Category: religion

Books · religion

Our Pain Matters to God

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A review of Where is God in all the Suffering?

I began this book immediately after last week’s book, What if It’s True? The author. Amy Orr-Ewing, is an Oxford-educated, a writer, and director of an apologetics center. While she is a passionate layperson devoted to evangelism, she does not have the novelist’s eyes that Charles Martin has.

That made getting into this slim volume (130 pages) a little more challenging for me. The best parts of the book are where she relates her own experiences, or the experiences of others very close to her, in suffering. Her depiction of the Grenfell Tower fire opens the chapter on Anger. Anyone who keeps up with the international news remembers that – but many don’t know about the events in the week after – the service that she and her husband conducted for the survivors and community after. That moving story showcases God’s love for all those angry and in pain in that tragedy.

With these scenes from her life Orr-Ewing begins the chapters of this book. Each chapter focuses on a particular emotion or type of suffering: grief, sickness, natural disasters, violence, and more. In each chapter, after the opening, she looks at how Christians perceive God’s response. Where is He? She continually contrasts the materialist/atheist philosophy against what Christians believe. In the chapter on sickness, she writes:

But why should the physical frailty of our bodies hurt us at this almost transcendent level? Could our human experience of illness be a reminder, an indicator, that to be human is to be more than a material entity of molecules and atoms?

She reminds us that Hebrew poets from 3,000 years ago were asking God about this in words that Christians and Jews cherish today:

Hear my prayer, Lord;
let my cry for help come to you.
Do not hide your face from me
when I am in distress.

Psalm 102: 1-2a

The Psalmist continues with vivid depictions of his illness:

My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
I forget to eat my food.
In my distress I groan aloud
and am reduced to skin and bones.

Psalm 102: 4-5

This second book in my Lenten reading series made me realize anew the power of story to convey truth. A story captures our imaginations and brings us in. A listener or reader empathizes with the characters, perhaps cheering them on or watching in despair. Stories are what we remember – not lectures. After all, did not the greatest teacher ever known teach in parables?

Books · Gratitude · religion

Seeing with new eyes

AuntGem2 Comments

The parables of Jesus in modern language

I’ve been reading the book “What if It’s True?” by Charles Martin every morning as part of my devotional time this Lent. Martin wrote this book after he decided to take a fresh look at Scripture, reading it with the mindset: What if this can be trusted? What if this really, really is true? What if the King of the Universe is speaking to me through it? And – if that’s so, what should my response be?

Martin said of his motivation:

What if this Jesus, the One who walked out of the tomb shining like the sun, holding the keys of death and hades, is alive – in you? In me? I write fiction for a living, and that’s either the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, or the most important word ever spoken.

Introduction, What if It’s True?

His reading led him to beautiful epiphanies and moments of heartbreak, stories of how God’s word is working through him. Each chapter is about a different story from Jesus’ life. Each chapter ends with a prayer that Martin prayed and recorded. These prayers are so raw and intimate it pushes aside any of your pretenses. I wanted to kneel several times reading these prayers that he wrote.

I’m only ¾ of the way through, but so far, my favorite chapter is Chapter 10 – “No Gone is Too Far Gone.” As in every chapter, he sketches the scene or parable in the language and idiom of today. His retelling of the story of the Prodigal Son made me understand exactly how low that poor boy got – it was if I could taste those horrible slops the prodigal had to eat. And when the Father sees the son from far off, coming home – you feel that joy.

It’s not that the Scripture is unclear, but hearing the story over and over, in the same words of the ESV or NIV for so many years had dulled its power. Through his book, Martin allows me to glimpse the sheer joy of this parable – the minute the son repented, the Father forgave him. And forgave him so generously – no nonsense about working off his debt, acting as a servant in his house. He restored him to sonship. That is the beauty of repentance. It’s a big ask – to turn back to the Father, to deny ourselves – but the rewards are overwhelming.

Books · religion

Looking heavenward

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Books for Lent 2024

This Lent I’m choosing to read one new book, finish one I started last year and never got through, and re-read an old favorite.

The one I have to finish is “What If It’s True? A Storyteller’s Journey with Jesus.” Last year, for whatever reason, I never made it past chapter 3. Here’s hoping I can actually read it this Lent and give you a review!

Next up on my list is to finish my re-read of “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis. My bookclub, The Inklings, is reading this classic this winter. I’ve read it several times, and each time I marvel at the description of a bus tour from Hell into Heaven, and the souls who are redeemed. It’s an exploration of Lewis’ complex thoughts on the possibility that Purgatory exists – and that some saved souls may need to be purified (or, in this book, “made solid”) in order to be able to withstand the holiness of Heaven. My favorite part is the description of the lady who was one of the “Great Ones” in Heaven. Who she was on Earth was quite a surprise to the traveler.

