A work of grace and beauty

Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life is a work of grace and beauty, well worth multiple slow and attentive readings.

Coming from the mind and heart of a very wise man, this slender volume is redolent with truth and love. It’s the kind of book that probably could only have been written by an older person, but that deserves careful consideration by people of all ages, especially young men!

Seventy-six-year-old Ford, a former world-trotting evangelist, recently a trainer and mentor of younger leaders, has stepped into the role of “artist of the soul and a friend on the journey.” As an artist with words, he surely succeeds, with elegant, even poetic prose laced with pithy nuggets of his own and apt quotations from a wide array of skilled authors. Rarely has a Christian leader with such a well-earned reputation for character and spirituality revealed so much of his own weakness and shortcomings. One thinks of St. Augustine’s Confessions.

As the back cover says, “Distractions and fear and busyness were keeping Leighton Ford from seeing God’s work in an around him. So he began a journey of longing and looking for God. And it started with paying attention.”

Under the rubric of “attention,” Ford includes concepts like listening, alertness, and the contemplative life. Chapter One, “Paying Attention,” would have been, as the saying goes, worth the price of the whole book, for it highlights how critical is attentiveness for finding “the way to clarity of heart,” which is “the path to seeing God.”

The author wants to help us be “clear at the center” (his preferred rendering of “pure in heart”) “and so with true attentiveness ‘to see God in all things, and all things in God.’” Such a quality mirrors the nature of God himself, who is a “Father who watches with careful attention.” After all, God is love, and “love is focused attention.”

By contrast, we learn how deadly distraction and inattention can be, not only in our relations with those around us, but in knowing either ourselves or God. “Perhaps inattentiveness is our greatest sin – not only against [God] but against ourselves.”

How, then, do we overcome inattention? Ford follows the “hours” of the monastic rule to paint a portrait of a life which stops, looks, and listens seven times a day. Each of these “hours” is related to a time of day, a state of mind, and a phase in our journey through life, until death itself approaches.

I am hard pressed to describe either the loveliness of this book or the depth and relevance of its central message as the theme unfolds and develops with a remarkably organic flow. A banquet of gourmet delights, pleasing to the palate, delightful to the eyes, and nourishing to the soul. A diamond with dozens of facets, each reflecting and refracting light in dazzling variety. A tapestry of rich colors of every hue, complex but coherent. A bouquet of flowers. A symphony of ideas and images, with theme and variation, ending in a quiet but deeply moving climax.

But I cannot do justice to the variegated richness of Leighton Ford’s style or the content of this highly-autobiographical guide to the attentive – and finally contented – life. You must read it for yourself. Soon. Repeatedly. Attentively.

Come Home, Son

Come Home, Son

You’ve wandered long enough, far enough. It’s time to come home.

Have you found what you sought?

What was it, anyway?

What drew you away from your Father’s house?

What induced you to demand what was “yours,” as if you had earned it by your own hard labor, or deserved the patrimony that would come to you by my free gift?

What lured you away from my steady love, my protection, provision and care?

Did you want to make a name for yourself – like the builders of Babel?

Did you think that the delights of this ephemeral world satisfy the hunger and thirst of your immortal soul?

Or were you just restless, driven, impelled to leave me, launch out on your own, perhaps even find yourself somewhere else?

Are you content? Happy?

How well do your erstwhile “friends” now like – not to mention love – you, now that your resources are expended and you have nothing left to give them?

Did you find what you were looking for in these companions in comfort, comrades in carousing, cohorts in crime?

You’re starving, I know, longing to eat one of the husks you feed the unclean swine of your stingy boss.

But would they stop the gnawing in your stomach?

You are coming to yourself; I see it from afar.

You know what I have to offer you, but you don’t know (yet) that it is yours to have – for free.

You are on the road, walking, now running.

I see your anxious look, know your doubting heart – will your Father yet take you back?

Your longing meets mine. I cast off my dignity and race towards you, arms outstretched.

“I am not worthy…”

“Hush, child. You are home. I am yours.

Welcome home, son.”

On reading Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life.

God’s Enfolding Love

God’s Enfolding Love

Yesterday as I was lying in the hammock my wife and daughter gave me for my birthday last year, I reflected on a passage from Julian of Norwich which I had just read on the love of God. I realized that I don’t just ponder the love of God very often. Earlier in the day, I had been reminded by Leighton Ford’s The Attentive Life to slow down and reflect on God, his Word, and his ways with us.

So, I thought about God’s love for a few minutes, and something new to me (though probably not to you) came to my mind.

Christians believe that God grants his pardoning love to us, forgiving all our sins by imputing them to Christ and transferring the righteousness of Christ to us (Romans 3:21-26; 5:6-11; etc.).

We also know that God’s love is transforming: As we consider what he has done for us, we are moved to imitate his kindness to others (John 13:34; Ephesians 5:1-12).

But what I saw yesterday is that God embraces us with an enfolding love. AS we trust in Christ, we enter into such a close relationship with him that the Bible says we are in some way in Christ (John 15:5; 17:21; Ephesians 1:3,4,6, etc.).

Now, since Jesus is in the “bosom” of the Father (John 1:18), indeed “in” the Father (John 17:17:21), and since we are spiritually alive in Christ, raised up with him, and in the heavenly places with him (Ephesians 2:5-6), we are also spiritually “in” the Father – that is, we are as close to him as we can be.

