Tag Archives: Books

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some posts I found worth reading and sharing over the last couple of weeks:

The Dead End of Sexual Sin along with some advice from John Owen about overcoming sin of any kind.

Providential Dullness: An Easter Meditation. We give the disciples a hard time for missing that Jesus said He would rise again, but Luke 18:34 says, “this saying was hid from them.” Why would that be? Some good answers in this piece.

The Ones in the Front Row.“I cannot control the reception my children’s God-given callings receive out there in the wide world. But I can raise them to be appreciators of beauty, loveliness, and skill. Then, maybe they will be the ones in the front row, clapping their hearts out, whistling, standing and cheering at all the beauty the world holds for them.”

Thanks For Raising the Man of My Dreams! I hate mother-in-law jokes and did long before I became a m-i-l. I did have  relatively good relationship with mine. Here are some good thoughts to enhance that relationship.

10 Ways to Create a Home of Warmth and Grace.

How to Get Published.

For those who like Christian fiction, especially free Christian fiction, there’s a Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt going on this weekend with a possibility of winning 17-34 books from 30+ authors. Some of the individual authors are hosting their own giveaways as well.

Happy Saturday!

Book Review: Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter

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Song of the MonringSongs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter was compiled by Pat Alexander and includes excerpts from the writings of C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, Dickens and others, some (mostly poems) written by children. I had bought it ages ago from a clearance section, put it on my shelf, noticed it it off and on through the years, and kept forgetting about it at Easter time. Finally this year I remembered to pull it out in the weeks preceding Easter. I like to read something devotional pertaining to Easter during that time, and while this wasn’t that exactly, it was both pleasant and beneficial.

I don’t think I realized, or I had forgotten, that it was geared primarily to children, probably the same age as those who would be able to read the Narnia series. But adults can gain from it, too.

I like that it couches the Easter story within historical context. The first section is “How It All Began” and begins with a short excerpt from a children’s Bible about God creating the world and sin entering in (Pat Alexander also wrote The Lion’s Children’s Bible, which I had not heard of before this, so I don’t know how well it expresses Biblical truth, but the excerpts I read here were fine). Then there are Narnia excerpts about the founding of Narnia and the White Witch and a couple of other sources to further illustrate those truths.

Other sections follow a similar pattern and focus on the birth of Christ, the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. There’s also a section of “The Greatest Love,” with several historical and story illustrations of sacrificial love (like Sydney Carton’s in A Tale of Two Cities and a story about a boy’s dog risking its life to save the boy’s), one called “It’s All Right,” dealing with how new life in Christ should affect our lives in practical terms, like forgiveness of others, and a final one called “A New Beginning.”

The stories come from a variety of countries. Some are old, some are new. Some are from adults’ work, some from children’s books. Some are fun, some are serious. Pat did a fine job putting all these sources together. It doesn’t look like the book is in print any more, but there are copies that can be purchased online, or perhaps you can keep an eye out for it at library sales and such.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live

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Million Little Ways

When you disagree with a foundational statement eighteen pages into a book, it’s hard not to let that color the rest of your reading. But I tried to give it my best effort. More on that in a moment.

I got A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman because I enjoyed her Grace For the Good Girl so much. The title sounds like it might be about finding ways to be more creative or finding time to express yourself artistically. However, though that is involved, that’s not exactly what the book is about, at least not in the way you might be thinking at first glance. The basis of the book is taken from Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Other versions use “handiwork” or “masterpiece” in place of “workmanship,” and the Greek word they are translated from is poiema, from which we get our English word poem.

Being his workmanship doesn’t mean we are all poets. It means we are all poems, individual created works of a creative God. And this poetry comes out uniquely through us as we worship, think, love, pray, rest, work, and exist.

Jesus reminds us we are art and empowers us to make art.

There isn’t one right way to do the job of glorifying God. There are many ways, a million little ways, that Christ is formed in us and spills out of us into the world.

Knowing you are a poem doesn’t confine you to be artsy, it releases you to be you (p. 29).

