les livres

With Christmas break comes pleasure reading, and with pleasure reading comes the re-reading of one of my favorite books.

"Scout," said Atticus, "when summer comes you'll have to keep your head about far worse things...it's not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down--well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience--Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man."

Now I remember why I love Atticus.

understanding

the author and narrator of the book i'm reading asked her father a question. she was about ten. the father didn't respond initially, but asked her to carry a case full of spare parts for watches he owned a watch shop as they got off a train.

she couldn't lift it. "it's too heavy."

he replied:
"some knowledge is too heavy for children. when you are older and stronger you can bear it. for now you must trust me to carry it for you."

then she said:
"and i was satisfied. more than satisfied--wonderfully at peace. there were answers to this and all my hard questions--for now i was content to leave them in my father's keeping."

at this point in time of my 20th year, these paragraphs resonated with me. i believe this is how our Father responds to some of our requests. i know in my imperfect and narrow-persepctive existence, i become impatient and want to know all things. i want to know why trials happen. why i have to wonder.

but i think if we knew answers to the questions we had about our lives, then we wouldn't learn. the knowledge is maybe too heavy for us. God wants us to learn. He wants us to experience life, and grow, and become better people. we sometimes have to trust Him to carry the knowledge of the bigger picture of our lives until we are "old enough" and "stronger" through the trials we've gone through. that's how we gain faith.

then we can be satisfied. we can be at peace. as we work at that faith, we will be content to leave our "hard questions" to our Father's keeping. He knows. He always knows, and we just need to trust in his timing. He knows when we need to hear things, and when we need to learn the hard things. He knows when we're ready.

timing is everything. patience is needed. faith is essential.

growing tired

and today i leave you with not my thoughts, but an excerpt from a book. the book i read really quickly, so i don't remember much about it, but this particular paragraph stood out to me as beautiful.

the words, the way he describes...

beautiful.

"'...Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?' she was saying. 'He drew men towards him by what was best in them.' She looked at me with intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,' she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard--the ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of wild crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness."