Don Miller is a gifted man. These days in spare moments I’m working through his 4+ hour workshop on The Elements of Story. He has a lot of good things to say, and I think Christians should join him in learning about the power of story, and how to harness it for God’s purposes. But that’s for another soapbox another day.

I recently finished A Million Miles in a Thousand Years after having waited on it for a year or so. Having read all his previous books, and with my limited knowledge of editing, publishing, and writing, combined with a lot of respect for Don, I was most anxious to read this book. Finally. Of course I can’t help but wonder what the scoop is with having it hit the shelves nearly a year later than was planned. The world of publishing has its own secrets, well protected from us mortals.

My sense of the book is that it is highly edited, tightly scripted, and of course has a smashing PR package. I mean, have you ever heard of a writer hiding copies of his book in various cities, giving directions to them via Twitter, I think it was, before the book came out? And this current 65-city tour–it’s a huge marketing scheme, and it makes me sad in a way because I feel that God’s people should support God’s artists and writers, and is this the best way it’s done? I guess it’s the modern way it’s done.

But I digress.

I think what happened to Don while writing this book is the same thing that happened to me when writing my book: it wasn’t til I was two-thirds into it that I hit my stride. And even careful editing doesn’t hide it or cure it. The first part of A Million Miles was fairly boring. I’d heard alot of it before in his various talks, plus it seemed he was trying to draw in the reader with sensational or arty ideas. Not that I did that with my book, no, never!!! Don can get away with the kind of airy-fairy writing that most of us mortals can’t.

I didn’t connect with this book until he wrote about his ‘melt down’ alone in his hotel room in LA when he thought to himself They don’t have an emergency room for the kind of pain that is about to happen to me. After that, the book isn’t arty anymore. It’s truthful and real and hits hard–and is still beautiful. Not that I took pleasure in hearing about his pain. But it was then that I knew we lived in the same world and speak the same language, and I could take on board what he was saying.

My favourite chapter is “The Reason God Hasn’t Fixed You Yet.” In it, he verbalizes the truth that things are never going to be perfect here. Utopia doesn’t come even if we do desperate things to get it. However, there WILL be a time when wrongs will be made right. Jesus will do it, not us, and it will be at a wedding, and there will be a feast.

The last chapter is edited within an inch of its life. Actually, if I ever get a chance to meet Don, I’ll ask him about it because I’m 100% sure that he didn’t write the last paragraph of the last chapter. It is so sculpted, it’s clunky and awkward. But the afterward is wonderful. It’s so beautiful and true it makes me wish I’d have written it.

Is Don one of those writers who will keep churning out books because publishers see big money coming from it? I hope not. I like to think that he’s a gifted writer, and that his message and his skill will not become diluted with more books and speeches. I hope that he is one of a new generation of writers and speakers who fan into flame the gift God gives them, knowing that they are trees in a story about a forest. I don’t know what all that means, but I do know that it means doing more than sitting on a couch waiting for inspiration to strike or for things to happen. I’m glad Don is living a good story. It inspires me. Which, among other things, is what good stories should do.

I don’t know why, but I haven’t found a devotional book I really like. There are thousands out there, and my sisters and I frequently come up with new titles, like Devotions while you pet your Cat, and Comforting thoughts for Coffee Drinkers. I think it was Donald Miller in one of his forwards who sparked off our creativity in this.

The one I once used the most and that still sits on my shelf but I haven’t used it in years is Joni Erikson Tada’s Secret Strength. She is solid and sensible, not as fluffy as some.

But what I use all the time, and have used for years, and don’t get tired of is what my sister gave me for payment for sewing a dress for her: Daily Light. It’s what Elizabeth Elliot’s family used, and what Amy Carmichael used before them. Every day has a morning and evening section but I read it all at one time because it’s so short.

It’s comprised only of Bible verses, collected into a specific theme for that day. I LOVE it. It feeds me every single day. Repeatedly, it speaks to the need of the hour, and I have 1998 or 2002 “Sam’s home-going” or some other significant event in the margins, and when I come back to that day the next year, I remember God’s faithfulness and how He met me there.

Which is much more substantial than pink, fluffy words that fill pages but don’t give any sustenance.

I bought it in a sort of deal: To Own a Dragon, by Donald Miller.

In a conversation about authors in the study room, I said I liked Don Miller alot, but didn’t think I needed to read a book for men.  Gideon said he’s going to buy my book, so I should read Don’s book. Fair enough. And I’ve so enjoyed it.

Which goes to show that sometimes it’s good to break out of your box and read something that’s not specifically for you.  For example, I recommend that singles read Love and Respect even if it’s written for married people and even if the author repeats his premise a million times.

Don Miller has an amazing way with words. He portrays deep concepts in a simple, conversational manner that takes you in and keeps you with him. Maybe it’s fluffy for some people, but I like it alot. And I’m awfully jealous that my parents got to meet him in TX last week at a book convention.

I think if we can learn to write in ways that let people hear our passion without letting it blow them away, that is what will invite them to Truth. I think that’s what was so compelling about Jesus when people heard Him speak.

By the Lion’s mane…

Years ago I found this poem somewhere and added it to my poetry collection book. I didn’t know who wrote it, but it spoke deeply to my heart, as I discovered how God ‘comes down His own secret stairs’ to me.

Much later, I found one of the verses as I was reading George MacDonald’s “The Lady’s Confession.” It was like meeting an old friend, and then getting to know the friend’s parents as well.

That Holy Thing

They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cams’t, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.

O Son of Man, to right my lot
Naught but Thy presence can avail;
Yet on the road Thy wheels are not,
Nor on the sea Thy sail!

My how or why Thou wilt not heed,
But come down Thine own secret stair,
That Thou mayst answer all my need–
Yea, every bygone prayer. –George MacDonald

Then on the bottom of the page in my book is this:

About God’s plan: “The whole thing narrows and narrows, until it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear–a Jewish girl at her prayers.” –C.S. Lewis

My brother and his wife gave me the book Souls of the Sea for my last birthday. I so enjoyed it. It’s the account of the storm and sinking of 2 boats off our local coast in Jan. 2007. I love that it’s so very Dunmore. It’s not great writing, but it’s so authentic. It explains the fishermen’s lives, how they work,  how they depend on weather predictions, and how those predictions are made.

It is still a mystery as to why the boats went down. It is a loss that everyone in the area feels; everyone was touched, affected by the tragedy. Everyone knew a sibling or relative or child or friend of the lost men. I loved how the book showed that authentic solidarity that the locals are so good at. It made me proud to live in Dunmore.

It’s a world apart. The harvest service in the village every fall thanks God for the harvest from the land and the sea. Having grown up mountains, that line of thanks always catches my attention and reminds me this is a different world indeed.  Right now, tourists walk all over the streets and stone walls, but I feel smug when I go through Dunmore because I’m thinking You pay big money to come here for a week, and I get to live here. Ok, the winters are dreadful and dark, but then we have the village to ourselves, and we get to see the glorious gales. But the gales do take boats and lives every winter. From the wrath of the sea, O Lord, deliver us.