Résistance

Title: Résistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France
Author: Agnès Humbert
Translated: Barbara Mellor
Publisher: Blumsberry, 2008 (Originally by Editions Emile-Paul Frères, 1946
Pages: 357
Begun: March 6, 2009
Completed: March 18, 2009

This book is truly living through Humbert's eventful ordeal of living in occupied Paris, to her eventual arrest, imprisonment, deportation, release, and reentry. The book is divided into 3 sections.

The first is in journal format taken straight from her journals--possibly with some editing on her part. The last entry is 2 days before her arrest. No one knows where she hid this journal so that it was not found by the Germans, but thankfully it was never found. She is one of the only people from this era that used real names and places in her journals. Most others used pseudonyms so as to protect the "guilty". Honestly, though she depicts the circumstances, the birth of the "movement de resistance", I would never have known she played such an important part in the resistance mouvement had it not been for the afterword of the book. In this historical document they explain in more detail some of the events of the book that she glossed over. She was definitely a prominent figure.

The second section follows a journal format, but is really recollections from her time of imprisonment. After her arrest, she, obviously, did not keep a journal, but she had an acute memory and was able to recall names of other inmates and circumstances to the tiniest detail. As soon as they were "released", she began writing about her imprisonment, so the memories were very vivid and real.

The third and final section picks up the real journal again as she works with the US Army as they weeded out Nazis still hiding in and around the area where her final incarceration took place. I guess one of the most amazing things to me from this section was how long the war continued after the war was ended! It was over 2 months after they were liberated that they were accompanied back to Paris. During that time, Humbert organized a hospital to take care of wounded, farms to help supply food for the starving, hunted out Nazis, and tried to keep peace with the Polish who were looting and vandalizing anything German.

I got a good laugh out of the paragraph where she described the Germans post-war. Everywhere she went she heard the same thing "We hated Hitler! But our hands were tied." To which she would reply "Were your hands tied more tightly than ours?" She says she could never resist the satisfaction of telling them that "we [the French] preferred to risk our lives rather than continue to live under Hitler." Then: "The Germans are a spineless lot on the whole, lackiing any ability to reason things through or view them with a critical spirit; and they suffer from a total and absolute lack of initiative, inculcated by their educational system down the centuries." !!! And the French, aren't?!

Humbert tells the story in a nearly void-of-emotion, matter-of-fact way. The atrocities that she does describe are stunning, but not described in a vulgar manner

I was reminded over and over again at the utter depravity of man. I cannot imagine people being so inhumane, but sadly to say, they were and even worse than what she witnessed. I also couldn't help asking myself if I would be willing to suffer the same atrocities she suffered for the sake of her country for MY Lord. What an even greater cause--and yet, would I be willing?

It is an excellent read. A good reminder of what the depravity of man and total abandonment to the beliefs of one man can lead to.

The Mission of Motherhood

Title: The Mission of Motherhood: Touching Your Child's
Heart for Eternity
Author: Sally Clarkson
Publisher: Waterbrook Press, 2003
Pages: 235
Begun: February 4, 2009
Completed: February 25, 2009

When I saw the title of this book I was really excited. I had heard about the book on a couple of different occasions and was looking forward to reading it. From the outset I was somewhat disappointed with it. I could not place my finger on what exactly bothered me until several chapters into the book. In giving a description of dealing with temper tantrums in her child she says, "It took many moments of training to bring out the good that was already in his heart and to help him learn to use self-control." (p.92) Verses such as Lk. 18:19 "No one is good except God alone," and Rom 7:18 "Nothing good dwells in me," and Jer. 17:9 "The heart is more deceitful than all else" immediately came to mind. (I actually penciled them in my book so that they would come to my mind again if I read this again!) Here is the basic problem. Though she has many wonderful ideas and tools her basic view of the sinfulness of man is not in line with Scripture. How you view sin really has profound effect on how you train your child.

