Book Review, and Three Books on Prayer

I wrote a review of the book The Papa Prayer: The Prayer You've Never Prayed by Larry Crabb on Good Reads on Wednesday morning, even though I read the book two or three years ago now. I'm not generally very good at book reviews these days, saying more about whether I liked the book or not than what the structure of the book was, what the author argued, whether I agreed. My book reviews have been sporadic over the years, inconsistent in their content, even though I was rather good at them in undergrad and grad school. It's as though writing about  a book as part of an assignment were easier than writing about the book in a responsible way for my own use. Make sense? If it doesn't, know it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. I hope that my work in Adler and Van Doren will cause me to improve.

Years ago a friend of mine gave me a book journal, a lovely little paperback thing she had picked up in California. She told me that I should try to capture my thoughts as best I could, but then I got out of the habit of thinking about books the way I once had, and when I tried to make notes about them in the book I too often felt that I was getting nowhere fast. Again, I hope that as I continue to build this habit of regular writing and careful reading into my life this will change as well. I'd like to fill that lovely little book with ink, the sort of thing I'll want to read in years to come.

I share my review of The Papa Prayer below, with some added details, and perhaps more personal information:

I thought this book was terrific, life changing in fact. My Dad, and another friend of mine disagreed, not that it was life-changing. We didn't discuss it in that way. The disagreement was over whether the book was wonderful or not. She (my friend) said that it seemed to her to be one of those books that revolved around one central idea that could better be expressed in fewer pages. I don't remember what my dad said, but knowing him it may have been something similar. Or perhaps the kind of prayer that Crabb described doesn't fit his relational style. I've advocated elsewhere that we are each of us uniquely made, and that therefore the relationship between God and us will not be uniform. This book contained some things that were bread and meat for me.


What I liked best about this book was the form of prayer that Crabb describes. Instead of trying to guess what God wants in any given situation, or demanding what we want from Him, Crabb advocates a form of prayer that becomes a conversation like you'd have with someone who cares about you. You present your own anxieties about a situation before God, tell Him what you're thinking, express your hopes for a particular outcome if you have them, but in so doing relinquish your concerns to Him. I know this isn't a revolutionary concept, but the way that Crabb describes it is immanently useful. For weeks after I read it I was more aware than usual of how much God values my conversations with Him, which in turn made me so much more aware and grateful that He was near.


Richard Foster presents a different view of prayer in a chapter of Celebration of Discipline, which is also valuable, and contrary to this one. Foster says that in intercessory prayer, which is the form he concentrates on in this book, there is no room for praying "Thy will be done." He says that when praying for others we must discern the will of God first, and then pray that in expectation. I don't disagree. I look forward to reading Foster's book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, if I can ever get my hands on a copy. I think the contradiction springs from a difference in focus, and I recommend Foster's view of the subject as well. I also absolutely love With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, which I read last summer. Andrew Murray's book reads like a devotional, a format that I have historically stayed away from. It's a terrific little book though, delving into scripture and teaching how to pray as Jesus taught and prayed. Each of these books is worth reading. Of the three, Larry Crabb's book moved me more to wonder at the glory and love of God and worship Him than it did claim my intellectual assent, and that is one of the reasons why I liked the books so much.

And now I'm one move closer to learning how to write a useful book review. For those books that I can remember well I now have the opportunity to re-review them, as the website I used to use for organizing my reading is in the process of shutting down. If I can make myself write about plot in the future, I may be able to start reviewing fiction as well, with something more than "I love this book," " I couldn't wait for it to be over but then it got better," and other such uninformative comments.

I tried to compose something about one of my favorite television shows the other day, but I couldn't get very far with it because I wasn't willing to explain the basic plot. It's something I shall have to continue to work on.

Note: I'll go ahead and publish the link below, but know that I have only written a couple of reviews on the goodreads website at this point, because I imported all of my books into their system only Tuesday. Reviews that I had published previously on living social could not be imported, and I had to give star ratings to many books that I had not read in years.


