In the Christian spiritual life, think about the disciplines and practices that are foremost in your tradition. Prayer. Attending worship. Serving others. Reading or studying a Scripture portion. Fasting. Generosity and giving.
Don’t think about what doing these things might render in a day, or a week. Consider what might happen if you did these things routinely over years, even decades.
Choose a few seemingly small commitments. Keep them.
You won’t know where keeping those commitments will take you, what it will render.
But years from now, you may be very glad to have found out.
Click the link above and check out other bookplates from authors like Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, and other luminaries.
I have a stamp for our books that is on its last leg. If you have a recommendation, if you know where to find an incredible bookplate, comments are open.
But it is a real, recent text exchange. And it’s brilliant!
I like’em both.
If you aren’t familiar, The Dark Night of the Soul is the most famous work of Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite friar and great spiritual writer. T
The Dark Knight is another appellation for Batman, the superhero persona of Gothamite Bruce Wayne.
In the spiritual formation class that I teach we explore different approaches to prayer.
Most of my students are familiar with extemporaneous spoken prayer and liturgical prayer. Fewer are familiar with the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me [a sinner].” This prayer is most commonly associated with the Eastern Orthodox Tradition and is said to trace back to the Desert Mothers and Fathers of the 5th century, but biblically you can say its origins rest in Mark 10:46-52, when Bartimaeus cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
I asked my students for other short, memorizable prayers that are familiar to them.
Some said, “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Amen.”
Others, to the tune of “The Theme from Superman:”
“We thank You Lord for giving us food (put one hand in the air), We thank You Lord for giving us friends (put the other hand in the air), (with both hands up swaying back and forth like flying) For giving us food, for giving us friends (hands up standing still) We thank You Lord, (both hands to hips in superhero pose). Amen.”
But one of my students raised his hand and said, “I know it’s kinda morbid, but…’Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.'”
Daniel Darling dedicated an issue of his newsletter to 5 Common Mistakes Leaders Make, identifying the following leadership missteps:
A Refusal to Deal with Personal Insecurities
No Gray Hair in the Inner Circle
Unwillingness to Build Relationships Across Key Constituencies
Unwise Stewardship of Leadership Capital
A Lack of Personal Humility
His exposition of each of these observations is worth reading, so visit the link.
I have a few thoughts on each of these corrective admonitions.
All five of these failings evidence of immaturity. All can be grown beyond. All five are potential pitfalls, especially for developing leaders.
Ministry leaders, like everyone else, have insecurities. The crucible of ministry service reveals what those insecurities are. The congregation is the forge for growth in holiness. It may not always be pleasant, but God often works through our relationships with those we serve to reveal the ways we have yet to stand confidently in the gospel, secure in faith. The people we serve often help us to see more clearly the way of repentance. Knowing oneself is a gift of God, but it often comes through intimacy with weakness, the very places where God’s grace can be displayed as strength.
While it is true that young leaders can mistakenly surround themselves exclusively with those of their age and stage, old leaders can commit the opposite, parallel error. Leaders need to know their congregation, from the oldest to the youngest, saying hello, learning names, shaking hands, being present, displaying curiosity, demonstrating care, and being open and vulnerable, sharing not only the gospel, but life.
I’ve seen leaders steward their “leadership capital” poorly, but knowing where and how and at what pace to lead is not easy. It’s easy to say “don’t spend it too quickly!” But the opposite error can be made, moving too slowly or doing nothing at all in order to play it safe. It’s more art than science, involving discernment, sensitivity, and skill. I don’t think anyone does this perfectly. Wisdom in this area comes from knowing that leaders gain trust in spoonfuls and lose it in buckets, so lead wisely.
The fifth is the key to lessening propensity to falling prey to the previous four. Humble leaders often become so by dealing with their insecurities in healthy ways, learning their limitations and the power of God in light of those limitations. They associate with all kinds of people. They are confident in making bold decisions, but they appreciate the weight of their decisions, are very aware of ways their decisions effect the people they lead, bear the criticism directed their way from those who disagree with them from a place of understanding and compassion, and share the credit when things go right. In fact, the most humble leaders give all the credit away to those who gave and sweat and prayed and bled and served and worked, and to God, who makes all things possible.
They know that, in the end, the objective is to glorify God. They know that in God’s kingdom the last are first and the first are last, that we are called not to lord over but to serve, that we are the unworthy who have been made worthy through so great a salvation. There is only one name to proclaim in ministry leadership, there is only one whose reputation and reign ultimately matter. The ministry leader knows that their being brought in, appointed, and anointed is a sheer miracle of grace. Having received so great a salvation, they cannot neglect it. They live in light of it. They invite others to do the same.
Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:
Books to read, such as Cicero’s Letters, Suetonius, Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon’s Memoirs, Mommsen, and (till we get a better one) Grote’s History of Greece.
Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry, the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers not the savants.
Books not to read at all, such as Thomson’s Seasons, Rogers’s Italy, Paley’s Evidences, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all John Stuart Mill except the essay on Liberty, all Voltaire’s plays without any exception, Butler’s Analogy, Grant’s Aristotle, Hume’s England, Lewes’s History of Philosophy, all argumentative books and all books that try to prove anything.
The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I venture to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme.
Pall Mall Gazette (1886)
I am occasionally asked for reading recommendations, and I tend to share what I have read, or what I have seen, or what I am confident rests along the lines of interest of the inquirer. And I occasionally have people ask me if a book is worth reading. That is an entirely different question. When that is the question, more often than not I answer, “no.”
Ecclesiastes 12:12 reads, in part, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” That verse came up repeatedly during my days in seminary, and I think of it from time to time. There are more books in print than any one person would every have time to read. More and more books are published each day. Not every concern that rises to the level of public debate is worth addressing. Not every question is worth the time and effort it would take to research. While it is delightful to learn new things and to explore new frontiers, conceding that others have more knowledge in a given area and admitting that you do not know is perfectly okay. Some books are not ours to read; some topics are not ours to master.
My advice to aspiring readers is to ask those who are well read what they are reading, to build lists, and to diligently and patiently chase authors and interests. I’ll add an admonition to pray and bring to one’s reading a faith that God is with us in our studies. We do not always appoint or choose our influences, rather, they find and grip us. This can be interpreted as a sign of divine providence. I have often heard it said, or testified, that the right books seem to find us at the right time. (Do the wrong books ever find us at the right time, or at the wrong time? Lord only knows how often we’ve been spared!)
We should not put aside our responsibility to seek faithfulness, to be discerning and discriminating with regard to what is ours to read and what is ours to set aside. We should also seek wisdom, and choose reading material that is timely and profitable for the season of life in which we find ourselves, or the line of inquiry that has been appointed for us to pursue. We should also choose that which is true and edifying, rather than trash. More reasons to be prayerful, all. In all things, desire that the Lord directs your steps.
We take one ride on this rock we call Earth. If you’re going to spend time with books, think before you read.
