Immersed in Words

None of us escapes being immersed in words. From the time your ears hear their first sounds until the final syllables you think, words are building blocks or stumbling blocks in your life. They articulate your happiness and define your chagrin. Words overlap all around you, a cacophony of personal shouts and whispers mingled with voices of loved ones, strangers, neighbors, and God.

Sometimes you’re so overwhelmed by verbiage, you seek silence, but even in secluded places with only the songs of birds and squirrels for company, language intrudes before you notice. Your mind starts a conversation that trips you up or directs you into new knowledge. Vocabulary is friend and foe, but always words are present. They’re the essence of your humanity. Almost without willing it to happen, human beings express themselves.

Not all the words in your life can be your own. Others have words you need to hear. What’s said may or may not be to your liking, and how the thoughts of others are couched may not suit your taste. You’d speak the thoughts differently, with less vehemence or more compassion. You’d stress different points, but regardless of how or why or where or when someone else’s words are delivered to you, an overarching obligation presses on you—the need to listen.

Words are spoken for a purpose. The speaker wishes to communicate with you. The information might be important, exciting, life-changing, hateful or boring. Yet you should listen. Words are the stuff of human existence. From the words that bubble around you comes the focus of your daily activities. Thus you must listen.

Those who don’t hear are soon devoid of friends or isolated from meaningful encounters. Life becomes humdrum, and the non-listening person slips into a mental, emotional, or spiritual coma. Words swim around, but they don’t make sense. They float in a rolling, dark emptiness. The person being addressed isn’t listening, isn’t awake.

Where’s this rambling headed? To the word of God. The Bible. If it should happen to be true that the words of scripture are God’s words to humanity, shouldn’t you and I listen carefully?

Below the surface of my Christian faith, the word of God rests as a major stone in the foundation. Without its presence the whole structure of my life would be immeasurably weakened. Through long experience reading, studying, and wrestling with the Bible, I’ve seen how precious its pages are. The words pouring from scripture immerse my mind and heart in God’s thoughts. He speaks to me! He doesn’t speak to me because I’m a saint or even a good person. God speaks to me through his word because he loves me.

His conversation is intended to be heard by everybody. He loves each human who reads his message. He loves those who ignore a holy book with ancient names they find hard to pronounce and so refuse to read. At the root of all the words God utters to humanity is his love for each person.

God wants us to know what’s in his mind and heart as well as our own. So he immersed us in words.

 

Putting Off What You Could Do Today

Nearly everybody says procrastination is bad. You shouldn’t put off what you could do today, because you may not have tomorrow to do it. True enough, but there’s an art to procrastination. You need to learn when to act and when to hesitate. Some things are better left alone for a while.

I found this true in the pastorate. Certain people would tell me a friend was in the hospital and about to die and ask me to visit. Off I’d race to be of whatever good God wanted to do with me in the dying person’s life. When I got to the hospital, the patient was sitting up in bed, eating a meal, and was very talkative. I soon learned to put off a quick visit, and check the matter with the hospital. Procrastination doesn’t always produce a bad result.

Don’t get we wrong. We shouldn’t procrastinate in everything, nor all the time. If two people are feuding, and you have a legitimate reason to bring them together to work out the problem, perhaps you should do so, quickly, before the feud spills over to other relationships. Then again, it might be wise to wait, allow time for the combatants to settle their differences on their own. Which should you do? Every situation is different. This time you may decide you should help; the next time you may decide not to assist. How do you decide?

Shouldn’t you decide as a Christian always decides the big issues of life? By prayer, by looking into the scriptures for light, and by conversing with a trusted but uninvolved third believer.

Prayer is direct conversation with God. It primes the relationship with wisdom, as water primes a pump to flow. Through prayer, you begin to discern the Lord’s mind. He will help you decide whether or not to put the difficult task off.

Scripture often guides by bringing up a subject that’s bothering us. Now I don’t mean using a concordance to look up procrastination or delay or some related word, then reading what’s said. That may help, but probably won’t. I mean the disciplined, regular reading of God’s word becomes, for a Christian, another conversation with God. I’m amazed how often my reading through a whole book of the Bible raises an issue that I’m dealing with in my life. If procrastination happens to come up while you’re reading the gospel of Mark, and you’re questioning whether to delay something, you’d better listen up. God’s giving you his advice.

Talking to another Christian can often solidify what your prayers and Bible reading have said. She may offer the same advice as scripture gave you. This is confirmation. This is wisdom. Her voice is a second testimony that you’re on the right or wrong track. Listen and move ahead, trusting God with the outcome. But what if her advice is contrary to what you read in the Bible? Give her a fair hearing. Think about what she says, compare scripture again, pray, then decide. But don’t procrastinate too long. You may miss an opportunity to bring good to a bad situation.

Procrastination calls for wisdom from above and within you.

 

Have you read Jonah lately?

