Only one life, twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
 |
| Pilgrim Painting by Mike Wimmer |
C.T. Studd used income from his family business to fund his work as a Christian missionary to China. He later founded Heart of Africa Missions, which now operates under the name Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ (WEC International). C.T. Studd knew that a life well spent meant sharing Christ with intent.
In 2020, you have an opportunity to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ through a book being published in America by my friend, author Tim Price. That book is entitled The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.
Typically, authors earn their money from "royalties" or "advances." Tim, an author and a publisher himself, needs our financial help to get this book published because of two important reasons:
1. Tim has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Tim had to quit his job because of the diagnosis, relocate to be near his adult children in western Nebraska. Tim is now working from his home to finish this project. He is doing great mentally and physically at this time, but the future is unknown to all but God. Publishers won't risk an advance. But people of faith will. use their resources to advance the Kingdom. Tim has finished the manuscript in preparation to publish The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. He is now working on the artwork. If you could help Tim with a donation to his Go-Fund-Me account, you will be playing a significant role in the Kingdom's advancement in English-speaking countries as I will explain in a moment. Tim is committed to recognize those who financially help him with this project. Again, any donation, no matter the amount - small or large - is an advancement of Christ's Kingdom because....
2. The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart is the Original Pilgrim story. Originally written in 1622 by John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) in Comenius' native Czech language, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart remains the most read book in Czech literature to this day. Many people, including me, believe this book inspired John Bunyan's 1678 classic The Pilgrim's Progress. In the new Moravian Public Libraray in Brno, Czech Republic, a stone relief of The Labryinth of the World welcomes those who enter.
The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegorical story of a Pilgrim on his sojourn through the world and how Pilgrim finally discovers how "the burden" on his shoulders (sin) can be removed by Christ. The nuggets of wisdom by John Bunyan found in Pilgrim's Progress include statements like, "What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it."
The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) wrote in his commentary on The Pilgrim's Progress, “Next to the Bible, the book I value most is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I believe I have read it through at least a hundred times. It is a volume of which I never seem to tire; and the secret of its freshness is that it is so largely compiled from the Scriptures.” Spurgeon wrote he loved Bunyan because Bunyan bled Bible.
John Amos Comenius' The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart is even better than The Pilgrim's Progress. Comenius' work has lagged in popularity among English-speaking peoples behind The Pilgrim's Progress because Bunyan wrote his allegory in English and Comenius' wrote his original pilgrim story in Czech and pictorial illustrations in Comenius' work were absent.
Tim Price is solving that problem. He is updating The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart into a better English version and adding vivid illustrations to the book. And you can be a part of Tim's effort to advance the Good News of Jesus Christ through allegory.
Go to OriginalPilgrim.Com to help.
In this video below, I tell you a little more about Tim and the project.
19 comments:
Thank you for letting us know of how we can be a part of both of these majestic and heartbreakingly beautiful stories. I will add Tim and his family to my prayers.
Wade,
You said Tim Price has early-onset dementia. I pray there is better medicine now than when my wife, Belle, died from it December 27, 2012.
Months before, a small mattress was being used to go down the slide, and had been left at the end.
I heard Belle screaming and crying. I rushed to see why. When she saw me, she stopped screaming and looked puzzled. She was holding the mattress in her arms thinking it was my dead body.
P.S.
Belle and I were married 55 years.
REX RAY, it takes a long time to mourn someone you were married to for that long. I was married for fifty-one and a half years and three days. Blessed are those who mourn. God comes near. Thank God for Judy.
Rex,
Please pray for Tim. You, above all, know the mercy of God that is needed.
Wade,
Yes, I’ll pray and I’ll add Tim to our church prayer list.
For those of us who seek the Peace of Christ when circumstances threaten to overwhelm us, we can be thankful for the healing grace of His sheltering when we are wounded.
The Peace of Wild Things
-by Wendell Berry
"Listen
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
Sam Ray, is my Grandson. He was born in Jerusalem. When he was nine, he was unable to hold a ladder I was on which resulted in three broken ribs, fractured pelvis, and my spleen being removed. I was 74, the same age as my father when a tractor flipped over and broke his pelvis 50 feet from where I fell from the tree.
After Belle met Jesus, Sam was staying with me. At three in the morning, a sheriff knocked on my front door and told me they’d arrested a man in my backyard, and was looking for another one. Sam went out the back door and heard “PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”
Now, Sam is now 25 and his wife, Ana, are living with us to save renting. His job is installing skylights on a contract basis, and works when he wants to.
In getting an engineering degree, he wrote a paper about me entitled “My Hero”. Said my greatest weakness was gravity.
They and their dog live upstairs. She ‘works’ over 40 hours a week using a computer to give advice in some kind of a business I don’t understand. He’s decided to help get our dock that floats on 24 barrels back in our lake. (Its been on land over eight months with bad barrels and an axle torn off.) We’re also making a boat ramp. The job is almost complete.
Fun online gaming channel Wherever your mobile phone is, you can enjoy the game and receive money in your pocket at any time.
Read more details, click!
https://www.ballinw.com/slotxo/
Wade,
I searched the ‘web’ on who won the debate last night, and it made me laugh that Biden won.
Trump: “You said, you’d stop franking.”
