Book Review: Signs of Life, David Jeremiah

"We need to freely dispense the same grace God has shown us."
~David Jeremiah

"Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity."
~1 Timothy 4:12

The Christian life that genuinely belongs to Christ will not only manifest itself inwardly, in the heart, but also outwardly, through the actions.  Signs of Life is designed as a 40 day reading plan which will encourage Christians to live the servant heart and reach out into the world that needs to experience His grace.  Each reading explicates a particular biblical wisdom and illustrates it in action by the use of anecdotes.  And at the end of each is a one sentence summary making the lesson easy to remember, a Bible verse that will corroborate the lesson, and an application question that will make the readers reflect.

I find this book very practical and timely.  It is quick to become indifferent in a culture that is bombarded by permissiveness, selfishness, materialism, greed, and lack of compassion.  This book is provoking one to go against the grain of what society teaches and live that quality of life that evidence's Christ round the clock, all year round, even on holidays ;)

Book: Dusty Shoes, Rolled-Up Sleeves, and other Signs of Life (Back to the Basics of Authentic Christianity)
Author: David Jeremiah
Number of pages: 276
Published by: Thomas Nelson
Price: PHP 600
Available at: OMF Lit book shops

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A Book Review: The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume Three: 1939-1944

"Let him remain a poet and reveal magic coincidences and magic possibilities."
~Anais Nin

I first came upon Anais Nin while reading about Henry Miller.  She is best known for her unstructured bohemian lifestyle that was the life blood of her diaries.  As a diarist, she is very aware of herself in relation to her environment and those with whom she interacts.  She is decadent and affront.  She can be sympathizing but sometimes highfalutin.  In most of her pages she records her obsession for love which I find narcissistic and foolish that my eyes roll inadvertently all the way to the moon while reading.  Regardless, she's a good, though not great or awesome, writer.  She can bring color to her opinions on art, writing, and everydayness by means of poetic locutions.

"Proust and Dostoevsky are opposite poles in the study of love.  Proust studied its fragmentations, analyzed its disintegrations,  the malady of doubt and jealousy.  Dostoevsky studies the exaltations of instinct and impulses, the dangers of emotional passions.  In Proust duality, in Dostoevsky an effort to dissolve dualities and conflict by a Christian self-annihilation, lost of the self in the ecstacies of sacrifice.  In Proust disintegration of analysis.  In Dostoevsky through passionate instinctive blind impulses, masochism, the chaos of nature.  In Proust the tragedy of lucidity, in Dostoevsky the tragedy of blind emotions, obscurantism, mysticism, contradictions."

~Anais Nin
  September, 1941

Book: The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 3: 1939-1944
Author: Anais Nin
Number of pages: 327
Published by: A Harvest Book (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.)
Price: *
Available at: *
*I got this book via ebay.  I'm not sure if local bookstores in Manila got 'em.

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