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?
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.
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….
My quest to draw closer to Jesus continues, no matter where I go. At times I’m very good about devotions in the morning, praying and reading my Bible; most of the time, I honor daily devotions in the breach by thinking about it for a few minutes. And then feeling guilty. Every time I deviate from my ideal I realize that I’m falling away from relationship with the Lord. He doesn’t move away from me; I’m the one straying. That’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful for the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The structured Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes Compline have been a super way to keep me praying, reading Scripture, and spending time with God. Not that I do them all the time. Like I said, I’ve been much better at observing them as something I should do.
I decided to get a leather-bound copy of the 2019 Book of Common Prayer. Built to last!
When I discovered podcasts devoted to morning prayer, I was thrilled. Finally – a way to listen to Morning Prayer while walking my dog! (Usually, I’m listening to something that isn’t filling my head with good news.) CotA’s church plant, All Souls, created the wonderful 10-minute podcast Lord, Open My Lips and I use that. Another way I’m focusing on God is to go to the Wednesday morning Eucharist our church offers. I’d been off and on, but on my birthday last October, I decided my goal for the next year was to go each week. I’ve been more often than not and I’m keeping on.
It’s not usual to find an Anglican running around in my part of the South; anybody seeking out liturgy is usually an Episcopalian. Most of my friends today in Columbia are Southern Baptist. That only makes sense, because 1) I spent 20 years in a Southern Baptist church, and 2) the top three religions in South Carolina are Baptist, Methodist, and SEC Football. But over the years my spiritual journey, ever since I was 12, has led me to going to where I truly think the Spirit of Truth is. I felt that in my time with Wesley Monumental, with Lamb’s Chapel, and then RHBC. Right now, that is in the Church of the Apostles, a member of the ACNA. In my Apostles 101 class I loved how our past Dean (that’s a fancy Anglican word for the head priest at the cathedral church of the Diocese) described the church: the place where the Scriptures are rightly taught and the Sacraments observed. At least that’s how I remembered the saying. And everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve been looking for a place that carefully paid attention to the Bible and actually believed it.
I think I’ll end my journey written journey here, with part 7. It is, after all, the perfect number.
This is the next-to-last post in this series. If you need to catch up, just look at the previous five weeks of posts!
It started with an Excel spreadsheet. Wait: before the Excel spreadsheet, there was an unfortunate administration change at my old church. RHBC’s beloved senior pastor was retiring after a long career. And the new guy was (is) hard-charging, young, enthusiastic, with clear vision and purpose. Unfortunately, his vision didn’t include the outstanding choir director who had led our choir for the past 10+ years. After he was shown the door, I waited until Christmas, to sing in one last Christmas cantata. (I wouldn’t have done that again to witness the chaos resulting from a choir that wasn’t fully in sync with the director and vice versa – missed cues, botched songs. Ah, schadenfreude!) I waited some more, thinking we’d get a new permanent choir leader and everything would start afresh. When that didn’t happen, and the temporary director became the director, my last day was Easter Sunday 2018.
Here’s where the Excel spreadsheet came in. I put together a list of the requirements I was looking for in a church and decided to start visiting around. Here’s what I put them on a spreadsheet:
Hopefully I will wrap this multi-part series up soon, but no promises….
That Disciple Bible study was the first time I had done in-depth Bible study. I wouldn’t study the Bible so thoroughly for another two years. I finished the course and put the Good Book back on the shelf to gather dust. In the meantime, I left Savannah, took a job that kept me working afternoons and evenings, and stopped going to church for quite a while.
It wasn’t until I started attending Lamb’s Chapel, a non-denominational church in my next town that I truly started reading the Bible again. I went there because a couple of friends I made in my new town were attending. It was as different from the liturgical United Methodist church as could be … there was no liturgy. Instead, we sang all out for about 30 minutes, followed by a few announcements. Then, the senior pastor would commence to preach, straight from the Bible, for 45 minutes. And what made it fascinating was that I actually liked hearing his sermons. They weren’t the dry sermons I was used to hearing. I actually started taking my new copy of The NIV Study Bible with me to church and making notes in it. I marked up that new Bible completely with notes from those sermons. I stayed at that wonderful, non-denominational, Bible-filled church until I left Florence about 18 months later.
This is the fourth in a multi-part series on how I grew in my Christian faith. See part 1, part 2, and part 3 to catch up.
Ah, the recycling. That and the fact I was pulled in so many directions, like most American teens, had a lot to do with my falling away from the faith for quite some time. I may have attended church during the college years, but it was a faith grown “lukewarm.” Yuck.
After graduation I moved to Savannah in early 1990 for my first job. Sad to say, part of my motivation for finding a church was 1) because the president of the place I interviewed at told me about important church was to him and 2) I was looking for one of those beautiful old churches in the historic district. Not too much on the actual faith part – more of a “looking good” type churchgoer. In a happy accident I wandered across one of the most spirit-filled churches of all, which just happened to be historic, beautiful, and blessed with a magnificent 60-rank Noack organ: Wesley Monumental Church. I was determined to go to a church with glorious music just once in my life!
Third in a multi-part series See part 1 and part 2 to catch up.
Right after the high of the Youthciple experience, I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to “do.” So, I just kept going to church. But certain things didn’t set well with me. First, I didn’t like how so many kids my age just started dropping out. It was hard to keep going to MYF when I knew so few people, and I wasn’t the most outgoing person to boot. They were all from different middle and high schools – I didn’t know them! And I didn’t like how so many things we were taught in Sunday School didn’t seem to play out in daily life.
this is the second part of a series. The image above: Noah’s Ark by Edward Hicks
Believing was so simple, so pure when I was a child. God said through the Psalmist he who had clean hands and a pure heart would ascend the hill of the Lord. And I wanted that.
“…Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
I think the first scattering doubts crept in when I read a child’s version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It had to be around fifth grade, maybe fourth. This volume was published by Disney! It had to be okay. Disney was practically patriotic in our house. Some of the only television we kids were allowed was Sunday night’s Wonderful World of Walt Disney.
There was a character in the epic named Ut-napishtim. In these stories from Mesopotamian mythology, he survived a great flood by building a ship to transport his family and some animals. Hmm….
Notes from Aunt Gem 