imitation

My husband and i have recently been reading Hebrews. We have had a wonderful discussion on the first few chapters and hope to keep the discussions going! In the meantime, i spent some time meditating on chapters 5-7, seeking to absorb them as best as i can.

Upon reading chapter 6 the first time, i was immediately struck by verse 12: "We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised."

Imitating those who have come before me.

At about this same time i had just finished reading this memoir and had rediscovered my love for memoirs. (Girl Meets God is one of my favorites.) So i found it appropriate that i now felt called by God to read more of them in order to learn from, and thus imitate, others.

So i began my search for the *perfect* person whose life i could learn from, in a Christian, Jesus-filled kind of way, who had also written about it. I started off at Barnes & Noble, perusing their Biographies and Memoirs section. Nothing stood out. I then spent an endless amount of time checking out all the books on Amazon's "bestselling memoirs" list. Again, nothing that really grabbed my attention. Clearly someone's story should suffice, right??? But since i had received Word from God about imitation so clearly, i didn't want to simply settle for just any book.

And then one day i arrived to work (like i always do), turned on my computer monitor (like i always do), and began my day (like i...well you get the idea. same old same old). All the sudden, i looked down at the two books that i have stacked underneath my monitor (to raise it) and thought, "hey, i wonder what these are all about." To my amazement, one of these was the perfect book!

It's called Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Marytrs to Modern Missionaries. It takes the reader through Christian history, specifically highlighting those Christians who have stood out for one reason or another. So not only do i get to read about one person, i get to read about several people throughout history!!

I have been reading whenever I have the chance and have been captivated by the stories and lessons I can learn from those who have come before me. Plus, it's written in a reader-friendly kind of way so I haven't ever gotten the sense that I'm reading a text book.

I highly recommend this for anyone who would like to imitate those who have come before us. There's so much to learn.

More info on the book can be found here.