I Want All the Books!

I vividly remember the day that a book first captivated me. Mama sat me down, handed me Little House in the Big Woods, and told me to read for an hour. I was less than thrilled, not sure what the "big woods" were all about, but certain that the "big words" would be dry and dull. Several hours later I had to be pried from the pages, and I was hooked for life. 

So in the spirit of sharing this passion with you, today I am answering a book-lover's tag! (I compiled the questions from several different sources.)

1. Name a book you’re embarrassed to say you haven’t read yet.

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.  Somehow, someway, I have read every other Narnia book except for this one...

2. What is the strangest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

The receipt for the book itself.

3. Look at your bookshelf. What’s the first book you see with a yellow spine?

My beautiful Anna-Bond-illustrated edition of Heidi.
 
4. If you could have one new book from a deceased author, who would it be?

This is difficult, but I will choose Jane Austen. I still haven't read all of her books, as I am legitimately concerned about my mental state when I finish the final page of her final book and realize I have to go the rest of my life without a new Jane Austen. So I resort to rationing myself to an Austen a year and admitting that I am a weird book nerd.

5. Name an author who deserves more readership.

G.K. Chesterton, without a doubt. Have you read his books? If not, get thee to a bookstore or library and pick up The Man Who Was Thursday!

6.  Bookmark or random piece of paper?

I want to be a bookmark person, I really do. But most of the time I resort to a random piece of paper (or receipt, as the case may be!).

7. Can you stop anywhere in a book or do you have to finish the chapter?

Anywhere is fine unless the chapters are quite short.

8.  One book at a time or several?

Always several!  Currently reading: The Innocence of Father Brown and The Book That Made Your World.

9.  Do you read ahead or skip pages?

Gasp. Is skipping allowed?

10.  Breaking the spine or keeping it like new?

Keep it like new as long as possible!

11. What books do you regret reading?

The Light that Failed by Rudyard Kipling. It was one of those books that you keep trudging through, sure that it cannot get any worse, and that after the main character loses his childhood sweetheart, goes blind, and finds his last masterpiece destroyed by a bitter servant there must be some redeeming ending. But then he died in his best friend's arms, and I was angry at Rudyard Kipling for a year.

12. On average, how many books do you read per year?

I don't really know. Up to 30, I would guess.

13. What book can you read hundreds of times and never get tired of?

The Scarlet Pimpernel--It is the best adventure/mystery tale ever!

14. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from a book?

I read the old book Ester Ried when I was 11, and it played a huge part in my maturing process from a baby Christian to a dedicated Christ-follower.  It made me realize that I could be sleep-walking through life without even realizing it, stagnant and unfruitful while thinking that I was fine. This book woke me up to the reality of living for Christ daily.

15. What is the most recent book you’ve read?

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I only decided to trust Kipling again because I wanted to read the original story before I watched the new movie, and I actually very much enjoyed it!

16. What quote from any book will you never forget? Why is it significant?

“In all they said, in their actions, in their looks, in their persons, could be detected a soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.” -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

The book itself was very forgettable, but this quote has stuck with me as a challenge, for I never want this to be true of me.

17. How many books do you own?

Hold on...3 hours later...a total of only 218 books. "Hi, I'm Lauren, and I'm addicted to real books. Kindle just won't cut it."

18. Of the past year, what is the greatest book you’ve read?

The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Vishal Mangalwadi. Although I am not quite done reading this tome, it is one of those books that I find myself constantly bringing up in conversation or referencing in my own mind as I observe culture around me. It is a truly amazing read by an incredible man from India who challenges the West from the perspective of someone from the East, saying, "The Bible created the modern world of science and learning because it gave us the Creator's vision of what reality is all about. That is what made the modern West a reading and thinking civilization. Postmodern people see little point in reading books that do not contribute directly to their career or pleasure. This is a logical outcome of atheism, which has now realized that the human mind cannot possibly know what is true and right. This book is being published with a prayer that it will help revive a global interest in the Bible and in all the great books."

So let's start a revival of global interest in all the great books together! If you are a fellow book-lover, I would greatly enjoy hearing your answers to these questions! So comment below with your thoughts or do the tag on your blog and comment with the link so I can get some new book ideas.

Now, if you don't mind, I think I have some books to read!

Because Quotes Are Like a Lay's Potato Chip...

