This Too Shall Pass...

Update: Check out the updated version of this post by CLICKING HERE. Also click here for some other stuff.

Every Wednesday morning, I have a Bible Study with some of the Junior boys. The regular attendees are Adam J., Paul, Jared, and Adam B. I love these guys, and I really want to see them grow. Currently we are studying a book called The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. It is a really good book, and very challenging. It breaks things down, so they are not so overwhelming. And it builds logically.

I love it when a book builds logically. When it starts off slow, with some general truths. It gradually progresses through some systematic steps, while keeping your attention. And then by the end of the book, you are chewing on some real meaty stuff, and you didn't even notice the increase in complexity.

For example, the first sentence, no... the first paragraph of the book is, "It is not about you." What a way to start!

We just finished chapters 4 through 6, and these chapters really focus on the shortness of life, seeing things with an eternal perspective. It talks about how life is three things. Life is a test, life is a trust, and life is a temporary assignment.

I don't have time to really go into the depth of the book, because I would end up just copying all of the book, and then I am sure that I would end up with some copyright laws being broken and such. But I will give you one good quote out of the book to wet your appetite.

C.S. Lewis captured the concept of eternity on the last page of the Chronicles of Narnia, his seven-book children's series: "For us this is the end of all the stories....But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world... had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever and ever and in which every chapter is better than the one before."

I know that most of what I quote from this book is actually a quote from another book, but that is the way Rick Warren writes. There is not a page that goes by where he hasn't either quoted the Bible, or quoted from another writer; all to help drive across a point.

(And if you think that the verses he uses are out of context, I don't believe that he is completely losing the point of the verse that he quotes.)

I would definitely recommend this book. Great reading!