The Gospel According to George

I’m considering writing a new book: The Gospel According to George. This would be a short book aimed at music lovers from non-Christian or post-Christian cultures who enjoy Handel’s oratorio The Messiah, but have no idea what it is about.

“Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people,” Handel begins, quoting Isaiah chapter 40. But why do the people need comfort? Why is the cry of one in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” such good news? 

After the air for tenor, “Every Valley Shall be Exalted,” the chorus comes in singing Isaiah 40:5, “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” But who is this Lord? How does Messiah reveal his glory?

Passing of a Statesman

 

Back in the 1980s when my family lived in Mozambique, then a “front-line state” against apartheid South Africa, I thought the South African government was crazy not to release their long-time political prisoner, a fellow named Nelson Mandela. 

“Let the ANC tear itself apart with infighting,” I thought. 

I didn’t know Nelson Mandela. His eventual release from prison in 1990 led, not to infighting, but to reconciliation. After twenty-seven years in jail, this great man spoke words of forgiveness and united a nation. In 1994 he was elected president in the first fully democratic elections in South African history.

My Family of 34 Million

December 1 is World AIDS Day, a time to remember the 34 million people in the world today living with HIV. Half a million have died in the US alone. More than two thirds of those living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa where I have lived for many years. For every one person with the virus in the blood steam, weakening the immune system, countless others are affected—parents, children, friends, employers, employees, whole communities loosing economic power as wage earners become too ill to work. Anti-retroviral drugs have greatly extended the lives and health of people living with HIV, but the virus still presents huge challenges.

A Bigger Love Story

 Stephanie Landsem is in my critique group. I read an early draft of The Well in manuscript form and rejoiced with Stephanie when it became a finalist for the American Christian Fiction Writers’ Genesis award for unpublished fiction. The manuscript I read showed lots of promise, but the finished book? Wow! I was totally blown away. I am telling you about this book, not because Stephanie is my friend (and not because the publisher sent me a free review copy), but because, IT’S A REALLY GOOD BOOK!

The Problem of Pain in a Modern Thrriller

 Jeanette Windle’s books just keep getting better. I reviewed her Afghanistan series in the past. Her latest, Congo Dawn, is being released this week. It's set in the former Belgian Congo, Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Whether that darkness is local or colonial, Conrad leaves in doubt, and Windle picks up this theme in a thriller that will keep you up at night turning pages. The author knows Africa from the relief organizations and schools where my kids studied to the stamping of pestles and the singing of the locals. She shows African believers putting us Westerners to shame with their faith in the midst of a horrific situation. The book may be fiction, but the situation of brutal warlords and corrupt corporations grabbing what they can get at the expense of ordinary people is all too real.

Ever Mourn and Say

This is not the first time that tragedy struck at Christmas. Two thousand years ago a psychopath who killed his wife and three sons, heard that his royal position might be in danger from a peasant baby. He wasn’t a pagan; he consulted Bible scholars to find out where this king was. When the foreigners he tried to dupe into spying for him didn’t return, he had no way of knowing which child. So he killed them all—every boy baby two years old and under in the whole village of Bethlehem. It wasn’t a large village. We don’t know how many children died that day.

Maybe twenty.

Thoughts on The Help

I am partial to audio books. They allow me to read while driving or doing a boring job. I can even read with my eyes closed at night. One of the books I “read” this summer was The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I know, you probably read it a couple years ago, or at least saw the movie, but somehow I missed even that. 

When I finally got around to it, I didn’t want the book to end. Some in the African-American community take exception to it—historical liberties, stereotypes and why is it only the blacks who speak with dialect? (Dialect didn’t bother this northerner; in the audio-book they all had accents.)