"To repent means to turn, to turn from whatever binds or enslaves you."-Father Tim Kavanaugh in A New Song by Jan Karon
After reading a very good, but very dark book (Piercing the Darkness)
, I decided I needed to go back to Mitford. This book, the fifth in the series, follows Father Tim and his wife as they go to a new town where the he will serve as interim priest. In his new capacity, he is told by his bishop not to worry about his old parishioners, which he finds difficult to do. However, after a terrible storm rips through his temporary island home, he finds it easy to say "no" to a planned trip back to Mitford to stay and tend his new flock. This book has a few wonderful pauses in the action (so to speak) that allow us to share in some of Father Tim's personal reflection...and which caused me to reflect myself. At one point, the priest reads over the following passage from a sermon of Charles Spurgeon's:
Go to Him without fear or trembling, ere yon sun goes down and ends this day of mercy, go and tell Him thou hast broken the Father's laws-tell Him that thou art lost, and thou needest to be saved; tell Him that He is a man, and appeal to His manly heart, and to His brotherly sympathies. Pour out thy broken heart at His feet: let thy soul flow over in His presence, and I tell thee He cannot cast thee away...Father Tim jots down in his notes, "Not that He will not turn a deaf ear, but that He cannot."
I will share later, perhaps, my reflections on the Frank Peretti book I mentioned earlier, but will say, for now, that the most amazing section of that book was a brilliant portrayal of heaven's response to a lost soul crying out to God for forgiveness. This passage in A New Song brought that imagery flooding back and makes me know that I need to spend some time on my knees in His presence...real quality time...soon.
