a pig!” (p. 87).
When asked which of his books he liked best: Till We Have Faces (though he felt it “attracted less attention than any book I ever wrote,” p. 107) and Perelandra (p. 95).
He often closed his notes by asking them to pray for him.

I loved this window into Lewis’s life and thinking.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Here are some good reads discovered recently:

Women: Trade Self-Worth For Awe and Wonder. Yes!

Trouble, We’ve Been Expecting You. Excellent.

Stop Trying to Make the Bible Relevant to Teenagers, HT to Challies, by which he means, you don’t have to present it in a way to try to make it “cool” to them. Its truth relates to all of us: just show them how it speaks to their needs.

Back to the Early Church? Excellent. Sometimes people idealize the early church in Acts, but it had its problems, too.

On Bible study:

What Is Bible Study?

4 Reasons Why Every Bible Reader Should Do Word Studies.

On prayer:

The Busy Mom’s Guide to Prayer. Good tips not just for moms.

4 Ways to Keep a Fresh Prayer Life.

On caregiving and dealing with aging parents:

What I’ll Say to My Children If I’m Diagnosed With Alzheimer’s.

What Caregivers Know and You Can, Too.

Her New Happy.

On parenting:

As Seemed Best to Them. Yes! Parenting is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor.

Why We Don’t Punish Our Kids. Not advocating not dealing with sin, but explaining the difference between punishment and discipline.

And to end on a smile…I saw this on Pinterest and cracked up:

Happy Saturday!

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Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

We’re over halfway through July and heading toward August! Here are some favorite parts of the last week:

1. Jason’s birthday. We kind of extended the celebration: since his birthday was on a week day, we had our main celebration on Saturday but then got together to play Settlers of Cataan on the actual day. Always a joy to celebrate God’s gift of my middle son. ♥

2. Grilled pizza. This was the main dish for Jason’s birthday – which Mittu put together and Jason grilled. They were all very good, especially the dessert pizza. 🙂

3. Being back in the gym is an odd listing since that’s not my favorite thing to do or place to be. But I do feel better afterward. Last week I had only been able to get out one day for various reasons, and it felt good to get back to it this week.

4. Power restored. I’ve mentioned several times being thankful for not losing power during storms. We actually did lose power on Saturday evening, but there were no storms – we never did figure out what caused it. Thankfully we had my mother-in-law’s dinner already pureed and heated when it happened, but we also had her flat on her back, changing her – and you can’t raise the hospital bed with no electricity! Yikes! But we used the Hoyer lift to get her in a seated position in her wheelchair and fed her there. I figured evening/nighttime was probably the best time for it to go out, and we’d just go to bed early. But thankfully it came back on later in the evening. Just having it off for that amount of time made me appreciate it so much more.

5. Two more new successful recipe experiments: Macaroni Sausage Stir-Fry and One-Skillet Chicken Parmesan.

Bonus: This photo. ♥♥♥

Happy Friday!

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Book Review: City of Tranquil Light

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Barbara Harper

I’ve had City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell on my TBR list for a while now, at least ever since seeing Sherry’s review. When I needed a new audiobook to listen to and had finished my Classics challenge, I was reminded of this book.

Though the story is loosely based on the author’s grandparents, it is fiction and incorporates elements from other people’s lives as well. It’s told in the first person from Will’s point of view, interspersed with sections from Katherine’s journal.

Will Kiehn was the son of a Mennonite farmer in Oklahoma in the early 1900s whose only plan was to continue the farming he loved. But when he was twenty-one, a friend of the family who was a missionary to China came through, visiting various churches on furlough. When he preached, Will felt “found out” and could hardly speak at dinner. When their guest, Edward, spoke of China at their table, he “could not look away.” When asked if he might consider going to China, Will’s siblings laughed because he “was the least likely to leave,” not good at public speaking, “quiet and shy” and “not a good student.” He felt he hadn’t “‘any training or gifts of that kind.’ Edward said, ‘The Giver of those gifts may feel otherwise…A torch’s one qualification is that it be fitted to the master’s hand. God’s chosen are often not talented or wise or gifted as the world judges. Our Lord sees what is inside and that is why He calls whom He does.'”

Will wrestled with these truths for a few days and finally surrendered. “Despite the fact that it would mean leaving what I loved most in the world, I felt not the sadness and dread I had expected but a sense of freedom and release. The tightness in me loosened like a cut cord, and I was joyful.”

