To Lose Everything

Today it is 55 years.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Here is a quote from the introduction of Shadow of the Almighty by Elisabeth Elliot--

Jim's aim was to know God.
His course, obedience-- the only course that could lead to the fulfillment of his aim. His end was what some would call an extraordinary death, although in facing death he had quietly pointed out that many have died because of obedience to God.

He and the other men with whom he died were hailed as heroes, 'Martyers'. I do not approve. Nor would he have approved.

Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him, after all, so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first? Furthermore, to live for God is to die, 'daily', as the apostle Paul put it. It is to lose everything that we may gain Christ. It is in thus laying down our lives that we find them.

Thanks for reading,

Miss Pickwickian

Threw New Eyes - James B. Jordan

Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World by James B. Jordan

Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers Inc (First printing 1988)

This is a book I've heard about a lot but never read. It was a much easier read than I first anticipated and I really enjoyed it. I wish it was something I'd done a long time ago.

I've never actually read anything by Jim Jordan (besides a few articles) so it was pretty interesting after hearing hours of his lectures. His voice was pretty stuck in my head.

I think Through New Eyes really helped me see better where he and a lot of other writers and teachers are coming from...more of the root of it, you know. It was really an exciting read.

He goes through the Biblical "worlds" and covenants and points out imagery and symbolism that really hit you on the head and make you think. It is a quick but invaluable overview from Genesis to the church today.

Besides the fact that we want to see the world biblically and see the Bible biblically, I found this book really exciting when it comes to trying to write fiction in a way that portrays accurately God's world.

Recently I've been going through a series of lectures on The Church and Pop Culture. In one of the talks N.D. Wilson says that all fiction would be plagiarism if we weren't so bad at it. And we are miserably bad at it. I don't know if the connection makes sense, but it did to me at the time... :-)

Here are just two portions that I thought were particularly interesting-

What emerges from this discussion is that if we want to acquire a Biblical view of the world, we shall have to make a study of Biblical symbolism. The way the Bible uses symbols shows us how to interpret God's natural revelation.

The Jews of this period had almost completely perverted the law. As we have seen, they were not keeping the moral requirements of the law. Neither did they understand the symbolic aspects. When Jesus told the Jews that if they destroyed the Temple He would raise it up in three days, referring to His body, they were utterly confused (John 2:19-21). Similarly, when Jesus talked with Nicodemus and referred to the water-cleansing rites of the Old Covenant as a means of resurrections and new birth, Nicodemus was confused. Jesus expressed amazement: "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not understand these things?" (John 3:10).

In the first century, the Jews had rejected Biblical symbolism and typology, and were divided into two groups. The Pharisees had turned symbolism into moralism, and were keeping the law as a means for salvation. The Alexandrian Jews had replaced Biblical typology with allegories grounded in Greek philosophy. As a result neither group was able to recognize Christ when He came to them.

Basically Through New Eyes is amazing and should be a must-read.

I have the feeling that the books I love and admire the most are the ones that get the crummiest reviews... Something I need to work on. But in one sense I just don't feel qualified and I'm not sure what I should add. You should read it. :-)

Thanks for reading,

Miss Pickwickian

Jewish Violin Music

I love this type of music.

The album Songs of our Fathers by Andy Statman and David Grisman is an intense favorite. So lyrical...and sometimes so energetic. There is a medley we dance Whip-the-Willow to that is just the best. :-)

Songs of Zion by Maurice Sklar is another CD that's been around our house for a long time. And now, of course, the Defiance soundtrack. :-)

We should produce music like this!

This song is played by the French violinist, Patrick Chemla.

I've grown up with pieces of this music but I don't think I'll ever think of them the same after reading Elie Wiesel's Night. The scene where his friend plays the violin while they are all waiting in the cold is one of the most moving of the book.

Elie falls asleep to the sound and wakes up and the violinist and most of the people around him are dead...from cold and hunger. The violinist is still holding his instrument in the same position.

Radical - David Platt

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt

Multnomah Books (2010)

Rating: 8

Readability: 8

Impact: Very high. Really made me think and want to talk about things I haven't really.

Read it Again: Yes... I almost did already...writing all the quotes I wanted.

Recommend It: Yes! Emphatically. And then I'd love it if you'd talk about what your thoughts. :-)

What to Expect

David Platt challenges our commitment to Christ and His Church and what we think that means. He comes strait on and doesn't shy away from criticizing the current state of American churches or explaining basic (but sometimes complicated or unpopular theology).

The book is an easy 200 page read and the writing style is engaging. He uses a lot of stories from modern day Christians as well as quotes from previous saints.

His focus is on Matthew 10 and the Great Commission.

My Squib

I'd heard the title of this book off and on, but had never really looked into it. I picked it up knowing no more than the title and that it had created a buzz.

I was suspicious. It was written by the pastor of a four-thousand member church and it's focus was on missions. (Not that either of those things are inherently bad at all!)

