death by living

 i've just finished the book by N.D. Wilson "Death By Living", a read recommended to me by my good ol, al american friend janaye.


we have quite similar taste in alot of things; books, music, doctrine, daydreaming, love for alone time..

"death by living" is a poetic portrait of faith, futility and the joy of this mortal life. or so amazon says.
here's the clip if you wanna sneak peak!

the book was my train ride to and from work over the past 14 days.

ideally while listening to sara swensen,

 my "denmark favourites" or "the launching pad" playlist.

to help consolidate my learning, i always highlight my favourite quotes in a book and then type them out afterward.

here's what mr wilson impressed into my brain :

 "understand this: we are both tiny and massive. we are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. swell with pride and gratitude, for you are tiny and given much." page 21.

"get outside your own head and your own little decisions and read the story. how did you get here? you can't really know where you should be going next, until you've taken a look at the road behind you." page 22.

"like a kindergartner shoved out from behind the curtain during his first play, you might not know which scene you are in or what comes next, but God is far less patronising than we are. you are his art, and He has no trouble stooping. you can even ask him for you lines." page 23.

"i began to see the world more like a cook than a writer. there were boundless ingredients out there, combinations waiting to be discovered and simmered and served. there were truths and stories and characters and quirks that could clash badly and some that could marry and birth sequels. i began to feel a lot more comfortable it wasn't all on me to create. it was on me to find. to catch. to arrange. see. say." page 43.

"story: a linked thread of occurrence, real or fictitious, in, around, and after trouble of some degree or sequence. WWII, Goodnight Gorilla, and all of reality.
good story: a linked threat of occurrence, real or fictitious, in, around, and after trouble of some degree or sequence, in which the triune nature is consistently revealed with artistry either through the real actions and choices of particular characters, the author's direct participation, or through the author's indirect judgements latent in the choices of style and arrangement in the recounting. examples: WWII, Goodnight Gorilla, and all of reality." page 104.

"if life is a story, how shall we then live? it isn't complicated (just hard). take up your life and follow Him. face trouble. pursue it. climb it. smile at its roar like a tree planted by cool water even when your branches groan, when your golden leaves are stripped and the frost bites deep, even when your grip on this earth is torn loose and you fall among mourning saplings." page 119.

"shall we die for ourselves or die for others? shall we cross this finish line for ourselves or for others? the choice isn't waiting for us down the track. the choice is now." page 119.

"lay your life down. your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. your reservoir of breaths is draining away. you have hands, blister them while you can. you have bones, make them strain - they carry nothing in the grave. you have lungs, let them spill with laughter.
with an average life expectancy of 78.2 years in the US (subtracting eight hours a day for sleep), i have around 250,000 conscious hours remaining to me in which i could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. i can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbours, or i can grasp after the vapour and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. and, like adam, i will still die in the end."  page 120.

"humans are not intended for data storage (though we have that capacity). we are intended for living, for moving through a story... we fight to remember. we lose. but it's worth it." page 137

"the world never slows down so that we can better grasp the story, so that we can form study groups and drill each other on the recent past until we have total retention. we have exactly one second to carve a memory of that second, to sort and file and prioritise in some attempt at preservation." page 143.

"enjoy life now. and now. and now. before the nows are gone. see the gifts. savour the food, knowing that you will have to swallow." page 154.

"live to die. if you do, inevitable success awaits you. if you were suddenly given more than you could count, and you couldn't keep any of it for yourself, what would you do? that is, after all, our current situation. grabbing will always fail. giving will always succeed. bestow. our children, our friends, and our neighbours will all be better off if we work to accumulate for their sakes." page 155

 "time is a kindness. we need it. we need loss to appreciate the gift. we need the world chanting at us like a crowd counting down seconds at the end of a shot clock. every day brings its own urgency. every day has periods that expire, things that count down, and breaks to collect our thoughts, sip Gatorade and draw up plays." page 156.

"as the earth screams through space, balanced exactly on the edge of everyone burning alive and everyone freezing solid, as we shriek through deadly obstacle courses of meteor showers and find them picturesque, as the nearest fiery stat vomits eruptions hundreds of times bigger that our wee planet (giving chipper local weathermen northern lights to chatter about), as a giant reflective rock glides around us slopping the seas (and never falls down), and as we ride in our machines, darting past fools and drunks and texting teenagers, how many times do we thank God? we are always in His hands, but we often feel like we are in our own. We can't thank him for every breath and every heartbeat, but we can thank Him every day for not splatting us with the moon or letting us drop into the sun." page 191.

"see it. hear Him. thank Him. ask for more. search for moments in your story for which you can be grateful." page 192.

"we are authors and we are writing every second of every day. a child scissors a couch, and that action is forever and always. it cannot be undone. but now it is your turn. what you say and what you do in response will be done forever, never to be appealed, edited or modified. if life is a race (and it is), then it is run across wet concrete." page 223.

"sure, you've been wronged. now show God how you would like Him to treat you when you're the one doing wrong.
rule 1 for mortals: love the lord your God (with every bit of you).
rule 2 for mortals: love your neighbour as yourself." page 225.

"living means decisions. living means writing your every word and action and thought and drool spot down in forever. it means writing your story within the story. it means being terrible at it. it means failing and knowing that, somehow, all of our messes will still contribute, that the creative God has merely given Himself a greater challenge - drawing glory from our clumsy botching of the past." page 225.

"and from it all, from the compost of all our efforts, God brings glory - a world of ripe grain in the wind. by His grace, we are the water made wine. we are the dust made flesh made dust made flesh again. we are the whores made brides and the thieves made saints and the killers made apostles. we are the dead made living. we are His cross." page 227.

"there is nothing new under the sun. there we all are. dust. floating on grace. beautiful only its light."

need to find a new read now.