Sat, Apr 5th - 12:35AM
GEORGE ELIOT CHANGED MY LIFE
George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Anne Evans, wrote her first book in 1860. Womens creativity was not taken seriously at that time in the male dominated society, and she hoped to get a wider readership by using the nom de plume. Christianity was a foundation of the society in which she lived and Eliot was a Ministers daughter. It is generally held that she moved away from her Christian faith toward the end of her life, but most of her books seem to have been written while she was a believer and reveal that she had a depth of understanding regarding peoples varying responses to Christianity and the Church. Her first book, Adam Bede, has a sermon not far from the beginning, preached by a young Methodist woman on a village green that goes on for about ten pages and that could be used today by any Evangelist without any changes needing to be made.
She had a love for the ordinary people whose lives at that time were very limited and often hard because of poverty, no education and ignorance regarding health and medicine. I find her books interesting because they give a window into attitudes of the time, how business was conducted, how the clergy obtained their appointments and conducted their ministry, the shortened life expectancy from vulnerability to disease and the Victorian obsession with other peoples opinions.
How did George Eliot change my life? 'The Sad Tale of the Reverend Amos Barton' is one of her shorter books and is a story of a dispassionate Minister who regrets his lack of attention and affection to his wife, after she dies leaving him with three young children. It is not a happy book and is really a description of how hard life was for families who struggled to adequately feed and clothe themselves. In most of her books Eliot occasionally stops her storytelling to talk to the reader and to impart some philosophical wisdom. In one of those deviations where she is discussing Amos Bartons regrets, she uses these words, 'and have no reverence for the sacred human soul, the most Divine thing God has put close to us'.
Those words had quite an impact on me. I'm one of those people who has perfectionist tendencies. Even after many years as a Christian, I still find sometimes that I have to do a bit of mental work to adjust to the so called imperfections around me. Being a perfectionist definitely does not work in human relations and Eliots words broke a barrier down for me. These days I have trained myself to be aware when the perfectionist might be about to throw a spanner in the works and upset a good relationship. Those words took me further on though, and actually caused a significant change of mind.
Reverence, sacred and Divine, are strong words in their true meaning and immediately made me think of the value God puts on each person, made in His image, as revealed in His sending His Son to suffer and die for each of us. I suppose all of us have a leaning towards assessing people by their behaviour or response to us. I have always tried to recognize that and to remind myself that God loves the person and in the case of those that don't yet know Him, has already forgiven their sins in Christ and all they have to do is genuinely receive it.
George Eliots words produced a change in me so that now as I interact with people or if I am just people watching, the first thing that comes to my mind is, "there is a sacred human soul that I am to have reverence for, the most Divine thing God
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Sat, Apr 5th - 12:29AM
OWNING OUR WORDS
OWNING OUR WORDS
God has given us words that are peculiar to us as His people, and it is important that we take ownership of those words. If we do not make them our own no one else will, no one else can. Here are some of the words I am talking about; Perfect, Blameless, Holy, Irreproachable, Pure, Cleansed, Glorified, Complete. In our humanity we often struggle with applying these sorts of terms to ourselves. Adam Clark the Wesleyan Bible Commentator had something to say about this in his sermon on perfection.
" Many stagger at the term perfection in Christianity; because they think that what is implied in it is inconsistent with a state of probation, and savors of pride and presumption: but we must take good heed how we stagger at any word of God; and much more how we deny or fritter away the meaning of any of His sayings, lest He reprove us"....
The New Testament shows that struggling to accept Gods words is a problem common to most Humans. Nicodemas, for example, seems to have heard Jesus' words on a completely secular level, as did the Jews after hearing Jesus speaking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Their is great blessing in accepting what God has said first, then seeking for understanding afterwards. When Jesus said, " the words I speak unto you are spirit and they are truth", He was declaring that His words are from another realm, one that will always be unfamilar to the human part of us.
We should bear in mind also that we have an enemy, the thief, who according to Jesus, " comes to steal the word".
Words such as those in the first paragraph have been given to us by God through the suffering, death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us take them as our own, whether we have understanding or not, for in so doing we glorify Him and honour what He did for us.
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Sat, Apr 5th - 12:19AM
Welcome to your Blog!
Dear Ross Thompson,
This is your blog, now you can post your own messages and communicate with your readers!
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Thank you and have fun blogging!
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Name: Ross Thompson
