First up is Tim Challies article, “Do I Really Need to Suffer?”

Because I write about suffering frequently, I find myself frequently engaged in conversation regarding the desire to grow in Christ and the hesitancy to endure the suffering that is sometimes required of that growth. I’m often stymied in my response because not everyone suffers in equal measure, and I would never want to say that someone’s sanctification is constrained or limited in depth because they’ve suffered less than others.

Here’s where Challies’ article is so helpful. He quotes J.R. Miller with one of the most beautifully written passages I’ve read on the different means of sanctification:

“There is no haphazard in this world. God leads every one of his children by the right way. He knows where and under what influences each particular life will ripen best. One tree grows best in the sheltered valley, another by the water’s edge, another on the bleak mountain-top swept by storms. There is always adaptation in nature. Every tree or plant is found in the locality where the conditions of its growth exist, and does God give more thought to trees and plants than to his own children? He places us amid the circumstances and experiences in which our life will grow and ripen the best. The peculiar discipline to which we are each subjected is the discipline we each need to bring out in us the beauties and graces of true spiritual character.”

Challies goes on to say that “while suffering may be a influence for godliness, it is not the influence. God does not need suffering in order to bring us to maturity. He needs only his Word and Spirit which speak powerfully in both light and darkness.”

While I do believe God often uses suffering as part of our sanctification, as suffering was the way of our Savior and we are not greater than He, it is not the only means of such growth. I think that needs to be said on a blog where I write so much about God’s good work in suffering.

I had a conversation about this very topic just last week with a friend over coffee, and I addressed the same story in the gospel of John because I had studied it recently. As someone who has walked the difficult path of infertility for 13 years, I understand exactly where Barnes is coming from—both in her pain and in her knowledge that Jesus is with her in it. In talking about what causes us to feel affection for Christ, I told my small group last night, “I wish I could learn to consider it pure joy when I’m facing trials, not five years after the fact.”

In her article, Barnes says this: “It’s easy to tell others how God has worked in my life in the past, now that I can connect the dots and see what he was doing. In this moment, though, I don’t see the full picture. I don’t have the promise of a pretty bow to tie it all together. What I do have is the confidence that he is present, even in the midst of sorrow. I am challenged to put what I believe about God to work.”

When my husband and I talk about trials we’d like to avoid or be free from, we often remind each other that God doesn’t promise to remove all our suffering. He does promise to be with us in it. His presence is the promise we hold on to.

Next in line and on a much lighter note is Katie Hughes’ article, “Goodbye Smart Phone, Hello Book” at the Blazing Center.

My gosh, I loved this article.

I’m a reader from way back. I remember the first time I read through the Little House on the Prairie series at age seven, and how I was never the same afterward: I became the child with a book in her hand at all times. I remember reading The Princess and the Goblin around age nine and being thoroughly captivated with the limitless impossibility of story. When I was eight, I discovered Ramona Quimby and went through every single Beverly Cleary title on the shelf at the local library in one summer. In middle school, a strict school librarian treated me with unusual softness when I devoured every book she put in my hand after reading The Bronze Bow twice at her recommendation. I majored in English in college, and my Creative Writing emphasis had me writing as much as I was reading, but still I fell in love with Evelina by Frances Burney (an entire book written in correspondence? Burney was ahead of her time) and gratefully discovered Ann Patchett when she came to campus to do a workshop.

Reading has been a lifelong hobby, and I’m even one of those annoying people who re-reads books because I find myself longing for specific characters or writing styles. I can often remember what I was reading when certain life events happened. The books I read growing up shaped how I thought about the world and helped me to develop a vocabulary that would sound ridiculous if I actually spoke the way that I think.

Now that I’m a mom, I read a little less than I’d like to. My husband and I are one giant cliche sitting in our bed against a mountain of pillows while we read until we can’t stay awake (I always turn out the light first). I’ve thought that perhaps being a tired mom is what has prevented me from reading as much as I used to, but I’ve had a sneaking suspicion of what the actual problem is. Katie Hughes nailed it in her article. And yeah, I’m taking her drawer advice until I can kill my bad habits.

Next up is Lauren Washer’s post “When You Feel Like the Noise of the World Has Affected Your Soul” in which she gives some helpful steps for quieting the constant input of sensory pollution.

Lauren says “When I focus on all of this noise–even the good parts–without meaning to I start to shut out the voice of God.  And when I shut out the voice of God my soul feels empty, lost and confused. This is not the way I want to live my life.  I want the voice of God to be the loudest one that I hear.” Amen, sister. And I strongly concur with her steps for quieting the noise.

I’ve seen this book recommended from so many wide and diverse sources that I’ve felt a little bad for waiting so long to read it. Robinson won a Pulitzer for Gilead, but I’ve learned that winning a Pulitzer does not ensure that I will love it (ex: The Goldfinch). I’ve picked up and put back our local library’s copy of Gilead at least a half a dozen times over the past few years. The jacket description of Gilead does not pull me in. The premise is the opposite of what I look for in a good book. It moves slowly. There is little dialogue. It’s a little boring in spots. I’m about 175 pages in so far and it’s not always the most entertaining read.

And yet.

I love it.

If I could sum up the book in one word, the word would be gentle.

Gilead is a restful read, and in a world with so much flashy and demanding input, this book is a place of quiet reflection, a city of refuge for its calming narrative. I love John Ames for his process of recollection. It’s contemplative, bound up with a thread of forgiveness. It reminds me a little of Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, which wasn’t my most enjoyable reading experience but which has stayed with me in the two years since I read it and comes to mind at the oddest times.

Gilead seemed to be going in that direction so I was skeptical until I got to page 6 and read this paragraph:

“That’s the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.”

That is more true than you might think, and I found a knot tightening my throat when I read it. When the narrator, John, recounts the number of sermons he’d written in his life,  it rivaled the amount of words attributed to Augustine or Calvin, and he says, “That’s amazing. I wrote almost all of it in the deepest hope and conviction. Sifting my thoughts and choosing my words. Trying to say what was true. And I’ll tell you frankly, that was wonderful. I’m grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.” As a writer, I understand what he means. And as a woman married to a pastor who weighs each word carefully, I understand what he means.

Or how about this passage on parenting as a reflection on the story of Hagar and Ishmael: “That is how life goes–we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord’s. I need to bear this in mind.” (p.119)

Gilead is lovely in the way the first warm days of the year touch your skin with the memories of summers past. Gilead makes me ache in a sojourning kind of way.

While we’re on the subject of reading, Jessica Hooten Wilson’s article, “Scandalized Reading” at Fathom Magazine is on point.

Let me just give you a taste of it with this paragraph: “I am thankful that we do not burn books anymore, but I’ve told students numerous times that I think what we do now is far more shameful. We convince ourselves that we do not have time for War and Peace or The Odyssey. We do less than fiddle while Rome burns; we sit glazed-eyed watching images of unexamined lives stream by on Instagram while the church crumbles. As Ray Bradbury says, ‘There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.’ ”

Happy weekend reading, friends.

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