I Do Repent

Today I took down one of the old hymnals in my collection, just to poke about in it and see what was there - a worn, blue 1923 Hymns for the Living Age. I do not know where I got it or if I have even looked at it before. I opened to this beautiful hymn of penitence:

Because I knew not when my life was good,
And when there was a light upon my path,
But turned my soul perversely to the dark,
O Lord, I do repent.

Because I held upon my selfish road
And left my brother wounded by the way,
And called ambition duty, and pressed on,
O Lord, I do repent.

Because I spent the strength thou gavest me
In struggle which thou never didst ordain,
And have but dregs of life to offer thee,
O Lord, I do repent.

Because I was impatient, would not wait,
But thrust my impious hand across thy threads,
And marred the pattern drawn out for my life,
O Lord, I do repent.

Because thou hast borne with me all this while,
Hast smitten me with love until I weep,
Hast called me as a mother calls her child,
 O Lord, I do repent.

~ Sarah Williams, 1868

I think the center stanza - the third - will give me the most food for meditation, because in its confession I see myself all too well.

Because I spent the strength thou gavest me
In struggle which thou never didst ordain,
And have but dregs of life to offer thee, 
O Lord, I do repent.

Librivox Children's Book Favorites

All of these free Librivox recordings are delightful books read by solo readers with clear voices. For a continuous-play version, click on the Internet Archive Page link on the lower left of each book catalog page.

The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat by Arthur Scott Bailey

The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne

The Dog Crusoe and His Master by R. M. Ballantyne 

Bowser the Hound by Thornton Burgess

Mother West Wind's Children by Thornton Burgess

The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk by Thornton Burgess

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy by Pádraic Colum

A Little Country Girl by Susan Coolidge

What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge

The Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

The Book of Dragons by E. Nesbit

The Railway Children by E. Nesbit

The Counterpane Fairy by Katharine Pyle 

Dandelion Cottage by Carroll Watson Rankin

Kayray's Storytime (A favorite reader's collection of favorite stories)

A Fairy Tale by Harrington Mann

L. M. Montgomery on Living Education

I love reading L. M. Montgomery's works. They are just delicious. With any of my favorite authors, I also love, when I am nearing the point of expecting any further enjoyment from them to be in the form of re-reads, to discover a book I have never read. Finding an old green-covered copy of Jane of Lantern Hill at the big city library, next to the familiar Anne books was a treat indeed. Is it really the same Montgomery? Yes, oh yes!

As with nearly all Montgomery's heroines, Jane's domesticity, sympathy and industry inspire me. In this particular work, Jane's relationship with her father is exceptionally lovely, and I appreciated these lines on her summer education under his tutelage. (For context: Jane had grown to hate the Bible because of being forced to read the Old Testament each evening under the critical gaze of her stern grandmother and severe aunt.)

When dad had converted Jane to the Bible, he set about making history and geography come alive for her. She had told him she always found those subjects hard. But soon history no longer seemed a clutter of dates and names in some dim, cold antiquity but became a storied road of time when dad told her old tales of wonder and the pride of kings...Thebes...Babylon...Tyre...Athens...Galilee...were places where real folks lived...folks she knew. And knowing them, it was easy to be interested in everything pertaining to them. Geography, which had once meant merely a map of the world, was just as fascinating.

'Let's go to India,' dad would say...and they went...though Jane would sew buttons on dad's shirts all the way...Soon Jane knew all the fair lands far, far away as she knew Lantern Hill...or so it seemed to her after she had journeyed through them with father.

 

~ Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery

What an inspiration for a living-books based education! But more than that, a reminder that the best things I will teach my children are things that I have learned myself to love and can pass on to them wrapped in the glow of my own delight.

