Need some inspiration? Think about your book collection. Perhaps you have some that you’ve read many times. I have a small shelf of such gems. I think about what they have in common. It seems to come down to this: they inspire. It might be beautiful use of language to inspire my own writing. It might be a story that is so compelling I continue to learn from it. It might be a book full of spiritual lessons that I hunger for. I hope you have such a collection. If not or if you’d like to add to your inspirational bookshelf, my colleague, Kim Shippey, can help as he shares his favorite must-have reads. Enjoy! Here’s Kim:
Every five years I thumb through the books on my shelves and cull about thirty percent of them, which I donate to our local library. What I notice is that year after year the same well-explored books escape the purge and return to their joyful task of inspiring those who turn their pages.
They include:
- The Greatest Thing in the World (Henry Drummond, 1911): “Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love?”
- What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Philip Yancey, 1997): “Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.”
- Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis, 1955): “The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
- Your God Is Too Small (J.B. Phillips, 1952): “Once the inner affections are aligned with God the outward expression of the life will look after itself.”
- And, a book, which since it was first published in 1927, has sold millions of copies in 40 different languages, My Utmost for His Highest (Oswald Chambers): “Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.”
Imagine my delight as a came across a new book……
