Keller books gleanings
On human suffering:
“All human beings are driven by “an inner compulsion to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos and to take a position toward it”. And that goes for suffering too. Anthropologist Richard Shweder writes: “Human beings apparently want to be edified by their miseries.” Sociologist Peter Berger writes: “every culture has provided an explanation of human events that bestows meaning upon the experiences of suffering and evil.” Notice that Berger did not say that people are taught that suffering is good or meaningful. (This has been attempted at various times but observers have rightly called these approaches forms of philosophical masochism.) What Berger means rather is that it is important for people to see how the experience of suffering does not have to be a waste, and could be a meaningful though painful way to live life well.
Because of this deep human “inner compulsion”, every culture must either help its people face suffering or risk a loss of its credibility.
Every society must provide a “discourse” through which its people can make sense of suffering.
However, not every society does this equally well. Our own contemporary Western society gives its members no explanation for suffering and very little guidance as to how to deal with it.” – Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, pp. 14 – 15, selected excerpts, Penguin Books, copyright 2013. Tim Keller.
a very new and young assembly we went to visit and help with, with their own traditional musical instruments
How we sometimes traveled to reach the very rural Quechuas deep in the highlands where there were no roads.
These are some of the Bible school students we helped teach and work with, leaving from Potosi for a practicum journey with us deep into the Potosi mountains where totally isolated villagers lived in small, separated enclaves of 4 and 5 houses each, and there were no roads. After the last train station, the hike was another 8 to 10 hours on foot to get to the first community and on to others from there.
When Our Hearts Break
Yesterday while continuing my project to gradually and systematically weed through, organize and de-clutter our apartment, I was dusting a bookshelf and happened to come across an old college textbook on 17th c. poetry. Feeling wry fondness for the faded green hardback, I pulled it and dipped in.
I came across a George Herbert poem, actually several of them, already marked up in now-faded pen, by the “me” of years ago, and they touched my heart, spoke to me, even YET, and YET AGAIN! Especially this one!
JESU
Jesus is in my heart, His sacred name
Is deeply carvèd there, but th’other week
A great affliction broke the little frame,
Even all to pieces, which I went to seek:
And first I found the corner, where was J,
After, where ES, and next, where U was graved.
When I had got these parcels, instantly
I sat me down to spell them and percieved
That to my broken heart he was “I ease you”
and to my whole is JESU.
-George Herbert, a pastor in the 17th century.
A Little Spot of Heaven in the “OLD” Cochabamba Downtown
back garden of the Jordan street guest home where we lived for five months after first arriving in Cochabamba, in the eighties
Comforted
A Poem by Amy Carmichael
COMFORTED
A great wind blowing, raging sea,
And rowers toiling wearily
Far from the land, where they would be.
And then, One coming, drawing nigh;
They care not, now, for starless sky.
The Light of life says, “It is I”.
They care not, now, for toil of oar,
For lo, the ship is near the shore,
And their Beloved they adore.
Lord of the Lake of Galilee
who long ago, walked on the sea,
My heart is comforted in Thee.
GlobeRoamer 