So the art she is talking about our creating isn’t writing or painting or sculpture – unless we’re called to that – but rather finding the purpose for which God made us, that which makes us most “fully alive” (a phrase she uses often), and then doing that by the enabling of God and for His glory, whether it is being a doctor, a mom, a janitor, a hostess, or whatever. But she is not talking primarily about our occupation, though that’s a big part of it:

I don’t believe there is one great thing I was made to do in this world. I believe there is one great God I was made to glorify. And there will be many ways, even a million little ways, I will declare his glory with my life (p. 40).

So we can express God’s glory whether we’re listening to a friend’s troubles, making dinner for our family, playing an instrument, or whatever else is a part of our day.

Part of uncovering what we are uniquely called to do is examining our desires. “Our passions aren’t the goal, but they are the signposts, like arrows pointing to our center” (p. 60).

Could it be possible that the thing the thing you most long for, the thing you notice and think about and wish you could do, is the thing you were actually made and equipped to do?

Could it also be possible that somewhere along the way you got the message that to follow desire would be selfish, when, really, it would be the opposite? (p. 47)

A couple of chapters discuss the ins and outs of that in greater detail, including redeemed desires (not everything we desire is something we should pursue). Other chapters discuss the need to do all leaning on God’s power and enabling, realizing we can’t do it on our own, handling criticism (I especially appreciated the thought that criticism has a purpose even when unfounded), waiting on God’s timing, learning when to say “no.” Probably my favorite chapter was “Wonder.” A close second would be the one on waiting, from which this favorite quote came:

The Spirit came over Mary in a moment, but it took nine months for him to grow. Jesus waited thirty years to begin what we cal his earthly ministry. But really, wasn’t he always being God in the world, from his first breath to his last? He was crucified and waited until day three to resurrect. Don’t lose hope on day two (p. 155).

Another favorite quote came neat the end: “One masterpiece is the work of ten thousand rough drafts” (p. 195).

So what was it I disagreed with so strongly at the beginning? A statement on page 18 that “God is not a technician. God is an artist.” My immediate thoughts ran something like this:

God is a technician AND an artist! When He creates a beautiful sunset, He doesn’t just throw colors in the sky: there is science behind it, and it’s not the less wondrous for that. When you think of the marvels of human biology, the mathematical properties in the universe that enable space travel, and so many other factors involved in his creation, it’s impossible not to see that He is a master technician. (My kids used to have a book titled God Thought of It First, showing that many of man’s inventions were based on properties in creation, like the similarity between how a submarine and a chambered nautilus works). My husband was a physics major and has worked for most of his career in the science of color, first in textiles and now in plastics. He can’t just say, “Hmm, this looks a little too blue” and add a dab of another color until it looks right, like an artist might do on a canvas: there are formulas involved which enable them to get the right color not just for the moment, but to be able to reproduce it in massive quantities for carpet fiber, plastic bottles, and even paint in artist’s tubes.

I think Emily would agree that God is a God of detail, engineering, and technology as well as artistry and creativity. But that’s not really what she is talking about when she says God is not a technician. She precedes that statement with these thoughts:

Is he only a God of right answers and right angles and acceptable behavior? Have we exalted the will of God and the plans of God above God himself?

He does not manage us, to-do list us, or bullet-point us. He loves us. Is with us. And believing him feels impossible, until we do, like a miracle, like lukewarm water turning merlot red right there in the cup. And hope sprouts new, because God doesn’t give us a list. He invites us into the story (p. 17).

Actually He does give us a list or two, like this one and this one. But, yes, I do get the point she’s making that we’re not saved or sanctified by keeping lists or commandments. It’s possible to keep commandments and totally miss God, as the Pharisees did.  We’re saved by grace through faith and sanctification and service come about the same way. Or, as she says later, when discussing Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and then instructing them to do likewise, “Maybe Jesus is inviting them into a relationship of do as I do rather than pointing to a list and saying, Copy me” (p. 75).

So once I understood where she was coming from, I could agree, but I still had to fight against that feeling when similar statements were made: “Technicians don’t move us. Artists do” (p. 14); “When a poet writes a poem, he isn’t writing a technical manual or a how-to book” (p. 26); “Are you living like a programmer instead of a poet?” (p. 135).

The bulk of the book is written from a right-brained, creative, artsy vantage point, which will appeal to that kind of thinker but not so much to the more left-brained, literal, logical one (I know the whole left vs. right-brained theory has been labeled incorrect now, but you know what I mean.) Although I struggled with that at times, and I wouldn’t agree with every little sub-point, overall I appreciated the message of the book, was inspired and challenged, and gleaned a lot from it. I’ll close with a section which I think sums it up:

 What if we approached the critic, our jobs, the kids at our table with the same wonder and anticipation an artist has when she approaches the canvas? What if we decided our purpose in this world really is to reflect the glory of God?

Would we begin to see ourselves as wildly free to approach the universe – the meal plan, the work project, the yard sale, our neighbor, the roof leak, the doctor appointment, the eternal destiny of our children – to approach it all with a wide-eyed wonder, with an edge-of-your-seat breath, with an expectation that any minute God will show himself in a way we have not yet seen? And he’ll likely do it through us?

When we embrace the beauty of our design, when we recognize that he has made us to be the unique expressions of himself, when we receive the gifts he has equipped us with and have the courage to pour them out, we worship. What else would it be? (pp. 188-189).

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

What’s On Your Nightstand: March 2015

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

Often I am caught off guard when the fourth Tuesday of the month is not the last Tuesday, but this time I saw it coming. 🙂

Since last time I have completed:

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope by Christopher and Angela Yuan, reviewed here. Excellent – I am predicting it will be one of my top ten books of the year.

I Deserve a Donut (And Other Lies That Make You Eat) and Taste For Truth: A 30 Day Weight Loss Bible Study, both by Barb Raveling, reviewed together here. Excellent.

She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast, review and a giveaway here. Riveting.

To See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner, reviewed here.

The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer, reviewed here.

My Emily by Matt Patterson, a family’s true story of a young daughter born with Down’s Syndrome who is then diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two, reviewed here.

Better To Be Broken by Rick Huntress, his personal testimony of God getting hold of his heart after an accident left him in a wheelchair, reviewed here.

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, reviewed here.

The Pound a Day Diet by Rocco DiSpirito, reviewed here.

That looks like more than usual – but one was a children’s book, and two were very short.

I’m currently reading:

A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman. Got off on the wrong foot with this one but am settling into it now. Will explain more when I review it.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, audiobook. I’m about 2/3 of the way through.

The Swan House by Elizabeth Musser

Songs of the Morning: Stories and Poems for Easter compiled by Pat Alexander, including excerpts from C. S. Lewis, E. B. White, and others.

Next Up:

Hard to say. I’m working on my reading plans for the year, and you people keep adding to my lengthy list of books I want to get to. 🙂 Once I finish War and Peace, I think I’ll get back to the Sherlock Holmes series via audiobook. Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder had been delayed but I am informed it is on its way now just arrived. I’ve seen several people mention Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and I just ordered it. I may need something lighthearted to break up some of the heavier reading.

What are you reading now?

Book Review and Giveaway: She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival

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She Is MineI first became aware of She Is Mine: A War Orphan’s Incredible Journey of Survival by Stephanie Fast through Carrie’s review, and then I won her giveaway of the book.

Stephanie does not remember her birthday or her given name: she gave herself the name of Yoon Myoung in her book. She was born in Korea not long after the Korean War: her mother was Korean and her father was an American serviceman who never knew of her. Because she was of mixed blood, she was not accepted, even by her mother’s family. Stephanie explains:

In Korea, having a fatherless child of mixed blood brought impurities to the ancestral bloodlines. It was culturally unacceptable – a disgrace. And children who were not given a family name literally had no birthright and lived unacknowledged. They were rejected. Worthless. Nothings. (p. 34).

The Korean people had suffered greatly during the Japanese occupation before WWII. Then the communist occupation had come, and then the Korean War–their cultural identity had been ripped away. Although grateful to their Western liberators, their greatest desire was to rebuild their lives, reclaim their land, and forget their pain. The site of mixed blood children such as Yoon Myoung stirred up their anger, frustration, and hurt. The foreigners may have fought to preserve South Korea’s independence, but they were not permitted into Korean families, heritages, or bloodlines (pp. 35-36).

