Dear Me Letter

In response to Ann Voskamp's "Dear Me Letter" post and challenge

Dear me,

Above all, remember God is faithful. His mercies are new every morning, and His compassions never fail. He is faithful, and His faithfulness is great. He is good and kind, trustworthy and true.

You listened to a writer recently who quoted another writer, who said, "Every writer only has one theme, and mine is love." That got you thinking, what is your one theme?

What you're realizing and don't really want to accept is that your theme is brokenness, or perhaps better, the sufficiency of God's grace in brokenness. Your imagination keeps returning to the idea of the kintsugi Christian, a broken person mended with gold, more beautiful after the breaking than before. It is a beautiful idea, but the cost of such a testimony frightens you. So much brokenness already. So many losses. Is that to be the pattern always? If His golden beauty in the soul's dark night is the theme of your song, is breaking and mending, breaking and mending, breaking and mending to be the rhythm of all the days of your weary Shadowlands pilgrimage?

I don't know that. Loss is engraved so indelibly in this postlapsarian life, as it was on our Savior's (and is even now in ascended, nail-scarred glory); such a rhythm is a distinct possibility.

But I know this: if such is your calling, your testimony, God will be faithful in it. He will unfold joys and beauties in the brokenness that would not be yours otherwise. The grace and courage and strength will be there when you need it, though likely not before. The fearful imaginings of impending losses, realized in full, omit the imaginings of the sweet presence of God in their midst.

What's more, consider the outcome of such breaking and mending, breaking and mending, breaking and mending. Every cycle will make you more of gold and less of clay. Every breaking will cause His light and glory to shine through you more brightly, until your journey is complete and you are like Him when you see Him face to face.

Courage, dear heart. Life is hard. There will be more death-shadowed valleys before the end. But Christ is worthy. He is worthy, and He is with you. You will never be alone or abandoned by Him.

Dive ever deeper into His presence in His Word, and soar ever higher into His presence in prayer. If brokenness is to be your theme, let Him be your song in the house of your pilgrimage.

You can trust God with this. 

cm

#DearMeLetter #SummerOfJournalling

A Meal in Six Words

"LORD, my Lord, my strong Savior, you shield my head on the day of battle."

Psalms 140:7 CSB

Morning summer sky, July 2022

Some days I read 5 chapters of daily bread only to find in 6 words the sustaining crumbs I need to bear me up: "LORD, my Lord, my strong Savior."

LORD: Yahweh, You are the eternal, self-existent, self-determining God, the I AM who brought such a one as I into covenant union that will never be broken, because it depends wholly on Your grace.

Thee I adore. 

My Lord: Adonai, my Lord and Master, ruler of all that is, seen or unseen. You alone have the right to lead, guide, direct, and discipline me. You provide all I need. I trust You even when what I need is affliction. You are good and do good. Teach me Your statutes.

Into Thy hands. Yes, I will.

My strong Savior: What comfort these words contain. You are "my" strong Savior, not in some general sense but mine personally. You are a "strong" Savior, because I am a great sinner, prone to wander and leave the God I love. If my rescue depended on my fortitude and strength, all would be lost. Hallelujah that it doesn't! I would need to be a much stronger sinner than even I am to wrest myself out of Your strong hand. You are a Savior, willing and able to rescue from the deepest, darkest pit of destruction and sin and death. You bore my sin and clothed me in Your righteousness that I might be reconciled to the Father and filled with the Spirit of holiness.

Lord, have mercy. 

LORD, my Lord,  my strong Savior, thank You. I worship You. May I worship You more fully, in spirit and in truth, in all my days and all my ways. Amen.

The Life of God in the Soul of Man {Book Review}

"The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love"
(Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man).

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" ( Colossians 1:27, ESV).

In a Nutshell

The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal, is quite possibly the best little book you've never heard of about the Christian life. At least, I had never heard of it until Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth shared the quote in the graphic above. That quote and the title (a sermon in itself) intrigued me enough that I leapt at the chance to review Crossway's new edition. Scougal originally wrote this volume as a letter to a friend; as a pastor and professor, he felt a written introduction to Christian living was the best way he could love his friend.

Henry Who?

Henry Scougal (1650-1678) died at age 28 of tuberculosis, but his life and writings bore fruit for the kingdom of God beyond the number of his years. Knowledgeable in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and a few related languages of the Ancient Near East, the Scottish Puritan first pastored a church briefly and then accepted a position as professor at King's College, Aberdeen. Given the brevity of his life, he did not leave many publications, and this is the best known of his works. The famous evangelist of the first Great Awakening, George Whitefield, claimed he never understood true religion until reading this book. According to the foreword of this Crossway edition, J. I. Packer attributed the theological foundation of the English side of that glorious revival to Scougal's little book.

