2012 Books in Review

This year I rediscovered a love for reading that I haven't felt since my high school book club days. Funny what starting over in a new town with no friends and TV season breaks will do, huh? I've actually been slacking in my reading now that we've settled into life here in the Memphis area, but I'm looking forward to hitting the books hard to start the new year. Without further ado, here's my reading list from 2012.

1. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Sign of the Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
4. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
5. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
6. A Meal with Jesus - Tim Chester
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
8. Voices of the True Woman Movement - Nancy Leigh DeMoss
9. This Momentary Marriage - John Piper
10. Knowing God - J.I. Packer
11. Just Do Something - Kevin DeYoung
12. Tempted and Tried - Russell Moore
13. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
14. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Schaffer
15. The Runaway - Terry Kay
16. The Lords of Discipline - Pat Conroy
17. Murder on Astor Place - Victoria Thompson
18. The Gospel and Personal Evangelism - Mark Dever
19. The Testament - John Grisham
20. Awaiting a Savior - Aaron Armstrong
21. A Hunger for God - John Piper
22. Delighting in the Trinity - Michael Reeves
23. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
24. Conversation Peace - Mary Kassian

Sorry to those of you who might like these books, but I wouldn't recommend...

• Murder on Astor Place may be the worst book I've ever read. With a terribly repetitive writing style and disgusting twists at the end to try to make up for an otherwise predictable plot, this book had me shaking my head.
• I felt compelled to read Catching Fire and Mockingjay immediately after finishing The Hunger Games (which I devoured), but I wish I'd stopped after the first book. I was hoping to grow to like Katniss in the last two books, but instead I hated every decision she made. Her world devolved into a nightmare, but not in an interesting way. I came to expect that the worst would happen at every pass and in this way things became very predictable and tiresome. These were two long books of disappointment and death - not what I was hoping for on my beach vacation!
• The Testament was my first Grisham novel, and maybe not the best to start with. I found it very slow-moving. A travel narrative was an odd choice for someone with such a straightforward, business-like writing style, and I think he tried to make up for it with laborious descriptions and lengthy dialogue. It was a long book and nothing special.
• Speaking of slow-moving, A Prayer for Owen Meany may have taken me longer to finish than any other book I've attempted. I started it over a year ago and stopped many times since. I enjoyed very little of it except the occasional humorous story, but most of them are just quirky rather than funny. I found Owen less than compelling as a Christ-like, all-knowing wonder boy, which left me with a "so what?" attitude throughout the book. Without empathy for the characters this book was just a bunch of disjointed stories about people I don't like.
• One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp isn't on my list because I didn't finish it. I will qualify my criticism by stating that some of my most respected friends love this book and highly recommend it. Voskamp has a love-it-or-hate-it writing style, and unfortunately, I hate it! When I read it I was looking for serious encouragement and this just didn't cut it. The book is essentially the journal of a woman who learns to love life again by savoring the green of the grass and blue of the sky. I really tried to be encouraged by these things, but they only annoyed me.  I know that her purpose is to find joy in everyday things, but the things she chose for inspiration felt unoriginal and superficial. When I read this book I was battling depression and I wanted a Christian writer to show me how to fix my eyes on Jesus, not raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. That's where J.I. Packer came in.

Here are my favorite fiction books of the year...

• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was nothing short of delightful. I wish I had ten more books like it to get lost in when I'm feeling down. Every once in a while I love to read something that is character-driven instead of plot-driven so that I can just enjoy the people. This was that book for me.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the opposite. Although the characters were intriguing, the plot had my eyes glued to the page until the end. I would love to read the other books in the series, but won't due to the very graphic nature of some of the pivotal scenes in this one. My understanding is that the next book delves into the heroine's violent past, which I'm sure will mean more rape scenes. I don't think it's worth it to read something so disturbing, but I'm sure they're otherwise spectacular books.
• The Runaway filled my longing for a good Southern novel. If you like To Kill a Mockingbird, All the King's Men, The Help, or anything by Toni Morrison, you would probably love Terry Kay. He writes about Georgia, which fills my heart with joy, even if the stories he tells are often sad. The book was slow to start, but I didn't want it to end. It's written beautifully enough to be taught in an English class and engaging enough to read for fun.

