Whispers of Truth

I have spent much of my summer perusing literature that is work related instead of what I normally read for pleasure. An escapist by nature, I gravitate toward Christian fiction in my free time probably because it differs from the literature I read and teach at work, which includes classics and critical analyses of them. This summer I have been revisiting many of the classic works I read twenty to twenty-five years ago (the majority of which has totally dissolved from my memory…), and I am noticing some things that never occurred to me as a younger reader. For example, while reading the introduction to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Johanna M. Smith, I observed that Shelley had a rather dysfunctional home life and parents that often seemingly contradicted themselves in their messages and the way they chose to live out their lives. As a Christian mother of impressionable teens, I can see the import of this now; years ago, I would have simply skimmed the commentary and dismissed it

While studying in Romans this past week, I came across a statement by Matthew Henry that struck me: "In every willful sin, there is contempt of the goodness of God. And though the branches of man's disobedience are very various, all spring from the same root" (Rom. 2 commentary). How many times do we sin willfully and think to ourselves, "I hate God's goodness"? I don't think that I've ever had that surface as a conscious thought, but it is very true. When God places something in our lives that is difficult to deal with or impossible to escape, the urge to walk away (thus, sin willfully) can be great. The struggle within to accept problems and deal with them in God's strength instead of our own can be enormous. Life offers various hurts and wounds us quite frequently, and we can get used to dealing with these small, expected pains. But let God throw a curve ball in and just watch out! A curve ball can take many forms, but when you are expecting a