Books are my security blanket. They’re outside me, like a child reaches for a blanket for comfort, so that I can reach and hold and know all will be well. But when a child can’t find his “blankie”? That’s how I’ve felt these last months with books boxed for moving. “Where’s Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris? She has something I need to read again.” Or, “Dang, can’t find Starcks Prayerbook.” Yesterday I got enough work done on new bookshelves that I can now have my blankie close.
It’s devotional authors who especially speak to this child. Like Brother Lawrence: “All things are possible to him who believes, yet more to him who hopes, more still to him who loves, and most of all to him who practices and perseveres in these three virtues. All those who are baptized, and believe as they should, have taken the first step on the road to perfection.” (The Practice of the Presence of God, 67)
Like Os Guiness, devotional with the insights of scholarship. “In short, the modern world quite literally ‘manages’ without God. We can do so much so well by ourselves that there is no need for God, even in his church. Thus, we modern people can be profoundly secular in the midst of explicitly religious activities. Which explains why so many modern Christian believers are atheists unawares. Professing to believe in supernatural realities, they are virtual atheists; whatever they say they believe, they show in practice that they function without practical recourse to the supernatural…. The call to follow Jesus Christ runs directly counter to this deadly modern pressure toward secularization.” (Os Guiness, The Call, 149)
Like Oswald Chambers: “Anything that savors of dejection spiritually is always wrong. Dejection springs from one of two sources—I have either satisfied a lust or I have not. Lust means—I must have it at once. Spiritual lust makes me demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God Who gives the answer.” (My Utmost for His Highest, February 7)
Richard Baxter, Herman Gockel, the German Gesangbuch (hymnal), For All the Saints, and oh so many more. Their writings exude Scripture, and so send me back to the Bible to see new insights that this rube had missed. I was honored to be the president of Concordia Seminary, but it was the most demanding job I’ve ever had; time with my books was limited. Now I can reach for my blankie, seek God, and yes, be with Diane.
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