He sails the sea, his vessel
set and tuned by his hands
to catch the Spirit,
catch the wind
that bends and bears him
farther out, farther on
than he has ever known.
For this he asked;
for this the wind
has come and blown
and shown him his task:
to scale this sea, then beyond,
strike home.
(written for a close brother, a number of years ago, in a time of spiritual stirring)
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Recently Read and Recommended
Great reads, these:
When Sinners Say "I Do": Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage -- by Dave Harvey --
I think this is the best book on marriage I've ever read. Dave's a fine writer, often humorous, and always honest and transparent. His book helps us center marriage on Christ and the cross in a thorough, daily way.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power -- by Rob Gifford --
Fascinating, highly informative, and extremely well written. For six years, Gifford (a Christian) was the head correspondent for NPR in China, and he's been a lifelong fan of China. This book looks especially at the changes now taking hold in the common people of China, who will ultimately determine her destiny.
Tolkien: Author of the Century -- by T. A. Shippey --
A must read if you're a Tolkien fan. Shippey will help you appreciate more than ever Tolkien's talents and labor, and especially all that went into the creation of The Lord of the Rings.
When Sinners Say "I Do": Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage -- by Dave Harvey --
I think this is the best book on marriage I've ever read. Dave's a fine writer, often humorous, and always honest and transparent. His book helps us center marriage on Christ and the cross in a thorough, daily way.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power -- by Rob Gifford --
Fascinating, highly informative, and extremely well written. For six years, Gifford (a Christian) was the head correspondent for NPR in China, and he's been a lifelong fan of China. This book looks especially at the changes now taking hold in the common people of China, who will ultimately determine her destiny.
Tolkien: Author of the Century -- by T. A. Shippey --
A must read if you're a Tolkien fan. Shippey will help you appreciate more than ever Tolkien's talents and labor, and especially all that went into the creation of The Lord of the Rings.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Amplifying the Only Voice that Matters
Jesus said (to Pilate, in the morning hours before His crucifixion):
"I have been born for this, and for this I have come into the world--that I might testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."
By God's sovereign grace, those predestined to be born of the truth ("I am...the Truth," Jesus said) shall be made capable of hearing HIS very voice in this world....
How needful then it is that those who would be messengers and communicators for the Lord's sake and in His name must be themselves carefully listening to His voice, and ensuring that their own spoken and written words are conveying what they have genuinely heard from the Lord.
"I have been born for this, and for this I have come into the world--that I might testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."
By God's sovereign grace, those predestined to be born of the truth ("I am...the Truth," Jesus said) shall be made capable of hearing HIS very voice in this world....
How needful then it is that those who would be messengers and communicators for the Lord's sake and in His name must be themselves carefully listening to His voice, and ensuring that their own spoken and written words are conveying what they have genuinely heard from the Lord.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Master Storyteller
For anyone who tells stories, the example of Jesus in his parables and stories is an artistic treasury. One person who recognized this is William Ellery Leonard, early in the twentieth century. Leonard wrote the following about Jesus as Story-teller:
‘With wonderful economy of effort he sets his characters before us as living men and women. His device is not to describe, but to show them doing or speaking, whether it be the Good Samaritan binding up the wayfarer’s wounds, or the shepherd coming home rejoicing with the lost sheep on his shoulder, or the woman sweeping her house, or the Unjust Steward with his account books, or the rich man begging Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip a fingertip in water and cool his tongue. With the realistic exactness of one reporting an incident out of his own experience, he mentions now one, now another characteristic detail, such as only a poetic imagination would emphasize. With him it is not simply a grain of mustard seed, but a grain of mustard seed that a man took and cast into his garden, and it grew and became a tree and the birds of the heavens came and lodged in the branches thereof. Even in the brief mention of the woman making bread, he tells us she hid the leaven not simply in the meal, but in three measures of meal—and that makes the difference between a lay-figure and an actual housewife. It is just these apparently trivial touches that betray the born story-teller.
