Food for Thought

My children started school this week. 

One thing I love about homeschooling is reading alongside my kids and setting aside time for reading myself. 

I’ve read some excellent books this year, and I am sharing them with you today in the hopes that it will spur us both on to God-exalting mindfulness and also that you will share your recent booklist with me! Feel free to email me or comment below with your book recommendations.

As far as devotional reading goes, I am usually a Scripture-only type of reader, but this year, I have enjoyed Jackie Hill Perry’s Upon Waking, a collection of Scripture-inspired reflections meant to direct the reader back to Scripture. Perry’s deep, personal insight doesn’t detract from the Lord’s truths or impact, but rather enhances it in a way that makes it applicable and memorable. This is definitely a devotional that I will re-read.

Helen Roseveare’s writings are a staple for me, and I recently read two of her books penned later in her life: Enough and Count it All Joy. Both of these tiny volumes are not tiny in challenge or meaning. Is Jesus enough? As a Christian, do I really count it all joy? When you pick up these works by Roseveare, you will find out.

From Anglo-Saxon literature to works of art, my nonfiction reading has been surprisingly rich, leading me closer to Jesus even as I contemplate the world around me. Even if you are not a literature nerd, Eleanor Parker’s Winters in the World sheds light on history, time, literature, matters of faith, and even self. I read this in preparation for studying Medieval History with my kids, but I found so much that thrilled, inspired, and delighted me. Just her inclusion of the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Seafarer” made this a five star read for me:

“So now my spirit soars out of the confines of the heart, my mind over the sea’s flood; it wheels wide over the earth, and comes back to me eager and greedy; the lone flier cries, incites the heart to the whale’s way, irresistible, across the ocean’s floods. So to me the joys of the Lord are warmer than this dead life, lent on land.”

Russ Ramsey’s Rembrandt in the Wind takes a look at art (and artists) through the eyes of faith. From VanGogh and Rembrandt to lesser known artists Tanner and Trotter, Ramsey paints broad strokes over the art world to help Christians get a clear view of how art so often points to the Gospel. 

I have slowly eased back into enjoying fiction, and Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow vies with Lief Enger’s Virgil Wander for top pick. Both are thoughtful, character-driven narratives that tell a story to make one think. I have also enjoyed Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse and all of the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries by Dorothy Sayers.

Perhaps there’s no book so good as C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when my youngest son snuggles beside me on the couch and asks, “Can we just read one more page?” I hope your reading is as satisfying.