Yes, this really was written for my mother. It started out as a cute, fuzzy little idea for a Christmas present and then turned into this monster project that gorges itself on my free evenings and carries the bloodied corpse of my sanity back to the den to feed its young. (I take back every mean thing I ever said about you Mrs. Cowman. I’m not even writing this stuff and the sheer scope of finding enough in my notes to cover a whole year of devotional writing is just horrifying.)
But, all joking aside, I really feel strongly about reading old books, as it says, much better than I could, in this post. Not because old things are inherently better, but because it simply provides a different perspective. The problems and blind spots of the past are usually different from our current ones, and there’s also a certain ‘survival of the fittest’ rule that applies: of course a lot of junk got written in the 1700s, but no one bothered to keep it, etc, etc.
I wasn’t really expecting for anyone else to read this, so I apologize for the occasional difficult or confusing bit of English. However, as a writer/editor, I know how frustrating it can be to have someone tell you what you meant, and, very often, paraphrasing or modernizing the language can end up maiming a piece of writing (and I feel like I’m on thin enough ice with all the cutting and pasting as it is). I’m aware that not everyone grew up on Shakespeare and the King James, and sympathize, so I try to avoid the more archaic stuff when I can, but I also think most of these writers are worth the occasional effort. (Honestly, operating on the New King James principle and just substituting ‘you’ for ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ will clear up half your difficulties immediately.) In both religion and literature we may not completely understand something the first time we see it, but, as Lewis implied, it’s better to understand half of what Plato himself said rather than the whole of one of his commentators.
I understand that not everyone is “literary” and willing to trudge through classic doctrinal or devotional works, and with good reason, but I feel that some of it still has value, and I happen to have read more of these classics than your average person, so I felt compelled to share the things that have had the biggest impact in my life.
Mum's devotional 