A Book Review: A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another wonderful book by C.S. Lewis. A wonderful, authentic perspective of walking through one's own grief and the battles of being at peace with the unknown and "misunderstanding less" as he puts it. I highly recommend reading it.

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Word of God

I am so thankful that God gave us His Word - it is an amazing thing to be able to spend my life discovering new things from the Lord because He gave it to us.  Some days, like today, I read something and I think, "wow, I just can't believe that this actually exists somewhere!"  What a gift Scripture is to us.  These verses below were some I read today and after I read it I just had to thank the Lord that He wrote this for us to read.  What an encouragement and great promise.

Psalm 18:25-30 (ESV) 

25 With the merciful You show Yourself merciful; 

 with the blameless man You show Yourself blameless; 

26 with the purified You show Yourself pure; 

 and with the crooked You make Yourself seem tortuous. 

27 For You save a humble people, but the haughty eyes You bring down. 

28 For it is You Who light my lamp; the Lord my God lightens my darkness. 

29 For by You I can run against a troop, 

 and by my God I can leap over a wall. 

30 This God—His way is perfect; 

the Word of the Lord proves true; 

He is a shield for all those who take refuge in Him.

Book Review - The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis

My mom, sister and I are in a book club together - we call it "Literati".  It is a cool way to stay connected as we live many miles away from each other.  One of the benefits of a book club, is that you are able to digest the book together after reading it - which for me, as a verbal processor, helps me really decide what I thought about the book and what to take away from it if anything.  

But also, I just found this cool website - Good Reads.  As I hope to continue growing in how much I read, I am reading other books while we are reading for Literati.  So this website is a fun way for me to revisit books I have already read, keep tabs of ones I want to read, and digest ones I have just read.  If you are a reader, I highly recommend it so far!


Here is a review I just wrote after finishing The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis:

The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Four Loves was a fabulous read - I underlined probably 25% of the book. For me, Lewis has yet to disappoint, but this one was very applicable and insightful. Love is something that is ever talked about in our culture - so many wrong perspectives of it, so many manipulations of it. It is interesting to see how Lewis pegged many things that are applicable to us today, though written many decades ago. It helped me identify ways to view different relationships in my life, and how to peace at peace with some as well. In the Chapter on Eros, Lewis gives a fabulous description of a husband's love toward his wife, which written between the lines is also a description on how a wife should be toward her husband. One of my favorite insights from this book, from the chapter on Friendship, says "By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets."

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The World Should Know.

I had one of those experiences last week...you know, the kind where looking back on it you say "I will never forget that for the rest of my life." 

I was at work, plowing through the normal administrative-type stuff.  Then, one of the pastors comes over to my desk and says, "There's a young lady downstairs who is looking for some help.  I am going to meet with her, will you come into the meeting as well?" I said it was not a problem at all.  When he brings the young lady into his office, she's on the verge of tears.  As we start to ask some basic questions, the floodgates open, and we give her some time to release the tears and decide where she wants to begin with her story.  

She starts by telling us that she was there for some guidance on a decision she was making.  In asking what she needed, she answered, "I need an objective opinion.  Someone to share their opinion who isn't in it."  Her situation was that she was leaving her home and her family in Pennsylvania to move to an Indian reservation in South Dakota to be with her boyfriend she had met online 7 or 8 months earlier.  We began to talk with her about this, asking questions to learn more, and the pastor giving some wonderful, God-led perspective from Scripture and as a father.  She listened very intently.

As we talked a little, I asked her, "so, you said your family is in Pennsylvania - are you not from around here?" She not only was not from our church, which would be powerful still, but wasn't even from our part of the country!  She literally had her CR-V packed with her stuff, and was traveling from Pennsylvania THAT DAY to move to South Dakota.  She had left at 4:30 a.m. to drive up...but something incredible happened.  She proceeded to tell me that she had been driving on the highway, and a voice was saying to her "get off the highway, get off the highway and find a pastor".  So she got off the highway in Illinois and began looking around our road as she drove.  When she was uncertain, she said she was pressed on "don't give up, find a pastor".  As she went down the road, she saw our church's sign, and pulled in the driveway.  Then she went in, and said, "I need to talk to a pastor."  I was overwhelmed.  My God had called to this girl while she was driving on the road and drew her into our church to meet Him. 

We continued to talk through some of the Truths that were involved with the decision she needed to make, to move to South Dakota or back home.  But God was pressing on my heart that she had to hear from us what she evidently knew deep in her heart - the reason she was there was much bigger than what was right in front of her.  My own eyes filled with tears as I looked at her and said, "God loves you so much.  He loves you so much that He said 'don't go any further, get off the highway now and find one of My children because they have something to tell you.'"  We talked about how her circumstance was big, but it was clear that God wanted something even greater for her first.  The pastor read from 1 John and Romans and we shared the Gospel and he asked, "Do you want to give your life to Jesus Christ?" She replied with a very sound mind and with purpose, "Yes I do."  Praise God He is alive!  I spent some more time with her and we made sure we could keep in touch and that she had all she needed to head out.  On the way to her car she said, "I am in awe."  I replied, "That is a great place to be."

