Apart from the Bible, what has been your most favourite book or series that you keep going back to? Is it the story? The author? The writing? Or something else? (500 words maximum)
My Favourite Books
by Lynda Otter
I had great difficulty choosing what book to write about. I read Christian commentaries, Bible studies, devotionals, and spiritual growth books. However, I read Christian fiction to relax, and I have many favourite Christian authors. I tend to read and re-read my books, many times. They are like old friends. I find that even though they are fiction, you can learn and grow through them. The series I want to share with you today, is the Mitford series written by Jan Karon.
Mitford is a fictional small town in North Carolina, and has a colourful, quirky, cast of characters. The main character is an Episcopalian priest, Father Timothy Kavanagh, a short balding bachelor who humbly lives his faith every single day. He is set in his ways but is everyone’s friend and confidant. To his amazement, at age sixty years, he is not only adopted by a huge black dog, described as the size of a sofa and disciplined by the quoting of scripture, but he becomes the guardian of a troubled boy called Dooley. Dooley comes from the worst type of poverty and abuse. The first time Father Tim meets Dooley is when Dooley is introduced to Father Tim by his sexton, Dooley’s grandfather, at the church office. After checking he is allowed in because he “ain’t washed,”1 Dooley asks, “You got any place in here where I can take a dump?”1 Father Tim raised that boy and eventually officially adopted him. Like all good stories, Dooley, parented with unconditional love and appropriate boundaries, becomes a vet.
Father Tim also meets a single lady but is oblivious to her interest. It takes time and several misunderstandings before, at the ripe old age of sixty-two, he marries Cynthia Coppersmith, a children’s book author, and illustrator.
The fourteen books in the series cover all sorts of unusual incidents, following Father Tim and his small family along with his larger church family. Some of the events include being lost in a cave, a big jewel theft, a heart transplant for a parishioner, a rich widow who sets her sights on him to the extent that she tries kidnapping him, a bizarre holiday in Ireland and much more. Oh, and do not let us forget Father Tim developed diabetes, went into a coma a couple of times, and killed the Baptist minister’s dog when he crashed his car into him while on sugar overload.
The books demonstrate humility, service, generosity, and giving of self even when it hurts. They demonstrate faith in God during the difficult seasons. They also show that even the best of us will get it wrong, and God will meet us in our mess. The books draw you in to the lives of the richly drawn characters and I am always sorry to leave them at the end when Father Tim is around seventy. The stories are in turn humorous, poignant, and sad. They are about everyday faith and community. The author says she wrote them to “applaud the extraordinary beauty of ordinary lives” and she succeeded. They are beautifully written, comforting and engaging. They feel like home.
- Karon, Jan, At Home in Mitford, page 81 (USA: Lion Publishing, 1994, Penguin Books 1996)
Before Burnout
by Ray Burton
The police officers walked down my driveway. A pile of unpaid bills sat demandingly on my desk. I read my text message that the big C had taken my best friend and left a partner with three kids without income.
The police officers stood patiently in the doorway as tears began to roll down my face. What would they say, I thought. I just cannot take any more. I opened the glass door.
“Mr Burton?” asked one of the officers.
“Yes,” I replied hesitantly, “What’s wrong.”
“May we come in?” asked the officer.
“Yes of course, please take a seat,” I said.
“I’m afraid we have some rather bad news,” said officer Bradshaw.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’m afraid your brother was shot by police this afternoon.”
“But why” I asked.
“He was to be arrested on a drug related matter, but as we approached, he pulled a gun and was shot during a shootout.”
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“Yes. He died at the scene.”
I pondered all I knew and had taught, about stress and grief. Like a dozen clouds drifting around on a windy sky, so my thoughts drifted in and out as the shock set in. I had just read for the fourth time, “Before Burnout” by Frank Minirth, Don Hawkins, Paul Meier and Chris Thurman1. I thought I was ready. I was wrong. The subtitle, “Balanced Living for Busy People” implied a book about coping with stress. But not this much.
The police asked if they could call anyone for me. But who I thought, they had just shot my only living family member.
After a moment I said, “Yes, my friend Goldie.” She will know what to do I thought.
They called her and she said she was on her way, so the police left me alone for a while. I picked up the book and looked at the list of chapters. Mostly about personality traits, and particularly those that were prone to burnout and the psychological drivers buried deep in their subconscious. Yes, I had ticked them all as unwantedly present and driving. I tried to remember the end of the book, which I recall had solutions that had been taught and demonstrated by Jesus. Another cloud drifts by. I hope, tomorrow I will remember, what I am supposed to do.
Goldie arrived. We hugged and hugged and hugged.
She looked into my eyes and said, “Speak if you want, but silence is fine.”
