Monday, March 7, 2011

Blue Like Jazz


Donald Miller first captured my interest, and made my soul think in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I tried to read Blue Like Jazz a few years ago, but couldn't get into it... I don't think I was ready for it....

By that I mean I was in a place where I was feeling so much pain and confusion about "religion" as well as being quite narrow minded I don't think I could have received a lot of what he was saying....at least not with out feeling really judged.

But now, at this exact moment in my life, this book speaks directly to me, ... I have struggled for a few years now with this "god" that everyone around me was trying to fit into a box...one titled "Religion", another title "Political Affiliation", and more boxes within each of those. The problem was God, the one I felt and knew in my heart, didn't fit in any of these, so I didn't fit either.

Blue Like Jazz broke these boxes down ... put these words to what my heart has been trying to speak to my brain "by reducing Christian Spirituality to a formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder."(p.205) That God doesn't fit in a church (He probably wouldn't attend many that claim to worship Him), or in a political agenda.

Instead He fits in love... the love we give, the love we receive, the acts of kindness, the acts of forgiveness, the acts of acceptance and not judging, the acts of servitude...to others and ourselves.

If God doesn't fit in a box, then neither do those that choose to follow Him.



Learned? A lot... but here are a few that I want to be reminded of:

pg. 13 If satan can get man wrapped up in habit, he can keep us from engaging God.

pg. 86 "Behavior will not be changed long with self discipline, but fall in love and a human will accomplish what he never thought possible."

pg.111 "dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something...is the hard thing."

pg. 182 "The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me."

pgs 218-219 The idea of Christians viewing love as a commodity, giving it to those who agree with us, withholding it from those that don't... but instead to "love people because they are Jesus."(p.201)

pg. 229 "your value has to come from God."

2 comments:

Polly said...

Nicely said! Love/God is seen or felt from an action.

Moore Minutes said...

I LOVE this book!