2013 Reading List

I thought it would be fun to share some of the books I’m planning on reading this year. In my blog reading I came across several books that sounded interesting, so I decided to compile a list of the ones I wanted to read. I’ve been getting what I can from the library, and I’m going to make use of an Amazon gift card that I got for my birthday for the rest. This is the first time I have ever made a reading list and it’s been fun! I’m enjoying broadening my reading horizons. I’ve included links to the books on Amazon if you’re interested in finding out more about them. I didn’t comment on the last three because I haven’t read them yet. 🙂

1. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner – I got this from the library at the beginning of January. To be honest, some of it was hard for me to understand, but I did glean some helpful information from it. It’s probably a book I would invest in once I seriously got into fiction.

2. The Traveler’s Gift: Seven Decisions for Personal Success by Andy Andrews – I read this one during the second half of January. I enjoyed it and took away some good points from it, but in trying to look at success from a Biblical worldview,  didn’t necessarily agree with a few of the seven decisions or the reasoning behind them. I still consider it a good read, though, and enjoyed the exercise of figuring out what exactly it was that I didn’t agree with and how I felt it should have been approached.

3. Persuasion by Jane Austen – This wasn’t one I had specifically planned on reading, but in my campaign to finish the things I start this year, I remembered that I had started it a while ago and so decided to pick it back up, and I got hooked on it! This was the most eager I’d ever been to finish a classic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath – I have this book in progress at the moment from the library. So far, it’s very good and one that I’ll probably want to own at some point. The tips in it are extremely useful for teachers, businesses, writers, speakers – anyone who needs to communicate ideas to people in a memorable way.

5. Humility: True Greatness by C. J. Mahaney

6. 20,000 Days and Counting by Robert D. Smith

7. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Stephen Pressfield

What about you? What are you hoping to read this year? Have you read any good books lately? Please share about them in the comments – I’d love to hear about them!

Frosty Morning

One morning, almost exactly four years ago, I woke up early and when I looked out of my window, I discovered a world covered with glittering shards of ice. The dazzling sight enticed me to go out of my warm house into the clear, cold morning, and I had a memorable experience capturing as many pictures of the frost-covered trees and plants as I could before I got too cold. Sadly, though I have searched among my files for these pictures for almost two hours now, I could only find a few of them. 😦 At least they will serve to give you an idea of what inspired the following poem, which began forming in my mind as I snapped those pictures:

God’s hand the frost doth form
Icy and sharp in the dark morn.

He raises the sun, and arranges its rays
In just such a way to give Him praise.

They light on the frost, so feathered and thick
And make crowns and scepters of each leaf and stick.

Yet though now frozen, the tree branch still brings
The promise of growth, the whisper of spring.

Though encased now in ice, the snow ‘gainst it thrown,
When God wakes it with warmth, a bud will be grown.

God fashioned the ship of the world carefully,
And left us the proof on each leaf and tree.

His presence He still works to show to the lost
Through the work of His hand on the wintry frost.

It’s by no means a perfect poem, but it expressed what I wanted it to and it rhymed and had some sense of meter, so I was pleased with it. 🙂 The last two stanzas beginning at the line “God fashioned the ship of the world carefully” was a sort of reply to a poem that I had read recently in school which began with that same line, but went on to say that God made the world and then got distracted and let it go, with no care or control for what happened to it afterwards, which I do not believe is the truth. Every time I look out the window the intricacies of nature remind me that there is a God who holds the world in His hand and cares deeply about all of His creation.

Love was Sweeter Then

Emma watched her grandmother’s face, more captivated by what she saw there than on the television, where a black-and-white film showed a couple parting at a train station. The young woman stood on the train station platform, waving her handkerchief at the receding form of a soldier hanging as far as humanly possible over the back railing of the train, waving his hat in wild swoops. Desperation to say the things they might never again be able to say in person opened the tongues that moments ago had been tied by nervousness; they called promises of love and letters to one another as the train slowly chugged away from the platform, stretching the cords of love between them like a thready spiderweb: fine and delicate, but with the strength of steel to span time, distance, and whatever else might threaten their love.