“I want to speak but I cannot. I am stunned. As dead as my brother,” I said. Again, we hugged, we cried and we sat in silence. Suddenly the essence of the book dropped into my consciousness. We burnout from lack of relationship with God and each other. Goldie’s embrace began the long journey back to healing and
wholeness. The journey of embracing God’s love and truth. The journey back to the centre of His being where the purest love is found and man’s frailty is transformed.
My New Name
by Deborah McDermott
Two days after an evil spirit was cast out of me, I was introduced to a book that has impacted my life almost as deeply as the Bible. Many believers think deliverance from demons automatically happens when we give our hearts to Jesus, but I can testify this is a delusion Satan wants us to believe. After I became a born-again Christian, the spirit that had tormented me throughout my childhood continued to do so for seven more years. The joy of finally being set free from torment was immense; so was my disappointment at how sceptically my testimony was received by those who did not witness my deliverance. Had I not been rescued from their unbelief by friends who took me into their home, I may have given into despair and perhaps been re-invaded by the spirit I’d been set free from!
Being believed by my rescuers—one of whom commanded the evil spirit to come out—was a blessing, but their gift of Hannah Hurnard’s Hinds’ Feet on High Places is what really provided the affirmation I needed in the first few days after my deliverance. Like Much-Afraid—the book’s main character—I had been a broken person struggling with rejection, fear and torment. To now be free of these things was cause for celebration, yet the guilt I had felt remained because so much of my pre-deliverance conduct had been sinful. However, Hannah’s beautiful portrayal of Jesus as the Good Shepherd healed my heart as God lovingly met and embraced me from every page I read.
As I followed Much-Afraid’s journey to become like the Good Shepherd, I found myself asking the Lord to also replace my limited human love with His boundless love so that I could accept with joy the path He was calling me to travel, and bear the cost of what that entailed. For Much-Afraid, the initial cost was rejection from her family, but this paled as she obeyed and trusted the Shepherd completely—even when it looked like He wasn’t fulfilling His promise to take her to the High Places. I have experienced several lows and have always emerged from them strong and victorious when I have trusted God implicitly. His burden is always light, even when life’s journey is rocky.
One of the Good Shepherd’s promises to Much-Afraid was to give her a new name once she’d reached the High Places. But first she had to place herself on the altar as a living sacrifice and allow the human love to be ripped out of her heart so that God’s divine love might blossom. As I read this section of the allegory, my heart cried out, “Oh God, you changed Much-Afraid’s Name to Grace and Glory. Please give me a new name too!”
The Lord immediately whispered: “You are now Joy and Gladness” and my heart leapt as I was changed in an instant. And as I trust God, so He will continue to transform me into the likeness of Jesus.
Delightful Dickens
by Sue Shelton
Not a book or a series but a writer that continues to enchant me is Charles Dickens. I got hooked into Dickens when rediscovering his writing on audiobook. Librivox, the app that makes public domain books available in audio for free has a reader, Mil Nicholson, who is so excellent that the characters are brought to life and one voice sounds like a whole cast of people.
Dicken’s characters are finely drawn and are never boring. Master of the unusual and eccentric his characters bring his books to life and draw you in to love them or hate them and sometimes both. The good, the trusting, the naïve, the heroic, the sneaky, the obnoxious and the evil all make their appearance. And you never quite know how things will turn out. A master of character development the twists and turns of his tales keep you guessing to the end.
I started with the well-known – Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend and the Old Curiosity Shop. I noticed that some themes recurred over several books – the gulf between the rich and poor, the plight of orphans, the vulnerability of women are some of these. I realised that Charles Dickens was writing from a place of deep concern for social issues. Overwhelmingly it was the fragility and brutality of daily life for many people that struck me. I was horrified at the conditions and challenges that some people were having to deal with simply to have a place to live and food to eat. One true story that was told very briefly in the preface to Barnaby Rudge concerned Mary Jones whose husband was taken from her by the press gang. She stole to clothe her freezing children and was caught and executed.
Yes, Dickens stories are not for the faint hearted. However, his heroes and heroines are equally vividly drawn. The closeness of communities, the hospitality shown to strangers, the individuals whose life purpose seems to be to improve the lot of others and bring justice to the world. And underlying many of these wonderful characters is a deep faith in a very personal God. He even wrote a book for his children The Life of Our Lord, an under-read and under-appreciated harmony of the Gospels. Gary College in his book ‘God and Charles Dickens: recovering the Christian voice of a classic author’1 notes that:
“In Dickens’s mind, Christianity was not . . . about guarding a system of doctrine, advancing the programs of the church, or giving intellectual assent to a given data set, Christianity was about imitating Jesus in the concrete realities of everyday life”
What I take away from these books is a tremendous gratitude for having a roof over my head, warm clothes and food to eat. Also that Christ at work in the hearts of his followers can bring love and hope and joy into the world, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Colledge, G.L. (2012). God and Charles Dickens: Recovering the Christian Voice of a Classic Author. Brazos Press