"When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, you first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it." (p. 124)
~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
(Another must-read for your list, by the way. I've really hit a gold-mine in my reading choices these days.)
On My Nightstand This Week:
Devotional: 1 Thessalonians with the Paul for Everyone Commentary (NT Wright)
The Daily Office Lectionary Readings and Prayers from The Trinity Mission
Theological: The Supper of the Lamb (Capon)
AO Book Discussion Group: Kim (Kipling)
On Education: Consider This (Glass)
Personal Choice: The Dean's Watch (Goudge)
Poetry: TS Eliot
With my Hubby: Emma (Austen)
Family Read-Aloud Literature: Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery)
*I am also reading Charlotte Mason's Volume 6 for a local CM book club, but these meetings are infrequent, and it is my third – or fourth? – pass through it and so I just read the brief section assigned as our meetings come up.
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Gilead has been a common theme in suggestions lately. It's on my shelf but needs to move up in the rotation. First to finish Kim and Westward Ho!, though.
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