Consider this image: God the Father enjoys unbroken intimacy with God the Son through God the Holy Spirit. Those who fully trust in Christ are God’s beloved children also (Ephesians 5:1), and brought into this eternal loving relationship. God has, as it were, brought us into his divine embrace, surrounding us with his infinite love, enfolding us in the everlasting arms.

Stop for a moment, as I did yesterday, and imagine the rest, the comfort, the security, the peace of being thus enfolded in God’s gentle, powerful, and loving embrace.

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Total Health?

How To Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses: A Health Manual for All Nations. Oak Brook, Illinois: Institute in Basic Life Principles, 2008.

Carefully reading and then applying the principles in this book would prevent a great deal of disease and even bring healing to those already afflicted with major illnesses.

The inside title page adds, and Discover Five Causes off all Diseases, which might seem to be an arrogant claim, but is supported by a great deal of evidence, both from science and from the Bible. Though the author is not named, Bill Gothard’s fingerprints appear on almost every page.

The book begins with a definition of “total health”” not perfect health, but “the ability to fulfill the purposes for which God created you.” We are told that “total health involves a restored relationship with God and the accompanying signs of joy, freedom, and inward peace.”

Next comes a series of chapters on the five factors that determine health, which are: what we think; what we say; what we do; what we eat; what we inherit. Each of these then receives detailed treatment, with a description of how they affect our physical health and how they can be adjusted to foster physical and mental well-being.

“The disease crisis of modern medicine” is that we rely too much on drugs, all of which have toxic side effects. Covering symptoms with unnecessary pharmaceutical intake, we set ourselves up on a “course of increasing drugs and diseases.”

After an explanation of the harmful effects of stress on the body, we read in the body of the work how to “resolve” the seven major stressors in life: anger, guilt, sexual lust, bitterness, greed, fear, and envy.

More specifically, the writers claim that anger affects the cardiovascular system; guilt affects the nervous system; lust affects the endocrine system; bitterness the digestive system, greed the immune system, fear the respiratory system, and envy the musculoskeletal system.

Extensive references to medical literature back these diagnoses, which were apparently contributed by C. Stephen Paine Jr., M.D., who is thanked for his extensive role in the production of book.

Fundamentally, however, the starting point for each analysis is the Bible, which turns out to contain far more specific references to the relationship of mind and body than most of us would think.

At the beginning of each chapter on the various stressors, we learn how we try to hide or deny their presence in our lives. “I am not bitter… I am just deeply hurt.” On the other side of the page are ways in which we reveal express what would otherwise remain hidden. Bitterness, for example, may come out as “harsh, vitriolic speech, being very easily offended, being extremely judgmental, hard facial features,” and other manifestations of a festering wound.

After diagnosis comes a prescription for healing, based on the Bible and illustrated by vignettes of people who have found freedom by carrying out biblical instructions.

I was amazed at just how intensely practical information was packed into this slender volume, and how much wisdom is contained in a very brief compass. The reader will find step-by-step guidelines on how to “have a courageous conversation” and “how to transform lust into the dynamic of genuine love,” for example.

Some of the aphorisms bear careful pondering:

“To love someone is to understand him.” “One of the greatest gifts we can give a neighbor is a listening heart.” “It is not wrong to desire greatness. It is wrong to strive for it in our own way.” “The truest test of being a servant is how we respond when we are treated like one!” “Love is not an emotion but a choice we make based on God’s will. “Love can always wait to give. However, lust can never wait to get.”

Because of my profound admiration for the value of this beautifully-produced, lavishly-illustrated guidebook to health, I hesitate to make any criticisms. No human production is perfect, however, and How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses has a few that should be mentioned.

Though in general I found the interpretation of the Bible adequate, a few sections seemed to stretch the original intent of the biblical passage quoted. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) probably means that we are to evince kindness to all sorts of people, even those who are unlovely. Instead, it is somehow made to support the otherwise helpful concept that we should be sincere and enthusiastic in the way we greet people!

Indeed, one of the main criticisms leveled against Gothard over the past several decades has been his propensity for forced interpretations of the Bible. Perhaps he would benefit from more input from biblical scholars.

Some will be turned off by another of Gothard’s trademarks: A “simple recipe” approach to resolving complex and sometimes chronic problems. One could get the impression that it’s just a matter of going through a checklist of recommended activities, and everything will be fine. For some reason, this doesn’t bother me, perhaps because I think there is the principles are so true, and most of the application of them so helpful, that a great deal of benefit really would come from following the author’s advice.

More difficult for me to understand were the ways in which a biblical principle is linked with a “resulting quality.” “Go the Second Mile” will produce deference; “Observe Communion” (the Lord’s Supper) will result in thoroughness. And so forth. I found this to be the only really jarring feature of an what is basically an extremely helpful treatise on total health.

Overall, however, I would strongly recommend How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses. It deserves repeated and thoughtful reading, and forms a good complement to my The Lord’s Healing Words, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and AuthorHouse.

You may obtain this book from the Institute of Basic Life Principles http://store.iblp.org/products/rsds/.

G. Wright Doyle