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

On the day when the Lord was handing out athletic genes, I must have been in the “facilities” because I have zero hand-to-eye coordination and a limited ability to do just about anything else requiring physical ability.  However, as a child, I was blessed with two much older brothers and in an effort to keep me from continually annoying them, they were endlessly running from me and I was endlessly chasing them.  The result:  MaryAnn, despite being vertically-challenged, was a pretty okay runner.  In fact, I’m a bit like Seabiscuit on a track.  Put a runner in front of me and I am bent on beating them.  I may not come in first, but I will probably be right behind the winner of the race.

I used to like running.  It felt like freedom to me.  But, then something good happened.  Isn’t that always the way?  The good stuff in our lives often takes away something else that is also good.  My “something good” was I had children. And guess what happened when running after I had children??? Let’s not go there. It’s not for polite conversation.  Let’s just say it was embarrassing.

So, I got lazy and only walked.  But, thanks to modern medical technology, I can now run again.  Unfortunately, someone forgot to give my 50-something body the memo.  Once you stop running, your body has this very nasty way of vehemently making you pay for ever lifting your feet off soil ever again. So, today I only briefly run…this is even more embarrassing than why I didn’t run.  Thus, I confine my poor excuse for running to my treadmill.  I think it’s safe to say that I am “running away” from “running.”  Fortunately, my Bible tells me I didn’t invent such a trait.  It’s been around for centuries:

Exhibit A:  Jacob.  When you lie to your dad, leave for a long time.  And I mean leave.

Exhibit B:  Moses.  When you kill a fellow countryman, leave for a long time and marry a foreigner.

Exhibit C:  David:  When you tick off the leader of your country, head for the nearest cave.

Exhibit D:  Jonah:  I’d hide in the belly of a fish, too, if God told me to tell an entire city to get their act together…not exactly a way to get yourself elected mayor.

Exhibit E:  Peter:  Okay. So, he didn’t run away literally.  But, would you call lying about your relationship with the savior of the world a resume-builder for founding and leading a church?

The reality is, that doing what God asks you to do, is often a dangerous, difficult, demanding task.  And what do we do? We run…and run…and run…away. It’s so human to do so.  Unfortunately, when we run away, we often miss some very important things:

1. That God is with us.  He knows where the finish line is and how happy we are going to be when we reach it.

2. That God is for us. When we stumble, He will be there with his encouragements, if we are quiet and wise enough to hear Him.

3. That God is before us.  He will point the way (even if He has to hit me “upside the head” to alert me to it).

4.  That God is beyond us.  He can see much more than our immediate and often, limited, perspective.

5.  That God is by us.  He actually takes the time to run with us and beside us, knowing that the journey is much easier with “back-up.”

So, today I’m going to try to do a little running (literally and figuratively) and hope that I can get out of that belly (and quit feeding my own…Grr.) and do a little more of what God would have me do.  How about you?

“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.  Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.  So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.”  —I Cor. 9: 24-26, NRSV

“Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.” Habakkuk 2: 2, NRSV

See you at the finish line. 🙂

Tomorrow’s Post: March Madness Poetry…c’mon, you knew it was coming!