For literary context, his dates overlap with fellow Scot Samuel Rutherford, John Bunyan, and John Milton. For historical context, the Authorized Version of the English Bible was published in 1611; we know it by the Scottish king of England who authorized it, King James I. Scougal was born near the end of the Commonwealth period, when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans governed Britain. Early in his life, the monarchy was restored. The "Great Fire of London" occurred in 1661.

What's It About?

Scougal expresses concern about several misapprehensions of the Christian life: some think it is primarily about behavior, doing right things; some think it is primarily about doctrine, knowing right things; some think it is about emotion, ecstatic feelings of communion with God. Although he gives each of these components their place in due course, he contrasts and summarizes what he calls "true religion" this way:

True religion is quite another thing. Those who are acquainted with it will entertain far different thoughts about it and avoid all false imitations of it. They know by experience that true religion is a union of the soul with God. It is a participation in the divine nature. It is the very image of God drawn upon the soul. In the apostle’s words, it is Christ formed within us. In short, I do not know how the nature of religion can be more fully expressed than by calling it a divine life (Kindle location 137-154).

 

Again a little farther on, he writes, "Religion is a reflection of the divine perfections, the image of the Almighty shining in the soul of man. It is a real participation of his nature. It is a beam of the eternal light, a drop of that infinite ocean of goodness. And those who are endowed with it can be said to have God dwelling in their souls and Christ formed within them" (188).

This life, as he describes it (and I believe his thoughts conform to the Scriptures), is a life of mutual love between God and the Christian and between the Christian and his brother or neighbor; of holiness, since the holy Christ formed in us through the Holy Spirit makes us like the holy God; of humility, as we see our lives in the light of God's perfect holiness; of prayer.

Why Read It?

This wee book concentrates so much treasure into so few pages as to leave me gobsmacked. It would take me volumes to unpack as much truth. It inspires me, challenges me, humbles me, woos me to love God more, and overwhelms me with His love for me. It holds many ideas in common with Jonathan Edwards's much longer work The Religious Affections, but here they are expressed more concisely and poetically. Also, Scougal's book is in its very nature a counterargument to those who misconstrue Puritans as dour, joyless fearmongers. Would such a one as that write this almost mystical passage?

Perfect love is a kind of self-dereliction, an emptying out of ourselves. It is a kind of voluntary death wherein the lover dies to themselves and all their own interests, neither thinking nor caring about themselves any more, and being mindful of nothing other than how they may please and gratify the person whom they love. Thus they are quite undone unless they meet with reciprocal affection.… The God-directed lover has an unspeakable advantage, having placed his affection on him whose nature is love. For if God’s goodness is as infinite as his being, and his mercy saved us when we were his enemies, how can God not but choose to embrace us when we have become his friends! It is utterly impossible that he should deny his love to a soul who is wholly devoted to him and desires to serve and please him. He cannot disdain his own image nor the heart in which it is engraved. Love is the only tribute that we can pay him. It is the sacrifice that he cannot despise.… how happy are those who have placed their love on him who can never be absent from them! They only need to open their eyes and they may behold the traces of his presence and glory everywhere. To be able to converse in an instant with him whom their souls love transforms the darkest prison or wildest desert, making them not only bearable but almost delightful (450-466).

The paragraph Nancy Wolgemuth quoted is no less lovely:

Let us consider the love and affection by which holy souls are united with God so that we may see the excellence and happiness that result from it. Love is the powerful and prevailing passion by which all of a person’s inclinations should be determined and on which perfection and happiness depend. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love (398).

While my edition came from Crossway and included a helpful foreword, a bit of subtle updating of language, and a Scripture index, free versions are available, given that the original is in the public domain. In my opinion, reading Scougal's small book amply repays the investment of time required, and should you disagree, you won't have lost much. 

Potential Pitfalls

Scougal lived and wrote in the seventeenth century. The King James Version (as we call it) was the trendy new Bible translation of his day. Bunyan and Milton were his contemporaries. As such, his thesis is densely and compactly reasoned. His sentences and thoughts are longer than the norm today. This is not really a skimmable book, unless perhaps you're an English professor fluent in Restoration literature. If you read it, and I hope you do, anticipate a slower than average reading speed and plan to go back and reread a section from time to time so you can fully appreciate the flow of his argument. Crossway's headings and subheadings help quite a bit with this.