Clarkson has a very child-centered view of raising children. Her focus seems to be more on providing opportunities and experiences to raise the "whole" child than on giving them a sense of the desperate wickedness and need of the Gospel. In fact, after doing some looking up on the internet their ministry is called "The Whole-Hearted Child." References such as teaching your child to not have "unreasonable selfishness" bothered me as well. Is there such a thing as "reasonable" selfishness? Selfishness is sin. God hates sin. Period.

I was amused when at the end of the book she gives a long description of the Avonlea TV series and how the qualities of family love and community life are what she and her husband "longed for " in their family. "We added biblical training and a Christian world-view to the mix and sought to create an old-fashioned family life and love." (p.221) While that may be a cute series, I hardly think that is my highest goal for raising my family.

Now that I have given you (too many?) negatives, let me say that as in most books there are always some good things to glean. In some areas she helped me readjust my thinking. Her emphasis on showing Christ to your children was a help to me. In every situation, whether training, disciplining, encouraging, or teaching I am to be demonstrating Christ in how I act. There have been times when correcting Stefan that I have had to stop myself and realign my attitude with that of Christ's. Yes, he needs to be corrected, but my actions should always be spirit-controlled. For that I appreciate her book. I will probably pick it up again and scan through various portions of the book. That is the beauty of books. Take some things and leave others and I am the better off having read it.

posted by Johanna

In the Splendor of Holiness

Title: In the Splendor of Holiness
Author: Jon D. Payne
Publisher: Tolle Lege Press, 2008
Pages: 115
Begun: March 11, 2009
Completed: March 16, 2009

The subtitle of this book is "Rediscovering the beauty of Reformed worship for the 21st century." Payne is the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Douglasville, Georgia. This fairly brief work is a compilation of his weekly pastoral letters to his congregation on the subject of corporate worship. Payne organizes his material by beginning with an introduction and then laying out a chronological order of a church's liturgy with Scriptural teachin on each section of the liturgy. From his introduction, I like his observation on the state of worship that tragically marks innumerable churches:

"In general, evangelical worship has become radically informal, presumptuously innovative, and biblically impoverished. Much of this is due largely to the abandonment of God-centered, biblically-regulated liturgy. What has been shelved is a Protestant liturgical heritage which, for centuries, has faithfully led Christians to worship God biblically and nourish their faith upon Christ through the ordinary means of Word and sacrament" (16).

The Second Chapter, in my opinion, is the best written and articulated chapter of this book, and is one of the best exposes on worship I have read. Payne lists eight qualities of Biblical worship:

1. Biblical worship is Biblical
2. Biblical worship is God-centered, not Man-centered
3. Biblical worship is Dialogical (a dialogue between God and His people)
4. Biblical worship is Simple
5. Biblical worship is Expressed in All of Life AND at Sacred Times
6. Biblical Worship is Reverent
7. Biblical worship is Trinitarian
8. Biblical worship Sets Forth the Person and Redemptive Work of Jesus Christ

Under the first quality, Payne says:

"Worship must, however, in its form and content be rooted in teh authoritative Word of God. Theology, and not a pragmatic philosophy for church growth or the weekly quest for a mountaintop experience with God, must drive our worship....Indeed, to worship God in a way not prescribed in His Word is to undermine His divine authority and rob Him of the glory due His Name" (22, 24).

This is a great book for both pastors and laypersons. I like Payne's deliberateness to be unashamedly Scriptural and Gospel-focused in every aspect of the worship service. It's especially refreshing in a day when churches conduct their worship services with little or no Scriptural thought to them. Why is it that some so-called Gospel-preaching churches engage in mindless, tradition-centered, man-centered "worship?" It is because there is a famine of the Gospel and/or lack of understanding of the Gospel in the church. Where there is a want of the Gospel in the church, there is no true worship. Worship is not about traditions, men, or fads, but as Payne states, "authentic Christian worship, when carried out according to what God (the ultimate governing authority) has instituted in His Word, is the context in which God is honored and His people flourish" (25).