Her story is a testimony to me that my God is exactly who He says He is.  She drove 10 hours to IL, got off the highway to hear the Truth and give her life to Jesus, and then chose to drive back home 10 hours to her family.  Her life totally changed in one day.  She didn't know what awaited her when she left that morning, but God pursued her and she responded to Him, clearly seeing that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. 

"Be lifted higher than all You've overcome, 

Your Name be louder than any other song, 

there is no power that can come against Your Love,

the cross was enough."  

-Jesus Son of God by Chris Tomlin

Just some thoughts

Today, E and I had the day off together - it was fabulous!  We walked around downtown this morning, went to Chic-Fil-A for lunch, I box-dyed my hair for the first time (a little tricky doing it by yourself, no doubt, but it was successful I would say)...pretty great day!  Now I'm sitting here ready to write about a "famous female", and what I ended up doing was just begin to read up on who I wanted to write about: Katy Perry.  

She certainly has a huge fan base with over 15,000,000 twitter followers and obvious support world-wide with her music.  The more I started reading her tweets, watching videos and interviews, the more I realized that it would be impossible for me to write about her influence on culture and my thoughts because I really can't sum them up yet.  When I look at her and many other celebrities, I really wonder what it must be like to be watched like that by so many people - the affects of "celebrity" on the celebrity.  I definitely don't envy it.  I also reflect on the affects on our culture of the celebrity deal.  I think it's great that people who are talented have the opportunity to take their skill to a whole other level in the times we live in.  But there are so many cons and costs that partner with the celebrity lifestyle at any level.  Obviously, I'm not saying anything new here, I'm just thinking about what my response should be to the world of celebrities with all of the pros and cons.  Do I read People magazine to try to get an understanding about their lives - why?  why not?  Why do I get so intrigued and attached when I hear updates about a celebrity?  Do I try to learn about people I'm watching or listening to when sometimes it's impossible to know trustworthy sources?  Lately I would say, heck with it! I don't even know these people!  And yet, something pulls me into wanting to know about their lives. 

While I continue to chew on this, let me leave you with two interesting videos I did find worthwhile in my time spent investigating the celebrity world:

A great interview with Whitney Houston   (Part 2)
An interesting quick interview with Katy Perry (I don't recommend surfing this page) 

Friday: Famous Females

Famous Females: Lady Jane Grey

I've heard it said, "one way to know culture is to study its history".  I am personally fascinated by many parts of history and I have found that many people are at the very least intrigued by some particular mark in history.  There are many specific eras or events in history that captivate me - such as the Kennedy Assassination, unsolved mysteries, and much of British history.  I recently came upon the story of Lady Jane Grey by watching the movie Lady Jane with Helena Bonham Carter.  I had never even heard of this woman, but have gotten into watching a lot of British movies/shows lately, and this one sounded interesting to me.  Well, I highly recommend it.  I so enjoy when movies surprise me in a good way like this one did!  It introduced me to another understanding of British culture and Christian history.

Let me tell you about Lady Jane.  She was known as the "Nine Days' Queen" because she ruled England for only nine days.  It was a really critical time in England's history because of the tension between Protestants and Catholics.  King Edward VI was ruling and she was his first-cousin-once-removed.  Edward, unfortunately, was ill and died at the young age at 15.  Though his half-sister Mary I (aka "Bloody Mary") would be in line for the throne after him because she was Henry VIII's daughter, Edward changed the succession on his deathbed to fall to Lady Jane Grey instead.  At least from the impression of the movie, a big part of why Edward wanted her to be Queen was because he shared her Protestant faith.  He did not want Mary to be Queen and reinstate Catholicism (which, unfortunately she did, and killed hundreds of Christians at the stakes).  Lady Jane only ruled for nine days and in the movie she was portrayed as a great Queen. Mary grew in influence and eventually Lady Jane was not only forced out of the throne, she and her husband were both beheaded.   

Though her story and life were short, what captivated me about Lady Jane as I watched the movie was her incredible commitment to her faith in Christ.  She did not care what happened to her, she did not back down once from the Truth nor did she remain silent in times when it would have been perceived as agreement with Catholicism.  There was a scene in the movie, toward the end when she is being held prisoner in the Tower, where the priest comes to question her one last time - hoping she will agree with Catholicism and be spared from death. And her and her husband both, while being separately questioned, held firm to their belief as Protestants in Christ.  It is an epic part of the movie.  

I was very moved by their commitment and fervency while watching - really evaluating if I would be as firm if in the same situation.  Lady Jane is a great woman of history.

Paul Delaroche - The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

Tips from C.S. Lewis

I found a great snippet about writing by C.S. Lewis that I must share.  It is from his book C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children. I used a quote from this in my previous blog because I think it can be applied to writing, as Lewis meant it to be, but it also brings to light some great things regarding how we speak as well. 

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.