There are two books that are taking up considerable mind-space for me right now: Bob Goudswaard et. al.'s Hope in Troubled Times and Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change. McLaren has high praise for Hope In ... calling it a must read. Apparently someone in Calgary had the brilliant insight to get the two of them together in one room a few weeks ago for an inspiring evening, according to my sister-in-law. Both books are prophetic in what they call us to. They are showing us the cracks in the empire and as much as that may frighten us it should also encourage us who live with hope. It does raise lots of questions, like Francis Schaeffer's How then should we live? Trust a great poet to shed some light, Ranier Maria Rilke from his Letters to a Young Poet: "I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Isn't that the way it is in life. We have these big questions and over time they lead to a new, and hopefully more faithful, way of living.
No comments:
Post a Comment