He was so green that when he set out to return with Edward a few weeks later, he had given no thought at all to finances. His mother foresaw that and gave him traveling funds. There was no deputation: I assume the mission paid missionaries’ salaries.

A few other recruits sailed with Will and Edward, among them Edward’s sister-in-law, Katherine. She only saw Will as a boy, “clumsy,” “awkward,” and “bothersome,” but her brother-in-law’s excitement about him “makes me believe there must be more to this Will than I can see.” On the voyage and then during their first months in China, they began to appreciate qualities about each other, and their love story is tenderly told.

After they marry, they travel to Kuang P’ing Ch’eng— City of Tranquil Light — to start a church. Theirs is not a story of giant super-heroes of the faith, but of quiet, ordinary people faithfully walking with God and working with Him, people with whom most readers could relate. The story of their first convert, his wife’s eventual coming to faith, and the birth and loss of their daughter, are all touchingly told. The beginning and growth of the church, laboring against superstition and anti-foreign sentiment, trials of bandits, famine, civil war, and the influx of Communism draw them close to the people and city they love.

A few standout quotes:

After the loss of their child and during a time her husband is missing, Katherine writes, “My faith feels tattered and threadbare and I am ashamed. What good is it if it does not see me through pain? But a scrap of faith is better than nothing, so I cling to it tightly.”

“I find myself questioning my Lord’s ways; I do not understand why He would place a longing in my heart that He doesn’t plan to fulfill. But whys don’t get me anywhere; they just lead me around in circles. So I pray I can accept this painful lack, and if my prayers are half-hearted, I know they are still heard” (pp. 157-158).

During famine, Will is asked:

“Why do you stay with us here when you could so easily go to your home and eat your fill?”

“My home is here. And if my belly were full but my heart empty, what would I gain?”

“Ah,” he said. “It is a marvel nonetheless for a foreign-born to endure our pain” (p. 166).

In an encounter with an enemy solider:

“You preach the man Jesus, do you not?”

“I do.”

“Are you not aware that what is well suited to you may be ill adapted to others?”

“I am…but it is not a question of what is suited to me. It is a question of obeying my God and passing on what has been given to me. I would be remiss if I kept it to myself.”

“You believe it is your duty to impose that truth on other nations?”

“Not to impose it, sir, like a law. To share it like a gift, freely given” (p. 202).

Though fiction, the book rings true with other missionary stories I’ve read from the era, especially Rosalind Goforth’s Goforth of China and Climbing, even to describing how the curiosity of the people at first led them to wet their fingers and touch the paper windows, making a peephole through which they could observe the foreigners and their strange ways.

Not long ago I came upon the term “quiet fiction” – Jan Karon’s Mitford books would be an example. It’s not that there are no climaxes or suspense or tension or emotions: there are plenty. But the purpose of the story is the relationships, not razzle-dazzle plot twists. I think that term describes this book as well. The audiobook I listened to was nicely read by Bronson Pinchot, who echoed the quietness of the narration. I checked out a hardback copy from the library to reread certain spots.

In trying to find out a little more about the author, I found the Wikipedia article on her maddeningly short. But I found a couple of interviews with her here and here that I greatly enjoyed.

I wouldn’t agree with every little point in the book theologically, but I think I would on the bigger issues. I loved the story: I loved how it was related: I am going to miss Will, Katherine, Chung Hao, Mo Yun, and Hsiao Lao.

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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Nursing Wounds

Posted on July 19, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Image courtesy of hywards at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

All of us have wounds of some kind. Oh, not just the physical scars from surgery or childhood scrapes (my husband has a couple on his forehead from when his siblings played “magic act” and he, as the youngest, had to be the ~~victim~~ assistant inside the box while they plunged knives into it. Yikes!) But all have emotional or mental hurts as well: being the last one picked for a team, not being invited to a gathering of friends, neglect, misunderstandings, losses, insults, teasing, hazing, betrayal, even sometimes cruelty and abuse. All of us, if we live long enough, will experience some kind of trauma.

Telling someone they need to “move on” from whatever has hurt them is not usually the best advice. How do you “get over” the loss of a loved one or a deep wound that still affects you today? In many ways the pain grows less intense over the years, but still leaves a tender, sensitive place. And something that has been long forgotten may rise up and wound again when memory resurrects it.

