Archives

Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Mar18

O.K. I must admit that this book, and other books like it, frustrate me. It’s a book about being totally, completely, abandoned-ly, sold out for God, about loving Him with your heart, mind, soul and strength. That’s good. I want to love God like that, although I admit that I don’t really. Not always. Not even most of the time.

“He is asking you to love as you would want to be loved if it were your child who was blind from drinking contaminated water; to love the way you want to be loved if you were the homeless woman sitting outside the cafe; to love as though it were your family living in the shack slapped together from cardboard and scrap metal.”

Fine. I’m sure Jesus does ask us to love that way, to that depth. But how does this sort of sacrifice work out practically speaking, or even impractically speaking?

Do I tell my kids no more extra classes–dance, piano, canoeing, drama–no more candy or doughnuts, heck, no more meat, until the entire world is fed and clothed to a certain minimal standard?

Do I quit buying clothes EVER and just wear mine until they fall off me in rags? (Not a great sacrifice for me because I hate shopping, and I wear clothes way past their style-date anyway.)

Do I sell my computer and my TV and my household appliances and give to the poor?

Do I turn off the air conditioning in Houston in the summer to save money to give away to those who are, I admit, much more in need of basics than I am in need of air conditioning? What would my husband, who suffers from the heat much more than I do, think about that sacrifice? Why not just turn the electricity off completely?

Do I tell my mom no more eating out together once a week because it costs too much?

Do we sell our house and crowd eight people into a two-bedroom apartment? Including my 77 year old mother who lives in a small apartment behind our house?

Do we sell our cars and walk? Or are bicycles OK and acceptably sacrificial?

Do we tell our kids “no college” because we’re giving that money to feed orphans in India? (Not that we can afford college anyway!)

Do I give all of my time and energy to serving others and leave my family to fend for themselves?

Do I refuse to read a book or watch a movie because I could be spending that time in prayer and Bible study, and if I really, really loved God, I’d want to spend all of my time with Him? Should I even have read Francis Chan’s book?

Maybe it’s Jesus himself I’m frustrated with. Mr. Chan says, and wisely so, that he can’t tell his readers what sacrifices or what obedience God is calling them to. He says he has enough trouble discerning God’s will for Francis Chan’s life and ministry. However, I’m not sure how to understand what Mr. Chan is preaching in this book. If it were really my family starving in that shack, I would immediately give up ballet lessons, vacations, fast food, meat, cake, books, movies, and anything else I could find to get my family fed, clothed, and loved. But am I to ask my real family to give up everything so that other families and children can have what they need? And where is the line? If there is no line, if total self sacrifice is the call (and I think it is), how do I do that and still remain faithful to the family in which God has placed me? I get the idea that I’m not doing enough, not giving enough, not serving enough, not sacrificing enough, but what’s enough? I can’t out-give God, who gave and gives Himself for me, but what AM I called to give?

I want a checklist and a pencil.

Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the money to the destitute, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come back and follow me.”
But when the young man heard this statement he went away sad, because he had many possessions.
Is that me?

“The one with two talents also came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I’ve earned two more talents.’
His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy servant! Since you have been trustworthy with a small amount, I will put you in charge of a large amount. Come and share your master’s joy!’
Or am I managing what God has given me to the best of my ability, allowing HIm to use me where I am?

I could still go for the list and the pencil.

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

Mar14

This book is not one to be read in a chunk, but rather a book of daily devotional thoughts written by Mr. Chambers, a Scots YMCA chaplain before and during World War I. Chambers died in 1917, and his wife compiled this book of daily devotional thoughts from Chambers’ writings.

However, the term “devotional thoughts” may give the wrong impression. These daily essays on how to understand and live the Christian life are not your typical little encouraging stories or aphorisms. Here’s an example, the selection for March 14th:

“His servants ye are to whom ye obey.” Romans 6:16

The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.

Yield in childhood to selfishness, and you will find it the most enchaining tyranny on earth. There is no power in the human soul of itself to break the bondage of a disposition formed by yielding. Yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust (remember what lust is: “I must have it at once,” whether it be the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind) – once yield and though you may hate yourself for having yielded, you are a bondslave to that thing. There is no release in human power at all but only in the Redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One Who can break the dominating power viz., the Lord Jesus Christ – “He hath anointed me . . . to preach deliverance to all captives.”