When Stephanie was four, her mother’s family found someone who was willing to marry her despite her indiscretion, but who was unwilling to take her mixed child. Her mother sent her away on a train, telling her an uncle would meet her at her destination. It’s unclear whether that was an outright lie or whether Stephanie got off at the wrong stop or what, but an uncle was not there when she got off the train. Instead of trying to find out what happened and taking care of her, the station master just shooed her away when he closed. Stephanie decided to follow the train tracks back the direction from which she had come to find her village and her mother, but she never found them. She wandered around the Korean countryside alone for three years. She had to try to find shelter and forage for food, finding out by trial and error what worked and what didn’t. When she did encounter people, it almost always went badly. She was called names, treated in abominable ways, betrayed at the deepest level from someone she had come to trust. At times she lived with groups of other abandoned children, once at a large encampment of many of them. Over time, due to exposure, malnutrition, and lack of ability to get clean, and everything else she had gone through, she was filthy, had a head full of lice, open wounds, and worms, so that added to the repulsion people felt toward her, but the primary hatred always went back to her mixed race.

At a very few intervals she came across someone kind who rescued her from death and danger, until finally she was near the end of her rope, abandoned on a garbage heap. A Swedish nurse passed by who picked up abandoned babies and nursed them back to health so they could be sent to an orphanage and adopted. She cared for all the children but could not possibly help them all, so she concentrated primarily on the babies. But when she saw Stephanie, she was compelled to pick her up. Stephanie then described her time at the clinic, the orphanage, and finally her adoption by an American missionary couple who actually had been planning to adopt a baby boy.

This is a heart-breaking story. It’s hard to fathom people being so cruel to a child for any reason.

But it is also a story of hope.

Stephanie writes in the third person rather than first because she wants people to think not only of her story but of the millions of orphans in need in the world. She has become an advocate for orphan care.

Overall I was greatly touched by this book, and also convicted about how I would react if, as happened to several in her book, I found a dirty, wounded, and somewhat wild child stealing from my garden or sleeping in my garage. I would want someone to help them but would be more likely to call a shelter or something than to take them into my own home. Yet throughout the Bible we’re told both by instruction and example to care for people. I was convicted to look beneath the surface to the person underneath, to see their souls, and to care for their needs.

Stephanie said in her preface that there were great gaps in her memory, so she filled in some of the story the best she could. I can’t help but wonder if much of the filling in was in the first three chapters about her mother and father and how they came together: I don’t know how much of that her mother would have told her in her early childhood. I would rather have had a little less filling in there than to wonder how much of it was true. And I would have liked to have heard a bit more about how she adjusted after being adopted. She told of many doctor’s visits and the healing of her physical wounds, and mentioned that it was a long time before she could return affection to her adopted parents. But after the trauma she went through, it had to have taken a long time for her to heal mentally and emotionally. I think families need to be aware that adoption, as wonderful as it is,  is not necessarily a fairly-tale “happily ever after,” that there is a lot to work through. But I realize, too, that the main purpose of this book is to draw attention to and awareness of the needs of orphans, so perhaps the rest is for another book.

Stephanie says at the end that she eventually came “to a place in my life where I can say with all conviction: There is nothing that has happened to me that I would have been better off without” (p. 224). She plans to write another book about how she came to that acceptance – that is one I can’t wait to read.

A synopsis of her story is here:

I highly recommend this book to you. I’d like to follow Carrie’s example and give this copy away to one reader. I’ll take all comments on this post as entries for the giveaway unless you tell me you would not want to receive the book. Due to shipping costs I am afraid I can only send it to the US and Canada. I’ll draw a name from among those who have commented using random.org a week from today.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

The giveaway is closed: The winner is Michele. Thanks for participating!

Laudable Linkage and a Jan Karon Video

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I didn’t do one of these last week because I only had two or three – and now this week I have several. That’s how it goes sometimes. But here is some noteworthy reading found in the last couple of weeks:

Moms Need Theology Too. Excellent. Not just for moms.

Adding to Our Faith? Good study of what 2 Peter 1:5 means when it talks about things we need to add to our faith.

5 Things People Blame the Church For – But Shouldn’t.

A Good [Wo]man is Easy to Find. Excellent piece about finding a mentor.

From Lesbianism to Complementarianism – one woman’s testimony.

Dear Gay Community: Your Kids Are Hurting. From the daughter of a gay couple.

An 11-Year-Old Boy’s Open Letter to Sports Illustrated.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s Advice to Young Writers and Speakers.

Solid Food for Little Ones. A list of books for young children that teach about God. Keeping in mind for future reference when my little grandson gets older.

