This lovely damp grey Saturday, let’s post a few thoughts on my latest reads shall we??

52. Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. A lovely book. My reading of Anne continues with the second book in the series and while I’ll bluntly state that it’s not quite as good as the first book, this is still a beautiful read. I could find little spots here and there to poke at, but there are also some truly lovely moments and lines. I love reading books such as this, ones that are simple and sweet and make me smile with delight at the beauty contained therein. I will note that this is the book where Montgomery apparently falls in love with the use of the ellipsis and I laughed to see how often she utilizes such. Also, I believe that in this book her powers of description soar even higher than the first book. I could read this book for the descriptions of nature alone. One of my favourite chapters was the one where Anne and her friends wander the countryside and have a beautiful day together conversing and laughing and tramping through the woods – a chapter only Montgomery could write with such simple elegance and joy.

53. Bearing Witness – What the Church Can Learn from Early Abolitionists by Daniel Lee Hill. A powerful and insightful work. This is a book I was not sure how to approach at first, wondering how Hill’s engagement with early Christian abolitionists would serve to craft a call to action for the church today – are we as the Christian church to attempt to live out a social gospel in denigration of the work of Christ for us or ought we spend our time in a Christian bunker priding ourselves on our own fidelity and adherence to the orthodox faith? Hill masterfully addresses both these ditches while providing a pattern and ethos for how the church might truly bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ in this modern world in which we live. I much appreciate the author’s dedication to centering the work of Christ and refusing to downplay the true gospel while at the same time pleading with the church to understand what it means to bear the burdens of both our fellow Christian and our fellow man as we live in this world in this present age, yes aware of its fallenness and looking forward in hope to the coming redemption and renewal of this world when Christ returns, but also keeping our eyes open and seeking to understand the mission of Christ on this world so that we might model such and in the moments that pop up around us, improvise on the themes of mercy and grace and suffering that we see running throughout all of Scripture and indeed, those themes that our very soul resonates with as we are sealed and enlivened by the Spirit of God.

I fear this somewhat rambling first paragraph may not do the force of Hill’s argument justice. I have not even begun to express my appreciation for how the author works through the narrative of slavery and the abolitionary movement in the early history of the States. There is so much history and so many stories that could be told, but I feel the author does a very fair job of attempting to lay the groundwork for the story tellers he is about to unveil. I love that Hill recognizes that the three fiery and faithful Christians he highlights in this book – David Ruggles, Maria W. Stewart, & William Still – are Christian voices that can still speak to us today, as they are indeed a part of the living and enduring church of Christ. So in retrieving their voices from the past, Hill lets us be part of the audience that hears these brothers and sisters speak and thus we can seek to understand what wisdom might they have that we can then ponder in our hearts and be blessed by such. I loved understanding the stories of these three historic figures – nay, not just historic figures – actual real people and brothers and sisters in Christ! – and hearing how they navigated the fraught waters of early 19th-century America, a place where it was not at all easy or safe to be a black person, enslaved or free. Hill seeks to show that even though it may not have been easy or safe, these three still sought to work in and cultivate the spaces they inhabited and to faithfully go forth to bear witness to the gospel of Christ in working and suffering alongside their fellow man. The historical facts of their lives were fascinating but even more so, the force and light of their testimony was humbling. Are we living such lives of witness in the places in which we live and move and have our being, understanding that we all live under the gracious and merciful hand of God?

And that brings us to the author’s conclusion, where he seeks to extract the nuggets of wisdom from the testimonies and stories we’ve been listening to and ask how the church might respond. Will the church’s response to our own modern horrors and nightmares look identical to how Ruggles, Stewart and Still acted? Perhaps not, for society is structured differently and we may not have the same mediums of communication or fellowship as were present in early 19th-century America. Still yet. Do we see in their actions a framework for how the church might keep its eyes open to the opportunities are around us? Even as we center our lives around the gospel of Christ and remember our call to proclaim such boldly, does not the presence of the church in this world and its calling to suffer as Christ has suffered indicate an allotted portion of stepping alongside our fellow and seeking to bear one another’s burdens and mourning with those who mourn as we recognize the patterns of decay even in the structures of our everyday? And we ought be so washed and enlivened in the Spirit that our thoughts ever more often resonate with the commands of Christ to love one another and so our patterns of behavior will then meet the moments that we encounter so that we truly exhibit the love of Christ.

I am writing too many words, but I am grateful for this book. It is written at a fairly high academic level and though I enjoy such, it may not be for all. Still, I found it profitable. Some may not like that this book is not more “practical” or does not put forth any sort of concrete action plan. But I would argue that is not this author’s aim. Instead the author is attempting to set forth a paradigm for the church that will of necessity lead to a multiplicity of responses. There is not and cannot be a cookie-cutter approach to living Christ-like lives in this fallen world in which we live. Also in this book there are moments of dry humor that I greatly appreciated, but more than that, I very much was struck by the awe and reverence the author has for our God and for His Word and for the holy calling that is upon all of us to follow Christ. While we are yet on this world, we groan as we recognize that it is not our home and that while we are absent from our Lord, we are incomplete. We now inhabit the temporal but we look for the eternal, for that city that will one day be our home where we shall see our Lord face to face. We long for the day when our Lord will return and make all things new and wipe away every tear. And so in the now, we with hope look for what is to come and bear witness to the God who is our hope. Might we cry out to God that he might give us eyes to see and the grace to live in such a way that this witness is one that to the world makes it clear that God has not abandoned this world and that we are not alone.