Well, Book Club Homies…we’re here! I hope you have taken the journey with me as I read Life Interrupted by Priscilla Shirer. And here’s why: I was fortunate to hear Priscilla Shirer speak at the 2013 Women of Faith conference in Dallas. And Priscilla had a tough place on the agenda–right after a filling lunch! She was quick to acknowledge that most of her audience might be nodding off during her time slot! But, she was oh, so wrong–she held my attention the entire time she spoke!

Thus, I was anxious to make the first MIP Book Club Selection her book, Life Interrupted. I have to confess that I chose her book partly because of the ridiculously cheap price for the Kindle edition–a mere $ 2.99. But, it turned out to be a GREAT $ 2.99 to pay. The stoic Scot over here found herself crying several times as I read about her take on the book of Jonah.

I don’t know about you, but I can so relate to Jonah. Running away from my responsibilities is one of my favorite hobbies! But Shirer carefully and skillfully shows us why God did what He did with Jonah and how we, as modern-day Jonahs, can learn to embrace an interrupted life as something new and magnificent and even as an adventure.

It is truly difficult to pick my traditional 3 quotes today, because I’d like to put about 19 here, but here are the ones I selected:

1. “…interruptions are only negative when we deem the person, problem, or circumstance that’s forcing itself on us to be of less value or interest than what we were doing before.”

2. “Hold your own plans loosely and stay ready to submit to His. Consider them to be more important, more desirable than anything you could dream up on your own.

3. “Sometimes the divine intervention of God means breaking allegiance with what you love.”

So, dear Book Club Readers (and Slow Reader Friday Readers!), I have a few questions for you to answer below. Today I will ask you a few more than I will in future months, simply because I want your input about the type of books you like to read, etc. I will do my best to take your interests to heart when I’m considering books for the future:

a) Do you prefer Christian-oriented books or something different?

b) What genre of book is your favorite? Biographies, novels, non-fiction, self-improvement, historical accounts, mysteries, sci-fi???

c) What is the highest you are willing to shell out for a Book Club book? (I’m trying not to break your budget, so please be honest and you can answer under an “assumed name,” if necessary.)

Here are the Life Interrupted questions:

d) On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being “WOW! Loved this book” and 1 being “Really? Why did you even select this book???”, where would you rate this book?

e) What was the most memorable quote of the book for you? Why?

f) What other impressions (good, bad or indifferent) did you have to the book? (Remember–I’m not judging anyone about anything here–you have a right to your own opinion–even if it’s completely different from my own!)

Thanks, in advance, for sharing!

Click here for the November 2013 Book Club Selection!

Monday’s Post: How roweled up are you?

You might also like: Slow Reader Friday: Mere Christianity, Book Club, and Slow Reader Thursday: Heaven by Randy Alcorn

Book Club Readers: Next Friday is when I will review Life Interrupted by Priscilla Shirer! Plus, I will announce the November Book Club Selection. Please finish the book prior to Friday and have your comments ready! I am very anxious to hear your thoughts about it!

Probably every contemporary Christian has read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. While I have read some of his works (The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters), I have to be honest that still haven’t read what many consider to be Lewis’ masterpiece, aka Mere Christianity!  Here are my rather late impressions.

First, those new to Lewis’ work need to remember that he is English and wrote in the early to mid-20th century. There are references and illustrations that are, for today’s reader, a bit dated and no longer applicable. However, an overwhelming portion of the book is still just as relevant today as it was when C. S. Lewis first wrote it. And despite the fact that Lewis was a noted professor at one of the most prestigious English universities, Lewis writes in an easily understood manner. And yet, the reader must also read “up.” I did find myself thoroughly scratching my head to follow a few of his arguments and statements.

The primary target for this book are the non-believers. And through Lewis’ convincing writing, even a non-believer has to admit that Lewis’ arguments are compelling and difficult to ignore. Perhaps this is because Lewis once found himself in the “non-believer category.”