"Black Like Me"- A Review by Bob

Title: Black Like Me

Author: John Howard Griffin

Date Published: 1961

Date Read: Last Week

Pages: 200

It was a huge best-seller in the day, but I had not heard of it. The author was a journalist that decided to become black for several weeks during the height of the Civil Rights unrest in the South. With the use of injections and medication (and occasional supplements of dye) he was able to become black for a couple of weeks. He shaved his head and his arms and was never recognized as a white man.

In fact, having no idea how to enter the community of Black Americans in New Orleans he connected with a shoe-shiner at his stand several days before he "became black." After the procedure (which was highly secretive and sponsored by a Sepia magazine) he went back to the shoe shine stand and the fellow who had shined his shoes the days previously did not recognize him at all. He recognized the shoes and was stunned when the author told him specific details of their previous conversations. He was very enthused about the idea and promised to keep Griffin's secret. 

The story is painful. John Howard Griffins had decided not to change anything about himself except his skin color. If people asked, he told them his full name and what he was doing. He simply did not tell them he was white. He tells about going into Mississippi and the tension tha was palpable. People were scared all the time. (In a recent interview John MacArthur shared about the same kind of tension during those days when he was arrested for associating with the Blacks). The outrageous treatment he endured just for being black. He could not believe it until he experienced it. 

One time on a long bus trip the white bus driver stopped for a restroom break. All the blacks were in the back of the bus, of course, and all the whites got off to go to the restroom, but as the blacks got to the door he slammed the door shut in their face and dared them to challenge him. They were forced to go back to their seats and be uncomfortable. 

He could never go to a restroom that was for "Whites Only." One time he saw a dilapidated outhouse behind a bar where blacks were served. He asked if there was a restroom nearby. The man kindly told him that he could walk down the street a couple blocks and turn left and walk a bit more and he would find a restroom. Of course, there was a restroom in the bar, but Griffin knew better than to ask for that. So, he said, "May I use the outhouse?" The man just turned away.

Some whites, he said, were apologetic, but never had the guts to go against the grain.

Some of the language is raw. I don't think it ever gets offensively over-the-top. He just puts you right in the scene. The parts that describe the white's perverted interest in black sexuality and their abuse of black women is done in such a way that did not offend my sensibilities. It just angered me appropriately.

There were tender moments. He tells about not having a place to stay and being picked up by a black man who lived in a cabin in the woods with his wife and four kids. It was the night of his daughter's fifth birthday and he couldn't help but think about the different life his daughter was leading at that very moment. There was no electricity. The father did not dare complain about his work. Businesses were actually trying to intimidate the black man out of the state. Griffins, a devout Catholic, tells about how he wept that night as he contemplated the evil way men treat other men and the bleak future that faced those children.

Personal observations:

1. I think Christian education (home and formal) has failed a whole generation of Christians because of its isolation from culture. This book is actually required reading for many seniors in highschools and is often reported on in college. Christians, for the most part, know nothing of it. I think that is due to several reasons:

  a. a bias against everyone and all that were involved in the Civil Rights movement.

  b. a deliberate unwillingness to put ourselves in the mocassins of another.

  c. an unhealthy idea of isolation from culture that doesn't want to read a book because it may have a bad word in it, even though the book is non-fiction and highly influenctial.

2. I think it is a terrible blight on American Christianity that the Civil Rights battle was fought mostly by Roman Catholics and liberals. Why didn't a believing person think of this? It's an accepted fact that evangelical christians were by and large missing from the fight, insensitive to it. BJU only just now limply apologized for its racism. It made news, but it's also newsworthy that it is in 2008 and not in 1968.

3. It made me think of the incarnation. And the most effective ministry is always incarnational. We have to get in the other person's skin. Jesus did more than anyone. If we are to be like Him in our outreach we need to learn how to feel things as others feel them. 

I noticed this when so many whites could not even conjure up empathetic feelings of happiness when a black man was elected president. They could not understand conservative blacks who were both happy and sad. They were just mad. An incarnational attitude can understand both the happiness and sadness of black conservatives. 

4. This book made me ashamed. I have been more vocal than many in my circle about the sins of the evangelicals/fundamentalists in this area, but I am ashamed that my culture was part of the Southern White culture that oppressed the black.

