A few years ago a man, someone said to me, after a church service, in the middle of the room with everyone else buzzing around,
"Your eyebrows are too thick. Why don't you get them dealt with?"
My eyebrows are descended from my grandfather who had a pair of the best beetlers anyone could hope to meet. We loved them on him. But, like any woman, I'd like to be thought of as beautiful, and this personal remark also hit me in my Englishness, which taught me that to make personal remarks like that is the height of rudeness. (Since then, the cultural stuff is being knocked out of me too; in the end, God's in charge of what people say - I'm only responsible for my reaction.)
Anyway, looking back, I realised that he was one of the most needy, hurting and stupid idiots I have ever known. He didn't know God. He was cheating on his wife at the time and still is. We were trying to help him and had opened up and were being vulnerable with him.
I don't think I had realised just how gracious God is back then. I was just offended.
Now, after all that time, I think I would say something like, "... And what are you hiding, dear?"
Anyway, I've just finished reading 'Bo's Café' by John Lynch, Bill Thrall and Bruce McNicol
I found this book really good in the sense that it took me further along the journey of understanding that God
likes me for who I am, not for what I do or don't do. I hardly know what good literature is any more - I love reading the classics and assume that they're good, but I rarely read a book these days unless I'm going to learn something by reading it, and most modern books, especially Christian books, seem to me to unbearably trite and shallow.Steven Kerner is a successful, driven 34 year old, who has everything outwardly, but little realises how little he has inwardly. The lies he tells himself are destroying his life and relationships with those closest to him. One day he's accosted by a man he thinks is a stranger in a bar and from that moment onwards, he starts to come unravelled.
The writers wrote this to help others along the journey of discovering 'the life and freedom in Christ that living in His grace affords us." I think that this parable does that. It's simple, the action is mostly in the conversation, but it works. I wanted to follow the conversation further and even join it.I am desperate to know God more and to learn to walk in His truth. After reading 'Bo's Cafe,' I realise more than ever that I don't have all the answers, but He does, and I am grateful that there are some who are further along that path than I am who can help me. I can think of at least a hundred people in Germany alone I'd like to give this book to.
