The subject of this entry comes from two different stimuli: 1) A suggestion that for Memorial Day, we honor someone who has been a great blessing in our lives. (I’m slow in getting around to responding.) 2) A sermon series based on a book I’ve been through twice, once as a personal encounter ten or more years ago and once as a teacher.
I dug out the book behind the sermon series, thinking it would be of value to go through it again. There are eight chapters. As I scanned the titles of the chapters, I realized that the lessons in the book have already been incorporated into my life as much as they probably will be. They’re fairly good lessons. If I find the time and my shared internet connection is available enough I will listen to the sermons, but I think I’ve pretty much mined the book.
I mentioned in an earlier entry that I was surprised by how many of my current habits find their roots in Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I don’t know that I’ve incorporated enough to be even moderately effective, but that book has made a difference in my life.
Obviously, my life (and everyone else’s) is a conglomeration of influences. Most of those influences are people. Yet, I can’t point to any one person who has played a “larger than life” role. Each has their place in sculpting me into what I am today, chipping away here and there, changing who and what I am. Many have been a blessing to me. None that I can think of have stepped beyond their place and prompted a complete change in direction in my life.
In contrast to the people, I can point to several books that had immediate and lasting influence on my life. Perhaps the strongest entry in the field is, A Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith. It was an accidental meeting when I discovered that book. My first clue that it existed came from a Catherine Marshall book given to me by my sister-in-law. Marshall mentioned it in passing as an example of a book that had been of great value to a friend but which she found dull and lifeless. When I later found a little paperback edition on the shelves in the church office, I recognized the title and decided to see what it was about. It was the exact book that I needed at that time in my life. I invited it in and it took up residence in my heart. That was 20 years ago and its influence continues to this day.
There have been others along the way. My Utmost for His Highest, a classic daily devotional of the transcribed words of Oswald Chambers. Stephen Covey’s book. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. That was another accidental encounter. If I remember correctly, it was a delivery of kids to church camp that took me past a Christian bookstore. I stopped in to browse the shelves for a book I wanted to read but which I couldn’t even begin to describe to myself. I couldn’t figure out what I was searching for; I only knew that I wasn’t finding it. I left the store empty-handed. Back in town, I stopped past the church and chatted with my pastor for a few moments. I don’t know what I said but he said, “Here’s a book you need to read,” and handed me Richard Foster’s book. It was exactly what I had been seeking. Several habits of my moderately effective life trace back to that book rather than the Covey book. (Perhaps that pastor who shared his library with me counts as one of those “great blessing” people, simply by knowing what book to hand me and when.)
Maybe the difference between people and books is that I can go back to the books and find them unchanged. I can find within the pages the same message that spoke to my soul and prompted change in my living. I’m often surprised to find the headwaters of a stream I now take for granted in a forgotten book. In contrast, the people have all changed and my memory is unreliable. I don’t know which of my character traits trace back to a stray comment here or there by a teacher or friend or stranger.
I often feel like I’m an alien in my world. As someone told me not long ago, “You have a different way of looking at things.” It wasn’t meant as a positive description. Being different is often lonely. The recent additions to my list of influential books have been those that make me feel that there are others like me in other places. I discovered a label for myself in those books – a postmodern Christian. In my everyday world, that phrase is an oxymoron. One either has a postmodern worldview or a Christian worldview. The two are incompatible because postmodernity denies absolute truth and Christianity depends on absolute truth. How refreshing it has been to discover successful writers who are citizens of both those seemingly incompatible countries and who make a living expressing my core beliefs in written form and selling them. I didn’t even know they were mentionable, let alone marketable.
What a blessing the printing press has been to me.
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