From the archives: Serious Times (book review)

First posted September 2011

"God calls us to live large on the very stage we find ourselves.  God has placed us in this very situation to infuse it with meaning and significance.  This enables us to live for Christ now rather than waiting for a set of circumstances we imagine will allow us to serve him in the future.  This simple but profound attitude has marked many of the great lives...."

The best book I've read lately...really the best...is Serious Times: Making Your Life Matter in an Urgent Day, by James Emery White, published in 2004.

I'm not sure if I'd ever read anything by Dr. White before.  I didn't go looking for him.  The book turned up in a pile of "religious non-fiction" I was pricing at the thrift store.  I liked the look of it and decided to buy it myself.

The Amazon reviews are pretty right on.  To say it's an entertaining book (as someone there said) might sound like you were doing it an injustice (I mean, the title is Serious Times); but it is written in an engaging and readable style.  Good thought stuff, good faith stuff, good life stuff.  I especially liked the chapter on "Developing Our Minds."  Here's a quote from that chapter:

"Beyond engaging various fields of thought, it is critical to be able to think about our faith in relation to its significance.  In dialogue with the world, the deepest question regarding the Christian faith is 'So what?'  This simple question gets to the heart of not only thinking Christianly but communicating Christianity itself....The Christian mind must understand the significance [of the resurrection] in order to offer it to the world.  If we cannot, we will have lost our place in the most critical of conversations--indeed, the only conversation that matters."

This one is a keeper.  I'd like to figure out a way to use it for an adult Sunday School class.  It would also be a great addition to a highschool worldview course.

One more quote:

"By nature we tend to adapt, to conform, to our surroundings.  There are only two forces shaping us: one is the world and the other is the will of God.  If we are to avoid becoming in the surrounding culture, we must take a stand.  That stand comes through the renewing of our minds....Taken into prayer, ideas become real, life-changing, dynamic.  Then, and only then, they change my life."

The last Wednesday Hodgepodge, and Mama Squirrel's summer reading list

I have not Wednesday-Hodgepodged for awhile, but I'm glad I didn't miss this one: it's the last-ever Hodgepodge. (First time we participated: July 2015.)

1. What has been the highlight of your summer so far? (It's still summer, people!)

That would be the trip to the U.S. in July, which was a sort of working holiday, retreat and reunion all at once. Some of our family also had a nice one-day holiday on Lake Huron.

2. What do you wish you'd done more of this summer? Less of?

Eaten more peaches: the ones we had were amazing.

I spent half the summer finishing a spring-term online course, and then a couple more weeks working on a writing project. So I could say I wish I'd done less work, but I really don't wish that, because Things Got Done.

 3. Something you're looking forward to on your September calendar?

My fall term online course, Designing Curriculum for Adult Learners, starts today. (So I'm procrastinating by answering the Hodgepodge.)

 4. Best/favorite book you've read this summer?

In June, I finished two education textbooks, a book of Denise Levertov's poetry, and the business book Scrum, which I'm still pondering.

Here are my four favourite books from July, August, and the first few days in September (because it's still summer):

Ulin, David
The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time

Walsh, Peter
Let It Go (about decluttering)

White, James Emery
A Mind for God

Willis, Connie
To Say Nothing of the Dog

 6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Our family has now been online for twenty years. Definitely a life-changing decision, to dial up that first connection. Our two youngest cannot remember life any other way. It's been good, bad, strange, useful, productive, time-wasting, annoying, and amazing by turns. Right now it means that I have to go and work on my online class.


Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

Quote for the Day: Don't turn off your brain

"There is even a sense that an undeveloped mind is more virtuous than one prepared for battle...for many Christians, humble ignorance is a far more noble human quality than a cultivated mind...[but] deep within the worldview of the biblical authors and equally within the minds of the earliest church fathers was the understanding that to be fully human is to think." ~~ James Emery White, A Mind for God

Favourite recent read: Serious Times, serious ideas

"God calls us to live large on the very stage we find ourselves.  God has placed us in this very situation to infuse it with meaning and significance.  This enables us to live for Christ now rather than waiting for a set of circumstances we imagine will allow us to serve him in the future.  This simple but profound attitude has marked many of the great lives...."

The best book I've read lately...really the best...is Serious Times: Making Your Life Matter in an Urgent Day, by James Emery White, published in 2004. 

I'm not sure if I'd ever read anything by Dr. White before.  I didn't go looking for him.  The book turned up in a pile of "religious non-fiction" I was pricing at the thrift store.  I liked the look of it and decided to buy it myself.

The Amazon reviews are pretty right on.  To say it's an entertaining book (as someone there said) might sound like you were doing it an injustice (I mean, the title is Serious Times); but it is written in an engaging and readable style.  Good thought stuff, good faith stuff, good life stuff.  I especially liked the chapter on "Developing Our Minds."  Here's a quote from that chapter:

"Beyond engaging various fields of thought, it is critical to be able to think about our faith in relation to its significance.  In dialogue with the world, the deepest question regarding the Christian faith is 'So what?'  This simple question gets to the heart of not only thinking Christianly but communicating Christianity itself....The Christian mind must understand the significance [of the resurrection] in order to offer it to the world.  If we cannot, we will have lost our place in the most critical of conversations--indeed, the only conversation that matters."

This one is a keeper.  I'd like to figure out a way to use it for an adult Sunday School class.  It would also be a great addition to a highschool worldview course.

One more quote:

"By nature we tend to adapt, to conform, to our surroundings.  There are only two forces shaping us: one is the world and the other is the will of God.  If we are to avoid becoming in the surrounding culture, we must take a stand.  That stand comes through the renewing of our minds....Taken into prayer, ideas become real, life-changing, dynamic.  Then, and only then, they change my life."