Books: Who or what are you to me?

In I Samuel 8 the faithless Israelites stoop to a new low: they beg God to appoint over them a king. God reasons with them that a king will not treat them as fairly and as faithfully as He will, but they are convinced this is what they need to truly thrive as a nation. And so the history of Israel (and the off-shoot Judah) becomes a chronicle of faithless deeds, evil, abandonment of their True God as well God’s constant redemption of the mess they have made. It’s a frustrating saga of a people that just didn’t get it.

Their story is our story. Their stubbornness and pride is ours as we approach God. I want life to be easy, not messy and I have many excuses for not taking the time to learn and grow directly from God. I want a pastor, a preacher, a book writer to eat of the Word, chew it up and spit it out to me in a more palatable chunk of encouragement.

When it comes to your life, who is your king that you have crowned over God?

These thoughts come to me in the wake being asked to review a book called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It’s a New York Times bestseller and is popular for many good reasons. Voskamp is easy to relate to. Her views from the trenches of Christian faith (through human suffering) are familiar. Losing her little sister at a young age starts the journey of finding God in the brokenness and heartache of life. If you cannot relate to deep loss, you might relate to her as a parent (although in this day and age, being a homeschooling mom of six certainly puts her in her own award-winning category!) or as a sojourner of faith, restless with a status quo life; living a satisfied dissatisfaction as she salivates and hungers for more of the spiritual life we are promised in the Word.

The book is well praised as to its style and poetic offerings. Her stories are relevant and revelatory. The book is also reviewed by some as having some minor theological confusion; but it’s unanimous that her heart is clear and steady and therefore the issues are sidelined for the meat and potatoes being offered on more important things like grace, thanksgiving and joy. The book is not without some controversy on a chapter where more graphic illusions to intercourse and intimacy are aligned with our relationship with God. But the biggest controversy for me goes back to that passage in I Samuel. Thousands and thousands of people have had a life change from reading this book – reminiscent of The Shack by William P. Young and many others like it.

You see, the scripture verses and the journey to discovery that these writers have found is available to all of us, but reading about seems to be a favoured way that the masses consume a spiritual experience. Don’t bother living your own spiritual life, you can borrow mine if I write a blog, or a book or preach a sermon. It’s a part of our modern day church consumerism that will likely have people jumping from fix to fix  - from one best seller to the next.

Who is your king? Is it the King of Kings who beckons us at every moment of the day to be solely dependant upon Him?

I believe that fellowship can come in different forms – it can come from coffee with friends, gathering for church, an email from far away, or reading a book from a believer you will likely never meet, but does it complement our daily, momentary efforts to commune with God, or does it eclipse the true source of our Life and substitute it with a baby food version of it.

A thousand gifts, written as a list of one thousand blessings in Voskamp’s life, can enrich your life because it is bathed in scripture and it points to Jesus. Read it and be blessed by it. Use discernment as you thumb its pages because it isn’t Scripture, and therefore flawed. Allow your true devotional time to be spent digging into the Word and your own journey of faith so that your life is authentic, like hers. This challenge reminds me of the opening pages of an extraordinary book by Jackie Pullinger called Chasing the Dragon. Before she even writes one word of her own story, she writes this: “Go! Write your own books. Go!”