And lastly, here are a few of my favorite spiritual growth books of the year...

• Knowing God is, without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read. It echoed so many of the beautiful things I learned about God while we were members at our church back in Georgia, so the whole time I was reading it I felt like I was saying a long goodbye to that chapter of our lives. What a precious gift to have all of those lessons condensed into one book! To read a whole post on my thoughts about this book click here.
• Just Do Something is the book I've most recommended to friends since I finished it. It's relatively short and a fun read - so if you're interested at all, you should pick it up now! If you ever struggle with indecision, delaying responsibility, or fear of the unknown, this book will give you a swift kick in the pants. To read a whole post on my thoughts about this book click here.
• This Momentary Marriage sums up everything I want my marriage to be like - a picture of the perfect love of Jesus. I often struggle with Piper's writing, but I enjoyed this book immensely. It's full of both practical and theological wisdom and a worthwhile read for anyone, including those who are single. To read a whole post on my thoughts about this book click here.
• Delighting in the Trinity is a surprisingly readable book on a prickly topic. It's actually a fun read, not only about the dynamics of the Trinity, but God's character in general. It tackles big questions like, "What was God doing before creation?", "What is the role of each person of God in creation, salvation, adoption, etc.?", and "What does it mean that Jesus is the Word of God?" Reeves is great at expressing things that I already vaguely know in a much better way than I've ever thought or heard them.

Join me on GoodReads!

For a while I tried to blog in-depth notes on my favorite books, but that became a burden and took away from my reading time. Instead, this year I'll be rating and writing brief reviews on all of my books on goodreads - a helpful site that helps me organize my reading and follow my friends' updates on their books. Feel free to "friend" me by searching for Angelyn Vaughan. I'd love for us to spur each other on in our reading goals. 

Happy New Year!

July Books: Tempted and Tried by Russell Moore

Russell Moore is a great writer. He's a good writer when it comes to concepts, but he's a great writer when it comes to stories. Having listened to him read the audio version of his fantastic book Adopted for Life, it was fun to hear his voice in my head while I read this one.

If Michael hadn't read and liked this book it certainly never would have made it on my reading list. A book on the temptation of Jesus seemed a little narrow in scope and not particularly pertinent to my own spiritual life. I realized quickly that this was a silly assumption. After all, there are few certainties in life, but temptation is definitely one of them.

This book individually examines the three temptations of Jesus and their implications about His character, Satan's methods, and our lives. I'll admit that I had difficulty following some of his points, but Moore provides the most thorough and insightful interpretation of this passage that I've ever heard. It occasionally felt like he was reading too much into the text, but considering he's dean of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, it's probably just that he knows much more about the rest of the Bible than I do. Yeah. That's definitely the case.

The three temptations of Jesus are:

• provision - turning stones into bread
• protection - bringing angels to the rescue
• exaltation/inheritance - taking on Satan's domain

Moore argues that at the core of each of these temptations, and the ones you and I face today, is an invitation to cast off the fatherhood of God. With God as our perfect Father, we have access to all of these things, but only in his timing and control.

"In every one of the temptations, Satan attempted to counteract God's voice at this point: 'If you are the son of God, then...' This is the equivalent of the Edenic 'Has God really said?'"

"Most people don't first conclude that adultery is right and then start fantasizing about their neighbor swinging from a stripper pole... It happens in reverse... First, you do what you want to do, even though you 'know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,' and only then do you 'give approval to those who practice them' (Rom 1:32) You start to see yourself as either special or hopeless, and thus the normal boundaries don't seem to apply."

"It's not that you are deficient in your ability to diagnose the situation. It's that you slowly grow to believe that your situation is exceptional."

"Eve started to see God not as Father, but as rival, and that's when she struck out to grab what He was holding back from her. Her appetites, Satan said, were a more reliable guide to what she needed than the word of her God."

"Cycles of abundance and abasement are part of God's strategic purpose, not because of his ignorance of human need."

"To lose control of your appetites is to lose sight of the gospel itself, the truth that God knows what you need to survive - the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus."

"Why do we never ask why it might be better to live in a one-bedroom apartment or a trailer park than to outsource the rearing of one's children? It's because the American way of life seems so normal to us that such things do not even seem to be options at all."