...you get not just one, and not just ten, but thirteen of my favorite quotes.  These are mile-markers of my last year: some marking times of tears, some stubborn sin, some silliness, and some the most profound truth that I've yet known.

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{If it were possible for C.S. Lewis to be over-quoted, I could be accused of such an infraction.  But since he can never be over-quoted, I will merely hope you enjoy him as much as I do!}

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When I read this last quote, I picture Corrie Ten Boom remembering being huddled in her Nazi concentration camp cell, awaiting her own death.  I picture her saying this because of that remembrance, and I am humbled.  

What quotes have changed your perspective?

Before You Travel to Another World

From the time I learned to read at age four, I have devoured any book I could hold onto for a day.  My parents didn’t ever have to take me to Disneyland as a child—the library was just across town and an evening there held far more attraction for me than an amusement park!

I remember several such library outings in which I would discover a new book and eagerly take it to my dad before I checked it out, hurrying in my typical library-fast-trot.

“Do you know if it’s good, Lauren?” he would invariably ask. 

When I would respond that I didn’t really know, he would hand it back and say, “Read the first page, a middle page, and a back page to test it out.”  If it passed this test, then I could check it out and take it home. 

The test wasn’t perfect: sometimes it failed and I would have to return a book before I finished it.  Sometimes the test revealed plot twists to me that I wish I hadn’t seen before reading the beginning of the book.  But sometimes the tested pages posed problems that put my heart in a head-on collision of discernment versus desire and taught me lifelong lessons as a result.  On those library visits I learned to look both ways before entering the world of a book to make sure it’s a world worth entering. 

Now I find myself faced with many worlds.

Books, movies, music, blogs, and internet all hold doors to worlds that clamor for my time, attention, and love.  And while that childhood test still applies, it sometimes seems too simple.  It is not the test, however, that has become simplistic, but my heart that has become complicated.  Recently I have realized that the deeper question beyond the childhood test has become, “What world do I desire?” 

I can scan book pages and read movie reviews until my eyes cross, but if that childlike innocence is gone and I am looking not for a “Caution Before Proceeding” sign, but for anything to justify my desire to enter that new world, then all my tests and questions are for naught.  Passports and visas protect the citizens of our country by keeping the wrong people out and enabling citizens with the freedom to travel.  Standards and discernment in media work similarly, but only if you want protection. 

A tiny girl was telling me the other day about a movie she had just watched with a bad part in it.

“I looked away,” she told me solemnly.  “But my brothers didn’t.  They watched.” 

My heart was pricked by this innocent little girl who knew when to look away and when to blush.  Her brothers had once known that as well, but somewhere along the way their desire had overruled their cautions. 

James truly said, “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” {James 1:14-15}

What world calls to you from the enticing pages of a book or the glittering screen of your laptop?

Is there a part of your heart left unprotected?

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“Your Imagination Can Take You Anywhere,” © 2013 martinak15, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Traitor Within

This is the storyline novels are made of: Ultimate sacrifice for one’s country.  A life motivated by the need to restore the once-respected family name that your alcoholic father tarnished.  True love and bitter loss.  Military genius and heroism.  Secret letters with codes written in invisible ink made from onions.  The ultimate betrayal.  The greatest ignominy.

Only the book I just finished reading was no novel. 

Instead, it was the true story of the man who, in the American War for Independence, was one of the greatest American heroes.

This was the man who realized that if the patriots were to be victorious they needed cannons, thought outside the box, and captured Fort Ticonderoga in order to obtain the needed cannons.

This was the man who, while recovering from a battle wound, could think of nothing else but the next move the Americans needed to make and planned an invasion of Canada.  He led 1200 volunteers through hundreds of miles of impossible wilderness, enduring flash floods, early snow, inaccurate maps, desperate famine, and painful deaths with a stamina and courage almost unmatched in history.  When that campaign ultimately failed, he was the last to embark on a boat headed to safety, selflessly sending all his men to safety first.

This was the man who, against the orders of superiors, dashed out into a losing battle and changed the tide for the American patriots, securing victory in that battle and campaign, and by domino effect, the aid of France which ultimately turned the tide in the entire war against the British Empire.

