what I'm reading: Amazing Grace by Eric Metaxas

I'm reading Amazing Grace, Eric Metaxas' biography of William Wilberforce, leader of the campaign to abolish the slave trade.

Four chapters in, and this book has a different feel to Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer. Less cool and measured, it comes across as a little effusive and breathless, but makes up for this in warmth and readability. It's an enjoyable and interesting read.

I was amused to find the quote I want to share with you today pilloried by a fellow blogger! Can't say I blame him: this is one of those purple passages I wouldn't dare write but can happily lose myself in. It describes a conversation with Isaac Milner that led to Wilberforce's conversion to Christianity:

The snowfall was heavy as they crossed the French Alps...The extraordinary felicity of this scene, of these incandescent minds meeting on this subject of eternal things, sailing in their horse-drawn coach through the mountains, seems like something out of a fairy tale, one in which a gnome and a giant on a journey in a sphere of glass and silver discover the Well at the World's End, and drinking a draught therefrom learn the secret meaning at the heart of the universe.

Yes, I know, I know. But there's something about this description that gets to me. Echoes of Tolkien and CS Lewis and a thousand fairy tales.

More down-to-earth, and more wonderful, is Wilberforce's own description of his conversion. At the end of a chapter where we get to watch God's work slowly unfolding in his heart, soon after becoming a Christian, he writes in his diary,

I was out before six, and made the fields my oratory, the sun shining as bright and as warm as at Midsummer. I think my own devotions become more fervent when offered in this way amidst the general chorus, with which all nature seems on such a morning to be swelling the song of praise and thanksgiving. Surely this sabbath, of all others, calls forth these feelings in a supreme degree; a frame of united love and triumph well becomes it, and holy confidence and unrestrained affection.

I can picture him walking across the fields in the early morning, his heart shining with the joy of God's newly-discovered grace.

Quote is from Eric Mataxas Amazing Grace 47-61.

Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor (1) to be faithful

Don Carson's Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson is a tribute by a son to his father. It's a moving and encouraging book, and a wonderful antidote to pride.

The man who transcribed the English part of Tom Carson's diaries says,

I used to aspire to be the next Henry Martyn [heroic British Bible translator and missionary to the Muslim peoples of India and Persia]. However, after reading your dad's daires, the Lord has given my heart a far loftier goal: simply to be faithful. I know we as men are but dust, but what dust the man I read about in these diaries was!

Tom Carson was an ordinary pastor, but also that most extraordinary of things: a man who sacrificed himself to tell others about Jesus, who didn't seek the praise of men, who spent much of his life in his knees, who dealt with conflict with humility and forbearance, and who struggled through his own "dark night of the soul" (brought on, as mine is so often, by perfectionistic guilt - but also, as mine so often isn't, by passion for the cause of the gospel) with perseverance and faith.

I cried when I read the closing paragraphs of these memoirs:

When he died, there were no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcement on television, no mention in Parliament, no attention paid by the nation. In his hospital room there was no one by his bedside. There was only the quiet hiss of oxygen, vainly venting because he had stopped breathing.

But on the other side all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to theh only throne room that matters, not because he was a good man or a great man - he was, after all, a most ordinary pastor - but because he was a forgiven man. And he heard the voice of him whom he longed to hear saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord."

I went away from reading this book determined to aim for that rarest of things: not to be praised or respected, but simply to be faithful.

The highlight of the book for me was the chapter on Tom's depression and discouragement in ministry. What Don Carson says is so significant for anyone in ministry, that I'm saving it for another post.

Faithful Woman and their Extraordinary God: book review

One of the books I finished recently (yes, I actually finished a book!) was Noel Piper's Faithful women and their extraordinary God.

It's a gem, not least because it will make you want to read more Christian biography. It includes 5 short biographies of Christian women: Sarah Edwards, Lilias Trotter, Gladys Aylward, Esther Ahn Kim, and Helen Roseveare.

I won't spoil the suspense for you by telling you their stories - buy it and read it for yourself! - and anyway, I think different things will speak to different readers.

I was struck by two of the women in particular:

- Lilias Trotter, who gave up a promising career in art (the well-known artist and philosopher John Ruskin told her she could be the greatest painter of her time) to become a missionary in Algeria.

How often during 8 years of motherhood I have felt a sense of regret because of the training I haven't been able to use, and the interests I haven't been able to pursue! As Noel Piper says, "For me, it's been especially true in my years with small children - 'I got a college degree for this?" Maybe our problem is the way we see ourselves. Maybe we think more highly of ourselves than we ought." (p.172)

It was encouraging to read about this faithful woman, who gave up what was good for what was better.

- Helen Roseveare, a missionary doctor in Africa, who found that God worked more powerfully through her weaknesses than her strengths: building hospitals alongside Africans when she longed to practise her medical skills, struggling to find time to speak of the gospel but discovering local Christians doing it for her, seeking forgiveness again and again for her hasty temper, being nursed through frequent illnesses and receiving rebuke and encouragement from those she came to help.

Like me, she was a perfectionist, and needed to learn to see God's grace and power in her sin and weakness. As Noel Piper says, "seeing the battles in someone else's life ... can give us perspective to understand clearly our own struggles." (p.170)

Whatever your struggles, there is probably a woman in this book who experienced similar temptations and trials. I found this book inspiring: I'm sure you will too.