But pretty soon I was just enjoying it and feeling convicted...and writing lots of notes.

David Platt is a pastor of a huge church but this book is about the complete failure and sometimes open hypocrisy of the megachurch of America and how they approach "missions"...a better and more accurate name for Platt's perception of it would be "life".

Although there are probably things we could argue about the book it contains a lot of solid wisdom and exhortation in it.

I really needed to read it. I'm relatively comfortable with talking (and/or arguing) theology but miserable at sharing the Gospel with non-believers. And I think this is, unfortunately, a malady with some CREC members. I'm not blaming my church at all here, but I think a lot of us young people have this problem. We don't have any excuse and this is really a horrible failure. Not okay!

I strongly recommend it and I'd love to discuss it with someone who has read it. (If you know me your welcome to borrow my copy.)

Plus talks about and quotes two of my heroes...Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jim Elliot. <3

From the Book

Are we willing to obey the orders of Christ? Are we willing to be like him? Are we willing to risk our lives to go to great need and to great danger--whether it's in the inner cities around us, the difficult neighbor across the street, the disease-ridden communities in Africa, or the hostile regions in the Middle East? Are we willing to fundamentally alter out understanding of Christianity from a luxury-liner approach that seeks more comforts in the world to a troop-carrier approach that forsakes comforts in the world to accomplish an eternally significant task and achieve an eternally satisfying reward?

We have adopted a Christianity consumed with little devotional thoughts from God for the day, supplemented by teaching in the church filled with entertaining stories and trite opinions on how to be a better person and live a better life in the twenty-first century.

Meanwhile, we hold the matchless Word of God in our hands, and it demands a superior position in our lives, our families, our small groups, and our churches. Do we realize the battle that is waging around us? There is a true God over this world who wants all people to bow at the feet of the loving Savior, and there is a false god in this world who wants all people to burn in hell. The battle is intense, and it cannot be fought with little thoughts in a daily devotional or petty ideas from a preacher on Sunday. It certainly can't be fought with minds numbed by the constant drivel of entertainment on television, DVDs, video games, and the Internet. If you and I are going to penetrate our culture and the cultures of the world with the gospel, we desperately need minds saturated with God's Word.

Thanks for reading,

Miss Pickwickian

Necessary Note: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. :-)

Encountering the Book of Psalms - C. Hassell Bullock

Encountering the Book of Psalms: A Literary and Theological Introduction by C. Hassell Bullock

Baker Academic 2009 (First printing 2001)

Rating: 6

Readability: 5

Impact: It might sound cliche to fall in the love with the Psalms...but that's the fact of the matter.

Read it Again: I dunno.

Recommend it: I dunno.

What to Expect:

This book is meant for college courses. Bullock tries to make the whole thing very student friendly with columns, graphs, pictures and such. It does make it a little more interesting, but it's still not a terribly exciting book.

It does have a lot of useful information and some genius quotes. Pretty well organized and easy to reference. Good review questions at the end.

There is no doubt that C. Hassell Bullock has a passion for the Psalms and it comes through..and is rather infectious.

My Squib:

I really enjoyed most of the book. He pulls from a lot of sources and brings in application.

He makes some pretty weird comments about the imprecatory Psalms through out the book but he's last chapter which is devoted to them, seems pretty solid. I'd love to read some other books that address this issue. Anyone know of any? Or other good books on the Psalms?

Glad I read the book.

From the Book:

To praise God is to live, and to live is to praise God. Anything less than that is substandard existence.

Th Psalms of lament attest, lamentation is never very far away from praise.

I know C.S. Lewis had problems with the imprecatory psalms... That knowledge was one of the great disappointments of my childhood...

But this quote that refers to him is very good-

C.S. Lewis takes a different take and observes that, on the side of Christian piety, the imprecatory psalms remind us that the absence of indignation may be an alarming symptom of the decline of righteousness and moral conviction. To lose this sense of conviction is to lose our moral moorings."

I know "moral" has some bad associations as a term, but I thought this quote was good. Indifference...not good.

I would love to have any recommendations on books of the Psalms. We have Calvin and Spurgeon's commentaries.

Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian

I Will not forget Your Word

I keep going back to this blog post by Leithart- Keeping Words

And to Psalm 119 and the psalmist devotion to God's word.

Make me to understand the way of your precepts,

and I will mediate on your wondrous works. vs 27

I trust in your word. And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your rules. vs 42b-43

Last week we finally got around to watching The Book of Eli. I'm sure there are things we could argue about and I'm certainly not saying it's the perfect movie, but it really makes you think. Right after we finished I went to bed and just wanted to clutch my Bible all night.

How often do we think about this gift?

We live in a nation where you can get a KJV from the Dollar Tree. Our houses are stocked with pocket, study, large-print, and leather bound in dozens of translations.

Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a town where only the church ministers had actually read the Bible? And some of those hadn't ever seen the New Testament?
You professed Christ but could never actually read His word? Never actually even seen it?

Can you imagine owning a Bible in risk of losing your life?

Of risking your life to take other people Bibles?

We are tremendously blessed. At the same time, how often do we even think of this gift? How are we treasuring it?

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you;

let me not wander from your commandments!

I have stored up your word in my heart,

that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O LORD;

teach me your statues!

With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.

In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on you precepts and fix my eyes on your ways,

I will delight in your statues;

I will not forget your word.

Psalm 119: 9-16

What does God's Word mean to us? And how to do we value it?

I think I certainly need to work harder on this. The Bible should be my #1 reading material.

I'm also rotten memorizer and I don't have any excuse. Two very good things to work on in this new year!

Thanks for reading,

Miss Pickwickian

Words in 2011

Happy New Year! :-)

2010 was a wonderful year. So many things happened I can hardly remember them. Pant, pant...

And now there's 2011. How weird that sounds... I have a lot of goals, and I want to focus on my writing/reading ones here. Hopefully this will help me check back to them and see how I'm doing. You all can pester me about them too. :-)

1. Finish non-fiction book. (March 2011)

This is a big one and I'd like to have the rough draft completed by February and the it off to the printer's by March. We'll see... I need some wisdom to pull this off well. The time part should be greatly helped by the Mexican work cruise Mama reserved last minute.

Thank you to the business! I will (hopefully) not disappoint and finally get this poor thing in some sort of intelligible state.

2. Finish fiction book. (August 2011)

It might sound crazy to finish this too but after 5 years I think it's about time. I'm currently on chapter 62, and of course having huge doubts about the POV, plot, style, format...you get the idea. Some self-confidence issues here. I'd like to at least have the 2nd draft done before the OCW conference. We'll see. I know there's going to be some pain involved in this one.

3. Write Articles

I have places to send these and I even have people who have said they would publish them.. What am I doing?
This is really something I need to buckle down and accomplish. I know it will really help me in my writing and it will certainly look better on a proposal to be published somewhere, even if it's only a magazine.

4. Go to the OCW Conference

The dates for this conference conflict with a sheep event, but I'm going to try hard to balance them and make it to both...somehow.

I'd kind of like to explore some other conferences too.

I was ecstatic when I received the info on Three Days in the Wordsmithy: A Writer's Workshop with Doug and N.D. Wilson and Aaron Rench. I'm sure this is going to be amazing!

Unfortunately there are some unmovable scheduling difficulties...as in it's during the only two weeks that I absolutely can not reschedule...because, Lord willing, I am going to be in Poland! Yup! I'm going on a two week mission trip to Poland!!!!!!

5. Read up on and learn how to write Screenplays

LOL...

Sound a little to basic?

While I at least need to dig into them. Everything has to start somewhere even if it's bad at the beginning (as I am sure I shall be).

6. Continue tutoring writing students

I almost wrote "torturing"...

Maybe get a few more, but still make sure it doesn't take away from my writing time.

7. Finish my biblical studies Ligonier Academy Course. (September 2011)

Maybe look into some other online courses there or elsewhere.

8. Read!

There are a lot of books I want to get my hands on and a ton of subjects I want to learn more about.

Most importantly-

a) The Bible. Yeah!

b) Biblical studies/theology/living

c) Fiction and non-fiction writing

d) Screenplays

e) Biographies and history

f) More Shakespeare and older classic sort of things.

g) Fiction!

I'm having to make sure I leave time for just fiction reading recently because I have so many non-fiction books I want to read. If I want to be a fiction writer I think it's important to read it! I'd also like to read some more historical fiction since that's something I haven't really looked into specifically for several years.

9. Enter something in at least 3 writing contests

Something I've said I was going to try for years...

10. Submit short stories

I only have a couple that are remotely presentable, but I want to work on them and to try a few more. I have a very hard time writing a descent short story and it's something I need to work on. It's also something that would be easier to get published... comparatively...

Believe me...I don't have any high hopes of getting published anytime particularly soon, but you have to start trying sometime.

11. And of course, if all these get accomplished and if Where Loyalties Lie doesn't consume my life in rewrites- Start a new novel! Yeah!

So I guess I have a lot of goals... Especially considering I do have a life that isn't only comprised of books and things pertaining there unto.

I'm going to need a good schedule and a serious commitment to keeping myself locked in this chair.

I considered annihilating this blog, but I think for now it's helping me think through things and not take myself to seriously. So...I guess at least it's a tool for me. I'd like to write more intelligent book reviews, too...btw.

Hope you have a wonderful New Years and New Year!

And...

That this is a year we are all spurred on to greater devotion and greater productivity for the Kingdom of Christ!

May all that we do be for the glory of God!

Thanks for reading,
Miss Pickwickian