Mountains of Spices

I've been staying super busy reading lately--for business and for pleasure. ;) This is one of the books I recently completed for pleasure.

This is the sequel to Hind's Feet on High Places--an allegory of a Christian's journey. It's a simple, yet beautiful story (with a slightly theologically incorrect ending), taking place after Much-Afraid returns from the High Places and becomes a living witness to her friends and enemies in her hometown. What I especially like about it is how the author integrates all of the fruits of the Spirit into her story and transforms her characters which display the opposite traits.

However, I think one of my favorite techniques that the author uses is in closing her chapters--she often writes poems that fully express the idea that she has been trying to get across. The depth is phenomenal!

Usually the poems are based on the fruits of the Spirit, but here's a separate one that particularly struck me and followed a poem about joy.

The cry of all distorted things:
"Why hast thou made us thus?
To bear the anguish which life brings;
Why didst thou not love us?"
So marred that God himself must weep--
Fit only for the rubbish heep.

The cry of every breaking heart:
"Why were we born for this?
Evil alone is made our part
And nothing of earth's bliss.
Why didst thou give us human birth
If we may know no love on earth?"

The cry of each despairing mind
Ascends before love's throne:
"Behold us, God! Or art thou blind?
Can we be blamed alone?
If thou be there, then answer us,
Why make us, or why make us thus?"

And love's voice answers from a cross:
"I bear it all with you;
I share with you in all your loss,
I will make all things new.
None suffer in their sin alone,
I made--I bear--and I atone."

~ by Hannah Hurnard, 69-70