Biden: “I never said that.”
Much later Biden remembered: “I said I’d stop franking on Government Lands.” (He wants cars to run on electricity produced by windmills.)
Wade,
I searched the ‘web’ on who won the debate last night, and it made me laugh that Biden won.
Trump: “You said, you’d stop franking.”
Biden: “I never said that.”
Much later Biden remembered: “I said I’d stop franking on Government Lands.” (He wants cars to run on electricity produced by windmills.)
I do think we can understand truths through allegories, yes, so this project offers this possibility. My own favorite allegory will always be the Light that darkness cannot extinguish. :) When the darkness threatens to overwhelm, we must walk towards the Light.
Here is an 'allegory' that broke my heart:
https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/emily.klotz/engl1302-6/readings/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-ursula-le-guin/view
And here is a letter that helped with my healing:
http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei.html
CHRISTIANE,
The link that told of an ‘allegory’ that broke your heart, filled mine with disgust. I mean naked children riding horses to a boy being treated worse than a skunk is not worth reading.
And the link that helped your healing was pretty much from the Bible.
Now, here’s something that was funny to me.
It’s a picture of a ‘drug detecting dog’ that was checking out Joe Biden’s son’s house. Dog’s hair is sticking straight out like he’s being electrocuted.
If Joe Biden read this, he’d say, “Come on man!”
WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY, YOU DON’T HAVE GOOD SENSE.
We were juniors in High School at Frankfurt, Germany and lived in the dorm. The lights went out at 10 P.M. regardless of where you were.
My wife, Belle, was taking a class from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. at North Texas University in Denton, Texas. It was all she needed to finish getting her Master’s Degree. We lived 30 miles away. I’d keep the kids and visited my brother who lived there.
I’d get off work at 7 A.M. and get most of my sleep in the morning. A 30-minute nap before going to work helped me feel fresh. Everything went fine until the teacher started keeping them till 9:30 P.M. which caused me to miss my nap.
I got angry missing my nap and told Belle, I was going to enter her class and say: This class is supposed to be over at nine, I need to get my wife and go home.
She told me I wasn’t going to do that, and she was right because the doors were locked and I couldn’t get in until they came out. We met without saying a word while I was going up the stairs to the second floor.
The very large classroom was empty except for the teacher. I talked with my teeth clenched as I explained about missing my nap. I had my hand on the doorknob to leave when he said, “I’ll dismiss my class at nine from now on.”
I looked back and said loudly, “I sure would appreciate it”, and slammed the door which put me in total darkness. I thought this school is just like the dumb school in Germany!
I banged my nose on the wall as I didn’t remember the hall being that narrow. I slid my hand on the wall so I wouldn’t fall down the stairs. If I got hurt, I was going to sue the school!
I went the wrong way because I was stopped by a wall. I slowly felt my way back the other way and found another wall. Having a minor in math, I quickly concluded I was in a very large closet for five minutes.
I found the doorknob, but decided to wait so he wouldn’t see me. Fool, he saw you walk in here, he’s either laying on the floor laughing, or has run for Security. I ran out without looking right nor left. (I got my nap thereafter.)
Good Morning, REX RAY
that WAS a strange and terrible 'allegory' from Le Guin, yes, but there is some 'hope' given at it's ending, not for the suffering child, but for some who refused to sell their souls in order to stay in that place where everyone was supposedly so 'happy', though they knew that their happiness depended on that child's suffering:
at the end, some 'walk away from OMELAS' but they know 'where they are going'.
As for the link that helped me 'recover' from that allegory's sadness, it has to do with 'hope' and with going 'towards the light of Christ' in this way:
" the memory of a promise, it becomes capable of opening up the future, shedding light on the path to be taken. We see how faith, as remembrance of the future, memoria futuri, is thus closely bound up with hope."
I think the allegory AND the link speak to me of how people can get confused about what is worth 'trading' for their own gain, and how for some, they live 'conflicted' accepting the trade-off as part of the 'deal';
where for others, the trading of the suffering of innocents in exchange for one's own benefits is a bridge too far, and they must leave and 'walk away' from that trade-off that threatens their own souls and go take the path that offers 'hope' in order to remain 'human' with their soul intact.
I think we can't knowingly let innocent children suffer in our wealthy country where they are firm on at least one in seven children have hunger issues, and now, with the change in the economy and so many laid-off, the number is said to be one in five. That's a lot of suffering so that the rich can get richer,
but in the end, the whole house of cards will fall on us all if we do not reach out to help the children who suffer . . . that is my greatest concern, but I do have hope for better to come. We are only so honorable as we consciously treat our helpless ones, and these days, we need to re-think priorities and turn towards the light that shows us the better path to take.
Loved your story, REX RAY. When you write, I can envision the whole scene. :) LOL
Wade,
Many years ago, I made a steel ladder. I put it against a tree in our woods for a place to hunt deer. The base was in concrete. While the concrete was wet, some of my grandsons pushed their hands in it leaving an outline.
Three days ago, Sam took a picture of his hand next to his print. His hand was three times as large.
Wade,
Just got news that I now have three Great Grandchildren. The bad news is she was born on Hillary’s birthday. :)
Congratulations, REX RAY !
Babies are GOOD news.
Post a Comment