Remember Card Catalogs? As a former librarian and avid reader, I loved this piece about people who take the old cards from library card catalogs and illustrate them.

I thought this was really cool. With a nerdy family who loves the Marvel universe films, Iron Man being one on them, I loved this video of Robert Downey, Jr. (aka Iron Man) delivering a bionic arm to a boy who has only a partially developed right arm.

And for Jan Karon fans, I saw on her Facebook page this announcement about her newest book coming out this fall!

I loved hearing her talk and watching her expressiveness! I also saw this post on her Facebook page saying that there might be a movie about Mitford and asking for suggestions about who should play which part. I hope if this comes to pass that they let her have creative control. I have mixed feelings – I love the books and would definitely see any film made from them, but I’m not sure I’d want any images other than the ones in my head. 🙂 But we’ll see.

Happy Saturday!

Book Review: To See the Moon Again

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ToSeeTheMoonAgainTo See the Moon Again by Jamie Langston Turner begins with Julia, a widowed, middle-aged, introvertish teacher of Creative Writing at a university in South Carolina. Her tightly-controlled world has been shaken up a little by the award of a sabbatical, a paid year off from teaching, and she is not quite sure what to do with herself. But it is shaken up even more by a message on her answering machine: Carmen, a niece she has never met, daughter of her estranged brother, is in the state and planning to come to see her. While Julia hopes with everything in her that Carmen doesn’t come, of course, she does, and while Julia plans to send her off again as soon as possible, for various reasons she can’t.

Carmen is Julia’s opposite in many ways: she is free-spirited, open, gregarious, and a Christian. Julia thinks Carmen’s faith is naive and unrealistic. But as the two women get to know each other, we learn more of what makes each of them the way they are. Both have had a number of hard breaks and tragedies, both have actions in their pasts that they can’t forgive themselves for. Julia takes Carmen along on a trip which takes them both literally and figuratively to far different places than they had first imagined.

I identified with Julia and her introverted way of thinking quite a bit, but I can understand that some readers may not like her. Sometimes introverts can come across as standoffish, and Julia has other reasons as well for holding people at arm’s length. Although I like Julia, I haven’t liked many of Mrs. Turner’s main characters in other books, but as I got to know them, their background, what makes them tick, and came to understand them better, I could at least empathize and usually came to like them as well.

I like the way Mrs. Turner gradually reveals the depth of her characters. I like that the spiritual truth in the book comes not from an expert who has it all together, but from a young woman who is still dealing with issues herself. I also like that the ending isn’t tied up with a neat bow: things are left a little more open, but you know both characters are on their way to where they need to be. I have to admit to a little disappointment with the ending: without revealing anything, I had hoped it would go the way Julia was thinking it would. Yet I can see that the choices that were made were necessary to the growth of both Julia and Carmen.

Many of Mrs. Turner’s books have the aspect of an outsider looking in on someone else of faith, and that is an interesting and refreshing perspective. They also have grace and redemption as major themes. She’s often described as a different kind of Christian fiction author, and I would agree.

Since I spent 26 years of my adult life in South Carolina, fourteen of them in the town where Mrs. Turner lives, which is near the town many of her books are set in, I very much enjoyed that aspect of the book as well. I knew some of the places mentioned and knew the pattern of spring blooming that she described and could very much picture it. And some of the different types of Southerners were familiar as well.

Since Mrs. Turner is also a teacher of Creative Writing, there are often literary references in many of her books. This one contains a lot of mention of Flannery O’Connor, someone I have never read but now want to.

An interview with the author about this book is here. I think this is my favorite of her books, and I hope you’ll give it a try.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope

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Far CountryI’ve been wanting to read Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope by Christopher and Angela Yuan ever since seeing it recommended by Tim Challies, and I am glad to have finally done so. I’m predicting it will be one of my top ten books of the year.

Christopher and Angela take turns with the chapters, describing events from their different points of view. They open the book with Chris’s coming out to his parents that he was gay. Angela did not object on Biblical grounds: she was an atheist who hated Christians. I don’t think the book ever explains just why she was against his homosexuality, except that they had hoped he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a dentist, and patients would probably avoid a dentist who had the potential to be HIV positive. Maybe it just didn’t fit in with her idea of a perfect family, but it was devastating to her.

