C.S. Lewis on Love

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."


~C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves


I read this book this summer... it was so good, I wanted to just memorize everything in it. It is definitely one I will go back to and read again. C.S. Lewis has such a gift of explaining complicated things in a surprisingly uncomplicated way.

Beauty

Our pastor preached a sermon on "Beauty in the Bible" on Sunday, which was excellent, and got me thinking about all kinds of stuff. I encourage you to listen to this sermon. 

Download or just listen here.

I have read and heard many thoughts on beauty, but this sermon was just so clear and spot-on. Yesterday I also listened to a sermon by John Piper on why God delights in His creation, which really applied to a lot of what I have been thinking about. 

Let me know your thoughts if you listen to the sermon. 

There will be another post (probably several) on this subject, as my thoughts on the whole thing coagulate. :-)

His Rules

This was also on my "20 Books This Summer" list, and I read it a couple weeks ago.

It was different than I was expecting... it wasn't about courtship, really, but more about preparing for marriage--and not in the learn-how-to-sew-and-make bread kind of preparing. 

It is written to both young men and young women, which seems like it would be hard, but they do a really good job...partly because it is written by a guy and a girl.

They had a lot of good things to say about the fact that your relationship with God is the most important thing in preparation for marriage. If Jesus isn't your all-in-all, then you'll try to make your spouse that, which is a recipe for disaster.

I highly recommend the book!

Mark Driscoll on Tolerance

{image source}

A dead thing can go with the stream, 

but only a living thing can go 

against it.

~ G.K. Chesterton

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years ~ Donald Miller

I loved this book. Not only was it a good wakeup call, but it talks about several things that I have been specifically thinking a lot about lately. 

Donald Miller has written several books--his most popular being Blue Like Jazz. I read it a couple weeks ago, after my sister read it and loved it. (Read her review here.) I liked it, but there were definitely things I disagreed with, and although the overall topics were good, they weren't as impacting to me. Mama read it after I did, and she loved it, so she ordered some more of Donald Miller's books, which included this one.

His writing his amazing. I know several people who aren't fans of his rather odd style, but I love it. He says things in very unusual and beautiful ways. I just want to memorize the whole book! :-) Although he has very different theological views, I think almost everything he said in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years was dead-on. It does have some content, so it is recommended for older readers. (Maybe 14+).

The gist of the book is this: Each of our lives is a story, and we should make the best story we can out of it. It really tied into what I have been thinking about lately, deliberate living. Consciously thinking about what we are doing, where we are headed, how we are impacting the world by what we do every day.

I get so excited just thinking about the book. I want to read it all over again!

Here's a quote from the book--

"Once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to the meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable tread of wasted time."

I highly recommend the book--it is entertaining, convicting, and just plain amazing.

Have you read it? What did you think?

I Corinthians 13

Memorizing this was on my summer goals, and I finished it! I'm also almost half-way through my list of 20 books.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, 

but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, 

and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, 

but have not love, 
I gain nothing. 

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrong-doing, but rejoices with the truth. 

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. 

As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease;

 as for knowledge, it will pass away. 

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 

but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, 
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. 

When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. 

Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; 

but the greatest of these is love.