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Legacy of a Pack Rat by Graham, Ruth Bell (1989) Hardcover
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Hardcover
Published January 1, 1989
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July 24, 2021
I love reading vignettes from believers from different generations/backgrounds, and to hear their stories of holding onto God, living a life as a Christian in varying circumstances. I didn't know much about Ruth Bell Graham, and it was fun to learn bits of her life growing up in China, and as a wife, mother, and grandmother, through this book and her reflections.
p. 48: "Listen. Our God, whom we serve, is a merciful God. True, your sin was great. Very great. But His mercy is even greater. This Jesus is His Son who came to earth to die for sinners like you. I, too, am a sinner. All men are sinners. And because He died for you, for Jesus', His Son's, sake, God can forgive you."
p. 51: And it came to pass at the end of two full years...he remembered and Joseph was freed.
"And it came to pass in process of time (exodus 2:23) that Pharaoh died and the children of Israel signed, cried, and groaned by reason of the bondage...And God heard...and remembered...and had respect unto them.
Yet it was forty years before He sent Moses back to lead them out (Compare Acts 7:23 with Exodus 7:7)
Samuel anointed David king when David was but a boy (1 Sam 16:13). But it was not for ten or fifteen years that he was finally crowned (2 Sam 2). Note David's behavior during those years.
God drafted Jeremiah to prophesy judgement and the destruction of Jerusalem in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign. But it was forty years and three months before Jerusalem was finally destroyed.
Jesus, at twelve years of age, stayed behind in the Temple, both asking and answering questions. When found by His parents and reproached, He replied, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" But He returned with them to Nazareth "and was subject unto them." It was 18 years before He began His public ministry.
p. 58: There are fish living so far beneath the ocean surface that when one happens to be caught and hauled to the surface along with the rest of the fisherman's catch, it is unable to exist without the pressure that holds it together: it simply explodes.
...JN Darby translates Psalm 4:1 thus: In pressure Thou has enlarged me." William Barclay tells us the Greek word for affliction (as in 2 Cor 6:4) means pressures. They are, he says, "the things which press sore upon us. Originally it expressed sheer physical pressure on a man...The sheer pressure of the demands of life upon one."
p. 59 J Hudson Taylor, that great pioneer missionary to China, used to say we should not mind how great the pressure is-only where the pressure lies. If we make sure it never comes between us and our Lord, then the greater the pressure, the more it presses us to Him.
p. 81: The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God (Ps 14:1)
This goes also for those who doubt His sovereignty. Either He is sovereign or He is not. If He is not sovereign He is not God. Therefore when we become so preoccupied with and dismayed by circumstances and certain people that we doubt God's ability to handle them in His own way, and in His own time, then we, too, are fools.
it is this knowledge that enables us to accept the unacceptable. We can take whatever comes as from His hand, submit to it, and learn of Him all He seeks to teach us through those circumstances. Read Genesis 16:9, Luke 2:51, James 4:6-8a.
p. 83: Delight-Submit-Learn-Shift goals-Worship - Take all He has to offer.
Delight -Psalm 37 List the commands. Do them.
Submit -Genesis 16:9, Luke 2:51, James 4:6-8a
Learn His lessons -Ps 25:4-5, Ps 27:11, Matt 11:29
Be God's eager pupil. Dan Piatt (who lost three members of his family in one car accident) said after the tragedy: I told God that I wanted to learn everything He had to teach me through this experience.
The Matthews on their house arrest in the Orient: We stopped looking for a way to escape and began instead to ask God to teach us all He had for us to learn from this experience.
Shift goals-from personal happiness to His glory.
p. 99: In 1962, Sir Francis Chichester sailed the Atlantic in 33 days, lopping one week off his 1960 record but failing to reach his target of 30 days. Of this failure he said, "If I had succeeded, I should have been deprived of the immense sport, anticipation, hope and excitement of trying again." London, Sunday Times Magazine, May 7, 1967
"How did you learn to skate? someone asked the winner.
"By getting up every time I fell down," was the reply.
p. 107: "How irrational human nature is, especially that of youth. They are not ashamed to sin and yet they are ashamed to repent. They are ashamed of the very returning which alone can make them to be truly wise men." - Daniel Defoe, in the original Robinson Crusoe
p. 150: "He appears to have been a sunny, playful man," wrote CS Lewis of George Macdonald, "deeply appreciative of all really beautiful and delicious things that money can buy, and no less deeply content to do without them."
