Snippets: The Hobbit

In honour of the upcoming movie release, I read The Hobbit (for the first time) this month.  The selection below speaks of journeying- the unwilling part of travel when being at home seems much easier than the harder path of completing the quest.

Long days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and up and up. It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long. Now they could look back over the lands they had left, laid out behind them far below. Far, far away in the West, where things were blue and faint, Bilbo knew there lay his own country of safe and comfortable things, and his little hobbit-hole. (Kindle location 837)

The Hobbit

Snippets: The Autobiography of G. K. Chesteron

"No man knows how much he is an optimist, even when he calls himself a pessimist, because he has not really measured the depths of his debt to whatever created him and enabled him to call himself anything. At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy."

The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton

Snippets: A Hidden Life of Prayer

David McIntyre's classic work, The Hidden Life of Prayer motivates Christians to develop a deep and meaningful life of prayer.  From the book:

He who has a pure heart will never cease to pray, and he who will be constant in prayer shall know what it is to have a pure heart (Kindle location 51)

The equipment for the inner life of prayer is simple, if not always easily secured. It consists particularly of a quiet place, a quiet hour, and a quiet heart. (Kindle location 184)

Our realization of the presence of God may, however, be accompanied with little or no emotion. Our spirits may lie as if dead under the hand of God. Vision and rapture may alike be withdrawn. But we ought not therefore to grow sluggish in prayer. So far from interupting the exercise at such times, we ought to redouble our energy. And it may be that the prayer which goes up through darkness to God will bring to us a blessing such as we have not received in our most favored hours. (Kindle location 339)

Hidden Life of Prayer, The: The Life-blood of the Christian

Snippets: Things as They Are

Amy Carmichael's book Things as They Are:  Mission Work in Southern India is collection of stories published in 1903.  She often emphasizes that she would prefer to tell the difficult reality of life as she experiences than to gloss over difficulties in favour of glowing reports.

I read a missionary story "founded on fact" the other day, and the things that happened in that story on these lines were most remarkable. They do not happen here. Practical missionary life is an unexciting thing. It is not sparkling all over with incident. It is very prosaic at times. (Kindle location 535).

The book's stories focus on the lives of the women with whom she works, including those who pay a heavy price for converting to Christianity.  She also writes of the young girls she rescues from temple slavery.   She passionately pleads for a change of heart among Christians; urging people to truly pray for and care for the lives and souls of others.

We are told to modify things, not to write too vividly, never to harrow sensitive hearts. Friends, we cannot modify truth, we cannot write half vividly enough; and as for harrowing hearts, oh that we could do it! That we could tear them up, that they might pour out like water! that we could see hands lifted up towards God for the life of these young children! Oh, to care, and oh for power to make others care, not less but far, far more! care till our eyes do fail with tears for the destruction of the daughters of our people! (Kindle location 2730).

Praying alone is not enough, but oh for more real praying! We are playing at praying, and caring, and coming; playing at doing—if doing costs—playing at everything but play. We are earnest enough about that. God open our eyes and convict us of our insincerity! burn out the superficial in us, make us intensely in earnest!  Kindle location 2815).

Though more than a century old, Things as They Are is remarkably relevant and convicting.

Things as They Are

Mere Christianity: The Real Problem

That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

We can only do it for moments at first. But from those moments the new sort of life will be spreading through our system: because now we are letting Him work at the right part of us. It is the difference between paint, which is merely laid on the surface, and a dye or stain which soaks right through. He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder—in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Snippets: Jesus + Nothing = Everything

Since Jesus secured my pardon and absorbed the Father’s wrath on my behalf so that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” how does that impact my longing for approval, my tendency to be controlling, and my fear of the unknown? How do the life, death, and resurrection of Christ affect my thirst for security, affection, protection, meaning, and purpose? In other words, how does the finished work of the one “exposed, ravaged, ruined, and resurrected for us” satisfy my deepest daily needs so that I can experience the liberating power of the gospel every day and in every way?   (Tullian Tchividjan, Jesus + Nothing= Everything, Kindle location 2236)

Classic Reads: The Abolition of Man

Based on a series of lectures first published in 1944, The Abolition of Man is a remarkably current argument about the nature of truth and the shaping of society.

     Lewis' argument begins with the assertion that the ability to judge correctly must be learned; value is not attributed to a thing based on emotion, but based on its intrinsic value.  He writes of the weaknesses in modern education systems that fail to teach students to judge correctly.
     In the next portion of the argument, Lewis writes against what he calls the Innovators, who search for a primitive basis for moral judgement outside of an objective standard of moral truth.  Lewis terms this standard the Tao, and writes that grounded in values held by societies across history and culture.  He writes that without a grounding in the Tao, there is no ground for accepting or rejecting any subset of values.

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles or Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value.  If it is rejected, all value is rejected.  If any value is retained, it is retained.  The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory.  There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world (43)

     In the final chapter, Lewis concludes his argument that without reference to an objective system of moral truth, humanity eventually destroys itself.  Without a moral standard, power degenerates into tyrrany.

When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains (65)

   Lewis' argument in favour of a traditional, trans-cultural standard for value, truth, and right remains remarkably current for present discussion about society-shaping and moral values.

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful.  But an open mind about the ultimate foundations of either Theoretical or of Practical reason is idiocy (48)

Purchase from Amazon:  The Abolition of Man

Classic Reads: On the Incarnation

One of my goals this year has been to read more classic works.  One I read earlier in the year was On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius.  I had wrongly thought that a book of its age would be intimating- of at least that it would be difficult reading.  I was surprised by how easily I was captured by the depth of theology presented in the book, and its continuing relevance.  On the Incarnation describes the necessity of Christ's incarnation as the only solution to humanity's sin, and the work done by His death and resurrection.  Athanasius gives a compelling apologetic while drawing the believer into worship through contemplating the implications of Christ's work.


Thus by what seems His utter poverty and weakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and hiddenly wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognize Him as God.  (Kindle location 156)

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image. (Kindle location 404)

In a word, then, those who disbelieve in the resurrection have no support in facts, if their gods and evil spirits do not drive away the supposedly dead Christ. Rather, it is He Who convicts them of being dead. We are agreed that a dead person can do nothing: yet the Savior works mightily every day, drawing men to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaching them about immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength in face of death, manifesting Himself to each, and displacing the irreligion of idols; while the gods and evil spirits of the unbelievers can do none of these things, but rather become dead at Christ's presence (Kindle location 711)

On the Incarnation can be read for free at Christian Classics Ethereal Library

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