(click on it to enlarge.)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

“Ultimately, we do what we love to do…Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me…Tony says that when people who follow Jesus love the right things, they help create God’s kingdom on earth, and that is something beautiful” (77).

And Tony does make the world sound so beautiful, when he puts it like that.  But it’s so hard to love the right things, even when we say we have God in our lives.
(And how do we even discern between loving the right things and the wrong things? Are there even such categories as things we should love and things we shouldn’t?  I might have taken this part the wrong way…I don’t know, I thought we were taught to love all things but here he talks about loving the “right things”…Heh maybe I’ll bring it up at the meeting.

“I found myself trying to love the right things without God’s help, and it was impossible…I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness.  Then I would get up and try again.  The cycle was dehumanizing.”

We are stuck in this endless cycle of
one. going to retreat/mission trip/etc. and having a personal spiritual high
two. coming home and swearing to do everything right and like Jesus and such
three. going through a couple weeks, months, maybe even days, of trying out this new Godly character
four. eventually giving up & giving in to daily imperfections
five. and then back to boring old life, lalala

Spiritual highs are powerful but they never seem to last long enough…It takes a lot of effort to change.

BLJ is a lot different from The Shack in that it tends to leave many concepts open-ended.  Papa, Sarayu, and Jesus met with Mack in each chapter and walked him through religious ideas and taught him what was right and what was wrong.  Instead, Donald Miller takes various ideas he picked up from his friends (he has a lot of interesting friends…) and puts them all down in this book, and he talks about his personal encounter with each thing and dissects it and talks about his feelings about it, but he never ties everything together.  There’s no specific objective or theme for learning in this book, it’s just random thoughts he decided to throw together, just like the subtitle: “Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”.
Both books are completely different, yet I feel like I have still learned a lot and enjoyed both.  It’s interesting how Christianity Christian spirituality can be shared in so many different ways.

Whew…this looks long…I hope people read this.  hahaha if you read this all the way, I will give you a cookie…at the next meeting.  yes.

love, sarah yang

BTW– if anyone’s interested in being a guest writer and help out with updating this thing, let us know!  :D

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