The reason Satan still uses the same methods as he did back then is that they still work. Left to our own devices, we will succumb to his schemes. But Jesus is triumphant. I've always been hasty in reading the account of his temptation because I know Jesus won't sin. It's a given. But what I learned from Russell Moore is that his triumph over Satan - not just in his resurrection, but in resisting temptation, gives us hope.

"We overcome temptation the same way He did, by trusting in our Father and hearing his voice."

"God's testing and Satan's tempting may coincide in the same event, but they are radically different, with different motives and different intended outcomes."

"The world around you often defines you in terms of what you want... If you want to have sex, then that's your 'need' and you must 'be true to yourself.' But you do not live by bread alone. You are not what you want... You are who you are. And that's defined by the Word of God."

"The Spirit of Christ compels us toward contentment. We are able to be free from the love of money when we recognize our identity and our inheritance in Christ and cling to the promise, 'I will never leave you or forsake you.' (Heb 13:5)."

"(Jesus) was willing to trust God's Word and to be seen to be wrong in the meantime."

"If you are in Christ, God will not allow you to enter his reign with a kingdom-grasping pride. You will be stripped of every haughty look, every personal empire, in order that you may enter as a little child, looking for a Father's inheritance."

"One of the first ways you can tell you are moving beyond temptation into a pattern of sin is if you find yourself in a time of prayerlessness. That isn't just a' spiritual maturity issue' - it's a gospel issue"

"Stop seeing yourself as an isolated individual, and start seeing yourself as the gospel does, as part of a head/body unity between Christ and his church... If you are in Christ, your desires will line up with his eventually. Count on it"

"As you read Scripture, ask God to discern your heart and to discipline you."

If, like me, you just read this book and move on to other things you will only find it interesting. If, like I should have done, you put it down and pray for grace at the moments that you identify your struggles, you will be changed. Revisiting the book for this post has made it clear to me that that's something I need to do. I hope you will, too.

July Books: This Momentary Marriage by John Piper

This book is one of those that you'll underline and highlight to death - assuming you're like me and you have a lot to learn about being a good spouse.

One of the things that I love about John Piper is that he publishes his books online for free. So if you're interested in reading this one and okay with not holding it in your hand, click here for the PDF.

I love that this book both glorifies marriage by demonstrating that it is a holy calling and humbles it by showing that it's a fleeting shadow of things to come.

"The highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream."

Marriage is wonderful, but it's not essential to following Christ faithfully. Piper writes an excellent chapter on God-glorifying singleness and constantly warns his married readers not to think of themselves as better than their single friends:

"Romance, sex, and childbearing are temporary gifts of God. They are not part of the next life. And they are not guaranteed even for this life. They are one possible path through the narrow way to Paradise."

Having experienced for myself and from others how beautiful it is to be part of a an unconditional marriage covenant it makes me sad that most people in our culture think of marriage as a conditional contract instead. While I've known all my life that God requires us to be faithful to our spouses, I don't think I quite understood the lavish grace that God intends us to extend to them until I read these words from Piper:

"As the Lord counts you righteous in Christ, though you are not righteous in actual behavior and attitude, so count your spouse righteous in Christ, though he or she is not righteous... Marriage is meant to be a unique matrix for this display of God's grace." 

I've known for a long time that God intends marriage to make us holy through constant accountability and responsibility to someone else, among other things. But I think I had forgotten that most of that sanctification comes from extending extravagant, Christ-like, forgetful grace to the other over and over again.

"If we are to return good for evil in general, how much more in marriage." 

To me, this is the quote that most completely summarizes the book:

"Keeping covenant with our spouse is as important as telling the truth about God's covenant with us in Jesus Christ. Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love. It's mainly about telling the truth with our lives. It's about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way he relates to his people. It is about showing in real life the glory of the gospel."

And I also love this quote about parenting:

"The chief task of parenting is to know God for who He is in his many attributes - especially as he has revealed himself in the person of Jesus and his cross - and then to live in such a way with our children that we help them know this multifaceted God. And, of course, that will involve directing them always to the infallible portrait of God in the Bible... His design is that children grow up watching Christ love the church and watching the church delight in Christ."