On the other hand, there is a difference between the residual soreness of a wounded place and just wallowing in our hurts, feelings, and woundedness. Sometimes we can hinder our healing by nursing our wounds and focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else. We can also grow worse if we let it get infected by growing bitter or resentful.

One of the best examples in Scripture of “handling” hurts is Joseph. First, “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him” (Genesis 37:4). He probably didn’t help that he had to bring “a bad report of them to their father” (verse 2). Then he had dreams about his brothers and parents bowing down to him. I’ve heard Joseph faulted for “bragging” to his brothers about this. Maybe that is what he was doing, but I don’t really get that sense just from the text: it looks like he was just sharing his dream with them. In those days dreams were often prophetic, and maybe that was one way God was speaking to the family about the future. But whatever the case, the brothers “hated him even more for his dreams and for his words” (verse 8b). Their hatred ran so deep that they conspired to kill him (verses 12-20) until Reuben intervened. Then they decided they’d just sell him and lie to their father, saying an animal had attacked him (verses 21-35), ignoring his pleas (Genesis 42:21). So as a young man, probably a teenager, he was removed from the only home he had ever known, taken to a strange country, sold as a slave (Genesis 39:1-6), tempted by his master’s wife (39:6-12), lied about and thrown into prison for doing the right thing by resisting her, (39:13-23), forgotten by those he had helped who had promised to help him in return (Genesis 40).

Joseph could have been angry, depressed, or bitter. He didn’t have a Bible, Christian counselors or friends, church, Christian music, or many of the encouragements to our faith that we have today. He only had the truth he had been taught as a child and the Spirit of God. But He took comfort in God and stayed close to Him, acknowledged His control over the circumstances of His life (Genesis 45:4-8), served God the best he could in every situation, cared for the needs of others (Genesis 40), and forgave those who had wronged him. Throughout his story in Genesis 41-50, he rose to leadership and maintained a good testimony, and “the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands” (Genesis 39:3). Eventually God delivered him from prison, made him Pharaoh’s second in command, used him to save Egypt from famine, and restored him to his family. He named his second son Ephraim, meaning “Fruitful,” saying, “For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” He acknowledged the affliction, but he focused on the fruitfulness God allowed in it.

And even greater than Joseph, consider the Lord Jesus, who was misunderstood, probably more than any man, betrayed, deserted, beaten, unjustly tried, and condemned to death though innocent. He forgave His enemies (Luke 22:34) and “suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (I Peter 2:21-24). Therefore, Peter says, “For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps (I Peter 2:19-21).

I’m not saying we should ignore or “stuff” our hurts down: if we don’t deal with them, they’re likely to come up again and cause even more pain. But there are ways of dealing with them that can enable them to be used of God.

One thing I have to remind myself of when hurt or angry to to stop feeding the fire, to use a different metaphor (or, to stay with the medical one, stop poking and picking at the wound). I can tend to replay an incident over and over in my mind, thinking “I can’t believe they did that” and speculating why they did, which usually makes thing worse, because we rarely come up with the right reasons. Each rehearsal of it only fans the flames or keeps the wounds open, and I literally have to tell myself to just stop and think about something else.

Sometimes it is hard to know when to confront someone who has wronged us (Matthew 18:15-17) or just overlook the offense (Proverbs 19:11; 1 Peter 4:8). But either way, we must forgive them, not because they “deserve it,” but because of the great offenses we have been forgiven (Matthew 18:21-35). It’s not just good for mental health; it’s a command (Matthew 6:9-15). But God has forgiven us so much: how can we withhold forgiveness to anyone else?

Then we can follow our examples here. We can remember God is in control and seek what He has for us to learn from it.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5, ESV)

Whatever God allows in our lives, He can use to mold and shape us. A hurt we have experienced can make us more mindful and compassionate towards the hurts and needs of others or even lead us to minister to them. Just this morning on Facebook I saw this quote from Paul David Tripp (I don’t know if it is from a book or a speech): “The hard moments are not just for your growth in grace, but for your call to be a tool of that same grace in the life of another sufferer… God intends for you to give away the comfort you’ve been given.” We can turn our focus upward towards the Lord and outward towards serving others. We can put away bitterness and anger (Ephesians 4:31-32). We can “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). When the wound feels tender, we can let it be a reminder of God’s grace to help us overcome and even triumph. We can encourage ourselves in the Lord and trust him to make us fruitful even in our affliction.