‘ Again, his people are always represented as occupied with something interesting, something in which they are themselves vitally interested—whether it be buying land to make sure of a treasure buried there, or hunting for a lost sheep, or building a house, or guiding the plow….’
Ellery emphasizes the “homeliness that runs through so much of his imagery,” and which would have quick appeal to the common folk who made up his audience:
‘Near to the folk also was his constant use of what our Latin grammar calls “direct discourse”…. He reports the householder, who went out at different hours of the day to hire more laborers into his vineyard, as in actual conversation in the market-place; he does not tell us the Prodigal said he would arise and go to his father, but he lets us overhear the Prodigal’s own spoken resolve.
‘Near to the folk, again, are his repetitions, like those familiar in Homer and in ballad poetry…: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” in the parable of the Talents; and “I have sinned against heaven,” etc., of the Prodigal Son; and “I pray thee have me excused,” in the parable of the Invitations: each repeated with the simple directness of an old folk tale.…’
And on the remarkable conciseness in Christ’s stories:
‘The background is but lightly drawn, even in such a vivid scene as the Prodigal feeding the swine; or it is omitted altogether, where, however, the convincing reality of the actors suggests it so truly that we are surprised to find on rereading that our imaginations have supplied so much. Here again is seen the magic of the artist: it is not what his imagination does for us, so much as what it is able to make our imaginations do for ourselves.…
‘Hence the wearisome inanity of most efforts to fill in the parables by paraphrase.…
‘Moreover, his characters are [mostly] unnamed.… And in this way his stories, with all their simple realism, acquire something of that remoteness and mystery characteristic of fairy tales, which usually tell of what happened somewhere, once upon a time, to some certain prince or maiden or forest child whose names we shall never know.…
‘And Jesus, leaving the moral to take hold as it might, was loath to tag his parables with elucidations. He had too much literary taste: as artist he loved the eloquence of suppression, silence, stopping short. He had too much cleverness: he knew human nature too well; he knew the greater force of a point when the listener can catch it for himself.…’
And finally, on his heart appeal:
‘The character of his materials—the personages and incidents—and his manner of arranging and setting them forth offer beautiful evidence of Jesus’ power to play upon the human heart. So many-sided and elusive is his personality.… Indeed, Jesus’ power over the human heart is perhaps his power above all other powers as poet.…
‘But these stories exist not for themselves alone; like all great art, they have a meaning beyond themselves. Each exists for an idea.… They are a part of the glowing concreteness of a poet’s thinking.…
‘It seems indubitable that no other body of poetry so slight in quantity ever contained teachings of equal loftiness and equal scope.’
— from the 1909 work The Poet of Galilee by William Ellery Leonard, as reprinted in The Story of Jesus in the World’s Literature, edited by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Creative Age Press, 1946), pp. 218-221.
‘With wonderful economy of effort he sets his characters before us as living men and women. His device is not to describe, but to show them doing or speaking, whether it be the Good Samaritan binding up the wayfarer’s wounds, or the shepherd coming home rejoicing with the lost sheep on his shoulder, or the woman sweeping her house, or the Unjust Steward with his account books, or the rich man begging Father Abraham to send Lazarus to dip a fingertip in water and cool his tongue. With the realistic exactness of one reporting an incident out of his own experience, he mentions now one, now another characteristic detail, such as only a poetic imagination would emphasize. With him it is not simply a grain of mustard seed, but a grain of mustard seed that a man took and cast into his garden, and it grew and became a tree and the birds of the heavens came and lodged in the branches thereof. Even in the brief mention of the woman making bread, he tells us she hid the leaven not simply in the meal, but in three measures of meal—and that makes the difference between a lay-figure and an actual housewife. It is just these apparently trivial touches that betray the born story-teller.
‘ Again, his people are always represented as occupied with something interesting, something in which they are themselves vitally interested—whether it be buying land to make sure of a treasure buried there, or hunting for a lost sheep, or building a house, or guiding the plow….’