The book I just finished reading, The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery (which I highly recommend as an easy but fascinating and page-turning read!), concluded with this profound statement on the man himself:

“If Arnold had died from his wounds at the Battle of Saratoga, we would think of him today as one of the all-time great American heroes.  Aside from Washington, we’d say, he did more to win our Revolution than anyone.  We’d celebrate his life as one of the best action stories we have—Washington never did anything half as exciting as the march to Quebec or the Battle of Valcour Island.  Sure, we’d say Arnold was unstable, tormented, a loose cannon.  But he’d be our loose cannon.  We don’t say any of that, and it’s all Arnold’s fault.  But still, it’s all true.” 

Benedict Arnold’s epic life proved that he was brilliant, brave, and heroic.  But he was also stubborn, volatile, and craved one thing more than anything else: recognition. 

Praise and promotion was the coin with which he traded. 

Applause was the language he understood. 

Honor was the motivation behind the man.

When he didn’t get it, he was willing to betray his friends, his family name, his cause, his life, and his country, and he somehow convinced himself that he was justified in so doing. 

As one who is very much driven by encouragement, praise, and pleasing others, I can easily relate to Benedict Arnold’s disgruntlement when America passed him over for admittedly deserved promotion in the army.  But I can’t help but reflect on the irony of his life’s legacy.

If Benedict Arnold had died in his greatest achievement on the battlefield, he would have died a hero’s death. 

If he had served quietly and humbly, regardless of political enemies and lack of acknowledgement, he would have lived a hero’s life. 

But in following his greatest achievements with the greatest of betrayals, he lived and died only one thing in the minds of all Americans: a traitor of reprehensible proportions.

Thus it is true that the quiet, humble service in between the podiums and the trophies and the battlefields is the most telling, the most illuminating, and the most defining moment of all. 

For an ordinary hero unrecognized and unknown is still a hero. 

But a self-infatuated hero unrecognized and unknown is already a traitor.  

Photo Credit: Carl Jones

The Media Wants YOU

The most important thing you should know about the secular media is that they want you.  They have agenda and mission.  They have an ax to grind and the greatest of grinders with which to accomplish it.  They have elite creativity, unlimited researchers, and exhaustive number-crunchers dedicated to our personal cravings.  Moreover, all these armaments the creators of books, movies, music, and websites pool to purchase one thing: you. 

Michael Landon Jr. said, “Unfortunately, with the [movie] studios and the gatekeepers, there’s no restraint. Their target audience is our children. So even if you look at the demographics of people who go to see movies at theaters it’s very young, it’s teens that’s the main marketplace. On television, they’re also the main target audience because the people that are buying product time are no longer interested in the actual buyers, the consumers of the product, their attention is now on future customers….I actually think that [Hollywood is] targeting our children, who by a certain inherent nature want to see these things. See, you put sexualized material in front of the teenager and it’s very difficult for them at that age to not want to look. You put graphic violence in front of them and it’s hard for them not to get involved.[i]”

This is not about putting eight claws and a fire-breathing mouth on the Big Bad Media.  I watch movies, read books, listen to music, and use the internet.  Sometimes wisely, but often foolishly.  I’m confident you realize the capability of the media for both good and bad.  Likewise, you should also understand mainstream media’s agenda, while not using them as a scapegoat for all society’s problems. 

So let’s go beyond the convenient scapegoat.  If the media’s target is you, then why not start with you?

1. Is your heart craving what the media provides?

Mine does.  All too often.  The storyline just sounds too sweet to be missed, and if the main character is blatantly living in sin, well, I can just fast forward most of those parts.  But the story is alluring, the soundtrack bewitching, and the actors enthralling.  So I take the heaping dish of glamor with the side of sin to live vicariously through the movie for 90 minutes and satisfy cravings like:

•  Needing someone to appreciate me 
• Desiring to be loved 
• Pushing aside stressful, pressing issues 
• Wanting success 
• Yearning for glamorous opportunities

2. How are you satiating those cravings?

If you turn on the television or crack open that book or stalk that website with those cravings urging, they will only be worse when the television turns off or the book ends or the website stalls.  I have wasted many hours on useless specimens of these media, and walked away afterward disgusted with myself at the waste and determined to do better in the future.  But if the cravings are not filled, they will continue to eat away at you until a gaping cavity appears. 

3. Will you allow yourself to be purchased?

If you are a Christian, you are already bought with a price.  There are many who would like nothing better than to buy your soul with their entertainment.  And you should know that “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.” {2 Peter 2:19}  Do you really want to be a slave of the latest rising star or Hollywood executive or author who pushes Christ to the gutter and themselves to the heavens?  If you are overcome by a media addiction, that is what will happen!