And new this year – I’m reading “The Collects of Thomas Cranmer.” Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury who wrote the Book of Common Prayer, the greatest collection of prayers and services in the English language. He wrote different collects for every week of the liturgical year. These beautiful short prayers are composed of five parts: 1) the Address, 2) the Acknowledgement, 3) the Petition, 4) the Aspiration, and 5) the Pleading. Here’s one example – the famous Collect for Purity:

  1. Almighty God,
  2. unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid,
  3. cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit
  4. that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name,
  5. through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Books · Gratitude · religion

The book that begins it all

AuntGem4 Comments

Reading through Genesis

My favorite book genres are varied and eclectic: mysteries, cozy mysteries, history, historical fiction, biographies, and especially thrillers. I can dash through a Kindle thriller in just a few hours – witness what I did with “The Attack” and one I bought just this weekend. Sadly, my reading through the Bible is much more slowly paced. And I’ve had one devotional book on the end table by my couch for the better part of a year.

My Ladies’ Bible Study has been tackling the book of Genesis for the last six months. Our leader wrote the guides herself, and we completed Part 1, Chapters 1-15, in the Fall of 2023. Now we’re working through Part 2, Chapters 16-through 50, this spring. And the way she is teaching this huge section has whet my appetite for this important book.

I can’t possibly describe the sweep and breadth of this wonderful book in one 800-word post. What I would like to share is the method by which we’re reading it, and the things I’ve discovered, that I either never paid attention to before, or had forgotten, in the story. Too often I equate reading the Bible with the slow, measured reading of just a few verses or section in a chapter.

An Adventure Story

To my shame, often I wonder how little I can read to satisfy my daily devotional. Now I am reading this fascinating and yet foreign book, of people who lived thousands of years ago in lands I can barely imagine, with fresh perspective. It’s all due to the way our leader instructed us to read the book in the two weeks we have before our next session:

Here is the assignment – on days 1-6, read through Genesis 16-50 as if it were a novel. …. Read without taking notes or use an audio version…. Enter into the hearts, minds, and world of the patriarchs. Their stories will resonate with your own. To emotionally connect with the book will increase our appetite to understand it.

Genesis, Part II – Lisa Wheeler

This way of the reading Genesis is a revelation. I haven’t censored my own thoughts about what I’m reading. I’m mentally commenting on the action as I would an action-packed novel by Lee Child, Vince Flynn, or Kyle Mills. What I’ve discovered so far:

  • Rebekah. Rebekah agreed to far away to be Isaac’s wife – of her own free will. At first I was thinking of the lack of agency women had in who they married – but Rebekah’s family left the choice to her. She is recorded in Scripture as saying, yes, I will go. However – the women who accompanied her – her nursemaid and others – didn’t have that choice. Sadly, that was the state of servanthood and slavery as it existed then, throughout the world.
  • Hagar. When Sarai sent the pregnant Hagar away, God looked after her. Hagar, an Egyptian, didn’t even know the God of the Jews, but He knew her. And He spoke to Hagar, reassuring her that she would be fine even returning to live in Sarai’s household, but that her offspring would be “wild” – meaning that child would not be a slave or servant.
  • Ishmael. Just as God took care of Ishmael’s mother Hagar, so he took care of Ishmael. For 12 years he was the son of Abraham. Then he was sent away with Hagar – but God intervened to provide. And God once again reassured the two that Ishmael would found a nation, with twelve sons who were called princes.
  • Isaac and Ishmael. Whenever I read the story, I always thought of Ishmael exiting stage left, and that was it for him. But at the end of Abraham’s life – both his sons buried him (Gen. 25:9.) That means to me that the two brothers had some sort of relationship. Were they close? Did they communicate over the decades? Or did Isaac reach out to Ishmael as Abraham grew weaker? I prefer to think that they stayed in touch. It’s something I never considered before.
  • Esau and Jacob. We all know the story of how Esau sold his birthright for a “mess of pottage.” (As a Southerner I love that phrase.) And Esau went far away from Jacob to other lands. But just like Isaac and Ishmael – there’s one line that surprised me. After Isaac died, we see in Gen 35:29b: “And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.” They had to have some kind of relationship, then, and that pleases me.

So much action

I make the mistake of thinking of the Old Testament as dry, recitations of ‘begats’ and names. But reading Genesis as a novel made me realize how much action there is: dysfunctional family drama, loyalty, betrayal, intended murder, sex scenes (that Potiphar’s wife was a hussy!), prostitution – yep, check out chapter 38 – dream interpretation, family, aristocracy and monarchy, drunken feasts and misunderstandings, a heartwarming family reunion, and at the end, blessings upon all the sons of Jacob.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good….

Genesis 50:20a