“Where words leave off, music begins.”

Heinrich Heine

On Earth We Serve God, in Heaven Enjoy Him

For my birthday this year I received from a childhood friend Arabella W. Stuart’s book The Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons. Every time I went to start reading it, I meet with a post it note that told me I needed to listen to a John Piper sermon on Adoniram Judson first. I would promptly close the book and start another.

I find it very hard to find good times to listen something like that with the required close attention. I’d much rather read.

Anyway, eventually I did find the time, which meant I could then go on and read the book without feeling guilty about disregarding my friend’s recommendation. But I soon found out it was an excellent recommendation, because Piper’s sermon set me up excellently to look out  for the key themes of the book. I really can’t do much more to commend the book to you then to write down some key quotes that outline these key themes. Mostly these quotes are direct quotes from the letters of the three Mrs. Judsons, or their husbands. They speak volumes of the wonders of God.

Just to clear up any misconceptions before we go further, the women in the book were all wives of Adoniram Judson, who devoted his life to ministry in Burma. But they were not all his wives at once! Burma was not kind to the health of the Americans, and Adoniram outlived two of his three wives, as well as a number of his children. The grief that permeated their lives as a result of this allow the first theme of the book to be highlighted spectacularly.

Certain Hope In the Midst of Severe Suffering

The Judsons suffered many griefs in great isolation. Yet their constant response to these griefs is a remarkably unshakeable faith in the good and sovereign hand of the Lord. They lived and breathed Romans 8:28-29. They knew its true meaning and they help anyone who reads their story to know it a bit better as well.

“These privations would not be endured with patience in any other cause but that in which we are engaged. But since it is thy cause, blessed Jesus, we rejoice that thou didst give us so many enjoyments to sacrifice, and madest it so plainly our duty to forsake all in order to bring thy truth to the benighted heathen. We would not resign our work, but live contented with our lot, and live Thee.” Mrs Ann H Judson, on the great difficulties faced by Adoniram and herself during their early work in Burma.

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

Charles Dickens

Our Boundlessly Tender God

I mentioned in a recent post about Isaiah that I thought I might write a whole post dedicated to chapter 40. And now I am.

Isaiah chapter 40 is one of my favourite passages in the Bible. I decided on a whim to memorise the whole thing a few years ago, and whilst before that I had simply been struck by a few different expressions here and there, memorising it opened my eyes to the wonder of the chapter as a whole, how it is put together and works together to communicate a wonderful truth.

You see, almost the entire chapter is designed to make you feel small. Oh so small. Because it masterfully employs language that makes God as big as it is possible for your mind to comprehend. This aspect of the chapter is immediately obvious upon even a cursory glance.

“Behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales” (verse 15).

After reading verse after verse like this, Yahweh asks the ultimate question:

 “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One” (verse 25).

The only answer you can give is ‘no one’. There is no one that ever was, is or will be that can measure up to a millionth part of the might and power of God, or inspire even the merest fraction of awe and wonder that our God inspires.

This chapter makes you feel small. This chapter makes you see just how big God is. Infinite – even if we can’t comprehend it.

Except.

As we grow old … the beauty steals inward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

In short, the beauty and poetry of many of the common things and daily events of life in its humblest aspect does not seem to me sufficiently appreciated.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Review: Death by Living

I recently finished N. D. Wilson’s book Death By Living, after spending 3 months reading it slowly and discussing it with a friend. I’m really grateful for the experience, so I’m just going to share a few things about it with you.

Firstly, I found out about this book at Christian conventions, where it was recommended next to your standard works on theology or Christian living. But I think someone who picks up this book should know beforehand that that’s not what they’ll be getting. Death by Living is more about how N. D. Wilson has come to understand God, life and the individual’s place amidst them both. And it’s not written as an exposition, e.g. ‘This is what I have come to observe about life: a) it is a story b) you must live it’. No, what Wilson does is much more brilliant than that. He understands the power of stories. He understands that the real way to help someone grasp a truth is not to tell it but to show it. And so what Wilson does in Death by Living is brilliantly entwine  stories from his and his family’s life with his musings on God and life and what it’s all about.

Secondly, boy does N. D. Wilson have a way with words. This book had me within a few pages, when Wilson described history like this: ‘All of history is a story. Every particle has its own story trailing backward until it reaches the first Word of the One and Three, and all of those trailing threads – those many – are woven into the one great ever-growing divinely spoken narrative.’ And then he kept on delivering, through the whole book. A joy for the English literature student, to see an author using words and literary techniques so ingeniously, so seemingly carelessly, yet to such purpose. Because any time the English-y part of my mind was blown  by the way Wilson put words together, other parts of my brain had to slow down, pay more attention and could suddenly see something new. That is, the way Wilson writes and describes can suddenly shed a whole new light on the completely and utterly ordinary. Or something you’ve heard exposited countless times before. This is one of the true gifts of Death By Living: a new way of seeing.

But finally, the themes of the book also make you catch your breath with pleasure and surprise. I don’t want to try and give you a thesis of the book – you have to read it yourself – but just give you a feel for what Wilson touches on.The joy and fury and absurdity of life. The stories we live, we create, we mould. The need to give it all we have and not constantly think of all we are losing. The preciousness of family, the way they shape our life, the way we can achieve lasting good in shaping theirs. You see, it’s not a book about epic people doing epic things. It’s about ordinary people, an ordinary family, it’s about how to reach death by living to the full, giving all you have for those around you, but most of all for your Creator. And if you mess anything up, he can still use it, because he’s been directing your part of The Story from the very beginning.

That might have gone further than I intended in telling you what’s covered in the book. But you won’t really get it unless you read Wilson’s words for yourself.

‘Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when the clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake.’

Vanity of Vanities

Faithful readers – whom I must confess have lacked much to read lately, but thus are all the more faithful – to you I must admit that I have found a new literary character who falls into the category of ‘Just Plain Awesome Men of Literature’. For me, this category is lightly populated, containing before now only Mr. Knightly of Emma, Mr. Thornton of North and South, Gilbert Blythe of Anne Shirley fame, Remus Lupin of Harry Potter, and perhaps as a wild card Sam Vines of Sir Pratchett’s famous Discworld series. I even did a quick sweep of the old bookshelf and didn’t come up with anyone else.

But now, I am more than happy to admit into this eclectic company Major William Dobbin of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.