  Views across the Bosphorus, Constantinople by Hermann Corrodi

Definite Love

I've been on a George MacDonald spree lately - audio book listening through Thomas Wingfold, Curate, The Wise Woman, and now The Day Boy and the Night Girl. Oh, how I love his stories! MacDonald's writing is exquisite, transporting and thought-provoking - all the loveliness of a fantasy escape sobered by wise meditations. With all that he understands and beautifully describes about the nature of God, people, and the world, MacDonald's theology has a great flaw - that is, he fails to grasp the God-centeredness of the love of the triune God.

Writing in the midst of a nation and church decayed in formal religion and starved for a glimpse of intimate, divine love, George MacDonald tried beautifully to give hungry souls what they lacked - pictures of a kind, compassionate Heavenly Father whose heart was open to true communion with those who would seek Him. But he forgot, or never really saw, that God's love begins and ends with God, and not with creatures. Over and over, MacDonald's portraits of divine love portray a brooding, yearning being whose chief desire is the transformation of the beloved creature, and a heart unwilling to leave any finally ruined. This is so close to being perfectly right, because God's love for His people is deep, passionate and transforming - but close is only close, and a tiny gap in one's view of God can lead to chasms of error. God's love for His people is aimed at His final glorification in them. (Eph. 1:4-6) A deity whose heart's passion is all for his creatures may look nice, but such a God could never condemn anyone to final, eternal punishment. From the innocent-appearing blossoms of man-focused love in MacDonald's stories, can grow (and has in some cases, grown) the dangerous fruit of universalism - the teaching that all creatures will finally be saved, even if they must pass through judgments (i.e. hell may be real, but not eternal), for they are God's beloved creations and He could not bear to see any finally lost.

This is one of the reasons I like to read multiple books at a time - blending fiction, history, practices, and theology reading throughout my days. Solid, straightforward theology writing sheds light on the more obscure philosophies one encounters in fiction and other reading. For instance, Jonathan Leeman's The Church and The Surprising Offense of God's Love is the perfect counterbalance to my recent fiction spree. Here's a quote that grasps so clearly what George MacDonald did not:

Insofar as God's affections uphold something as most precious, he will evaluate or judge all things by whether they, too, ascribe proper value and worth to that thing. He intends for us to call 'good' what he calls 'good' and to call 'evil' what he calls 'evil' (Mal. 2:17). If, therefore, God love his glory more than anything, upholding it as most precious, everything in the world that redounds to his glory would be called 'good'. Anything opposed to his glory would be called 'evil,' the law of God would be that which upholds the standards of his glory, and the judgment of God would be rendered according to these glory-promoting laws. On the other hand, if God loves us more than anything - if his greatest affections are bent toward our glory - God's law and judgments would be in precisely the same direction.
All God's judgments serve the God-centeredness of his love. His love evaluates and assesses in accordance with his God-centeredness. His love expects, it demands, and it enacts penalties in accordance with his God-centeredness.

A theological system that presents a God who loves his creatures more than anything is a system that will probably tend over time toward universalism...any doctrine of eternal judgment or damnation will dry up. Man-centered systems might inconsistently keep such a doctrine for a time because the doctrine can easily be found on the pages of Scripture, but the inevitable logic of the system will eventually determine that , if humanity is most precious and if God loves man more than himself, there is no higher law that constrains God to do anything other than grant all humanity eternal bliss." (Chapter 2, "The Nature of Love")

God's love for His people is mighty, sweet, transformative (MacDonald pictures this beautifully in some places) and it has nothing to do with us. It is as free and unconstrained as His freedom to not love us. He loves Himself, His Son, His glory first, because He is best and first. That is right and good. That would have made George MacDonald and many of his contemporaries uncomfortable. But that is what ultimately makes the intimate fatherliness of divine love even more breathtaking than the loveliest word picture a human author could paint. He didn't have to have us at all, but if we love Him, He first loved us - and the God that first loved us, loved God first, and calls us to love Him first. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

Illustration from MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin, Jessie Wilcox Smith, 1920

The Good Life

I keep thinking about this piece of a paragraph from a current read - "Love Your God With All Your Mind" by J. P. Moreland:

"According to the modern view, the good life is the satisfaction of any pleasure or desire that someone freely and autonomously chooses for himself or herself. The successful person is the individual who has a life of pleasure and can obtain enough consumer goods to satisfy his or her desires. Freedom is the right to do what I want, not the power to do what I by nature ought to. Community gives way to individualism with the result that narcissism - an inordinate sense of self-love and self-centered involvement - is an accurate description of many people's lives."