Do you know that using the media to fulfill desires meant to be filled only by God is like using a piece of scotch tape on a shattered dam?   

• Only He provides your worth.
• Only  He unconditionally loves. 
• Only He gives grace to keep your head above water. 
• Only He defines success. 
• Only He chooses your situation for His perfect, wise purposes. 

The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in imperfect, sinful you because Christ who fulfilled the law lives in you.  I wish I could copy and paste the entire book of Colossians here, and specifically chapter two!  If you don’t have time to read it right now, suffice it to say: you are complete in Christ (2:10)  If you died with Him, you were buried with Him, raised from the dead with Christ, and are made alive with Him.  (2:11-13) 

This is why I am not a slave to the media or anyone else.  I am not up for purchase—I are sold out and all in, because Christ lives in this body. 

If you skimmed all of that, read this: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.  Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.  For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” {Colossians 3:1-3}

Yes—cravings, Hollywood, whitewashed sin, and slave owners will exist, as long as this fleshly body does.

But yes, yes, yes—the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, God the Father, freedom, and grace endure, beyond infinity. 

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[i] http://www.faithtalks.com/posts/michael-landon-jr/
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: Stuart Richards

The Last Page

Today, I turned the last page on The Last Battle with Jonah.  Nagged with secret guilt over our failure to read this culmination of our favorite series, he and I finally decided the only remedy was to make the time.  And so, several months ago, we plunged in together, and I read aloud to him this masterpiece by C.S. Lewis.  

Although there were parts that I loved as well as parts with which I did not agree, we made memories reading this dear book.  We gaped at the Ape’s brashness while driving to help clean a friend’s house.  We held our breath in suspense for the king’s life while on our way to dinner.  And with near giddiness we rediscovered our old friend, Reepicheep, in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  But today, at our lunch table, I turned the last page and read the words that will be seared on my heart forever:

“‘The term is over: the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended: this is the morning.’ And as [Aslan] spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.” 

Even our most festive of holidays here on earth are only a shadow of the holiday of Heaven.  And thus even the most draining of exams in this life is only a part of the school term that will soon be over. 

Yet this short term of life is necessary.  It is God’s term of gift-giving, of sinner-loving, and of saint-commissioning.  It is my chance to fall to the depths of the ocean and find His love still there.  A chance to soar to heights of prowess and find His glory still greater.  A chance to despair that all is lost and the way out gone forever, only to see His saving Hand outstretched toward my shrinking fingers.  A chance to see the holy beauty of God in stark contrast to the wilds of this world. 

This world is only the Shadow-Lands.  It is only the school term; it is but a dream.  It is the landscape seen rushing past a car window.  The dress rehearsal, the prologue, the introduction...to eternity. 

This busy December Tuesday, hold fast to this hope without wavering: the end of the term will come before you know it, and then the holidays will begin!  

Photo Credit: Jonathan Kos-Read

Storytelling

Stories have been in my blood since I first heard about that little piggy who trotted off to the market.  As soon as I learned that those curious curlicues on the page formed sounds which somehow formed pictures in my mind and stories in my head, I was a reading addict for life.  In fact, I was that child who would disappear into my book, only to find myself (and rightly so) in hot water a few hours later for ignoring my math, chores, or some such down-to-earth responsibility.    

There was hardly a gap between my figuring out that if those curious curlicues on the page told stories, and I could master those curious curlicues, then I too could tell stories.  From that moment on, storytelling has been in my blood as well.  From the age of five, I have always had a story “in the works.” 

 

I hawked my stories to my aunt.  I entered them in contests.  I came home from the library with a chin-high stack of books on Scotland, because my next novel was set therein.  I scoured name books for hours, searching for just the right name for my protaganist.  And guess what?  I still have stories “in the works.”  I still love every bit of fashioning a world in which the only boundaries are the breadth of my creativity and the size of my hard drive.

 

In the world of storytelling, I am always drawn to the compelling, tear-jerking, life-changing sorts of stories, and again and again I find myself coming out with a bitter taste in my mouth and defeated hopes after reading a pathetic attempt by a modern author at just that sort of story.  But I return again and again to the love story of Hosea and Gomer—it is the most beautiful one I have ever read.  The story of Israel and her God is one of the most heartbreaking.  And the story of David and Jonathan warms my heart with a friendship the likes of which most people have never known. 