5. I realized that there is still much, much work to do to recover the damage that has been done in our country. We have a HUGE problem when our church is considered unique in this town as one of the most integrated churches under 300 and, to date, we have only 2 black families.

It was a powerful read. It's a shame it's not required reading for college students in bible colleges.

For the record....

Whether or not Grandma will give me any credit for just listing and not reviewing, I don't know but for the record, tomorrow is her day of reckoning, so I announce that I’ve read 4 books in their entirety, this year, and several others, much or most.

The four are :

1. Abortion: A rational look at an emotional issue. By R.C. Sproul. Very good. Some excellent helpful arguments for convincing middle-of- the- roaders.

2. The Truth War: by John MacArthur. A good timely book, basically a commentary on the book of Jude.

3. The Intentional Church: by Mark Devers (started last year, but finished this year. It is in French too) Good

4. When Grace Comes Home: by Terry Johnson. An excellent book that cleared up some of my thinking.

---

Love You Forever

14 pages “Love You Forever”


I love to read this book because I feel really loved when I read it. The mother goes in to the boys room every night and rocks him and sings:

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

As long as I’m living

My baby you’ll be.

Then one day when he was older his mom was older she got sick and for the last time she sang it, but was too sick to finish. So her son sang it to her. Then he went home and sang it to his baby.

Patience

The Gospel & Personal Evangelism

Title: The Gospel & Personal Evangelism
Author: Mark Dever
Publisher: Crossway, 2007
Pages: 119
Begun: March 10, 2009
Completed: March 11, 2009

In times past in reading books on witnessing and evangelism, I internally cringed at the plethora of "easy-believism" theology and at the "user manual" approach to soul-winning. This book, however, was refreshing for its emphasis on the Gospel, God's sovereignty, and God's glory. Having read Dever before, I like his deliberateness and the way he plainly articulates the Gospel. Consider some of his statements on how a true understanding of the Gospel compels us to herald it to others:

"We should stop blaming God. We should stop excusing ourselves from evangelism on the basis that God is sovereign. We should not conclude from his omnipotence that our obedience is therefore pointless. We should instead read from the Word that God will call a great number to himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation, which will encourage us in evangelism....Again, if you will realize that conversion always accompanies proclaiming the gospel and the Spirit's work, then you will stop trying to do the Spirit's work, and you will give yourself to proclaiming the gospel." (28)

"When we don't sufficiently consider what God has done for us in Christ--the high cost of it, what it means, and what Christ's significance is--we lose the heart to evangelize. Our hearts grow cold, our minds grow smaller (more taken up with passing concerns), and our lips fall silent. Consider that God has loved us as he has. Consider that God is glorified by our telling others of this amazing love of his....If we would be more faithful in evangelism, we should fuel the flame of love toward God within us, and the flame of gratitude and of hope. A fire so enflamed by God will have no trouble igniting our tongue." (29)

The book is in seven fairly brief chapters. In my opinion, the Second Chapter is the best, entitled, "What is the Gospel?" I would read the book again just for this chapter. The Appendix, A Word to Pastors, is also very good. Dever exhorts the pastor to cultivate a Gospel-culture within the church:

"It is our task as pastors to lead all believers in accepting, embracing, and using the opportunities that God richly gives them. In all of this, we should work not so much merely to implement programs as to create a culture in our church. We want our congregations to be marked by a culture of evangelism." (118)

I highly recommend this book. It doesn't take long to read, and Dever is easy to follow. You will find it, as I found, provocative and stimulating.

Trucks

Trucks. This book is about trucks. It had a lot of nice pictures. There were red trucks and blue trucks, white trucks and red trucks. There was a red truck and it is my favorite truck because it's a fire truck!!!!! (Daddy, can you put a lot of exclamations because I really like them.) You can also see on my book that there is a fire truck. And I want to be a fireman when I grow up. The other one I liked was the big flat truck. It had a lot of logs. I had fun reading this book. I like to play with trucks. This book has 8 pages.