When I chose to read it, I did not realize I was picking up my dad’s copy who was a Presbyterian minister and former college professor. He passed away in 2008 and to see his penciled-in notes throughout this paperback was fascinating. I realized, by Dad’s notes, that he had probably purchased this copy to teach Sunday School classes about the book.

In some places I would have underlined and commented on the same things my dad did. In other places I was drawn to far different statements than my dad. Since I generally share three quotes that stood out to me in my book reviews, I thought it would be fun to pick three quotes that also stood out to my dad, so this Friday, you’re getting a “two-for-one” deal!  Here are a few of Dad’s favorites:

1. “As long as you are proud you cannot know God.”

2. “Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing…..the difficulty is to reach the point of recognizing that all we have done and can do is nothing.”

3. “God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.”

Here are my favorites:

1. “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.”

2. “And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata–of creatures that worked like machines–would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in the ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”

3. “The better stuff a creature is made of–the cleverer and stronger and freer it is–then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.”

So, dear teacher and Dear Teacher, thanks for giving a middle-aged Christian some “new” things to ponder. And Dad, if you’re up there in Heaven seeing this, thanks for the “Cliffs Notes.”

Monday’s Post: Do you live in fear of redound or anticipate it?

You might also like: Slow Reader Thursday: Heaven by Randy Alcorn, Slow Reader Thursday: Going Places, and Slow Reader Thursday: A Grace Disguised

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Book Club Update: We’re supposed to be on Chapter 10 today of Life Interrupted. Don’t be Jonah and run away from your responsibilities! 🙂

Join me and my friends for the 2014 Dallas Women of Faith conference on September 19-20! If you book your ticket now, you will save $ 30 off the regular price (only $ 71!). This will also include a one-night stay for the conference! Message here if you are interested. Tickets are going fast! Do you have to be a Christian? Nah. Do you have to be a member of my church or be in my family or one of my buddies? Nah. Just join us.

Not sure why you’re on the planet? Burned out? Live in my “neck of the woods”? Female? Then, join me and my buddies at Oakdale United Methodist Church on Sunday evenings beginning 10/27 at 5 pm for a study on our unique place in the world. We will be using the book, S.H.A.P.E., for our study. Cost of the book is $ 12.00 or you can download the Kindle version here. Not a Christian? Not an Oakdale member? Trust me–my buddies and I really don’t care–just join us anyway.

Have you encountered a word you did not know this week? Then send it to me in a message here and if I don’t already know it, you may just find it as one of our future WOWs! A reader already sent me such a word and I’ve already added it to the list and it is just a really fun-sounding word, so I am looking forward to the week we get to discuss it. Keep in mind that I am working my way through a list of words I’ve already chosen, so it may be a while before your word appears, but have no fear, it will appear eventually!

Okay, Word Lovers, enough updates and announcements! Last week’s Word of the Week (WOW) was miscible. According to Merriam-Webster Online, miscible means capable of being mixed; specifically, capable of mixing in any ratio without separation of two phases. Hmmm…kinda like my mixing of several unrelated definitions for the WOW. This definition got me to thinking, “Is mixable really a word? If not, should we be using miscible instead?” We Americans sure like to “mess” with the English language and create words that really do not exist and fail to use the proper ones.

However, I looked up mix and yes, mixable is perfectly fine. Thus, I think I now know why we don’t use miscible! Mixable makes more sense to us and is easier to remember how to spell!

Redound is our new WOW. Here are my miscible guesses for it:

redound: (ri-ˈdau̇nd) 1. a rebound shot with a red basketball 2. the color of your skin after trying to take off a pound or two by running around (I’m a poet and I didn’t know it?) 3. the color of a child’s face when wound up

What are your guesses for redound? Comment below!

Wednesday’s Post: Lessons Learned from Actually Walking the 2009 Dallas Komen for the Cure 3 Day Walk…

You might also like: Word of the Week: miscible; Word of the Week: depone; Word of the Week: tourbillion; and Word of the Week: orgulous