What I Read Last Year {and a challenge}

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I almost didn’t write this post. It’s one of my favorites every year, in which I list all the books I read the previous year. But last year I outdid myself—I read over 70 books (more like 700 if you count all the picture books)—and I was afraid I would sound boastful...

A Sketch

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A SKETCH      The little hedge-row birds, That peck along the road, regard him not. He travels on, and in his face, his step, His gait, is one expression; every limb, His look and bending figure, all bespeak A man who does not move with pain, but moves With thought....

Autumn

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AUTUMN Today the peace of autumn pervades the world. In the radiant noon, silent and motionless, the wide stillness rests like a tired bird spreading over the deserted fields to all horizons its wings of golden green. Today the thin thread of the river flows without...

A Case for Old Books

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I love old books. As in, give me a choice between a new book and an old book, and nine times out of ten, I’ll choose the old one. C.S. Lewis once wrote a defense of old books and said that one out of two books you read should be written in an earlier era; or, if that...

The Stories Are True

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It happens every once in awhile, and always it is unexpected. Once, it happened in my kitchen while I was washing a bunch of rainbow chard. Another time, it was at a Taize service when we sang the name of Jesus over and over and over again. Still again, it happened...

Christ the Bonny Outlaw

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On my honeymoon, almost 15 years ago now, I picked up a used copy of Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton. I tried to read it then and couldn’t make heads or tails of it. When my editor at IVP told me it was one of his favorite books ever, I tried again and still...