You find this out in the most ridiculously small ways – “Oh, I can give that habit up when I like.” You cannot, you will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you yielded to it willingly. It is easy to sing – “He will break every fetter” and at the same time be living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. Yielding to Jesus will break every form of slavery in any human life.

President George W. Bush used to read My Utmost for His Highest each morning when he was president, probably still does. According to Newsweek (2003), “George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone. His text isn’t news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.”

You can read these brief, but meaningful daily reflections here.
Wisdom in a Time of War:
What Oswald Chambers and C.S. Lewis teach us about living through the long battle with terrorism by JI Packer.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Mar13

40 Inspirational Classics

It’s a hot topic (see Universalism as a Lure? The Emerging Case of Rob Bell): universalism, or to put it as a question, will everybody get to heaven in the end? Rob Bell repeats the old mantra, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

C.S. Lewis answers this objection to divine judgement and heaven and hell as separate for the blessed and the damned in The Great Divorce.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

“What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”
“Ye see it does not.”
“I feel in a way that it ought to.”
“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”
“What?”
“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”
“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or you’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

However, these two excerpts are only the pertinent quotations in regard to universalism and the complaint that it’s unfair for anyone to go to hell. The book itself is much more, a wonderful story about an excursion bus from hell to the outskirts of heaven. I learned more about heaven and God’s mercy from reading The Great Divorce than from many a sermon listened to in my youth.

Maybe I’m a better reader than listener. Or maybe I learn better through story. A little of both I think. Also C.S. Lewis is just a great writer and thinker. You’ll come across several of his books in this series of 40 Inspirational Classics that I’m recommending for Lent. Now go out and get The Great Divorce; it’s only 125 pages long, but there’s lots of truth in that small package.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

Mar12

40 Inspirational Classics

I spent a couple of days re-reading G.K. Chesterton’s spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy and decided that I should read a bit of Chesterton every few months, if only to remind me that Christianity is a merry and somewhat eccentric philosophy of life. Chesterton says that the “frame” of Christianity, its conservatism and rules, enables us to be like children playing on a cliff with a fence to keep them from falling over. We can range far and wide, “fling [ourselves] into the every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries.”

Chesterton himself was a merry old soul. He weighed over 300 pounds, played the part of the absent-minded professor in his daily life, and enjoyed a beer, a debate, and a nap, but not all at the same time. Nicknamed “The Prince of Paradox,” his verbal gymnastics are sometimes exhausting, usually entertaining, but at the same time full of wisdom and insight into the fallacies of pagan and modern philosophy and into the satisfying rightness of Christian orthodoxy. Here a few assertions and witticisms that grabbed me as I read through Chesterton’s philosophical defense of orthodoxy:

“I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.”

Of course, I am reminded of the song, Creed, by Rich Mullens:

“Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. . . . That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship only Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within.”
The Jones part is probably what reminded me of Jim Jones who went from rejection of the God of the Bible, to worship of himself, to the insistence that his followers should also worship him as God. They certainly would have been better off worshipping cats.

Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
If the world and its meaning begins and ends with me, I am of all creatures most tragically unhappy. I have a friend who believes that he will find any meaning that there is to be found in this world inside himself. I pity him.

“The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our Mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire but not to imitate. . . . To St. Francis, nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”
What breathtakingly beautiful freedom there is in that order of things. We are not beholden to nor dominated by Nature; we are the stewards, the caretakers. God is still over all and through all, without Nature taking over His role as Creator and Sustainer.

“A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”
“It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For Solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”
In this season of Lent, and certainly as we approach the celebration the Resurrection, take time to laugh. The Story is after all a comedy, and God wins in the end.

“[Modern Philosophy’s] despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority.”
A world without meaning and without Christ at the center is either too terrible to explore or too boring to enjoy—or both. Hence, voodoo dolls and fetishes or Sartre’s existential hell play, No Exit.

Choose the adventure.

Links:
The ‘Ample’ Man Who Saved My Faith by Phillip Yancey at Christianity Today.
The American Chesterton Society
Semicolon thoughts on The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.

