In the meantime

Click on image for link The sub-title says it all: The Greater Journey focuses on Americans in Paris from 1830 to 1900 and how Paris influenced them and how they, in turn, left their mark on Paris. McCullough uses a chronological timeline to organize his book, however, he does not give equal weight to all individuals. For example, individuals like Samuel Morse, George Healy, Elihu Washbourne, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens have large sections dedicated to unpacking the time they spent in Paris, as well as their overall character as a person. For others, McCullough gives much less space: some are given a few pages, others only a paragraph or two, and still others are given barely more than a brief mention. Despite the primary focus being on Americans, McCullough skillfully weaves significant events in Parisian history into the story-line: there was the cholera outbreak in the early 1830s, the rise of the Second Republic in 1852 with Napoleon III as Emperor, and then the Franco-Prussian...

Click on image for link W hat is a Healthy Church Member  by Thabiti Anyabwile is the second book about church membership that I've read recently. The first book is  I am a Church Member  by Thom Rainer, and I wrote about it here .   Similar to  I am a Church Member , Anyabwile also outlines some specific attitudes and habits a healthy church member should strive to cultivate. Several of these attitudes overlap with and expand on the ones mentioned in I am a Church Member .   This entire book is solidly Biblical in how it argues from Scripture why church membership is important. After I finished reading it, I couldn't help but feel like I had just had a spiritual battery recharge concerning my understanding of my role within the local church and why I should want to serve and be involved with the other believers who attend the same local church. Combine this book with  I am a Church Member  and you have two outstanding books...

Photo by  Anaya Katlego  on  Unsplash  In The Hacking of the American Mind, Robert H. Lustig describes Christians believing that "happiness will occur there and later as opposed to here and now. Life is unpleasant, but if you live it as an upstanding Christian, heaven awaits. Pleasure was the devil on earth, and pain in the form of humility and service was the path to a happy afterlife, a gift from God" (page 20, emphasis mine). This brief (and somewhat misrepresented) description of Christianity reveals several things about the world's perspective of Christianity. First, it reveals just how foolish Christianity looks to the world. Reading this description from an earthly-minded perspective causes one to turn away from it with one simple thought: What fool would choose to believe and live out such utter nonsense?   However, even as a warped representation of Christianity, Lustig's description validates what Scripture reveals about the world's ...

Six years ago, we stood before our family and friends and pledged our love to each other. We became Mr and Mrs Isaac Stanley and had that first awkward kiss before a watching audience. It has been 2,190 days since I became  Mrs Stanley,  and I'm still not used to that name.   Wedding Day - June 2013 That sunny June day, almost four years after we first met, we thought we knew each other. But oh, how little we really knew! I mean, I knew he loved to read, but just how much, I really had no clue!   We thought we loved each other, but that love had been untested, untried. Sure, we had to work through some things before we were married, but that day when we pledged our love to each other, our love was really only in its infant stages. It was definitely still in the fuzzy-feeling stage. It was still in that stage where our hearts would beat faster at hearing each other's voice on the other end of the phone or while reading a love note that had been sent ...

In case you haven't figured it out already from all the book reviews I been posting lately, I've been doing a bit of reading these days! This year, I decided to do Tim Challies' 2019 Reading Challenge. I originally set out to read a total of twenty-six books this year. However, I think I am on track to actually complete the first three levels of reading--Light, Avid, and Committed (a total of fifty-two books.) So for something fun and different, here's a list of the first twenty books I've read this year, as well a brief statement about it and a 1-5 star rating  to help you know which ones are actually worth reading! (And yes, I had to add a "5+ Star" rating...just because!) Rating 5+ Stars - Incredibly encouraging & edifying; absolutely loved it! 5 Stars - Fantastic and edifying read! 4 Stars - A great read!  3 Stars - An okay book overall. 2 Stars - Left much to be desired.  1 Stars - Don't waste your time reading it.  The ...

God's Glory Alone: The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life , by David Vandrunen (Zondervan, 2015).  Published around the 500-year anniversary mark of Martin Luther's famous nailing of his 95 Theses , this book is a part of "The 5 Solas Series" that covers the five solas of the Reformation: God's Word Alone, Christ Alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone, and God's Glory Alone. I cannot begin to express what a blessing it was to read God's Glory Alone . I really did not know what to anticipate from this book, except that it would probably be a bit more theologically in-depth than many of the books I tend to read. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, while it was indeed a theologically-rich book, it was also easily understandable for me, a lay-person, if I simply took the time to read it slowly and carefully.  Soli Deo gloria is a familiar phrase to many of us; we are also familiar with what is often called "the doxologica...

Yes, you read that right: Tom Sawyer has had a definite impact on my life.  Let me explain. Before I went to college, I read alot. It was primarily fiction, and romance fiction at that. Nonetheless, I was reading. However, when I got to college and had to read hundreds and hundreds of pages for homework, by the time I graduated, I had lost the joy of reading simply for the sake of reading.  Years passed, and I can probably count on my fingers how many books I read between 2012 and 2018. Any reading I did during those years was only the result of much diligence and intentionality, for even romance fiction, with all of its allure, had lost its appeal. I simply could not get back into reading.  Until I met Tom Sawyer through the masterful pen of Mark Twain. Last summer, my husband picked up The Adventures of  Tom Sawyer and would read it to himself each night before going to sleep; he would then frequently burst out laughing at Tom's ridiculou...