from the boring middle

"It is difficult to recall, much less recapture, the excitement of an adventure's beginning when you find yourself in the boring middle of it." — Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

Who's your favorite Christian author?

I know I'm supposed to say Paul or Lewis or Buechner or Chesterton, but my honest answer is Elizabeth Elliot. I recently (as in last week during vacation) began reading her Secure In the Everlasting Arms collection for the third time and find myself once again connecting with an author on a personal level. Everything she writes hits home. Hard.

Hits Home?

I could say the same is true every time I read something by Donald Miller or Rob Bell, too....because it is. Rob Bell says what I'd say about the American church. Donald Miller writes his way through our shared thought, exposing us as broken and uncertain, but aspiring and beautiful. And I get what they're trying to say, because without knowing me, they seem to get me. So does Elliot.

However, the difference between those guys (whose works, let me clarify, I absolutely love and learn from) and Elliot is that her stuff forces me to focus first on God. She acknowledges the crap and the distractions associated with life on earth, but she refuses to leave God out of it for even two sentences. She quotes authors I've never heard of in a way that makes me desperate to have a conversation with them. She put prayers to paper that I feel compelled to read aloud and meditate over for days at a time. She gets more of my underlines and margin scribblings than any other author has besides God. And she reminds me why I should be excited about this story of God's of which I get to be a part. I lose my cynicism in her words.

The Point?

She's worth reading. If you haven't, you should.

Of what author might you say the same?

Comments

[meghan]

Elisabeth Elliot is my Jiminy Cricket. I have chunks of "Passion and Purity" memorized. I'm not sure that's a good thing! But I'm glad you like her soooo much.