It all started almost a year ago, when I found a basket of books by George MacDonald that belonged to my late father. Many of the books were regular novels, but one that caught my attention the most was Lilith, a fantasy and a little box of four little short story collections. I started reading and fell in love with his writings. I was most intrigued to see C.S. Lewis saying that MacDonald was his master on the back cover and other quotes by G.K. Chesterton, W.H. Auden, and Madeleine L’engle calling him “the grandfather of… all who struggle to come to terms with truth through fantasy” I dug in and read many of his works over the last year.

This morning as I was reading George MacDonald, I came back across this quote, below, from his last chapter in A Dish of Orts, The Fantastic Imagination. There is so much that catches my attention and I intend to dig more into this as I write the paper for the class I am studying on his influence of C.S. Lewis. I just couldn’t wait to share this. It says so much about who we are and who God is. It says so much about what is wrong with our world today. I wonder if MacDonald was reacting against the beginnings of the enlightenment. Those ideas have only gone further down the line today. People are so confident that they are self-made men and that their empirical observations are cold hard fact. There is this idea that truth is only what we discern from reason and thinking. MacDonald blows that assumption open by presenting imagination as a means of getting at the truth. His idea of imagination is not mere invention but presenting old truths in new ways. He argues in this chapter that if an imaginative work of art does not embody truth, then it would give no delight and lack life.

I think he is making the case through this, that our being made in the image of God enables us to create imagination as a means of bearing his image. So anything we imagine or create is only a reflection of the truth that God already planted in us, even in our ability to think. I think I see some of this in the same light as a painter creating a picture or a carpenter making a new design of furniture. I can only imagine, that the inventor of the wheel used some imagination in creativity. So as we create, our imagination is something placed in our minds by our creator that only helps us discover who He is and the world that He has made us to dwell in. He seems to see that imagination and reason go hand in hand along with thinking and feeling. I can try to apply this by considering how there are nuances where feelings may deceive us but there are also other nuances where our thinking creates untruths about our feelings. Sometimes our emphasis on thinking prevents us from seeing the truth of why we are feeling what we are feeling. I will save that for another topic as I get farther into counseling. Getting back to MacDonald, it seems that he is saying that feelings can actually help or influence our thinking or the opposite.

What I love most about this chapter is that he calls us out on our foolish way of thinking that what we see is the only truth there is, or to think that we are the authors of truth and that the only way to get at it is by mere logical thinking. It is a wonder to consider that there is a truth and that the God who made us has determined all things to be. Yet, in our finite being, we only see parts of it and the imagination and learning from each other helps us get closer to seeing that Truth in all of its wonder. God’s truth is so much bigger than we can even imagine. Our fallen nature in sin is the root of why we miss seeing it in all of its beauty. Our fallen nature is the reason why we misinterpret it or are limited in our grasp of it. Jesus came to restore us not only from our guilt of sin by his work on the cross, but also to restore us to be able to see creation more fully and participate in it more fully as members of the new creation. I can’t wait to dig into this more and grow to be able to communicate this with better words.

“The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is—not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding—the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be. “But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!” Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God’s things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.”

(https://read.amazon.com/kp/kshare?asin=B073Q5KD5N&id=juv2htxg5vc2fgdwls4lyxqbqa&reshareId=B7EXH91PY3B8Q10JTFC4&reshareChannel=system)

This past weekend, we had the privilege of visiting French Camp, MS, where I was the speaker for their missions conference at French Camp Presbyterian Church. Here is a link to their website with the live stream of all three messages.
https://www.fcarp.org/life-in-the-church/mission-conference-2024

When I was in seminary the first time, a mentor told me that at times it takes a 2×4 across the head to get my attention. I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I wasn’t mature enough to hear him. The irony of that is only recently not lost on me. I thought he was just a bad mentor who chose to criticize me instead of teaching me. Now that I am older, I am starting to understand him. Yet, I am not alone. It takes most of us a long time to finally come to our senses and see who we are before God. Our slowness may be in different areas, but we are all affected by the fall.  I am thankful that God is longsuffering and patient with us. I love how George MacDonald shows this in two of his fantasy stories, Phantastes and Lilith. In both stories the main character does a lot of stupid things until he finally comes to his senses and realizes that life is not centered around himself but that his purpose is found in discovering the truth of creation that there is a greater being who created him to serve others. The biblical application of this that MacDonald is demonstrating in those stories is that God has created us to worship Him and serve His kingdom and until we see that, everything we touch we mess up.