If you want to watch a video with a beautiful, heartbreaking, God-glorifying application of the principles in this book, click here. Go ahead and get a box of Kleenex ready. And your sleeve.

I hope you'll read this book and be humbled, encouraged, and instructed as I was.

July Books: Knowing God by J.I. Packer

I could write a book on this book. I don't want to do that. I've never read a book so rich in biblical doctrine and so practically applied. So here's a bullet-point summary of what I learned.

Things I didn't know or had misconceptions about:

• There are places in the Bible where Jesus displays a lack of knowledge, indicating that he drew on his omniscience intermittently - not that his power was reduced, but restrained. I've never seriously pondered this on my own, but reading it made me realize I'd always felt uncomfortable with those texts!
• Packer spends a chapter equating icons and images (including crucifixes and pictures of Christ) with idolatry. I'm not sure that I'm totally tracking on that one, especially with how far he draws his boundaries on it, but it's something to ponder.
• Although all people are made in God's image not everyone is a child of God: only the elect are. I've believed that for a while, but not applied it to the "we're all God's children" ideas so prevalent in pop culture. 
• I know I've opened a big can of Calvinist worms here, which I don't want to debate right here. But to read more about what I believe on this subject check out this site.
• Adoption as sons of God is the highest privilege given to believers. Justification (being made right with God) is just the beginning of God's special grace to us.
• In the context of adoption, The Sermon on the Mount should be read as a family code of conduct like moral instruction from parent to child.

Areas of muddy understanding or forgetfulness:

• The Holy Spirit is Jesus' agent among us. We should focus on His main ministry: giving peace, joy, hope, etc. more than His extraordinary and sporadic ministry: giving gifts like healing or tongues. Also, one of his most important roles is deepening our filial relationship to our Father.
• The four main analogies for knowing God are son/father, wife/husband, subject/king, and sheep/shepherd.
• I learned many details about the persons and relationships of the Trinity.
• I've never enjoyed wisdom literature and all the exhortations to wisdom in the Bible, but the chapters on wisdom put me in my place. Wisdom is seriously important to God!
• Note: I read this right before I  read "Just Do Something," which really put this talk about wisdom to work.
• Being made in the image of God means that we are made to display his communicated attributes (attributes God shares with us, like wisdom). Redemption means that this is possible even after sin.
• Our works provide an index of what's in our hearts - that's why we'll be judged according to them.
• God's wrath simply confirms/executes judgements sinners have already made on themselves through their choices. Another can of worms. I know. : )
• God shows his common grace to all (blessings) and special grace to some (salvation). His generosity is how we experience the rest of his attributes.
• God's threefold purpose: judgement/rule, redemption/choose people, be loved/glorified.
• God's righteous jealousy for us demands that we be zealous for him.
• The authority, affection, fellowship, and honor God gives to Jesus are extended to us in adoption.

I usually prefer to write in actual paragraphs, but in this case it's definitely best that I stuck to bullet points.  

I highly recommend this book. I plan to reread it in the future to remind myself of God's goodness, wisdom, and truth. Thanks for stopping by!

July Books: Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung

I read some fantastic books last month. Fantastic. The kind of books that shift around ideas in your mind so that they'll never go back to where they were before.

Because these books were so great, I wanted to record my thoughts on them so that I can look back at them in case I find myself forgetting. When I read novels I'll probably just write a few paragraphs, but when I read books for spiritual growth I'll probably write much more. Although I know these posts may not be the most fascinating for everyone, I think they'll be really helpful for me. If I can be disciplined in doing it, that is. You might notice that we're already a few weeks into August. Oh well...



Just Do Something - A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will

I love this little book. I wish I'd read it 10 years ago, but it hadn't been written yet.

It's full of tough love - maybe a little tougher than some like. Its purpose is to encourage people to make wise, God-honoring decisions in the many situations where they don't have crystal clear direction from above. DeYoung's intent is not to discourage us from seeking God's will, but the opposite. He teaches that many of the attitudes Christians employ in making decisions demonstrate a lack of faith and ignorance of scripture.

