This week I continue my memorial celebration of the life of J.I. Packer, who died last month at 93. As the son of a railway clerk, Jim retained a lifelong fascination for locomotives, saying that trains evoked his “longing for the transcendent.”
Author Archives: Mike Mason
Announcing the Brand New Audiobook Edition of The Mystery of Marriage!
This week, on August 7, Karen and I celebrate 38 years of marriage. And this year we have something additional to toast, because at long last my book The Mystery of Marriage has been issued as an audiobook. Moreover the reader is one of the best in the business, Simon Vance, who does an excellent job.
J.I. Packer’s Foreword to The Mystery of Marriage: “A Crackerjack!”
Last week the world lost a great Christian theologian, writer, and teacher, and an even greater human being. Dr. J.I. Packer passed away on July 17 at the age of 93, just five days shy of his 94th birthday.
C.S. Lewis in Heaven: A Visit to the Real Narnia (Part Two)
In my last blog post, a friend who has visions of heaven told me he had met C.S. Lewis in the real Narnia, an actual region in the next world. Here is the continuation of his story …
C.S. Lewis in Heaven: A Visit to the Real Narnia (Part One)
An American fifth-grader once wrote to C.S. Lewis asking if it were possible to visit Narnia. Lewis replied that the only way, as far as he knew, was through death. But then he added a curious qualifier: “Perhaps some very good people get just a tiny glimpse before then.”
The Image of God: Sovereignty and Racism
This week, a guest editorial by Arthur Enns, a retired pastor and former healthcare administrator, who is writing a book on the sovereignty of God. Here is his reflection on the timely topic of “Sovereignty and Racism.”
Old and Full of Years: Eating Sin for Breakfast
The last two verses of the Book of Job tell us that after his ordeal, “Job lived 140 years. And so he died, old and full of years.”
The Tree with Lights in it: Mystical Encounters with Trees
Annie Dillard, in her radiant book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, tells of a girl blind from birth who had an operation which restored her sight. When the bandages were removed and she was led into the garden, she saw what she described as “the tree with the lights in it.”
Thomas Traherne: Apostle of Joy
Lately I’ve been savoring Thomas Traherne’s book Centuries of Meditations, in a wonderful contemporary edition by David Buresh called Waking Up in Heaven. I heartily agree with what C.S. Lewis wrote about this book, calling it “almost the most beautiful book in the English language. I could go on quoting from it forever.”
My Redeemer Lives: Job’s Easter Prophecy
On July 20, 1969, the first man landed on the moon. One spring morning about the year A.D. 33 the first New Man landed on the earth. His spaceship was a tomb, and He left His pressurized linen suit inside and walked out into a garden.