Pensees by Blaise Pascal

Mar10

It’s Lent, and as a growing Christian you want to read something that will bring you closer and deeper in your relationship with Jesus. Or you’re not a Christian, but you think that this time leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ would be a good time to explore the Christian faith and see for yourself what it’s all about.

I would suggest that first and foremost you read the Bible, but not just any old books of the Bible. If you’ve never read the Bible before I would suggest starting with one of the Gospels, the four books in the New Testament that tell about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Even if you’ve read the Bible several times from cover to cover, springtime and Lent and Easter are good times to review the story of Jesus and let God refresh you spiritually through His Word as it tells about the Greatest Love Story Ever Enacted.

Then, if you’re like me and still want some more reading to inspire and encourage you in your journey, try one or more of the recommended books in this series, 40 Inspirational Classics.

Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher. He was educated at home by his father and he grew up to be a talented scientist and mathematician. In 1654, Pascal had a mystical experience of the presence of God, a sort of “second conversion,” and he devoted himself to writing a book about the reasons for belief in God and in the Christian faith.

Pensees means “thoughts,” and these “thoughts” are really Pascal’s notes for a book of Christian apologetics that he planned to write, but never managed to finish. Pascal believed that to bring a person to faith in Christ it was necessary to make him want to believe.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.

The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which knows God, and not the reason. This, then, is absolute faith: God felt in the heart.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought.

…there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.

Pascal’s Wager: “You must wager; it is not optional. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God exists. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

I found Peter Kreeft’s edition of and commentary on Pascal quite accessible; it’s called Christianity for Modern Pagans. I wrote some reflections on the chapters of Kreeft’s book in these posts a couple of years ago:
Order and Fear of Religion
Sinners Need Silence and Ultimately, A Saviour
Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me
Animal or Angel?
Vanity, Vanity, All Is Vanity
Every Day in Every Way: The Vanity of Justice.

Free Kindle edition of Pascal’s Pensees.

Edwardian, Turn of the Century and The Great War

Mar8

I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the years 1890-1920 for the past week or two, via fiction, nonfiction, a couple of British period TV series, and my history class. It’s a fascinating time period. I’ll tell you what I’ve been watching and reading, and then I’ll try to share some of what it all made me ponder and put together in my mind.

Fiction:
She Walks in Beauty by Siri Mitchell. I’m not sure exactly when this novel is set, about 1890 or the turn of the century. I read this one because it won the INSPY award for historical fiction this last year. It’s about New York City debutante, Clara Carter, who becomes the leading belle of the season with a little help from her overbearing aunt and her rich, social climber father. Unfortunately, Clara wasn’t really the “spunky, defiant heroine” that we all love and tend to expect in these sorts of historical romances. She’s a seventeen year old girl who’s been indoctrinated to believe that her only worth lies in her ability to attract a rich husband and restore her family’s honor. As Clara makes her way through the balls, dinner parties, and social visits of her coming out season, she changes very little and allows cultural expectations to mold her and pressure her to become what she actually hates. Only a family tragedy forces her to come to her senses and begin to make decisions that will give her a chance to live a real, authentic life. (The Kindle edition of this one is showing as free right now. Definitely worth your time if you like historical romance.)
After the Dancing Days by Margaret Rostkowski. We read this YA novel for my English/History class at homeschool co-op. Annie is a thirteen year old girl living in a small town in Kansas at the end of World War I. As she begins to visit the returning soldiers at the veterans’ hospital where her father works as a doctor, Annie is at first repulsed and frightened by the severely injured men. However, she comes to be friends with them, one in particular, even though her mother is opposed to Annie’s hospital visits and wants her to forget about the war and its consequences.

Nonfiction:
Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt. Semicolon review here. In this true story of a mother and daughter in 1896 who accepted a wager that saw them walk across the entire continent of North America, I found a couple of women who not afraid to strike out and do something unexpected and unacceptable to many of those in their community. Unfortunately for the two women, the book also tells how they paid a steep price in betrayal and social ostracism for their daring.
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson. This book of social history covers the years 1918-1920 and tells lots of little stories, vignettes really, about people in Britain both great and small and their experiences in the aftermath of World War I. The book featured lots of fascinating people that I wish I had time to find out more about:
plastic surgeon Harold GIllies who repaired and reconstructed the faces of thousands of wounded WW I soldiers,
Joseph Enniver, inventor of Pelmanism, a secular program for strengthening of the mind and character,
nurse Edith Cavell, who helped two hundred allied soldiers escape to freedom in Belgium during the war before she was captured and executed by the Germans,
Coco Chanel, the greatest couturier of all time,
Nancy Astor, the American lady who became England’s first woman Member of Parliament, and many more. Look for a post of quotable stories from this book in the near future.