Well, there are many ways that I have grown over the years and many ways God has been gracious to use me in through my weaknesses, perhaps actually use my weaknesses for great things. I am thankful for that. Yet, I am still slow to come to my senses. It has taken a full year to come out of the fog of being a missionary. We just hit the one-year mark of our return. I am realizing that any missionary and family usually needs a year to recover and transition. I don’t think I fully realized how much it weighs on us. Our youngest still feels like she doesn’t belong here and asks when we are going back to Peru. Tears come to my eyes as I think about that. The confusing thing is that she has already forgotten Spanish. More tears.

This past week, it took another 2×4 to get my attention. I really thought we could ride through this time for me to study with enough support to get through it before I finish and then start making money as a counselor. However, it has come to my attention that our support has been lower than our expenses and now it is time to find another job. We hope to continue to receive the support that we have but I will have to take another job to be able to make ends meet. Please pray with us for the right job that will allow flexibility to work with my studies.

“And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” (1 John 5:20 NAS95)

     What a joy it is to have this gift of understanding and know Him and be in Him. We are thankful that God has brought us through another year. Thank you for continuing to pray for us and support us. This time last year we were packing for our move back to the States. Now we are starting a new year having settled in a new place and in new situations. All the children seem to be doing well with school and extra-curricular activities. The boys are in archery. The girls are in gymnastics and ballet.  Meg is working hard in the lab. She is excited to find several Christian ladies in her lab with whom she has found mutual encouragement and mentoring. 

I finished the fall semester well. This past fall and upcoming spring, I am taking all the courses I can before I enter the full cohort of counseling classes in June. Sadly, my previous studies were too long ago to count for this program, so I still have to take all the needed credits. They did allow me to substitute the introductory course in Old Testament with a Hebrew Exegesis course on Song of Songs. This course was quite a challenge on refreshing my Hebrew and it helped me greatly understand this most challenging book. Another class was Theological Foundations for Counseling. This one was most helpful to present the theological basis for considering how to look at and use psychology as a Christian from a biblical perspective. The third class I took was Systematic Theology for Counseling. This was mainly a good review of the Westminster Standards, but it was also helpful to consider how it applies to counseling. The most beneficial part was writing a paper on how sanctification is the process that God uses in making us into our true self and I reflected on writings of George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis as they touched on this subject. This helped me develop thoughts that I have been having on a new interest in discovering how much George MacDonald influenced C.S. Lewis.  

This spring, I am excited to have the opportunity to do a directed study class on C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. I look forward to digging into seeing ways their imaginative writings so effectively communicate biblical insight and how this applies to counseling. I will also take a course on the Gospels and another on History of Christianity II. 

During the year Meg and I each were able to attend some counseling weekends that were very encouraging. We visited family for Christmas and were able to rest some in January. Now I am much refreshed and ready to hit the ground running. Last week, I visited Southern Louisiana’s Presbytery meeting. Next week, it will be a full year since we have returned to the States. I must say, we really needed the year to regroup and adjust to this change in our lives.

Now, I am looking forward to classes this spring.  I am still doing some work for Peru Mission; this weekend we will give a report during the Sunday school hour at Faith Pres in Clinton, Louisiana. I am excited about the opportunity to speak at a mission conference for a church at French Camp, Mississippi this March 2-3. I am still open to schedule a visit to your church to come and share about the work of Peru Mission and/or to fill the pulpit.  Feel free to respond to this email or give me a call.

in the joy of resting in Christ,
Stuart