Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Older the Book...(Anointing and Memories)

This is surely not an absolute statement, but I am certainly beginning to wonder if there is some truth here...

The older the book, the more anointed and powerful the content! (Note that I am referring mainly to older Christian writers, writing about matters of faith and spiritual discipline.)

Let me explain...before leaving on Sabbatical, I went through my library and gathered books on personal spiritual growth that I would use to supplement my Bible reading!! I refused to bring any books with me about church, ministry or leadership. I've had enough of that over the last few years. Time for me to be more concerned with growing me than growing the church. God will grow His church! Anyway....as I gathered what books I owned that met this criteria, I noticed that quite a number of them were old...like written-in-1900-old. The pages were no longer white, instead they were creamish-yellow! I though that was noteworthy, then otherwise shrugged it off.

Well, over the last few weeks I have been reading books like this:


And this:

Tonight or tomorrow I will finish up this (I will be blogging about it later...great book!!):

I just could not help but notice that these books were all:
  • So Word-centered!
  • Free of clutter...like churchy stuff, technology, technique, political jargon, etc.
  • They seemed to be written under strong anointing. Meaning, I would read stuff and just have to stop and re-read, think, cry or pray! That does not happen too often with many of the books that I seem to read.
  • Oldies but goodies??
Oh and a BIG THANK YOU to people like:
  • Lew Good, who gave me many books from his Library in 1998 before I left for college!
  • David Eshleman, who also gave me many books during our years of working together.
  • My Parents, who have bought or given me many books over the years!
  • My Grandfather, "Pop" who was an avid reader and after he passed, I cuffed many of his books! In fact, "How to Pray" that I am reading now and that is pictured above was his!
As a matter of fact, this is the note written in the front of it. The book was given to him by the late Ron Fenwick who died in a plane crash. I blogged about him HERE! You can always click the photos to enlarge:

And inside of the book I found this 28 year old love note that my oldest Sister, Joeley wrote to her "Pop"...the book probably has not been cracked open for 28 years:

Well, these are just some musings that are dear to me this evening.

God be glorified!

--Noah

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This has been such a blessing to read and see
MOM

Unknown said...

Thanks for letting me know about that! I was exactly Elliza's age when I wrote that. She thought it was pretty cool and loves writing in cursive handwriting just like I used to. Was there anything else in the book?
Love,
Joeley