Two Old Treasures Revealed

This world of blogging can be nothing short of amazing. Earlier in the year I was sent a book Meme and when posting it I also posted pictures of book shelves in my home. See under 'books and reading'

Very soon Sara from Much Ado About Something commented on my post and this was the result:

Sara: I see you have 2 Elizabeth Goudge books on your shelves

Barbara(in my thoughts): Do I, where?

Then followed a week where I, on 4 separate occasions, looked through my book shelves (I have book shelves in 6 rooms) and could not find any Elizabeth Goudge books. In my mind I kind of pictured some very old books which I was sure I no longer had.

I became frustrated thinking that someone in California was telling me that I had something in my home that I could not find. Could she have made a mistake? I was on the verge of E-mailing Sara to ask her where did she think she saw these books.

But, just one more last look first.

I found them, tucked away in a corner of a shelf in one of my guest rooms amongst some old James Herriot paperbacks. I had obviously not scanned this shelf carefully enough thinking they would not possibly be there. They were bought second hand many, many years ago and the covers were faded and the pages dark brown with age. At some forgotten moment in my life I must have thought they were worth keeping. I knew that Sara was a fan of Elizabeth Goudge and knowing her fine taste in books I decided that they would be worth reading. So with the smell of old and slightly mildewing paper in my hands I began to read one of them.

When I first began to read I never anticipated that it would become a book that I could not put down. I could not wait to finish the first in order to read the second one. What treasures I had been missing.

Elizabeth's descriptions of everything are a delight and she takes one back to an almost now forgotten era. Her insights into the human thinking and behaviour in those early years of the last century strike a cord with life today in many ways. It would seem that nothing ever changes in the human psyche. All human expereince is the same whether we can articulate it or not.

She was obviously a very devout and spiritual woman. Her faith comes out in the telling of her stories in a most beautiful way. Never intruding, just part of the story, told in a very beautiful and natural way. I am hooked.

As I am typing this I see a great spiritual lesson. So often we miss out in this Christian life because we are not aware of what we already have. We do not always benefit from the life of Christ within us because we forget we have it until some situation arises that causes us to seek it out. The treasure, the abundant life, the beauty is there waiting for us to open the pages and devour all that is already there and laid out for us. Jesus Christ is always at our disposal but we cannot live from that reality until we seek Him out and make Him our own. One never knows what one possesses until it is tested.



So here are those 2 old treasures. Thank you a million times Sara for bringing these books back into my life. All Elizabeth's books are long out of print but I have already been searching Amazon and see that I can purchase many old and second hand copies there.

It took a blogging friend all the way over in California to tell me what I had in my home.