 

Those stories are a writer’s deepest well from which to dip inspiration: God is a Master Storyteller, and because of Him we love stories and love sharing meaningful ones.  It truly is in our blood.  In fact, we each are in the middle of our own epic stories, and if you are a Christian, the Author has whispered in your ear, “It’s all right—it ends happily.”  With relief, you can make it through the tragedy that intervenes because your story ends happily ever after in the truest and most complete sense of the cliché. 

Any story has a villian, however, and so does storytelling.  It has been grossly perverted by Satan, for he knows that a good story can change a life.  Stories now are lowered to the level of pure entertainment, thrill rides for the reader and money in the bank for the author.  But God didn’t give us the story-telling gene so we could be amused.  He gave it to us so He could communicate the greatest story of all to our hearts and so we could pass the story on. 

 

So what would happen if in your story-telling, you told only the stories that were worthy of being told?  In your reading, if you read only the stories that were worthy of being read?  And in your living, if you lived only the story the Author wanted you to live?  I know what would happen: those compelling, tear-jerking, life-changing stories would begin to emerge in ways you never imagined. 

Photo Credit: Reading in Public

Living on Mystery

Photo Credit

When I was perhaps ten, I went through a phase in which I inhaled mystery books.  I voraciously read as it was, but for some reason, the mystery genre was the bee’s knees for that time in my life.  I sprawled on my stomach on my pink carpet and read and read.  I didn’t stop until I was certain who was the culprit behind the cat-stealing or the candle-waving in the window or any other such innocent mystery. 

 

Mikaela and I even wrote an entire mystery book, at least one hundred pages long, which involved two twin girls and a mysterious chopping sound in the woods.  At the end of every chapter, we inserted several questions to give the opportunity for the reader to put together the clues and solve the mystery. 

 

Pure genius.

 

And perhaps all that infatuation with mystery now explains why I was scared spitless to venture out after dark to close up the chicken coop.  Hmmmm…

 

But it also illustrates a very real point that humans thrive on mystery.  I was struck with this insight on Sunday while playing a favorite hymn at church.  The final verse of the hymn says,

 

"I know not when my Lord may come,

At night or noonday fair,

Nor if I'll walk the vale with Him,

Or meet Him in the air."

I have no idea if I will die or if I will get to be raptured to Heaven with the rest of the believers.  I have no clue if I will get married or whom I will marry.  I’m in the dark about what color the sky will be tomorrow or if we’ll have an unseasonably late snowfall. 

 

But that's just the fun of it.  Don't those mysteries give you a zest for life as you wait to see what God does tomorrow? 

 

God did give us confidence in Him, and He clued us in to the important things that we need to know.  Colossians 1:25b-27 says,

“The word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

But other things, He purposefully left in mystery because therein lies the joy of life.  He could have made the color of the sky to correspond with the day of the week, or the rapture to fall precisely on a prophesied day.  But once you read the end of the book, the point of reading is lost.  Likewise, although God has revealed the ultimate triumph of the ultimate Protagonist, there are many whos, whats, whens, and wheres that we have yet to discover. 

 

The problem is, we often view life as one long dreary roll of toilet paper, unrolling predictably to the next perfectly square, routine, white day.  That is a lie.  In truth, God is hand-embroidering each day to His design, and no day is ever quite like another, because no day is just about what you accomplish therein.

 

Last week I held for the first time a beautiful baby girl who had just breathed her first gaspful of oxygen only days before.  A mystery.  Today I sweated while I endeavored to interpret whether my recipe for chocolate mousse which called for “whip cream” meant “whipped” or “whipping.”  I deduced whipped, correctly solved the mystery, and stand by my opinion on the importance of suffixes.  A mystery.  Tomorrow I teach the same children I taught last week, but I have no idea what stories they have to bring me, what dedication they have to show me, or what character issues they will have to work on.  A wonderful mystery.  As for the next day, I do not even know enough to guess what mysteries God will bring me! 

 

Although mysteries are far from my current go-to reading genre, I’m now realizing that it would be accurate to say that I still inhale mysteries or that, in point of fact, I quite live on them. 

P.S.--Speaking of mysteries, what do you think of all the mysterious changes going on around here?  We're not quite done tweaking, but are loving the new look!  Also, don't forget to enter our giveaway before you leave!

Photo Credit: Ignacio Conejo
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.