(Sharing with Inspire me Mondays, Woman to Woman Word-Filled Wednesday, Thought-Provoking Thursday)

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Book Review: The Methusaleh Project

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Lately I seem to be catching up with books that were popular a year or two ago. Maybe that’s how long it takes for them to go on good sales for the Kindle. 🙂 At any rate, when The Methusaleh Project by Rick Barry came up as Kindle sale last year, I remembered seeing a number of favorable reviews about it, so I got it.

The first part of the book switches between two different story lines. In one, Captain Roger Greene is a US pilot flying on a mission in Nazi Germany in 1943. His plane is shot down and he is captured, but instead of being taken to a POW camp, he is taken to an underground bunker set up like a lab. He and six other captives are subjected to experiments by a Nazi doctor designed to accelerate the body’s healing and prolong life. If successful, the doctor will be able to to pass along this technology to the Nazi powers that be. When an Allied bomb destroys the building, the doctor, and all his research, as well as the six other captives, only Roger and the doctor’s assistant survive. The Nazi regime keeps Roger captive and sets up the doctor’s assistant in a new building to try to figure out what the doctor did to Roger so they can duplicate it.

The alternate story involves Katherine Mueller in Atlanta in 2015. Her parents died long ago and she was raised by her uncle. The major consideration in his life is the Heritage Organization, a secret society “aimed at challenging individuals to higher levels of achievement, improving the world with inventions and positive influences, then passing on a stronger heritage to the next generation.” He wants Katherine to move up the ranks in the organization, which involves excelling in marksmanship and field exercises involving tracking. She doesn’t know exactly what the organization does – only the higher-ups do – and it seems almost cultish to her sometimes. But her Uncle Kurt and both her parents were involved in it, and she trusts her uncle completely, so she wants to carry on the family tradition. Though she loves her uncle, she’s frustrated by his matchmaking involving only men from the organization, none of whom attracts her in any way.

I assumed these story lines would intersect at some point, though they were 70 years apart. And wow, did they ever! I won’t reveal how, but let’s just say this is the fastest I have read any book lately because I kept looking for opportunities to open it.

There were just a few speed bumps in the writing in the first part of the story, but I didn’t even note what they were except that Roger at first seemed beyond the stereotypical brash and breezy WWII American flyboy into something of a cliche in the first chapter or so. But that feeling dissolved pretty quickly, and it wasn’t long before I was totally wrapped up in the story, racing to see how the author would bring various elements together and whether some of my suspicions about some of the characters and the “organization” were accurate.

I’m not sure exactly how you’d classify this book. It’s part sci-fi, part historical fiction, part contemporary fiction, part action and suspense. It is Christian fiction: neither Roger nor Katherine are Christians at the beginning of the book. Roger has faint memories of a former Sunday School teacher encouraging him to pray, and he is given a Bible in captivity that long hours of inaction and desperation drive him to. I thought the author wove the faith element in quite naturally.

Overall – I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

(Sharing at Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books)

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Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Another week has zoomed by. Here are some favorite parts of it:

1. An afternoon to myself is rare these days, especially on a Saturday. But everyone else was otherwise occupied, and I got to spend some focused, uninterrupted time on some blog posts that needed more thought than I had been able to give them.

2. Successful recipe experiments. This one is just called Baked Chicken, but it needs to be called Pesto Chicken or something else a little more descriptive. It was my first time ever to use pesto. Everyone really liked it, and I am sure I’ll be using it again. Honey Mustard Sausage and Vegetables was a hit as well (we used turkey rather than beef sausage). Chicken In a Skillet was pretty good, too.

3. Take-out – two nights in a row! I requested it Friday night, and we got Papa Murphy’s. When my husband suggested getting something out again on Saturday, well, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. 🙂 We got Red Lobster’s then.

4. Not losing power in a pretty bad storm yesterday. It blinked off for a moment, and we were without Internet for a few hours, but many had it much worse. My son and daughter-in-law have been without power since yesterday afternoon and spent the night here.

5. A “Laundry” sign. I had seen this several months ago and thought it work well with the other decor I had in there, but kept resisting. Who needs a sign that says “Laundry,” of all things, hidden away in a laundry room? But it was on sale 1/2 price this week, making it only about $7, and I still have credit left on a couple of Hobby Lobby gift cards, so I went for it. And I like it. 🙂 This is the first time I’ve had a cheery, decorated space in a laundry area, and it does brighten up the task.