He interprets the following familiar verse, which concludes Jesus' teaching on worry and God's provision, to mean that those who are seeking after the things of God (who know the scriptures, submit to God's authority, and seek to please Him with their lives) will make decisions that honor Him. And "all these things" - non-moral decisions like where to live, whether to go on that mission trip, or what to eat for lunch today, will be added unto them. In other words, God isn't witholding his will and waiting for us to mess up. It is his will that we ask for wisdom and trust Him along the way.

³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33

I think most believers would benefit from reading this book, but especially two types of people: those who fear missing God's will and those who feel like they receive less spiritual guidance than their friends.

The first type of person describes most of the Christians I knew in college. And myself for my freshman year at least. We tried every major, every campus ministry, and every new Christian fad just in case God's will was hiding behind it like a door on a game show. Trying out new ways of living is part of growing up, but after four (or five, six, seven...) years, hopping from one job, church, location, or relationship to another becomes frightening rather than fun. And at some point you realize that a significant portion of life has passed you by while you were trying to find God's supposedly elusive will. Whether it's fear of working in the wrong field, marrying the wrong person, or generally missing God's best for your life, fear of taking the wrong steps can keep us from maturing in many aspects of our lives. I love the following quotes on relationships and church involvement. If only this were required reading for college freshmen...

"Guys, if you like a girl and you're both Christians and your friends and family aren't alarmed and she actually likes you back, you should probably get married." p 106

"My fear is that of all the choices people face today, the one they rarely consider is 'How can I serve most effectively and fruitfully in the local church?' I wonder if the abundance of opportunities to explore today is doing less to help make well-rounded disciples of Christ and more to help Christians to avoid long-term responsibility and have less long-term impact." p 36

Chances are, if you were friends with a lot of the first type of people I described you've at least felt like the second one. In high school and college my friends were always feeling led to do this or that. I often was, too. I can recall times when the Spirit led me to buy a meal for a homeless person or to become better friends with someone I didn't know well. But in the big decisions, like where to go to college, I heard nothing but silence. I remember the guilt I felt when friend after friend talked about how they wanted to go to one college, but felt led to go to another. All I could think was, "I want to go to UGA, so surely that's not God's will." Wrong! I'm so glad God made me to love downtown Athens and Georgia football and the palpable energy of Sanford Avenue on a fall afternoon. And I'm thankful that I didn't swerve from my inclinations. Most of all, I'm thankful that I met a man there that I married without any thunderbolt direction from the Lord. That man isn't tossed about by fads or feelings, but consistently perseveres in his preparations to fulfill a decision He made in high school - to take the gospel of Jesus where it's never been heard. The biggest decisions of our lives have been determined by our own wisdom (sought from the Lord) and confirmed by God's grace along the way.

“We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that's all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.” p 48

 
I could write much more about this book, but instead I'll close out this post with a few more of my favorite quotes from DeYoung:

"We need the firm reminder that many of us expect too much out of life. We’ve assumed that we’ll experience heaven on earth, and then we get disappointed when earth seems so unheavenly... When every experience and situation must be rewarding and put us on the road to complete fulfillment, then suddenly the decisions about where we live, what house we buy, what dorm we live in, and whether we go with tile or laminate take on weighty significance." p 32

 

"God promises to work all things together for our good that we might be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28). And the degree to which this sounds like a lame promise is the degree to which we prefer the stones and scorpions of this world to the true bread from heaven (Matt 7:9-11)…He promises to make us loving, pure, and holy in Christ. In short, God’s will is that you and I get happy and holy in Jesus." p 61

I think you should go read this book! It might be God's will for you. : )

Ten Chapter Challenge

Two weeks ago I mentioned in this post that I was planning to start Grant Horner's ten-chapter-per-day Bible reading plan. When I first heard about the plan I was seriously intimidated. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided it was just what I needed. Lately my attempts at consistent scripture reading have been plagued by these problems: a lack of direction (reading a little here and a little there), getting bogged down in more difficult sections, and looking for deep meaning in just a few verses but coming away scratching my head. This plan has an answer for each of these problems: a structure and prescribed reading amount for each day, a mixture of stories, instruction, and poetry/prophecy each day, and the expectation (already confirmed) that scripture will explain scripture. In other words, the more I read the more I understand, without diagramming each sentence or cross-referencing all kinds of verses I can't remember. The cross-referencing happens on its own.

