Book Tales and Suggestive Typos

Third Monday / June, '25

Hello! Third Monday posts are more incidental, personal, and situational updates touching on my life in general and on the possibilities and circumstances of ministry. Let me know what you think at randy@greatheartstable.com or in the comments below.

I

I’ve been reading Lucy R. Austen’s very good biography of Elizabeth Elliot^⁠¹ which reveals that Jim Elliot had the emotional intelligence of a rock. After “Betty” visited Jim and his family in Oregon, he wrote to her to pass along what his family thought. His mom thought she was aloof, his father thought she was unattractive, his sister thought she didn’t read her Bible enough, and so forth, and I want to say, “Sheesh, Jimmy, keep that stuff to yourself.” What he wrote to her was simply cruel.

II

I had never before read G. K. Chesterton, but watching some episodes of the BBC adaptation of Father Brown led me to want to read the stories on which the character was based. I discovered that though the TV version is fun, the stories absolutely sparkle. In one, the reader is introduced to a particularly cheery man.

Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men. . .

The equation of morbidity and Calvinism aside, there are times I find that I might agree with Chesterton’s final assessment.

You say that nobody could kill such a happy old man, but I’m not sure; ne nos inducas in tentationem [lead us not into temptation]. If ever I murdered somebody,” he added quite simply, “I dare say it might be an Optimist.”

Which, I suppose, might make me one of those morbid Calvinists.

III

I have been trying to have a podcast episode released every Monday, with the third and fifth Mondays being portions of interviews I’ve been privileged to have. There is no such release today, but I encourage you to follow the Greatheart’s Table podcast here or here so that you don’t miss a future release. In the past we have had discussions about pastors’ and elders’ wives, ministry sustainability, and a pastor’s reading life. Upcoming soon, on June 30^th, we will have a conversation on healthy teams. Check out these previous releases and tune in for the new one!

IV

My serendipitous reading habits recently led me to read a fascinating book about Emmit Till’s murder in Mississippi, The Barn. This, upon my wife’s recommendation, led me to The Devil in the Grove, a sordid tale of racial injustice in Lake County, Florida, in communities all of which are less than an hour from me. That then led me a biography of Harry Moore, a man previously unknown to me, but who lived not much more than 30 minutes from where I now live. In the 1940s Moore was an influential civil rights leader in and around communities I regularly drive through. But in 1951, on Christmas day, someone planted a bomb under his bed, killing him and his wife. The murderer was never found, but the motive was clear.

It’s sobering to read this history, and then to discuss it with friends who lived some of it, which I’ve since had the privilege of doing.

When Harry Moore died, Langston Hughes was commissioned by the NAACP to write a poem to commemorate the man. “The Ballad of Harry T. Moore” has been put to haunting music by Sweet Honey in the Rock which is worthy of a listen.

V

It turns out, I discovered in a recent post, that when you unintentionally drop out the letters “en” from the word “denomination,” spell check is not going to alert you to the fact. And since some find the resulting two words, one with and one without “en,” sometimes sadly synonymous, I decided not to fix the typo.

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