Laura Sumner Truax – Undone [Feature Review]

[easyazon-image align=”none” asin=”083084306X” locale=”us” height=”110″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515nOWjAvDL._SL110_.jpg” width=”73″]Page 2: Laura Sumner Truax – Undone

 
 
Instead, “the cross offers us a way of holding it all loosely,” she writes, “and I do mean all.” While the gospel calls us to realize the claims that other people have on us, and to join other followers of Jesus in something like a common life (“a group of people all leaning in”), the way of Jesus “looks like some of us being activists when others of us can’t be” and recognizing that “there are many issues [of justice] you will remain ignorant of.” It’s a relief to those of us (I include myself) who have an unfortunate tendency to turn even the best of ideas into an opportunity to live and think as if we are in bondage to some law.

The small but “unusual” question that Laura Sumner Truax persistently but gently forces you to consider: “is this how I want to live?” Annie Dillard wrote: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” To allow ourselves to be undone by encountering the truth of who we are–and the depth of God’s love for us (“I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even killing me won’t change my fundamental stance: I am for you”) – is to allow ourselves to be slowly, repeatedly, in ways both big and small to be put back together by God’s grace.

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Rachel Marie Stone is the author of Eat With Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food (InterVarsity Press 2013). She’s also the author of a book about Jesus for children with the working title God’s Upside-Down Kingdom, forthcoming from Olive Branch Books this year. She’s a regular contributor to Christianity Today’s popular women’s blog, Her.meneutics, and tweets @rachel_m_stone.

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