I'm happy to say that by God's grace I just completed Day 15 of the plan. I've read 150 chapters of the Bible in the past two weeks!! That's ridiculous! And I absolutely love it! Reading on my phone (I highly recommend the ESV Bible App) means that I can read a little when I wake up, a little while I eat breakfast, a little in a work break, a little after dinner, and a little before bed. Or all together. I was skeptical that quick reading (not trying to absorb every detail) would allow me to finish in 45 minutes, but I think it usually takes me less than that.

I absolutely love how much of God's word I've been exposed to in this time. And I think the thing that really pushes me forward is seeing how much ground I've covered so quickly. So here's a look at what I've read in just a short time.

Matthew
Jesus is born, baptized, tempted, calls disciples, gives the Sermon on the Mount, heals a LOT of people, calms a storm, sends out the apostles, teaches in parables, feeds a LOT of people, walks on water.

Genesis
God creates the world, Adam and Eve sin, Cain kills Abel, Noah builds an ark, God sends the flood, God disperses the peoples from the Tower of Babel, God calls Abram, God gives Abram land, God makes a covenant with Abram.

Romans
God's wrath against sin is righteous. We are justified by faith. We are free from sin and slaves to righteousness. The law reveals sin, and sin takes advantage of the law. We live according to the Spirit, not the flesh. We are sons of God. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. God shows wrath to some and mercy to others. Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. God will save the remnant of Israel and the Gentiles who are grafted in to his kingdom. We are to live sacrificially through love, service, rejoicing, prayer, humility, and peace. We should submit to earthly authorities. We shouldn't judge each other or cause each other to stumble.

1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy
God has not called us for impurity, but holiness. Jesus will return and take the saints with him. No one knows when Jesus will come back. Avoid idleness. Avoid false teachers. Christ came to save sinners. Prayer pleases God. Elders and deacons must meet requirements. The church is responsible to care for widows.

Job
Job is righteous and God allows Satan to take all he has to test him. Job suffers greatly, but does not curse God even though his friends think he has sinned to earn his hardships.

Psalms
God establishes/protects/hears the righteous and punishes/judges the wicked. God will send his Son. God's love is steadfast. Those who trust/fear God rejoice/give thanks. God's creation shows us his majesty. God does great things for us. God takes care of the poor.

Proverbs
Wisdom is one of God's greatest gifts. The way of sin leads to destruction. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Honor God with the firstfruits of your labor. Love reproof - it's good for you. Do not withhold good when it's in your power to give. Adultery leads to death. Be responsible with your money and work hard for it. God hates a liar. Righteousness is a better reward than riches. A wife can bring glory or shame to her husband. Words are powerful. Good parents are diligent in discipline. Blessed is he who gives to the poor. God sees everything and everyone. Seeking good advice leads to success.

Joshua
God leads Joshua to the promised land. Rahab hides the spies of Israel. God allows the nation of Israel to cross the Jordan on foot. Israel worships God, circumcises the new generation, and observes passover. Israel defeats Jericho, Ai, the Gibeonites, the Amorites, and lots of other people in Canaan. Land is distributed as inheritances for the tribes of Israel.


Isaiah
God will judge the wickedness of his people and destroy the earth. God will blot out their sins. God is weary of our religious rituals. God will humble his people. The remnant of Israel will be glorified. Isaiah has a vision of the Lord and he purifies his mouth and takes away his guilt. The son of God will be descended from David and will be called Immanuel, Wonderful Counselor, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. God will destroy Babylon.

Acts
Jesus commissions the apostles and ascends into heaven. Matthias replaces Judas. The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost. The members of the church take care of each other in every way. Peter and John preach and heal people and are arrested, but released after giving witness. Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead after being dishonest about offerings to the church. Stephen is arrested, gives witness, and is stoned. Simon the magician tries to gain the power of the Holy Spirit for monetary gain, but is converted. Philip converts an Ethiopian eunuch. Saul, who persecuted the church, encounters Jesus and is converted to Paul, the missionary. God shows to Peter in a dream that no people or things are unclean. Peter preaches to the Gentiles and they receive the Holy Spirit. James is killed. Peter is imprisoned and later rescued by an angel. Barnabus and Saul go to Cyprus, Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.