This could seem at a glance to be another sadly accurate commentary upon the pitiful contemporary culture in the West - I've heard stuff like this so many times. But in this clear, objective description, I was unsettled to realize how much I saw of myself. I tend to think that I, as a Christian, am a separated observer of the follies of my surrounding culture - that I may have plenty of my own follies, but they are not those of the prevailing mucky-muck. I don't watch their shows, read their books, or worship their celebrities. I like old shows, read old books, and maintain a sincere fondness for G. K. Chesterton and Charles Spurgeon. But these are surface things, really. As much as I detest to admit it, I am a product of my culture. I am redeemed and sanctified in Christ, but I am not immune to the modern world's influence, anymore than a fish in a tank of water dyed pink. Don't I think of the good life kind of in the way he describes - sometimes? Sometimes I do think of life at its best when I have money to spend on something I want and time to do what I want. Time for me, stuff for me. Even if it isn't watching the latest chick flick on a brand new big screen TV, or some other culturally common ideal that I sort of despise, the underlying mindset can be the same.

My 2016 Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

I truly enjoyed participating in the 2016 Reading Challenge from Challies.com. My achievement level in number of book categories completed was certainly mediocre, but each book that I read for the list was enriching. I realized my personal bias toward certain genres when confronted with "A book about a current issue" ("Oh, please no!" I often read to escape) or "A book published in 2016" (I prefer books published nearer to 1916 and rarely buy new books) - and I never did get around to reading a book in either of those categories.

As a non-competitive free spirit, I indulged in books that just wouldn't fit into a category on the challenge list - "A book for children" was checked early in the year, but many subsequent evenings found me curled up with another nice little piece of juvenile fiction that didn't fit any of the other check boxes. Looking back, I realize that I didn't allow the reading challenge to stretch and mature me to the extent that I could have, and if I do something like this again, I will try harder to branch out of my comfort zone of Spurgeon and Dickens and try "A graphic novel" or "A book on the current New York Times list of bestsellers". But very few categories were skipped out of indifference. Most of the list was not completed for lack of time. I look wistfully still at "A book by Francis Schaeffer" and "A book with at least 400 pages" never completed. Maybe I will keep the list going until it is all done...in three years perhaps.

Here, though, are twenty-seven books that I did complete, and my brief reflections on them.

~ A book about Christian living - Future Grace by John Piper
I completed this book early in the year as I neared the end of pregnancy with our second child. The winter was cold, we had recently moved, I was often unwell, and the pregnancy went long overdue. Future Grace encouraged me immensely many afternoons spent on the couch while our son napped. It was just what I needed to help me carry on - whatever happens, your covenant-keeping God will be there for you. Thank God for books like this.

~ A biography - John Bunyan - Tinker of Bedford by William Deal
Written for middle-schoolers and published by a homeschool curriculum company, this was not a typical grown-up biography, but it made John Bunyan's life more real to me and filled my heart with wonder at the grace of God to this man so humble and weak, yet so greatly used for good.

~ A classic novel - Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
This category was not hard to complete, but it was hard to choose! My husband came to my assistance as I stood staring at the bookcase - "Read Robinson Crusoe - you can't get more classic than that!" I was glad I read it - I hadn't realized what a strong Christian message it contained. Crusoe's journey to faith in the God who ruled over even the worst tragedies of his life resounded with true Christian experience. It was encouraging! Besides that, just about anyone enjoys the classic adventure tale of survival by resourcefulness and perseverance in dire circumstances.