Granny Brand

Title: Granny Brand: Her Story
Author: Dorothy Clarke Wilson
Publisher: Paul Brand Publishing, 1976
Pages: 222
Begun: February 8, 2009
Finished: March 6, 2009
Rating: ***
The writing was not the greatest, but the story and lessons were excellent.


Trust and Triumph. Her husband, Jesse, had seen this sometime before they were married and had taken it into his marriage as the motto for their lives as pioneer missionaries to the hill countries of India. Jesse died after he and Evie had been married for less than 15 years. The week before his sudden death from Blackwater fever, as he and Evie stood looking over the 5 known mountain ranges dotted with villages and unreached by the gospel, he had said, "Before we die we must go to all five ranges and take the saving message of the Christ!" "Yes," she replied with all the solemnity of a vow.

It was that vow that gave Evie the drive to continue in the ministry in the hill country for the more than 60 years following her husband's death and before her own in December of 1974. The hardships that she encountered during her 60 years of widowhood (she had been 35 when married!) were absolutely astounding. She had been born into a wealthy English home and was considered the "belle of the ball" in prominent circles in London. Yet she came to prefer sleeping on the floor to sleeping on a bed, riding a donkey to riding a car, and eating her meals on a bamboo rug to an ornate table.

It is obvious that Evie struggled with her flesh--primarily stubborness and wanting her own way. However, it is also obvious that Evie was aware of her weaknesses and willing to allow her Saviour to mold her and grow her into a vessel fit for His use. On one of his visits to his mother, when she was 89, Paul wrote back to his wife that he "'found her distinctly younger than she was a year ago.' Yet when he tried to define the change he was at first puzzled. She was not physically any stronger. ... Then he put his finger on it. In previous years her passionate love for her hill people had been striving within her with an anger towards those who had been hindering the work. The result had been stress and strain. Now it seemed that she had been able to extend her love a little further, to include those who may have deserved her criticism. In this broadening and deepening of her love had come a serenity and peace that brightened her smile and gave her new inner strength. 'This is how to grow old,' he had wirtten. 'Allow everything else to fall away, until those around you see just love. They will also see your own life renewed and they will recognise the love to be the love of God.'"

I was very touched by Evelyn's life and dedication. I was also encouraged by her weaknesses. She recognized that while she strived to make things happen according to her own personal agenda, the motto chosen by her husband so many years before was what she had to rest in. Trusting in her sovreign Lord would bring triumph--not necessarily what she had planned but what He had planned. In her 30+ years of ministry after retirement, Evie had the joy of seeing dozens of churches started not only on the 5 mountain ranges known Jesse, but 2 additional ranges. Evelyn went to her own triumphant entrance peacefully in her beloved India and was buried next to her husband at the age of 95. Hundreds of those saved, nurtured, taught, admonished, rebuked, but all loved flocked to pay hommage to "Mother", the lady who had manifested Christ's love to the most depraved and despicable of characters. Truly she had trusted and triumphed.

When Sinners Say "I Do"

By Dave Harvey
Shepherd Press, 2007
183 pages
Read on airplane to/from Denver

Let me preface... Don't get any wrong ideas that both Brenda's and my first book reports are on marriage books!

I'm quite sure that I am amongst the last in our family to read "When Sinners Say 'I Do'". (So... I will do my best to keep this review shorter than the book!) I am, no doubt, the one who needed it the most. This book is really well written, and combines a great mix of humor and good theology. It is so helpful to really understand the doctrine of the depravity of man.

That's how the book starts, by laying out that doctrine in very simple language. He stresses the idea that "till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet" (quoted from Thomas Watson, p.30). He applies this truth in such practical ways. For example, he says that in any conflict (or potential conflict) we should be suspicious of ourselves. He says that "[s]inners who are humble are growing more knowledgeable about their hearts. In doing so, they are discovering what's really going on - that the ability to claim righteousness apart from Christ undermines the truth of the gospel" (pp.64-65). Wow. That truth, of course, can be applied to so much more than just marriage.