Later in the Anthology, George Macdonald himself says: "Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers; if I may not, let me think how nice they would be, and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the world holds, and be content without it."
-George Macdonald, An Anthology
by CS Lewis
p. 151: William Barclay has said that "in praying for those we love we must remember: 1. the love of God that wants the best for them; 2 the wisdom of God that knows what is best for them; and 3. the power of God that can accomplish it."
p. 190:
Let them go-
the things that have
accumulate thru the years.
If they be only things
then
let them go.
As barnacles
they but impede the ship
and slow
it down when it should go
full speed ahead.
Why dread the disentangling?
Does the snake regret the shedding
of its skin?
When the butterfly eludes
its chrysalis,
does regret
set in?
p. 193: There is the story of the fishermen working in the North Sea off England bringing in their catch to the Billingsgate Wharf in the city of London The fish, many of which had been caught days previously, were flabby. But one fisherman always had firm, fresh fish. However, he would not divulge his secret. After his death, his daughter passed it along. He always kept catfish in the well of the ship where the fish were stored. The catfish kept the other fish in such a constant state of irritation they did not have the opportunity to grow flabby.
..."Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle." -Zachary Verne The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour
p. 194: "it is more difficult to live the Christian life under freedom than under repression."
p. 196: "We are honored to have served our country under difficult circumstances..." Capt Jeremiah Denton
is this how the believer will feel when he stands one day before God? Liberated from this earth and its struggles, will we say, "we are honored to have served...under difficult circumstances"?
God has entrusted to some of His servants the most difficult circumstances, and without explanations. We can go all the way back to Job, to Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, the early martyrs, and on into the twentieth century where, we are told, there have been more martyrs in the Christian church than in the entire preceding two thousand years...
p. 48: "Listen. Our God, whom we serve, is a merciful God. True, your sin was great. Very great. But His mercy is even greater. This Jesus is His Son who came to earth to die for sinners like you. I, too, am a sinner. All men are sinners. And because He died for you, for Jesus', His Son's, sake, God can forgive you."
p. 51: And it came to pass at the end of two full years...he remembered and Joseph was freed.
"And it came to pass in process of time (exodus 2:23) that Pharaoh died and the children of Israel signed, cried, and groaned by reason of the bondage...And God heard...and remembered...and had respect unto them.
Yet it was forty years before He sent Moses back to lead them out (Compare Acts 7:23 with Exodus 7:7)
Samuel anointed David king when David was but a boy (1 Sam 16:13). But it was not for ten or fifteen years that he was finally crowned (2 Sam 2). Note David's behavior during those years.
God drafted Jeremiah to prophesy judgement and the destruction of Jerusalem in the thirteenth year of Josiah's reign. But it was forty years and three months before Jerusalem was finally destroyed.
Jesus, at twelve years of age, stayed behind in the Temple, both asking and answering questions. When found by His parents and reproached, He replied, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" But He returned with them to Nazareth "and was subject unto them." It was 18 years before He began His public ministry.
p. 58: There are fish living so far beneath the ocean surface that when one happens to be caught and hauled to the surface along with the rest of the fisherman's catch, it is unable to exist without the pressure that holds it together: it simply explodes.
...JN Darby translates Psalm 4:1 thus: In pressure Thou has enlarged me." William Barclay tells us the Greek word for affliction (as in 2 Cor 6:4) means pressures. They are, he says, "the things which press sore upon us. Originally it expressed sheer physical pressure on a man...The sheer pressure of the demands of life upon one."
p. 59 J Hudson Taylor, that great pioneer missionary to China, used to say we should not mind how great the pressure is-only where the pressure lies. If we make sure it never comes between us and our Lord, then the greater the pressure, the more it presses us to Him.
p. 81: The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God (Ps 14:1)
This goes also for those who doubt His sovereignty. Either He is sovereign or He is not. If He is not sovereign He is not God. Therefore when we become so preoccupied with and dismayed by circumstances and certain people that we doubt God's ability to handle them in His own way, and in His own time, then we, too, are fools.
it is this knowledge that enables us to accept the unacceptable. We can take whatever comes as from His hand, submit to it, and learn of Him all He seeks to teach us through those circumstances. Read Genesis 16:9, Luke 2:51, James 4:6-8a.
p. 83: Delight-Submit-Learn-Shift goals-Worship - Take all He has to offer.
