Kindle | All is Well

Prayer–Does it Make Any Difference?

March 24, 2012 By Shelly Durkee

Phillip Yancey’s book “Prayer; Does it Make Any Difference” Is currently on sale for the Kindle at the price of $3.99.

If you struggle with doubt, with prayer, with Christianity, then I urge you to read this book. It was a key book in opening my mind up to the possibility of there being a God. Yancey does not mince words, he is direct in his writing. I often felt, while reading this book, that Yancey was writing and addressing my questions personally.

Books: Gratitude

February 22, 2012 By Shelly Durkee

With the proliferation of e-readers on the market today, one has to question as to whether or not “real” books are coming to an end.

I certainly hope not.

I love what e-readers have to offer–instant access to purchase books, easy portability, the opportunity to read just about anywhere, and many more. But I love what real books have to offer me as well.

This post by Kevin DeYoung summed up my experience with books with just the right words. I’ve included my favorite paragraph from his post below:

Old books are like old friends. They love to be revisited. They stick around to give advice. They remind you of days gone by. Books, like friends, hang around.

And they prefer not to be invisible.

I can’t tell you how many often I sit at my desk, push back my seat, and allow my eyes to drift around the room full of bookshelves. I’m not procrastinating, not exactly. I’m scanning the room to see my friends. Their covers jog my memories. They remind me of what I learned once. More than that, they remind me of my life–where I was when I first read Lloyd-Jones on the couch, how I knelt by the bed with tears when I read Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, how my life was so different 15 years ago when I read my dad’s copy of the Institutes as a college student. If all my books disappeared on to a microchip I might have less to lug around and I might be able to search my notes more easily, but I’d lose memory; I’d lose history; I’d lose a little bit of myself.

Me too. Sometimes I will just walk over to my bookshelves and read the titles, remembering both when I read a book and why. I can pull a book off of my shelf and see all the marks and notes and highlighting I have done in those books and it brings back reminders of what I have learned about myself, the world, and my God through books.

When I became a believer, I had a similar experience to C.S. Lewis. He shares in his book Surprised by Joy that at one point in his process of becoming a believer, he felt all the books were chasing after him. Me too.

I hope books–real books–never go away. I don’t think that they will. My books chase me. They comfort me. They kick me. They teach me. They challenge me. And I am grateful for them.

Nothing Nothing: Frances Schaeffer and His Writings

January 30, 2012 By Shelly Durkee

I’ve not read much of Frances Schaeffer, though what I have read has resonated with me. His use of words and contexts are similar to the way my mind works. Maybe not to the degree that I find compatibility with my “Uncle”, C. S. Lewis, but on a more literary level. I love Schaeffer’s coinage of terms such as true truth, which makes absolute sense to me. Or nothing nothing, which I’ve borrowed below to demonstrate how his mind works:

We are considering existence, the fact that something is there. Remember Jean-Paul Sartre’s statement that the basic philosophic question is that something is there rather than nothing being there. The first basic answer is that everything that exists has come out of absolutely nothing. In other words, you begin with nothing. Now, to hold this view, it must be absolutely nothing. It must be what I call nothing nothing. It cannot be nothing something or something nothing. If one is to accept this answer, it must be nothing nothing, which means there must be no energy, no mass, no motion, and no personality.

My description of nothing nothing runs like this. Suppose we had a very black blackboard which had never been used. On this blackboard we drew a circle, and inside that circle there was everything that was — and there was nothing within the circle. Then we erase the circle. This is nothing nothing. You must not let anybody say he is giving an answer beginning with nothing and then really begin with something: energy, mass, motion, or personality. That would be something, and something is not nothing.

The truth is I have never heard this argument sustained, for it is unthinkable that all that now is has come out of utter nothing. But theoretically, that is the first possible answer.

This week Schaeffer’s books are just $3.99 for Kindle. They include:

The Finished Work of Christ

No Little People

Death in the City

Pollution and the Death of Man

Truth With Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life.

****I simply must add these paragraphs of Schaeffer’s from his book

No Little People:

As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place.

In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church. This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride.

In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation. But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride.

In the inner circle must be the humble heart — the love of God, the devotional attitude toward God. There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there.

These three circles must be properly established, emphasized and related to each other. At the center must be kept a living relationship to the God we know exists. When each of these three circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit. Then, at the end of my life, when I look back over my work since I have been a Christian, I will see that I have not wasted my life.