He dwells for a significant time on the beam vs. speck concept and really helped clarify that in my mind. The issue is not that removing the speck from someone else is a bad goal... but that it can't be done with a beam in my own eye. I've tended to just leave the speck (and beam) alone. The goal is to remove both.

The book had so many great and practical chapters, including chapters on forgiveness, dealing with sin, showing grace, sex, and even one on dealing with a spouse's death (I embarrassed myself on the airplane... I was bawling like a baby during that chapter).

I would very highly recommend this book. It is theologically sound, and is very much the opposite of so many "make sure your needs are met" type books on marriage. It was a blessing to me... I think I'll probably need to re-read it every couple of years :-).

The J. I. Packer Collection

Title: The J. I. Packer Collection: Selected & Introduced by Alister McGrath
Author: J. I. Packer edited by Alister McGrath
Publisher: IVP
Number of pages: 284
Purchased: $14.95 with book money from Friendship Baptist Church missions conference, April 2008.
Recommended by:
Begun: 11/24/2008
Finished: 3/3/2009
Rating: ***

Review: Alister McGrath (professor of historical theology at Oxford University and author of J.I. Packer: A Biography) has collected 16 separate essays by Packer and arranged them in chronological order, the first dating from 1954 and the last from 1998.

If one were to organize these essays thematically, they would testify to Packer’s statesmanship in three different areas.

1. Statesman for Christian apologetics. Here is where Packer is at his best: defending the historic, evangelical faith. His genius mind is not shrouded, as others are, in verbose terminology and syntax, but exposed in his crisp and elucidating explanations of the doctrine of Scripture (“Revelation and Inspiration,” 1954), the exclusivity of the Gospel (“Christianity and Non-Christian Religions,” 1959; “The Problem of Universalism Today,” 1969; “Is Christianity Credible?,” 1981), the deity of Jesus Christ (“Keep Yourselves from Idols,” 1963; “Jesus Christ the Lord,” 1977; “A Modern View of Jesus,” 1987), penal substitution (“What Did the Cross Achieve?,” 1974) and “the divinely executed retributive process that operates in the world to come,” i.e. “the reality of hell” (“The Problem of Eternal Punishment,” 1990)

Here we find him taking his enemies head on. (Of Dr. Robinson’s book he said, “It is just a plateful of mashed-up Tillich fried in Bultmann and garnished with Bonhoeffer. It bears the marks of unfinished thinking on page after page.”) He stands up even to his friends. (In defending the doctrine of eternal punishment, he specifically mentions John Stott and said that he, among others, “appear[s] to back into [the belief in annihilation or conditional immortality] in horrified recoil from the thought of billions in endless distress, rather than move into it because the obvious meaning of Scripture beckons them.”) One thing is clear: Packer is not the man to mess with!

2. Statesman for theological spirituality. A major emphasis in Packer’s writings comes from a failure that he observed in seminaries to make any real connection between Christian theology and Christian living. He opposes the approach to theology that “separates the questions of truth from those of discipleship; it proceeds as if doctrinal study would only be muddied by introducing devotional concerns; it drives a wedge between theology and doxology, between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between knowing true notions about God and knowing the true God himself, between one’s thinking and one’s worshiping. Done this way, theology induces spiritual pride and produces spiritual sleep. Thus the noblest study in the word gets cheapened. I cannot applaud this.” The problem, as Packer saw it, was found in the “cultural assumptions, especially within the western academy, which have forced theology to see itself as an academically neutral subject, not involving commitment on the part of its teachers or students, which is primarily concerned with information about abstract ideas.”

In contrast, Packer says we should approach theology “so that our thinking about [God] becomes an exercise of homage of him.” Packer’s goal was to “arrange a marriage” between systematic theology and spirituality. “Properly understood, theology embraces, informs and sustains spirituality.” Out of this flowed, of course, his most famous book, Knowing God (1973). The articles pertaining to the topic of theological spirituality in this collection are “On Knowing God” (1975), “An Introduction to Systematic Spirituality” (1990), and “Evangelical Foundations for Spirituality” (1991).

