paragraphs written on the train this morning

The lovely Carol gave me a book for Christmas. Actually she gave me several books, but I'm going to tell you about only one of them this time: "Searching for God Knows What" by Donald Miller (author of "Blue Like Jazz"). He starts out with a sort of dry wit, and at first I wasn't sure if he was ever going to get serious. He does pretty soon, and it's worth waiting for, and it's pleasant too, especially if you enjoy dry humor.

In the first chapter, he describes a Christian writer's seminar where he learns a couple of magic formulas that will make your book a best-seller. Both formulas involve taking three or four easy steps to go from crisis to confidence, or from misery to joy. But he notices that the Bible doesn't have these formulas - that God himself seems rather the opposite of formulas.

Here is my favorite quote from the chapter:

The truth is there are a million steps, and we don't even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing.

Ain't that the truth?