In the true tradition of how things have been going lately: Happy Belated New Year!
As far as "resolutions" go, I'm not a big fan of them. But with the chance to start a clean slate, I'm putting last year's reading glut behind me and looking eagerly toward finding a steady stream of reading material to keep some of my brain cells functioning in the new year.
I've already put to rest one highly recommended book: "The Fourth Part of the World," by Toby Lester. Nothing overly spiritual about it, though. It's about the history of world exploration that led up to the making of the 1507 Waldseemuller map, which is the first to explicitly name America. A copy of the map itself was procured by the Library of Congress for an enormous sum and the history that builds up to it's creation is fascinating (at least to me).
To the extent that there is a connection to anything Christian, I suppose I could elaborate on the tangent of what set off a lot of the exploration. Among the motives of the explorers was the opportunity to spread the Good News. In several cases, this was accomplished by taking slaves, imprisoning native populations, and exploiting the resources of their land. Considerate, no?
The book itself doesn't dwell on the topic all that much. But it struck me as yet another amazing indicator of how God uses even the faultiest of ministries. Of the areas explored in this manner, there are still numerous traces of Christian communities that remain. It's perhaps not dissimilar to how strong Christian communities exist in African-American communities here in America, as the faith was initially spread during slavery. In both cases, there's a welcome absence of people who would openly suggest spreading the Gospel in either manner. But there's a curious ray of hope that's worth noting here: that even in the harshest circumstances where God's word is being advocated by the most impure of means ... that the Good News of God's word actually shines through even that. We may not have such visibly dire circumstances clouding God's word today, but I don't doubt that we'll look back on some of the ways that aren't obvious to us today. Fortunately, it's not enough to keep God from being seen and heard.
As for some other reading material on the short-term agenda, I'm sticking fairly close to the topic of Lester's book, by reading Daniel Boorstin's "The Seekers." In true trilogy form, I'm once more reading the last book of the trilogy first. In this case, it's because I'm tempted to commit to the other books in this series, but a bit wary that I'll really like Boorstin's style. We'll see how it goes. Trilogies have not exactly been a strong suit of mine, but I'm sure that I'll enjoy getting through at least one Boorstin book in my lifetime.
I'm still nickel & diming my way through William Stringfellow's "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land." It's a short enough book and I'm over halfway through it. But it's also a very peculiar book in a lot of ways. I can definitely see this as a book that I might put to rest soon and enjoy it more the second time I flip through it. There's a wealth of insight in the book, but given the context of time that it was written ... it's a bit of work to get through.
Upcoming after all of this, I'm very eager to dive into two books by A.J. Gregory - "Messy Faith" and "Silent Savior." I think I had seen "Messy Faith" on the shelves before and I'm not sure what had really kept me browsing past it. Fortunately, the current push to regroup my reading addiction has led me to look at it anew and I have to say that based on the previews of both books, I am really looking forward to them.
Beyond that, I'm hoping for a little bit of luck to finally get around to reading Frank Viola's books and maybe - maybe - regain the urge to pick up Rob Bell's "Jesus Wants to Save Christians." The only thing certain is that I've got new material from Eugene Peterson to look forward to in February.
That strikes me as ambitious enough for the short term.