Emma could discern all of these unspoken messages communicated in the last seconds of the movie, but the meaning of the look on her grandmother’s face eluded her. It seemed unusual that an ending like that would so enrapture someone, but that was exactly what the soft, dreamlike look in grandma’s eyes portrayed as she sat leaning forward slightly in her chair, staring at the television. A few of the lines in the woman’s wrinkled face fell away in her rapture and made it easy for Emma to imagine what Grandma must have looked like when she was the same age as the young woman in the movie. She continued to study her grandmother’s face as the words “THE END” flashed across the screen with a triumphant musical flourish. The screen went dark, but the look in grandma’s eyes remained. After a moment she leaned back in her chair and sighed.

“Love was sweeter then,” she said, still gazing at the television.

“What?” asked Emma, not understanding the remark.

“Love was sweeter then.” She said it in a less dreamy voice this time, coming out of her trance and fixing the blanket tucked over her lap.

“What do you mean by that?” Emma asked again, hoping for a more expansive answer this time.

“Your grandfather and I had to say goodbye just like the couple in that movie,” Grandma began. “Those were uncertain times for everyone. When we said goodbye during wartime, we never knew if it was for months, years, or a lifetime. We had to treasure the moments we had together; to push aside the constant fear of ‘what ifs’ and simply cherish one another while we had each other. Times like that taught us to let the little things go and to put our energy into building something that could outlast a war, and even time itself.” Grandma sighed again. “Yes, love was sweeter then.”

Emma looked up as her grandfather entered the room and put his hand on Grandma’s shoulder. She watched as they smiled at each other, and Emma thought to herself that love was still sweet – it just had to be the right kind of love.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Those aren’t surgical instruments. Surgical instruments are used to save lives, not take them.

When my eyes landed on this picture in Time magazine, a shock ran through me. I’d never seen what is used to perform abortions before. The caption under the picture said something like “Instruments used for a surgical abortion”, but my mind immediately classified them as something else: weapons of mass destruction. Every year more lives are lost through abortions in this country than in all the wars of our history combined, and since 1973 a number of people (53 million) that is nearly ten times more than the number of Jews (6 million) killed in the Holocaust have been killed with these small pieces of metal. 

But as with guns, bombs, and other weapons, it is not the weapon itself that should be held responsible for the killing. It is the wielder of the weapon, the one who uses it or permits or encourages its use. Every year more lives are lost through abortions in this country than in all the wars of our history combined, and there are still those who are fighting to make it more acceptable and easier for more lives to be taken this way.

How did America get to this point? The answer is quite simple. It’s called apostasy. Our nation has largely renounced the Christian faith and Biblical principles upon which it was founded, and the low state to which it has sunk because of this is clearly demonstrated by the millions of human lives it discards each year. For the principle that human life is sacred comes solely from the Bible, whose principles our nation was founded upon, and when people walk away from the Bible, it isn’t long before they walk away from the moral principles that are derived from it and begin instead to elevate their own ideas of man’s “rights” above God’s holy law.

If our nation continues to despise and ignore the instruction of God, it is headed for certain destruction. Like our flag was stitched together with thread, our nation was stitched together by wise men with prayer and Biblical principles. But if we do not keep those threads strong, our nation with tear and tatter, like a flag battered by the wind. Instead of waving as a glorious symbol of freedom and honor, it will hang limp and worn, a tattered rag, the shattered remains of a great nation that was. Because what made our nation great was God’s blessing upon us, and we have no right to say “God bless America” until we first humble ourselves and ask for His forgiveness for populating heaven prematurely with millions of souls whom He created and for whom He had wonderful plans.

In order for our nation to avoid certain disaster, we must change our way of seeing things. First of all, we must see God as the only One who has the right to take life. Then, we must see these unborn babies as people- tiny, marvelously designed people who are the future of our nation, the ones who will be our future presidents, pastors, scientists, artists, plumbers, musicians, businessmen and women, teachers, missionaries, moms, dads. The ones who may someday find a cure for cancer, invent something amazing, inspire thousands of people to live greater lives, bring us closer to God. We need these babies.  If we destroy them, we destroy our future.

For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well…Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.” Psalm 139:13-14 & 16