December 11, 2007
Ole Hallesby: Prayer
“All suffering which is laid upon us should work together for our good. So also faith-suffering. It is not as dangerous as we feel that it is. It is not harmful to faith nor to prayer. It does serve to render us helpless. And, as we have seen above, helplessness is, psychologically, the sustaining and impelling power of prayer. Nothing so furthers our prayer life as the feeling of our own helplessness.”
…
“I need not exert myself and try to force myself to believe, or try to chase doubt out of my heart. Both are equally useless. It begins to dawn on me that I can bring everything to Jesus, no matter how difficult it is; and I need not be frightened away by my doubts or my weak faith, but only tell Jesus how weak my faith is. I have let Jesus into my heart. And He will fulfill my heart’s desire.”
January 26, 2007
Book Blurb – George MacDonald
Several years ago, my dear friend B introduced me to George MacDonald’s fiction. MacDonald lived and wrote in the 1800s and his writings influenced many other Christian authors, including C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeline L’Engle. He even appears as a character in Lewis’s The Great Divorce.
Reading MacDonald always awakens in me this joy in God’s presence, a hunger and thirst for the sort of peaceful God-love that many of his characters possess or achieve. MacDonald makes you feel that Christianity is not nearly as complex as it might seem at times and reminds you that a simple, pure love for Christ is what Christianity is all about. Everything else flows from that. In The Curate’s Awakening, Wingfold at one point realizes that he has never once in his entire life done something just because God wanted him to do so. It seems to me on reflecting on that passage that the closer one grows to God, the more one will automatically do the things that God desires without thought or struggle. The challenge is hearing and understanding the still small voice.
MacDonald has a passion for exploring characters who are in the process of seeking after God. In the midst of doubts and fears, they hunger for the welcoming God of their deepest hopes and imaginings. I love the way he presents a life of loving God not as one of certainty and decisiveness, necessarily, but one where questions may exist alongside abiding love for God.
Haven’t read MacDonald? I recommend starting with The Curate’s Awakening or The Shepherd’s Castle. The editions edited by Michael Phillips are particularly good, but the originals are readable, too, if you’re willing to slog through dialog filled with thick Scots accents. Original texts of many of MacDonald’s works can be had in electronic format from www.gutenberg.org.