It's been a good two weeks, wouldn't you say?! Try it for yourself!

2011 Books in Review

One of my goals when I started this blog was to keep track of my progress in reading books and record my thoughts about them. I even made a tab just for books, but as you can tell it hasn't seen much use. That's okay though, because I've spent some of the time that I would have been blogging reading instead (but mostly on facebook and pinterest).

So, instead of going book-by-book, I've decided to post a reading summary from the whole year, brief reviews of my top three favorites, and set some goals for next year's reading.

2011 Books
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
The Mysterious Incident at Styles - Agatha Christie
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Financial Peace University - Dave Ramsey
Guide to Georgia Vegetable Gardening - Walter Reeves
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
Chosen by God - R.C. Sproul
Same Kind of Different As Me - Ron Hall, Denver Moore
Ministering Cross-Culturally - Sherwood G. Lingenfelter
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
The Tears of the Giraffe - Alexander McCall Smith
A Praying Life - Paul Miller
Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches - Russell Moore
Hudson Taylor - J. Hudson Taylor
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen

Some of these books I loved and others I didn't, but here are my thoughts on the top three books of 2011.

1. Chosen By God - R.C. Sproul
Written 25 years ago, this treatise on the doctrine of predestination has become a contemporary classic. I would highly recommend this book, not just to those who consider themselves Calvinists or reformed, but especially to those (like me, before I read this book) who have always thought of predestination as murky theological waters. It's not a big book, but it's dense, and it took me a few attempts to finish. This book, in combination with sermons from our church and others I've listened to online, has given me a much better understanding of the mysterious balance between the sovereign authority of God and his boundless grace.

2. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
I was one of the millions of people this year who read and loved this book. Set in Jackson, Mississippi at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, this inspirational story examines the lives of black maids and the women they work for. This book was unexpectedly funny, lighthearted, and powerful. The characters were absolutely delightful and the Southern idioms were perfectly authentic. It's been a long time since I've allowed myself to become so consumed by a story, and like all wonderful books I was sad to put it down. If you've only watched the movie, which was wonderful, but lacked the richness of the book, do yourself a favor and read The Help.

3. Adopted for Life - Russell Moore
Michael got a free download of the audio version of this book from www.ChristianAudio.com (check out their 50% off sale on audio Bibles here) and once we started it I wanted to keep driving until we'd heard it all. I plan on purchasing a hard copy and going back to it over and over again. This book serves to remind the church that the gospel of Jesus is really about adoption: becoming the sons and daughters of God. Inasmuch as God has loved us and given us the rights of children without any prior claim to these blessings, so we as the church are to love orphans. Much like the relationship of Jesus and the church is mirrored in marriage, so the sovereign grace of God to sinners is mirrored in the relationship of adoption. Moore, who has adopted two children from Russia, addresses both the "why" and "how" of adoption without getting mired in details that don't apply to those of us who aren't parents in the process of adoption. This book confirmed our desire to adopt at least one child in the future, made us really excited about being parents someday, and moved us to marvel at the riches of God's grace in adopting us as his wayward children.

My Plan for 2012
One thing I found helpful this year was to keep a note on my phone with a list of books I'd read and ones that I wanted to read. Any time I got bogged down in one book I encouraged myself to press on so that I'd be able to move another title from the "To Read" list to the "Already Read List." So, here are some books leftover from my phone list from 2011.

2012 Reading List
Money, Possessions, and Eternity - Randy Alcorn
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
2020 Vision - Bill and Amy Stearns
The Girl w the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
Knowing God - J.I. Packer 
In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
The Master Plan of Evangelism - Robert E. Coleman
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Sacred Marriage - Gary Thomas
Sookie Stackhouse series - Charlaine Harris
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera

I've had a recent exciting development when it comes to reading. In addition to the iBooks app that allows me to read classic public domain novels for free, my new Audiobooks app (the $1.99 version, not the free one) lets me listen to the same books on my phone. Of course, listening to these books makes a long drive fly by and helps me plow through books I might otherwise not finish. But my new favorite thing to do is to turn on an audiobook while I'm doing housework. It's always a struggle for me to put away laundry (clean or dirty) in the bedroom and to iron my clothes for work. But fortunately these tasks are quiet enough that I can focus on the book while I'm cleaning and the work is over in just a few chapters. So here's a list of public domain books I'm hoping to read and/or listen to over the next year.