Jonah 1:1-4:11

The prophet Jonah got me into trouble once. I preached a series of sermons on his prophecy, and I made the “mistake” of referring to the whale as a big fish. But I was simply quoting the Bible translation we used in the pews. A woman in the church became angry with me for changing the Bible. She was in charge of VBS that year, and we covered the story of Jonah and the whale. As an award to the teachers, which she made sure I received, she gave out pins in the shape of a whale.

But Jonah’s message is so much more than a debate over what kind of aquatic animal swallowed him. The prophet was a Galilean, same as Jesus, and he tried to run from his call as a prophet by taking a ship to Tarshish, Spain, all the way across the Mediterranean Sea. This guy wanted to get away from the Lord, as far as he could! But he succeeded in running smack into God, and he had face up to his divinely given responsibility. He was supposed to preach repentance and salvation to the Ninevites, archenemies of his nation.

Jonah is about the unlimited grace of God. He cares for all humanity, and reaches out to every one of us all the time. The Lord wants to redeem us from our own bad behavior and morally corrupt nature. The mercy of God is far-reaching and encompasses even the people we would exclude.

This is not the ordinary way of seeing the Old Testament. Many people think the Old Testament God is a beast, eager to chew on anyone who strays from a narrow path. But the Lord is a God of grace in the Old Testament just as he is in the New. The prophecy of Jonah revealed this about God, as do other writers from the first two-thirds of the Bible. God is merciful. He is merciful to righteous and unrighteous.

He is not, however, nothing but mercy. The threat of judgment is firm in Jonah’s prophecy. If the Ninevites didn’t repent, they’d come under his wrath. Jonah’s own life was an illustration of the truth, too. He could not escape the Lord’s anger. He went into the water and the belly of the huge fish. His “leafy plant” was chewed up by a worm, also a punishment, although it was meant to lead Jonah to discover God’s compassion. The Old Testament God is not what people expect. He’s so much more.

Jonah’s character was a mixture of muscle and frailty. He walked in faith, and he vacillated in commitment. He was both a godly man and obstinate. He could be obedient to the Lord, though it might take a reprimand from God to get him to behave. He was childish and childlike. Jonah was a lot like me, and you, and many people.

Jesus said that the only sign people would have is the sign of Jonah. Matthew explained that as a reference to the resurrection, because Jonah was in the fish’s belly three days (see Mt. 12:39-42). But Luke took a different approach. He pointed out that it was the prophet’s preaching and the Ninevites’ repentance which is the sign. He didn’t hint at the resurrection. Perhaps the sign Jesus referred to was the amendment of life and attitude that comes when people who hear the gospel preached also repent.

It seems to me that’s what Jonah learned and taught.

 

A Christian Novel Worth Reading

Karen Baney, A Heart Renewed.

Fiction eBook 110,920 words

Price: $5.99

At the start, let me tell you that the author Karen Baney is my daughter. So you can decide if I am prejudiced in favor of the author as a father or as a critic.

When she began talking about writing a novel, I encouraged her and gave her my advice about writing and self-publishing. She read and consider other people’s ideas, too. I’m glad to say she’s proven herself as an author. I am proud of Karen.

Now to this book. A Heart Renewed is the second in her Prescott Pioneers series. So it’s her second book. Since this one, she has published two more books. How good a book is it?

As a critic, I think it is quite good, primarily for two reasons. Karen has done a marvelous job drawing believable characters who populate her story and give the plot its action. She has also done her research on the era and its lifestyle and managed to make it a well-integrated part of her novel.

Julia Colter experienced a terrible personal trauma. The author has explored what the devastating experience means to her and how she responds to it. Julia has a volatile personality and learns harsh lessons, making her believe she will never find happiness. But through her interactions with the other characters in the story, Julia grows. Her faith regains its composure and develops into a mature belief as the plot progresses.

Adam Larson is a Christian with deep convictions who learns patience while dealing with Julia’s up and down moods. He grows from being a bewildered man, made so by his sister and Julia as they find ways to deal with Julia’s experience, to being a strong support for Julia in trying times. Other characters, Will and Hannah, whom readers met in the author’s first novel, also grow and develop in the course of the story.

Karen has drawn her characters well, with clear portraits, allowing them to grow beyond their starting points. When I finished reading A Heart Renewed, I felt I knew them as people.

The backdrop of the author’s story is Prescott, Arizona in pioneer days. She has become very familiar with the ground she covered and has made it a realistic and credible place. Having visited modern Prescott with Karen, I can see how she took into account the growth and change of the community, as well as pushed back over the years to what it must have been like at its founding. She made Prescott in the 1800’s a place I could know as a reader. This is what an historical fiction writer should do.

Since this is a Christian romance novel, I’d like to express myself about Karen’s handling of one of my pet peeves. Faith and scripture. Too many Christian authors use these aspects of their belief like bludgeons, slapping the Bible into their books to score points with their believing readers, but alienating readers who aren’t Christians. Karen does not do this. She has brought out her faith and the Bible’s message in a fashion that makes this aspect of her novel genuine. The characters struggle with their beliefs and their meaning, and they read scripture as part of their life experience not as way for the author to score points.

As a father and a critic, I would heartily recommend that you read my daughter’s book.