Wow, it’s that time again.

Right now I have a nice stack:

Les Miserables for the March Classics Bookclub at 5M4B.

Christianity in Crisis: 21st Century for the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers

honey, i don’t have a headache tonight by Sheila Wray Gregoire

Not Knowing Where by Oswald Chambers, a loaner from a friend.

Your God is Too Small by J. B. Phillips picked up from our Sunday School shelves.

And I am finishing up the audio book Not For Sale, which was the Feb freebie at christianaudio.com

That means I will probably have a new audiobook when March rolls around.

Progress from last month.

I finished The Seven Storey Mountain and the Oswald Chambers biography (January’s free audio book). I also read The Great Eight by Scott Hamilton for the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers and Deeper Water for my church book club in March.

This is our March book club choice: Deeper Water (Tides of Truth Series, Book 1). I have never read anything by Robert Whitlow so I was wondering what I would find. Then I start it and find out the main character is a young woman in law school who was homeschooled by her mother until high school. And she was raised in a very conservative religious environment with a faith that is very real and very practical. Turns out the story is good, too!

The setting is Georgia. First the western part where Tammy Lynn’s family lives. Then Savannah where she gets a job as a summer clerk. The law story was interesting, and the law firm environment was well portrayed, even the other summer clerks. There are differences, but it isn’t one Christian girl among an entire cast of heathens. There are differing levels of faith, different types of faith, and folks with enough money to think they don’t need faith.

The story is told from Tammy’s perspective. We learn a lot about her and we see the other characters developed through her eyes. This means we don’t always know what their motives are, but even then I came to a few different conclusions from Tammy when deciding who to trust and how sincere some people were.

There is more room for growth and development in this series. I have not read much Christian fiction outside of Francine Rivers, but I have heard some common concerns with the lack of plot or believable characters. I found this a very believable book, watching a woman who is growing in her faith and learning to stand on her own with a firm foundation laid by her parents, and a family turning to God for the strength and wisdom to let her grow.

I finally finished The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. Here are some thoughts on the book.

I’m not a Catholic so it was interesting to see his perspective on Mary and purgatory. What I enjoyed was that his faith was so real and his worldview as a result of that. And that also made it convicting because he points out where he settled for just a “nice” life and then when he was disturbed enough to move deeper in and higher up.

Here is an example: “I made the terrible mistake of entering upon the Christian life as if it were merely the natural life invested with a kind of supernatural mode by grace.” All he has to do is live as he did before while avoiding mortal sin. This is so true and I still struggle with this.

My initial reaction was that I would rather read more of his contemplative work and not have spent 400+ pages going through his life. But since I finished reading it, I have found that it was the story of his life that has been coming back to my thoughts. His last days with his brother during a visit to the monastery, his struggles to come to grips with the faith that was pursuing him, his change from wanting the easiest order so he would know he could “make it” to wanting to give it all to God and walk into a very difficult order as a monk. Perhaps it was best to see it all in the scope of his story told by him.

I loved the introduction where they explain that this is not a deeply researched biography, it is an autobiography so of course the author skips some things and isn’t always exactly right with the order of events. That is exactly how my autobiography would come out, so I could relate. This is what he remembered as the important points and events.

Here is another quote that hit home:

I did not have the humility to care nothing about what people thought or said. I was afraid of their remarks, even kind ones, even approving ones. Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

This quote from the first chapter grabbed me and kept me wanting more from the book. Then he talks about not wanting his little brother hanging around, even though John Paul just loved Tom and wanted to be with him.

“And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.” p26