Television:
Lark Rise to Candleford. This series from the BBC is set in rural England just before the turn of the century, c.1895. The story is taken from a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by author Flora Thimpson. In the novels Ms. Thompson tells about her experience as a young girl getting a job in a post office and seeing the changes that were coming to England as a result of industrialization and the new modes of transportation and communication that were coming into use during the time period. Laura Timmins, the character through whose eyes we see the stories of village life and cultural transformation, is a village girl and as such, much more adaptable than some of the upper class young women in these stories. She’s able to become independent and see the world as one in which she can rise above her circumstances and become an intelligent voice while retaining her femininity and her place in the community.

Downton Abbey. While I was waiting for the DVD’s of the several episodes of Lark RIse to Candleford to get here in the mail, I began watching Downton Abbey, another period piece set in the years just before WW I, from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 to the announcement that England was at war with Germany (1914). Downton Abbey is amazing in its deft characterization of both the upper classes and the their servants, and even the burgeoning middle class gets a nod in the appearance of Lord Grantham’s new heir, Matthew Crawley, a distant cousin who becomes the new heir after the death of a couple of closer relatives in the Titanic tragedy. Lord Grantham has only daughters, three of them, who are of marriageable age, but with very little inheritance to hook a husband since almost all the money in the family is tied up in the estate. The servants in this grand old English family are all intimately involved in family matters as well as in the working out of their own lives and relationships. Downton Abbey is something of a soap opera, but it just manages to transcend that genre because the problems and the issues that make up the plot are very real and identifiable and intriguing, leading to both reflection and a feeling of connection. The characters are appealing, sometimes frustrating, and the dialog is spot on and funny. I loved this series, and I was only sorry to see it end.

I’ll have to leave the pondering and putting together for another post. However, I would recommend any or all of the above for your viewing or reading pleasure.

W.F. Matthews: Lost Battalion Survivor by Travis Monday

Feb21

Reading Unbroken(Semicolon review here) made me want to take a look at this WW II memoir about a man who was a deacon and a patriarch at my church when I was growing up in San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Matthews also survived imprisonment with the Japanese in Southeast Asia. As I remember it, my parents told me that Mr. Matthews had been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II but that he “didn’t like to talk about it.” So I was curious, but I never asked.

Apparently, Mr. Monday who pastored my parents’ church for a while after I had already moved away from San Angelo, did ask—and wrote this self-published book in 2004 to tell “the incredible true story of an American hero,” W.F. Matthews.

The most striking note in the book was Mr. Matthews’ almost dispassionate attitude toward his captivity.

About the Japanese treatment of prisoners: “They beat on us pretty good. It seemed like—you know most of them are short—seemed like they resented us being so much bigger than they were.”

About the New Testament BIble that he carried and hid from the Japanese all through his captivity: “I’d get down, boy, and I’d sneak out and get that thing out and sit there and read it for about 20 minutes, and boy I’d get pepped up again.”

About working near Bangkok during bombing raids: “It was pretty rough up there. The Americans started bombing us. They were bombing at River Kwai and all down through there.”

About his condition after the war’s end in hospital: “I was about 90 pounds when I got in there, and of course, I had that malaria and dysentery. And they put me in that hospital and treated me for that, and I got in pretty good shape. I started eating and I gained a little weight.” (He weighed 220 pounds when he left Texas for San Francisco at the beginning of the war.)

About his recovery from the emotional scars of the war: “People would hover around me and want to talk and I had to leave pretty quick.” “There was a creek right by the house there, and I’d go way down on that creek walking around and kind of staying by myself.”

What magnificent understatement. What a matter of fact attitude.