As the foreword of this edition makes clear, Scougal does not lay out the basics of the Christian gospel in this letter. His friend has already come to faith in Christ and believed Jesus the God-Man lived a perfect life, died the death on the cross which we sinners deserve, rose again bodily on the third day, and now reigns at the right hand of the Father until the appointed time for His return. With the original recipient of this letter having already trusted Christ for salvation, Scougal focuses his encouragement on how to live as a Christian, what theologians call the doctrine of sanctification. That does not in any way indicate a different gospel or alternative way of salvation.

The Bottom Line

The Life of God in the Soul of Man is a beautiful little book on living the Christian life. Henry Scougal was an old soul indeed to have written such a gem of a treatise in his twenties. It is truly too glorious and beautiful and true to take in fully at one reading. This is a book worth returning to again and again and taking into one's heart. I hope you read it too. If you do, and if this review influenced that decision, please come back and let me know how you got on.

N.B.: Crossway Publishing provided me with a complimentary digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Amazon link is an affiliate link.

Another free source of Scougal's book and additional biographical information: https://www.monergism.com/life-god-soul-man

The Italian Ballerina {Book Review}

 "So if God is behind something as small as an old suitcase coming to light, I could believe He’s looking for ways to heal us in our brokenness. And certainly to be there with us in our grief” (The Italian Ballerina, Kindle location 2583). 

The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons

 

Brokenness and beauty. 

Grace and grit. 

Grief and growth. 

Prodigal sons and an orphaned child. 

Love willing to lay down its life for a stranger or a friend. 

 

These are some of the central themes of the new World War II novel, The Italian Ballerina, by Kristy Cambron. This is a dual-timeline story, with the Italian ballerina of the title supplying the hinge connecting the two eras. This is a fun, sweet romance by a Christian author, but it is not preachy at all and should appeal to a general audience as well as the Christian book market. A literary vacation lies within its pages. 

The Dance Class by Edgar Degas, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons

In the modern timeline, journalist “between pens” Delaney Coleman travels to Tivoli, near Rome, to deliver a child’s suitcase, mysteriously found among her recently deceased grandfather’s belongings, to an elderly ballerina who claims to be its rightful owner. The story of both the combat-medic grandfather and the ballerina unfolds in the World War II timeline. Love blooms in both. The unanswered questions and mysteries keep the pages turning; Cambron times the big reveals well to keep the reader guessing but not frustrated. 

 

At the same time, the novel draws attention to a real historical rescue operation in which three hospital doctors and a priest in Rome invented a highly contagious terminal disease, Syndrome K, in order to rescue as many Jews as possible from the Holocaust. The city and hospital were occupied by Nazi troops, yet these brave men hid the rescued ones right under the soldiers’ noses. (Some of the discussions of masking and how contagious the disease struck me as ironic given the book’s pandemic publication.) 

 

The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage by Edgar Degas, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons

For me, the ballet parts of the tale were especially nostalgic. So many life lessons are learned through the arts, so many heartaches soothed. My dearest interests in childhood were books, ballet, and piano. If I wasn’t practicing ballet in the front hallway to my album of piano music for ballet practice, there was a good chance I was reading books about ballet and the history of ballet. In third grade I did a book report on a biography of English prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn and a yearlong project on Fonteyn and Native American prima ballerina Maria Tallchief. Consequently, the mentions of Sadler’s Wells, the Old Vic, and Covent Garden, and even the dropping of Dame Margot’s name, were lovely connections to my childhood. My mind’s eye can see how British ballerina Julia Bradbury and Calla Santini move because I lived in that world for a decade. 

  

Ballet Rehearsal by Edgar Degas, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons
original in Pushkin Museum

For my reading habits, this is not likely a book I will return to again and again, but it is a delightful (and clean) escape for readers who enjoy stories set in World War II, tales of courage real and fictional, the ballet, Christian romance, and classic films (especially Roman Holiday). (It also has the makings of a beautiful movie.) Books with a similar sensibility include The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Before We Were Yours, and Eternal. There is some wartime violence described when necessary to the plot. If you, like me, can’t take a summer vacation (again), this novel might just be the cold glass of lemonade needed to cheer your soul. 

 

Full disclosure: I received a complimentary NetGalley copy of this book prior to publication in exchange for an honest review. 

 

Amazon Affiliate purchase link, if you would like to drop a few coins in my tip jar at no added cost to you:  

https://amzn.to/3R2wW9I 

 

This book releases July 12, 2022.