View all my reviews

The Story of Our Week (Oh, boy, It's a Long One)

Last week did in fact turn out to be a trying week.

On Saturday I saw that the maintenance required light that had been blinking in my van for three months had suddenly changed from blinking to solid. This was not a good sign. I had been supposed to take it in for an oil change the week that I was sick, and then we had VBS every morning, and then the weekend, so I had to trust my children to ride in a vehicle that I feared, for about five seconds, might not be safe. Michael had commented that the engine sounded different and that it seemed to lose power as he was driving only days before.

Took the van in to the shop. I would have stayed and waited for the oil change if I didn't think there was a good chance something else would have to be repaired. Got a ride home from the shop with one of their drivers and practiced my question-asking skills all three miles. It wasn't difficult as he was the kind of man who takes a question and runs with it. Nice guy.

They were able to fix it for us that day, but it cost about two-hundred dollars more than I had hoped to pay for a repair.

That evening around dinner time we failed to notice that our yellow labrador was needing to go out. Parker, my four year old, was the first to notice her peeing on the rug in the back room, which is also our laundry room. She had never had an accident in the house before. Luckily our sometimes daytime house guest was there, and he was able to tell us what to do to clean it up. After we mopped up as much as we could with towels, he poured baking soda all over the wet area to wick up the moisture. This was scraped and swept, and in the morning the residue was dry enough to clean up with the vacuum cleaner.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday occurred without either positive development business-wise, or negative incident. A good friend brought us dinner. Michael and I got a couple of hours out of the house to attend a short seminar. The children and I met my sister at CHOM and at the public library.

Then Friday. Ah, Friday.

Because I had felt pretty crummy all week, and our laundry room was being used for test-taking by our guest, the laundry had been piling up. In fact I hadn't even folded towels from the weekend before. As Michael left the house for play testing with Jim and errands, I finally put on a load of clothes and got the children ready to go outside.

We go outside. I see an unaccountable puddle of water streaming from the basement. It looks like it has soap in it. I walk into the basement to investigate, noticing that a lot of the moisture seems to be originating around the water heater, but there's nothing wrong with the water heater. Next thing I know, a rush of water falls from the raw ceiling above the heater. I run upstairs to see what's going on, only to find a stream of water growing out from underneath the washing machine, the wooden floor boards becoming warped around the edges. Since the load of laundry in the machine is in its final cycle, I have no choice but to let it run, even as I have a pretty good idea of what is going on below.

Michael's gone. The children are outside alone. A friend of mine is coming in a couple of hours to cut my hair.

I could drag this out and give you all the details, but the main thing that happened in the hours before my friend got there and Michael made it home from errands was that a $600 car repair that didn't bother me at the beginning of the week suddenly became a frighteningly large expense, as I contemplated the possibility of an even more expensive plumbing charge. For a moment I envisioned the floor collapsing and the siding falling off the back of the house. For a moment I couldn't help but think about the disparity between our income and expenses for the month. We're fine, but it really was a rough couple of hours alone in the house with two tired, and I do mean tired, children.

On Saturday I washed all of our dishes by hand (with help) because I was afraid that running the dishwasher would overload the plumbing. On Saturday Isaac's diaper leaked into my bed, wetting our one and only mattress pad, making the laundry situation all the more urgent. On Saturday Michael worked on the plumbing, and worked on the plumbing, and worked on the plumbing, with the benefit of some good advice from our sometimes house guest, but the problem wasn't immediately fixed. It wasn't a surprise that a plumbing issue would require a lot of trial and error, but it was still disheartening.

More help, this time from my Dad, after which the problem was solved without our having to call in the professionals, and without my having to leave the house to do laundry or grocery shopping or anything.

This was the week that I was dreading, and it turned out to contain things I never would have imagined in advance. I was glad on Saturday that it seemed to be over.

On Friday for a time I wondered why God wasn't providing for us in a more satisfying way. I wondered why the business possibilities that had come up at the beginning of the month hadn't developed into much of anything. I wondered why I had to finally get upset about the cost of the car when I had handled it so well earlier in the week.