W.F. Matthews went on to marry and father two sons. He was, as I said a deacon in my Southern Baptist church, and I grew up with his boys. He never said much of anything about the war, certainly never intimated that he was a hero or a person to be admired. As far as I knew, until my parents mentioned something about Mr. Matthews’ war experience, he was just Randy’s and Tommy’s dad, just a good ol’ West Texas man who happened to drink coffee with my dad and some other men every morning at the Dunbar Restaurant.

I believe we are surrounded by quiet, matter of fact, humble heroes, not always war heroes, but all kinds of unheralded and unsung heroism, and we often know nothing about the stories that these quiet heroes never think to tell.

How W.F. Matthews said he wants to be remembered: “I’d like them to remember that we were Americans and that we had a little more to live for than the rest of ’em. That Bible and a few things like that made a difference.”

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Feb14

Amazing story. If it weren’t so heavily footnoted and corroborated, I would find it difficult to believe such a miraculous survival story. Louis Zamperini, the subject of this riveting biography, was an Olympic runner. He won a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and he planned to compete in the 1940 Olympics. Louie, as he was called, was getting close to breaking the four minute mile, but World War II derailed Louis’s Olympic and world record hopes. However, the rest of the story which chronicles Louie’s experiences during and after World War II is even more astounding and transcendent than any world record in a sporting event. I don’t think I’ve ever read about anyone who survived the multiple ordeals that Zamperini was able to live through and then also managed, by the grace of God, to live a full and joyful life afterwards.

One of my urchins says she doesn’t believe in miracles. I think she’s saying she’s never heard a Voice from on high or seen a person instantly healed or witnessed the sudden appearance of manna from heaven. However, if what happened in the life of Louis Zamperini wasn’t a series of miracles, I don’t know what to call it. First of all, Louis and the pilot of his B-24 bomber survive a crash in the Pacific and forty plus days on a raft without supplies in the ocean. And it only get worse when the two Americans land on the Marshall Islands and are “rescued” by the Japanese army.

But the greatest miracle of all comes after the war is over for everyone else, when Louie is still trapped in the prison of his own mind.

No one could reach Louie, because he had never really come home. In prison camp, he’d been beaten into dehumanized obedience to a world order in which the Bird (a cruel Japanese prison guard) was absolute sovereign, and it was under this world order that he still lived. The Bird had taken his dignity and left him feeling humiliated, ashamed, and powerless, and Louie believed that only the Bird could restore him, by suffering and dying in the grip of his hands. A once singularly hopeful man now believed that his only hope lay in murder.
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird’s death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.

This book actually brought me to tears, something that seldom happens to me while reading. I was reminded that as Corrie Ten Boom often said, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

I was also reminded of my conviction that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary evils. The Japanese were not planning to ever surrender to the Allies. In the book, Hillenbrand tells how the POWs in Japan saw women and children being trained to defend the homeland to the last person. And the Japanese had a “kill-all policy” which ordered prison camp commanders to kill all the prisoners of war if it ever became evident that they might be rescued and repatriated. This policy was carried out in several Japanese prison camps, and “virtually every POW believed that the destruction of this city (Hiroshima) had saved them from execution.”

Man’s inhumanity to man continues on into this century, but if we are to avoid and prevent future horrors, we must remember the past. And we must be presented with stories that affirm the possibility of redemption, even from the darkest of atrocities.

Reading Through Africa: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Feb9

Still reading through south central Africa, today we’re in the country of Malawi. Malawi is another country that borders Zambia, where a group from my church will be traveling this summer to work at Kazembe Orphanage. (If you are interested in participating in this mission trip by donating books to the Kazembe Orphanage, see this post at Semicolon for details.)

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been billed as a story of scientific and technological innovation, but it couldjust as well be advertised as a survival story. Much of the first half of the book tells how William and his family survived a horrendous famine in 2002 brought on partly by natural disaster (drought), but also exacerbated by government ineptitude and apathy. William is unable to attend school past the primary level, since his family can only afford one communal meal per day during the famine. School fees are out of the question.

By the time the famine is over, with William’s family still too poor to send him to school, William borrows a book from the local lending library. The book, Using Energy, tells about windmills, and William sets out to build a windmill for his family to generate electricity using old bicycles, scrap metal, and tractor parts. He calls his invention, “electric wind.”

