Afghanistan: The Forbidden Harvest on amazon.com
Salaams! Just finished reading two good books that I highly recommend to everyone:
Rumors of Another World: What on Earth are we Missing? (2003),
Rating = ********* (9/10)
This is probably the 7th or 8th Yancey book I've read and it did not disappoint. Yancey is a superb writer and in my opinion one of the most stimulating & challenging Chstn writers of today. He writes this book "for those who live in the borderlands of belief." It is written to help answer the difficult question of why he/others believe in the unseen world, where faith--and not sight--must rule and determine what is real. Yancey himself admits that he is a "reluctant Chstn, buffeted by doubts and 'in recovery' from bad church encounters."
His "think-aloud" philosophical/theological treatise traipses through the worlds of creation, science, the arts, sex, psychology, and material possessions. He is concerned with how we can keep focused on the things that are unseen and eternal, while there is so much stuff right at hand pulling us in every other carnal direction. The book is a sort of outworking of an observation C.S. Lewis made years ago when he sensed that our longings were not only rumors but 'advance echoes' of the unseen world. Flashes of beauty and pangs of aching sweetness "are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard."
Afghanistan: The Forbidden Harvest (1981), J.
Rating = ******** (8/10)
Christy Wilson's book on Afghanistan is a good overview of the beginnings of modern M work in that country, which include his personal story of going to teach English there at a high school in 1951. He details how God called out many tentmakers from various professions to work in that closed country; job openings made possible by the former King's desire to modernize his country. There is the "inside" story of the formation of the Kabul Community Ch and the eventual construction (1971), and subsequent destruction (1973), of that church's building. He also includes a chapter on the history of Afghan martyrs which is very interesting--and inspiring. The book only covers the work that went on up until the end of 1980, a year after the Soviet invasion.
All for now--wes
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"If you're not standing on the edge,
you're taking up too much room."
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