Delight -Psalm 37 List the commands. Do them.
Submit -Genesis 16:9, Luke 2:51, James 4:6-8a
Learn His lessons -Ps 25:4-5, Ps 27:11, Matt 11:29
Be God's eager pupil. Dan Piatt (who lost three members of his family in one car accident) said after the tragedy: I told God that I wanted to learn everything He had to teach me through this experience.
The Matthews on their house arrest in the Orient: We stopped looking for a way to escape and began instead to ask God to teach us all He had for us to learn from this experience.
Shift goals-from personal happiness to His glory.
p. 99: In 1962, Sir Francis Chichester sailed the Atlantic in 33 days, lopping one week off his 1960 record but failing to reach his target of 30 days. Of this failure he said, "If I had succeeded, I should have been deprived of the immense sport, anticipation, hope and excitement of trying again." London, Sunday Times Magazine, May 7, 1967
"How did you learn to skate? someone asked the winner.
"By getting up every time I fell down," was the reply.
p. 107: "How irrational human nature is, especially that of youth. They are not ashamed to sin and yet they are ashamed to repent. They are ashamed of the very returning which alone can make them to be truly wise men." - Daniel Defoe, in the original Robinson Crusoe
p. 150: "He appears to have been a sunny, playful man," wrote CS Lewis of George Macdonald, "deeply appreciative of all really beautiful and delicious things that money can buy, and no less deeply content to do without them."
Later in the Anthology, George Macdonald himself says: "Let me, if I may, be ever welcomed to my room in winter by a glowing hearth, in summer by a vase of flowers; if I may not, let me think how nice they would be, and bury myself in my work. I do not think that the road to contentment lies in despising what we have not got. Let us acknowledge all good, all delight that the world holds, and be content without it."
-George Macdonald, An Anthology
by CS Lewis
p. 151: William Barclay has said that "in praying for those we love we must remember: 1. the love of God that wants the best for them; 2 the wisdom of God that knows what is best for them; and 3. the power of God that can accomplish it."
p. 190:
Let them go-
the things that have
accumulate thru the years.
If they be only things
then
let them go.
As barnacles
they but impede the ship
and slow
it down when it should go
full speed ahead.
Why dread the disentangling?
Does the snake regret the shedding
of its skin?
When the butterfly eludes
its chrysalis,
does regret
set in?
p. 193: There is the story of the fishermen working in the North Sea off England bringing in their catch to the Billingsgate Wharf in the city of London The fish, many of which had been caught days previously, were flabby. But one fisherman always had firm, fresh fish. However, he would not divulge his secret. After his death, his daughter passed it along. He always kept catfish in the well of the ship where the fish were stored. The catfish kept the other fish in such a constant state of irritation they did not have the opportunity to grow flabby.
..."Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle." -Zachary Verne The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour
p. 194: "it is more difficult to live the Christian life under freedom than under repression."
p. 196: "We are honored to have served our country under difficult circumstances..." Capt Jeremiah Denton
is this how the believer will feel when he stands one day before God? Liberated from this earth and its struggles, will we say, "we are honored to have served...under difficult circumstances"?
God has entrusted to some of His servants the most difficult circumstances, and without explanations. We can go all the way back to Job, to Joseph in Egypt, Daniel in Babylon, the early martyrs, and on into the twentieth century where, we are told, there have been more martyrs in the Christian church than in the entire preceding two thousand years...
September 3, 2018
I have read most every book written by Ruth Graham Bell. I highly recommend them all.
This particular book was purchased after she passed away.
It is a compilation of story's, thoughts, life
experiences.
It's like sitting in a comfortable chair, up in the attic, finding a special book to
read on a rainy day. Ruth was a great women who loved our Great God.
This particular book was purchased after she passed away.
It is a compilation of story's, thoughts, life
experiences.
It's like sitting in a comfortable chair, up in the attic, finding a special book to
read on a rainy day. Ruth was a great women who loved our Great God.
September 5, 2021
Love this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews