A lesson I learned from John Piper, whose books got my attention and changed my life.

A great example from an interview with him today (re: the 25th anniversary of Desiring God):

Yes, we are to rejoice in God’s good gifts, all of them, from justification to sexual intercourse.

Forgot to mention last week that I also recently read Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. I highly recommend it.

Hill is a homosexual Christian: someone who is attracted to those of the same sex but accepts the Bible’s and the church’s teaching that homosexual behavior is wrong. So he believes that unless God changes his orientation, he’s called to a life of celibacy. Hill doesn’t spend much time arguing for this traditional view; his focus is on what it means for him to live in this tension.

One of Hill’s goals is to encourage other Christians with same-sex desires to talk openly about their struggles. I hope this happens. For me, as a straight Christian and especially as a pastor, it was important to hear what life is like for some of our brothers and sisters. It hurt to begin to get a sense of the loneliness Hill feels– the desire for intimacy that we all share, without even the potential for legitimate experience of it.

The Gospel makes hard demands on all of us. But we need to acknowledge that some of us have especially tough challenges as we seek to live in obedience to God’s word. That’s the case for those with same-sex attraction. We need to stand with those who feel these strong desires, listen to their stories, be patient with their struggles, encourage them with the Word, and welcome them as part of our churches and communities.

In the fall we got a surprising and thoughtful gift from an anonymous friend: an Amazon Kindle. Now that I can’t be accused of dropping hints, let me just say that if there’s a bookish missionary you want to bless, that’s the way to do it. Incredible device.

Anyway, that’s opened the door for some fun pleasure reading:

• Decision Points, George W. Bush. This was a fascinating read. Not an autobiography, but an account of some of the most significant decisions he made as President. No one else on the planet has had to make the kinds of calls W has; the other 6 billion of us are in the cheap seats.
• At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson. Basically lots and lots of historical trivia about how things in the home came to be the way they are. Interesting but forgettable. (Bryson is a great writer, though. Check out A Walk in the Woods.)
• Portrait of Calvin, T.H.L. Parker. Available for free from Desiring God! Not really a biography, but what the title implies: a sort of thumbnail sketch of Calvin’s life and thought.
• Currently I’m in the middle of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, Victor Davis Hanson. This collection of essays about war is challenging because Hanson, a classics scholar and military historian, assumes a lot more knowledge than I have. (Thank heavens for Wikipedia.) But fascinating nonetheless. Lots of sane talk about the tragic-but-unavoidable nature of war.

I also finally read through most of Rick Steves’ Prague & The Czech Republic. Living here it’s funny how much you miss. This helped me get a better overall glimpse of our city, and find several places I haven’t seen yet and want to.

One of my hopes for this year is to make better use of my time, part of which means less internet putzing (Facebook, FailBlog, etc.) and more reading. In addition to a Bible reading plan, I think I’m going to take another shot at reading through Calvin’s Institutes, which stalled out pretty early in the last attempt.

I also want to read all of C. S. Lewis that I haven’t read. That amounts to about a dozen books, but some are pretty short. So we’ll see.

And finally, John Frame’s long-awaited Doctrine of the Word of God came out a couple of months ago. (That’s one for the shelf, not the Kindle.) So I might try to start plowing through that. A longer-term goal is to read all of his Theology of Lordship series. No way will that happen this year.

Westminster Books has a good sale on the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT) series, especially on the new volume on Hosea in that series.

NICOT is a great commentary series (that I wish I had), and WTS Books is a great source for dependable books. Bookmark ‘em, I say.

I quit my bookstore job almost a year ago, which explains why I don’t do as many book reviews as I used to (no free books and less time/excuse to read books). Also, I took a Christian book hiatus for a while. But anyway, here are some of my favorite Christian books I’ve read since entering the private sector.

• Christless Christianity
• Give Me This Mountain
• The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism
• To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson
• ESV Study Bible (I’ve said this before, but seriously. Do what you have to do to get this.)

As you can see, I went on a bit of a missionary biography kick. You should too.

Amazon’s Kindle 2, the newest version of their wireless reading device, was unveiled yesterday. One of these days…

I learned about Leif Enger through Abraham and John Piper’s recommendations of his first novel, Peace Like a River. It didn’t disappoint. The narrator’s father is one of my favorite characters ever, an Old Testament prophet dropped into the Midwest in 1962. (Read the excerpt in JP’s post to see what I mean.)

Enger’s second book is So Brave, Young, and Handsome. With both second books and second albums, there’s always the worry that it’ll just be a retread, but I thought Enger avoided that well. Of course there are common elements, but it’s a different story told with a different voice.

Enger’s characters are mysterious and endearing. You get the sense that there has to be a back story, but you don’t get it– you’re just dropped in where he wants you. Where he wants you is somewhere out West in a world that doesn’t exist anymore, except that you feel it does when you’re reading Enger. You don’t have the feeling that it’s 2009 and you’re reading a story about a different time, but really that you’re embedded in that time. And his use of language is sriking and skillful– each sentence can stand on its own, just the right words for its purpose.

You could say that both of these stories are about developing manhood– one in a boy and one in a grown man. Enger portrays manhood well, and in a world that’s trying desperately to forget what manhood even is, that’s exciting.