3. Statesman for ecumenical “great-tradition Christianity.” In later life, Packer saw the difference between Protestant churches and the Church of Rome overshadowed by and a new and greater division within Christianity: a division between those who “honour the Christ of the Bible and historic creeds and confessions” on the one hand, and “theological liberals and radicals” on the other. Why should not conservatives form an alliance across the denominations to fight this radicalism? “Domestic differences about salvation and the church should not hinder us from joint action in seeking to re-Chrstianize the North American milieu.” This is what motivated him to sign the document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT) in 1994 and to speak at the Aiken Conference, organized by leaders within the Orthodox Church, in 1995. (The essay he gave at that event is published in this book as “On from Orr,” 1996.)

Towards the end of his essay he asks, “Can conservative Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholics of mainstream type join together in bearing witness to all that I have spoken of? I urge that we can, despite our known and continuing differences about the specifics of the salvation process and the place of the church in that process” (emphasis mine). There was only one hindrance: “To be sure, fundamentalists within our three traditions are unlikely to join us in this, for it is the way of fundamentalists to follow the path of contentious orthodoxism, as if the mercy of God in Christ automatically rests on persons who are notionally correct and is just as automatically withheld from those who fall short of notional correctness on any point of substance. But this concept of, in effect, justification, not by works, but by words--words, that is, of notional soundness and precision--is near to being a cultic heresy in its own right, and need not detain us further now, however much we may regret the fact that some in all our traditions are bogged down in it.”

It is on this point, in my opinion, where the great Packer fails, and does so miserably. I am reminded of Peter in Galatians 2 who began to undermine the Gospel for which he had fought so valiantly to uphold. Packer has fought valiantly to uphold the truth of the Gospel. We should never forget our debt. Sadly, he undermined through his actions much of his life’s labor. We should never forget the danger of doing the same.

Amelia Bedelia, Bookworm

Amelia Bedelia, Bookworm

Written by Herman Parish

Feb. 23, 2009

I read Amelia Bedelia, Bookworm. I loved the part at the end where there is a fair! And on page 11, Amelia Bedelia makes “jackets”, coats, hats, and scarves for the books.

I really think you should read Amelia Bedelia books. Amelia Bedelia is very fun and funny.

This book has 64 pages.

Isabelle Bixby

This Momentary Marriage

This Momentary Marriage
By John Piper
178 pages
Read by Brenda

As you can guess by this book’s title, it is an overview of marriage. I learned a lot from it. It’s one of the first Piper books that I think my brain actually could understand, and remember! :-) He starts off the book with shocking accounts of martyrs, and then goes on to articulate why. “…..Marriage is a good gift of God, but the world is fallen, and sin abounds, and obedience is costly, and suffering is to be expected…. Marriage passes through breathtaking heights and through swamps with choking vapors. It makes many things sweeter, and with it come bitter providences.” (pg. 16, 17)

“The ultimate thing to see in the Bible about marriage is that it exists for God’s glory. Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. Most ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It is designed by God to display his glory in a way that no other event or institution does.” (pg. 24)

I really appreciated the forward of the book where Noel, John Piper’s wife, transparently tells that not everything is always perfect. She even opens up about their 25th wedding anniversary by way of a poem she wrote, that shows how she didn’t think it was the most wonderful marriage in the universe. :-) I don’t know about you, but when it comes to this topic, an author’s honesty enhances the message….big time!

He talks about the busy years of child bearing, and child rearing, of the beauty of singleness; he explains (very clearly) his high view of marriage, and why he is against divorce, and remarriage, along with a lot of other crucial topics.

I would recommend the book to anyone. For me, it wasn’t another ‘101 ways for me to be a better wife’, it was bigger than that. It took a giant step backwards to see the over-arching view of marriage from God’s perspective…..and ultimately greater awareness of the awesome task at hand. :-) You could take that last statement the wrong way. :-) I love Daniel with all of my heart, and want to be a better wife to him, but it’s gotta start with me being a more obedient daughter to my heavenly father.