Angela had come from an unhappy home and had put great stock into having a good family. But over the years her husband grew cold and distant, her oldest son rebelled, and now Christopher was going in a direction completely unacceptable to her.  She gave him an ultimatum between his family and his homosexuality, and, believing he had no choice in his orientation, he left home to be with friends who would accept him as he was. Angela crumpled to the ground in despair, feeling she had nothing left to live for. She made plans to end her own life, but wanted to talk to a minister first. Though he was kind, nothing really changed in her heart. He gave her a booklet which she later read, and her eyes were opened to the truth that her lifelong desire for belonging could be fulfilled in belonging to God. It was even a relief to know and admit that she was a sinner, that though she was far from perfect, God still loved her. “I had not been seeking God, but I was found by him” (p. 19).

Chris, for his part, was glad to get away from the “Chinese-mother guilt-trip drama” (p. 8). Coming out to one’s parents and the inevitable negative reaction was a rite of passage among his friends. He finally felt free to live as he wanted to. He “started going to gay clubs and began tending bar” (p. 23) at night while attending dental school during the day. Eventually the party scene took over his life. While feeling low after a broken relationship, he accepted someone’s offer of the drug Ecstasy, and within a very short time started selling drugs to support his own habit, then became a popular and leading seller in his area and even across the country. His schooling suffered to the point that he was eventually expelled, but it no longer mattered since he was making money hand over fist and enjoying life and popularity.

Until he was arrested.

During this time Angela had been growing in her own faith and her husband Leon had come to the Lord as well. At first she tried various things to get through to Chris but finally realized that she could not “fix” him. She could only fast, pray, show him love, and not shield him from the consequences of his actions. She and her husband did not intervene when Chris was threatened with expulsion from school and after he was arrested asked the judge to give him a sentence just long enough to bring him to God. Once after reading Psalm 46:1, “Be still, and know that I am God,” she knew “as hard as it was, I knew I had to quit striving and trying to make things work my way. But rather, I had to let God do things his way and in his timing” (p. 73). “It may have just been easier for us to give up on our son, but God said, Wait! He gave us faith to hope against all the evidence we saw and to trust he had a plan, Leon and I committed to focus not on hopelessness but on the promises of God” (p. 109). She “prayed specifically that God would do whatever it took to bring our son to him — not to us, not out of drugs, not out of homosexuality…but to the Father” (p. 159).

With Christopher’s arrest, his popularity vanished. None of his “friends” wanted any more to do with him. One day in prison, he saw a Gideon’s New Testament on top of some trash, and he took it back to his cell and began to read mainly just as a way to pass the time. Over time, both with reading the Bible on his own and studying it with others, Chris came to believe on Christ.

Being in prison had taken care of getting Chris off drugs and out of the party scene, and he came to admit they were both wrong and he needed to stay away from them once he got out. When he talked with a chaplain about his homosexuality, he was told that the Bible did not condemn homosexuality and gave Chris a book explaining that view. That sounded wonderful to Chris, but as he read the book and then studied the Bible, he felt the book did not line up with what the Bible taught. He did discover that in “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 — passages normally used to condemns gays and lesbians…God didn’t call lesbians and gay men abominations. He called it an abomination. What God condemned was the act, not the person. For so long, I had gotten the message from the Christian protestors at gay-pride parades that the God of the Bible hated people like me, because we were abominations. But after reading these passages, I saw that God didn’t hate me; nor was he condemning me to an inescapable destiny of torment. But rather, it was the sex he condemned, and yet he still wanted an intimate relationship with me” (p. 186). Being gay had been a major part of his identity, but as he continued to study the Scriptures, he “began to ask myself a different question: Who am I apart from my sexuality?” (p. 187). He details his thought processes and conclusions in a chapter called “Holy Sexuality.” One conclusion was:

God’s faithfulness is proved not by the elimination of hardships but by carrying us through them. Change is not the absence of struggles; change is the freedom to choose holiness in the midst of our struggles. I realized that the ultimate issue has to be that I yearn after God in total surrender and complete obedience (pp. 168-169).

This book touched me on so many levels. What a joy to see the journey of how God brought both Christopher and his parents to Himself.

