I Was Just Wondering

I think one of the main reasons why I like Philip Yancey is because he distills some of the greater writings into palatable bite size nuggets of enlightenment There was a phase when i was so inspired by his description of certain classical writers that I bought the original books- it didn't help that I was in the States and books were really cheap off amazon. But 2 years later and counting, I have not managed to finish a single book with many 'given up halfway' attempts in between.

This book is a collection of his thoughts as he reads and observes the different phenomenon around him. Its kinda like a collection of blog posts arranged in loose themes. I love his writings because they juxtapose the reality of the world with God and show that they actually complement, unlike popular belief that they are always in conflict. I don't mean that the values of the world and God are in sync, but the distortions and beauty that we see around us are shadows of what the bible says. Its like how the old testament foreshadows Jesus, the world and the human experience foreshadows a greater being and realm. And in doing so, he strips away the jargon and the the hypocrisy to offer a new perspective.

Converted Imagination
' Although he lived in a time of great conflict between science and religion, George MacDonald saw no split between the " natural" and supernatural" worlds. He confessed that in his youth" one of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I though I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things that God has made." Instead he discovered that " god is God of the beautiful- religion is the love of the beautiful and heaven is the home of the beautiful- nature is tenfold brighter in the sun of righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian..'Such Christian Naturalism served to enrich the sensory descriptions in his novels. " To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it-just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing that to know all theology".



The Jilted Lover

'For Two weeks one winter I holed up i a mountain cabin in Colorado. I brought along a suitcase full of books and notes, but at the end of the two weeks I found I had opened only one of the books: the bible. I began at Genesis and read straight through. outside, snow was falling furiously. By the time I reached Deuteronomy, snow covered the bottom step, when I hit the prophets, it had crept up the mailbox post; and when i finally made it to Revelation, I had to call for a truck to unbury the driveway. Over six feet of fresh powder fell during my time there.

The combination of snow- muffled stillness, isolation from all people, and singular concentration changed forever the way I read the Bible. Above all else, this is what struck me in my daily reading: Our common impressions about God may be very different from what the bible actually portrays. In theology books you will read of the decrees of God, and of such characteristics as omnipotence, omniscience, and impassibility. These concepts can be found in the Bible , but they are well buried and must not be mined. Simply read the Bible and you will encounter not a misty vapor but an actual Person. God feels delight, and anger, and frustration. Again and again he is shocked by human behavior. Sometimes, after deciding on one response, he " changes his mind".