On Saturday I remembered that we're supposed to thank God for trials. And I figured something out about the way I was supposed to pray while we wait for our financial situation to change. Maybe this is what I ought to be saying to Him (God): I know that You could provide us with an adequate stream of income any time You want. For all I know You could be planning to solve all of our employment problems tomorrow. Until You do, please just stretch what money we have and in the meantime teach me the lesson that You can be trusted with all our desires and needs.

It's a lesson I've been working on, and I have plenty of ideas about what faith and trust mean in terms of our relationship with God, that lovely old loaded term I'm also trying to cope with.

And then I started to recognize some of the blessings of the week.

My mom came to my house unexpectedly on Sunday night and cut my children's hair after which they got to run around in the sprinklers for half an hour.

A friend who will remain anonymous because I don't know whether he would want me to name him or not brought us dinner one night because I had been sick and because he wanted to do something nice for us. That dinner lasted us for two meals.

The children got a chance to use the computer games at the library because my sister was there with us, which meant that each child had their own adult giving them full attention.

Our sometimes daytime house guest was here when the dog peed on the carpet and was available with good and practical advice when the plumbing went all haywire.

The friend who cut my hair was here when I needed someone to distract me from what could have become a full on panic followed by depression as I described above.

My husband was able to solve the plumbing and problem and my parents were available to help.

We ended Saturday evening in the presence of someone Michael and I both love, who fed us yet again, and who brought the entertainment, leaving fresh vegetables and lemonade, among other things, behind.

In fact it turned out to be a rather good week.

"Nature Abhors a Vacuum."

RG loaned me Larry Crabb's book The PAPA Prayer many months ago, and since he warned me to take it just a chapter at a time, I laid it aside and didn't pick it up again until last night. At one point Crabb says that the Holy Spirit, just like nature, will always fill a vacuum (within the life of a believer), except that usually we're too busy trying to fill that vacuum ourselves that we don't give HS a chance. If Crabb is correct (and I suspect that he is) I want to start embracing the vacuum in my own life--the moments when I am tired, or lonely. Or bored. Or beyond my own capacity to deal.

Speaking of which, it's time to take a vacuum to this floor!

Veggie Tales: It's already started

I have seen the movie Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie at least once a day every day this week. Parker brings the case over for me to look at at least three times every day, and last night he managed to start the movie all by himself . (I tried to interest him in The Muppets Take Manhattan earlier this week, but he just didn't go for it.)

So I'm sitting here this morning, with Parker eating breakfast on my right, and the movie running on my left (it just ended), and in the Newsboy's track of the credits I hear--"How long is this going to take?"

Last night I started a book by Larry Crabb that Padre loaned me called The Papa Prayer. The premise of the book is that our usual approach to prayer is all wrong, and that prayer is more about enjoying the relationship than it is posting our problems and concerns. Seems rather obvious, doesn't it? Though if we really understood prayer this way, and enjoyed our relationship with God this way, prayer wouldn't be the burden or require the discipline from so many of us that it is and does. Looks like a good book. ("Limit yourself to one chapter at a time," he recommended.)

"How long is this going to take?" is something I have often wondered as I've prayed about a certain situation in the life of our family. Michael has had the same job for nearly the length of our marriage, and I have long prayed that he would find more satisfying employment. In seven years of searching, little has changed except that he gets to play the saxophone even less now than he once did. Some weeks before Christmas it hit me. If we believe that God is our provider, and He has not yet chosen to provide my husband with another job, it must be because He wants him where he is.

There are lots of reasons why this may be. I can make certain guesses based on what I know about the nature of God, but what Michael and I need to begin to pray is that God will bring us into agreement with Him that whatever it is, His will be done. It's not that I haven't prayed this way before, but the sudden realization on a December evening in 2007 imbued my previous knowledge with renewed meaning. Then the simple line from a Newsboys recording reminds me that God knows (understands, acknowledges) how I feel in the meantime.