Christopher’s testimony from a documentary is here:

You can read more of Christopher’s life and ministry at his web site, www.christopheryuan.com.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

 

 

Book Review: My Emily

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My EmilyMy Emily by Matt Patterson is a family’s story of a young daughter born with Down’s Syndrome who is then diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two.

After the joy of Emily’s birth, the Pattersons were shocked to learn that she had Down’s Syndrome. Once they had a chance to absorb that, though, they found it didn’t really change anything. Emily was a little behind other children in her development, but she was developing, and “she did possess two characteristics many Down’s children are blessed with – a never-ending smile and a heart so very full of love.”

But a late-night run to the ER for a fever when Emily was two, and a question about some dots on her leg, led to blood tests which revealed Emily had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Matt relates what Emily and the family went through as she underwent a 100-day course of chemotherapy with its attendant side effects, went into remission, relapsed, and had a bone marrow transplant.

A major part of a journey like this is wrestling with God about why He allowed it, especially for a little child, and Matt shares some of that as well.

Perhaps He sent this little, unassuming angel to instruct me and many others about what’s truly important in life. I believe she taught us not to take one single day for granted, showing a greater appreciation for family, faith, and friends and all that we have been given and blessed with.

…Some would look at Emily’s life and think that a child born with Down’s syndrome has little hope for a meaningful life. Throw in the diagnosis of leukemia and that little hope turns into no hope whatsoever.

I disagree.

Emily’s life, with all its imperfections, had great meaning. Because of how many people she touched, I realize that we are far more than what we can accomplish. We are the very thumbprints of God.

Matt goes on to say:

Incidents in our lives – big or small – develop our character. The Bible says, “We know these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character.”

Our lives, as short as they may be, are a test. And one of the biggest tests we can endure is how we respond to those moments when we don’t feel the presence of God in our lives. I believe deeply that one of God’s greatest gifts is to teach us there is a purpose behind every single one of our trials and problems.

Treat them as a gift, an opportunity to to move forward and draw closer to God. Problems often times compel us to look to God and count on Him rather than ourselves.

This is a very short book at 98 pages and at the moment is available for free for the Kindle app. I was touched at many points in the book and the quote about every life with its imperfections having meaning and purpose and that we “are more than what we can accomplish” particularly spoke to me.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Laura Ingalls Wilder 2015 Wrap-Up

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It’s the last day of February and so it is time to wrap up our Laura Ingalls Wilder Reading Challenge. If you’ve read anything by, about, or related to Laura this month, please share it with us in the comments. You can share a link back to your book reviews, or if you’ve written a wrap-up post, you can link back to that (the latter might be preferable if you’ve written more than one review — the WordPress spam filter tends to send comments with more than one link to the spam folder. But I’ll try to keep a watch out for them.) If you don’t have a blog, just share in the comments what you read and your thoughts about it. We’d also love to hear if you’ve done any “Little House” related activities.

I like to have some sort of drawing to offer a prize concluding the challenge, and as I thought about it this year, I decided to offer one winner the choice of:

The Little House Cookbook compiled by Barbara M. Walker

OR

Laura’s Album: A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson

OR

A CD (hard copy or digital) of music based on songs from the Little House Books: Happy Land: Musical Tributes to Laura Ingalls Wilder OR Arkansas Traveler: Music from Little House on the Prairie. (Thanks, Susan, for telling me about them!)

If none of those suits you, I can substitute a similarly-priced Laura book of your choice. To be eligible, leave a comment on this post by Friday telling us what you read for this challenge. I’ll choose a name through random.org. a week from today to give everyone time to get their last books and posts finished.

For myself, this month I read (linked to my reviews):

By the Shores of Silver Lake

The Long Winter

I also wrote Happy Birthday, Laura Ingalls Wilder with some fun facts and favorite moments and quotes from her books.

I had planned to read the newly published Pioneer Girl, Laura’s first book that had never been published before now. But they quickly ran out of all they printed at first and had to print more, and so far I have not received it.

Thanks for participating! I hope you enjoyed your time “on the prairie” this month. It always leaves me with renewed admiration for our forebears and renewed thankfulness that I live in the times I do.

<strong>The giveaway is closed and the winner is Bekah! Congratulations! I will leave the comments open for those still finishing up their reading and posts for the challenge.</strong>