Ellery emphasizes the “homeliness that runs through so much of his imagery,” and which would have quick appeal to the common folk who made up his audience:
‘Near to the folk also was his constant use of what our Latin grammar calls “direct discourse”…. He reports the householder, who went out at different hours of the day to hire more laborers into his vineyard, as in actual conversation in the market-place; he does not tell us the Prodigal said he would arise and go to his father, but he lets us overhear the Prodigal’s own spoken resolve.
‘Near to the folk, again, are his repetitions, like those familiar in Homer and in ballad poetry…: “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” in the parable of the Talents; and “I have sinned against heaven,” etc., of the Prodigal Son; and “I pray thee have me excused,” in the parable of the Invitations: each repeated with the simple directness of an old folk tale.…’
And on the remarkable conciseness in Christ’s stories:
‘The background is but lightly drawn, even in such a vivid scene as the Prodigal feeding the swine; or it is omitted altogether, where, however, the convincing reality of the actors suggests it so truly that we are surprised to find on rereading that our imaginations have supplied so much. Here again is seen the magic of the artist: it is not what his imagination does for us, so much as what it is able to make our imaginations do for ourselves.…
‘Hence the wearisome inanity of most efforts to fill in the parables by paraphrase.…
‘Moreover, his characters are [mostly] unnamed.… And in this way his stories, with all their simple realism, acquire something of that remoteness and mystery characteristic of fairy tales, which usually tell of what happened somewhere, once upon a time, to some certain prince or maiden or forest child whose names we shall never know.…
‘And Jesus, leaving the moral to take hold as it might, was loath to tag his parables with elucidations. He had too much literary taste: as artist he loved the eloquence of suppression, silence, stopping short. He had too much cleverness: he knew human nature too well; he knew the greater force of a point when the listener can catch it for himself.…’
And finally, on his heart appeal:
‘The character of his materials—the personages and incidents—and his manner of arranging and setting them forth offer beautiful evidence of Jesus’ power to play upon the human heart. So many-sided and elusive is his personality.… Indeed, Jesus’ power over the human heart is perhaps his power above all other powers as poet.…
‘But these stories exist not for themselves alone; like all great art, they have a meaning beyond themselves. Each exists for an idea.… They are a part of the glowing concreteness of a poet’s thinking.…
‘It seems indubitable that no other body of poetry so slight in quantity ever contained teachings of equal loftiness and equal scope.’
— from the 1909 work The Poet of Galilee by William Ellery Leonard, as reprinted in The Story of Jesus in the World’s Literature, edited by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Creative Age Press, 1946), pp. 218-221.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
CBN-TV Airs Spot on "99 Ways to Entertain Your Family for Free"
It aired this week -- the CBN-TV spot built around an interview with me (as "Mack Thomas," my pen name) on my book 99 Ways to Entertain Your Family for Free . I'm very grateful to Paul Strand and his crew for putting this together.
Here's the link if you'd like to watch it--
http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/vod/PST138v2_WS
Here's the link if you'd like to watch it--
http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/vod/PST138v2_WS
Monday, August 24, 2009
A loving local church
Yesterday, Rebecca and I joined in the worship celebration with Christ Our Redeemer Church in Vancouver, Washington. We are very grateful for this church and their warmth and hospitality, their love for the Savior, and their gospel-centeredness and grace-centeredness. We are grateful for Pastor Dan Morse and also for the visiting speaker, Pastor Tony Walsh from Crossway Community Church in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, who spoke on 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
CBN interview for "99 Ways..."
This afternoon, Paul Strand and his crew from CBN interviewed me for my book "99 Ways to Entertain Your Family for Free." Really enjoyed the time with Paul, his son Austin, and Dave the cameraman, who are on a work trip out here in Oregon. They'll let me know when it airs...and I'll let you know here.
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