Public Domain
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie
Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie
Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

2012 Scripture Reading
In addition to these books, I'm excited to have a plan for scripture reading this year. Michael recently found this post from Tim Challies about a 10-Chapter-Per-Day reading plan. This sounded like insanity to me, since I haven't been consistent in scripture reading since we got married. But after thinking about it, I think it's going to work well. The idea is to read a large quantity of the Bible quickly rather than steeping slowly in a short passage. Instead of reading 10 consecutive chapters (which inevitably means getting bogged down), you read a chapter from each daily: the gospels, the Pentateuch, the New Testament letters (two daily), the Old Testament wisdom literature, the Psalms, the Proverbs, Acts, and the Old Testament History and Prophetic books. The quick pace of this plan means that by the end of the year I will have read through each of these sections multiple times. It also means that if I get behind I still will have covered enough ground to maintain my progress. Check out this link to download the reading plan and handy bookmarks to keep you in the right places.

So, what do you think? Are there any books you would add to my list?

The Book Nook: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

The very observant among you may have noticed that I've had a tab called "The Book Nook" up for about a month now. One of my original intentions in starting a blog was to review books that I read as a way to keep track of my progress and to organize my thoughts about them. While I've read several books since the beginning of the year, I decided to pick up with the last book I finished. But to catch you up, so far I've read: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen,  The Mysterious Incident at Styles - Agatha Christie, How to Cheat at Gardening and Yardwork - Jeff Bredenberg, Guide to Georgia Vegetable Gardening - Walter Reeves, Financial Peace University - Dave Ramsey (a course rather than just a book, but I'll count it), Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon. Not quite as far as I'd like to be, especially in the spiritual growth department, but I'm working on that.

I have a bad habit of judging a book by it's title. This goes for other things as well. I actually have to keep myself from looking at the names of nail polish colors so that I don't end up with hideous "Perfect Peony" instead of much more flattering "Just Plain Pink." So, while the cover of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime caught my eye a long time ago, the strange, intentionally complicated title put me off. Until one of the unit secretaries at work told me about it as she was reading it for school. She didn't love it, but her description was sufficient to explain the title and pique my interest.

The book is about Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old British boy with autism (likely Asperger's syndrome). He is brilliant at math, he is logical to a fault, he has difficulty trusting others, and he has lost his mother. The book is a quick read - entertaining, heart-felt, and intelligent. The story is told by Christopher, and in addition to chronicling the greatest adventure of his young life, it demonstrates how he looks at the world - how he solves complicated problems for fun, how emotions confuse him in a world governed by science, how being extremely observant causes him oppressive anxiety, and how things (and people) outside of his control make him feel very unsafe.

I won't give a synopsis of the plot, mostly because Christopher's thoughts and behavior are the real subject of the story. I will say that Christopher's traits seemed a little stereotypical to me at first. Some of his behaviors, especially his "Rain Man"-like number tricks and outbursts when being touched have been portrayed in other media plenty of times. But Haddon, who worked with autistic children for several years, included some delightful nuances that make Christopher a real character. For example, Christopher explains why jokes aren't funny, why metaphors are really lies, and why humans aren't more special than dogs or rats. We also learn that just like the rest of us, Christopher has a few traits that are incongruous with the rest of his character, like his illogical aversion to all things yellow and brown.

Unlike most stories, the resolution of this book is not tied up in the progress of the characters' relationships because Christopher's understanding of these relationships is very different than ours. Instead, it ends with Christopher secure in his accomplishments: finding his mother, excelling at his A-level math exam, and solving the mystery of a poodle's murder. A gushing, emotional ending wouldn't be appropriate for Christopher's story, but we do share his satisfaction that the courage that enabled him to accomplish these things will be very important for his future.

The bottom line: I would recommend this book. It's a great read for vacation or any other time that you can knock it out in a few days. The quick pace of the story lends itself to being read in a few sittings, rather than tediously spreading it out. There is some rough language (not a ton, but enough) that may not be appropriate for kids.