The story of how William manages to study on his own and then scrounge and save to beg, borrow, and buy the things he needs for his windmill is inspiring but also somewhat sad. Why do I have so much when others have so little? It’s amazing that William Kamkwamba was able to overcome opposition, prejudice, and a lack of education to build something that improved the life of his family. I wonder what I would have been able to make of my life without all of the advantages that I have enjoyed as a citizen of one of the richest nations in the world.

I would suggest you read the book if you’re interested at all in this sort of story; however, you can also read more about Mr. Kamkwamba and his windmill at the following websites:

William Kamkwamba: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Bryan Mealer’s website
Moving Windmills

Reading Through Africa: Blood River by Tim Butcher

Feb6

I’m focusing my Reading Through Africa project on south central Africa because of the mission trip that some members of my church are planning for this summer to Zambia. They will be working at Kazembe Orphanage in July, God willing, and I am trying to help them to prepare for that journey.

However, my reading has distributed itself around and about Zambia for the most part because I’m finding very little fiction or nonfiction actually set in Zambia itself. I have a list of a few titles that someone very kindly suggested to me, but so far I haven’t found too many of them available at the library. Anyway, the following book takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo which borders Zambia, and it has given me a feel for the political situation, the culture, the peoples, and the rhythms of the entire region of south central Africa, although of course, conditions in one country cannot be generalized and made applicable to all nations in the region. Kazembe Orphanage is located just across the river from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher. Mr. Butcher set out in 2004 to retrace the footsteps of the famous British explorer Henry Morton Stanley across the Democratic Republic of the Congo from east to west, from the eastern border town of Kalemie on the shore of Lake Tanganyika to the Congo River and downriver to the Atlantic coast. Stanley was the first outsider to map the Congo River as he traveled its length in 1874-1877, almost losing his life in the process. Tim Butcher hears repeatedly while planning his own journey that the trip is “impossible” and at the least “very dangerous.” In spite of war, terrorism, widespread corruption and lack of governmental authority, Mr. Butcher makes his way across the DRC by motorbike, steamer, and dugout canoe, and as he travels he recalls the history of the places he travels through and reports on the present-day conditions. In almost every case, the state of the towns and the people in the DRC is pitiable and far more perilous and poverty-stricken than it was back in the mid-twentieth century before and immediately after the country gained its independence from Belgium (1960). From Wikipedia:

The Second Congo War, beginning in 1998, devastated the country, involved seven foreign armies and is sometimes referred to as the “African World War”. Despite the signing of peace accords in 2003, fighting continues in the east of the country. In eastern Congo, the prevalence of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world. The war is the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II, killing 5.4 million people.
Although citizens of the DRC are among the poorest in the world, having the second lowest nominal GDP per capita, the Democratic Republic of Congo is widely considered to be the richest country in the world regarding natural resources; with untapped deposits of raw minerals estimated to be worth in excess of US$24 trillion.

The contrast between the wealth of natural resources in the country and the poverty of the people is astounding and heart-breaking as Mr. Butcher travels through one wrecked, crumbling, and lawless town after another. He concludes that the greatest need in the DRC is not money or even education, but simple stability and even justice and the rule of law. Without a framework and infrastructure of honest government the people cannot be safe enough to begin to improve their lives or to educate their children to something better. Blood River gives consequently a tragic picture of prospects for the future in the DRC, as Mr. Butcher sees little or nothing that would lead him to hope that the DRC will change or become a more law-abiding and decent place to live. Indeed, according to Wikipedia again, “In 2009 people in the Congo may still be dying at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month, and estimates of the number who have died from the long conflict range from 900,000 to 5,400,000. The death toll is due to widespread disease and famine; reports indicate that almost half of the individuals who have died are children under the age of 5. This death rate has prevailed since efforts at rebuilding the nation began in 2004.”

Hope for The Democratic Republic of the Congo and its people:
Among Congo’s hardened rebels: 500+ baptisms (Baptist Press)
Frontline Fellowship: From Communist Chaos to Christ in the Congo.
Congo Initiative. To train and develop strong, indigenous Christian leaders to transform their communities and their nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Heal Africa