Not her books. I used to read her blog faithfully, but now prefer people a bit more “found” and settled–builders, if you like. Ann Voskamp, Sarah Bessey, Shauna Niequist and Donald Miller are some of my favourite Christian bloggers.

“But the Creator speaks and, without effort, order is restored. A deeper, more secure Order, where the jangling emotional DNA stops resonating, just long enough for the Small Voice to be heard.”

How lovely. This happens for me, in prayer. 2 months ago, we returned from a holiday in Paris and the Loire Valley to find our car stolen, and the house ransacked–TV, laptops, iPods, Wii etc stolen. The worst was the mess (aggravated by the fact that we weren’t adequately insured, details overlooked!)

I was shattered for about a week, just at the thought of restoring my ravaged house, then got up early one morning to pray, and sort of sensed the winds of the spirit blow through the house, restoring things in a deeper sense. I thought of Holy Saturday, oddly, when everything seemed lost, a failure, futile, wrapped in all-encompassing sadness–and yet, the power of God was going to bring about something more wondrous than they could ever have imagined. Nothing is as it seems.

My own life has sloughs and troughs–I am in one now ever since I returned from Cambodia 3 weeks ago. Low energy, waiting for direction, waiting to see what God may do, or lead me to do. And these in-the-womb slumps are always the precursor of new birth and new life and new energy if I seek Him in them.

Thanks for sharing it: that article is very interesting. In fact it could spark a whole debate! Have you read anything by Rachel Held Evans? (e.g. A Year of Biblical Womanhood’?)

Hi Kathy,
When I was doing my MA in Creative Writing, a professor said, the dishes can wait, the poetry can’t. Which was true, in a way. When I became really serious about pursuing Christ, in late 1996, I used to say something like that to myself, “The dishes can wait, but I will not make the invisible lover of my soul wait.” It led, of course, to dreadful housekeeping in the short run, but I think putting Jesus first saved my sanity and happiness in many, many ways.
I used to study scripture seriously, every day, for years and years. Now, as a Christian blogger, my challenge is not to allow writing about Scripture to take the place of “eating” it–reading and meditating on it!!

Hi Mari, the sentence was taken from this New York Times profile of Priscilla Shirer
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14evangelicals-t.html?pagewanted=all

Quite honestly, any Christian who can seriously write in a book, or publish a book containing that sentence equating a failed diet with ‘not being completely submitted to the Lord’ is on the wrong road. Excuse me, but how does this relate to what the Gospel is about, and what our relation to the Lord is about? Really about? Can we point to Scripture and find such thoughts? That book needs to be ignored! And maybe ‘submission’ to Christ isn’t the only, or the main, response He wants? (Yes, maybe that sounds like ‘having a go’ at the writer of the book, but I find it a bit shocking, though of course, I mayn’t have done if I read it in context… It’s true that God is interested in all the details of our lives, but it is also surely true that His attitude is not going to be ‘submit to me! Totally! Submit!’

“joy in the journey,” indeed. I think it’s going to come down to fixing my eyes on Jesus!

Thanks for visiting, Mari, and have a happy Easter too. I am looking forward to it!