What's On My Nighstand?

What's on my nightstand? A whole lot of Dan Allender, that's what. I've been reading his book To Be Told. I had partly read it once before, but I picked it up again recently when I re-wrote an outline of my life (something we encourage people to do in our leadership training). It's been helping me identify places in my life where difficult things happened to shape me (as he calls it "Shalom Shattered), how I tried to redeem those places in my own way apart from God ("Shalom Sought") and how God wants to use those things for His glory.

As I'm wrapping that up, I also pulled The Healing Path off the shelf, another Allender book. This one goes more deeply into a lot of the same themes, helping me focus on how God is redeeming me and my role in the process. I feel like both of these books are back in my life at just the right time to help me know and understand my story and my heart.

And as if that weren't enough, as I've mentioned before we have a group of us watching a Dan Allender video series every other Friday night called Learning to Love Your Story. If I don't after all this, I really don't think I can blame a lack of input.

What's on My Nightstand?

Well, I'm happy to say that what's on my nightstand is a brand new Kindle, but the book I'm currently reading is an honest to goodness real old fashioned paper variety. It's called The Last Days of Old Beijing, by Michael Meyer, and I can't put it down (except for now, because I need to type).


Meyer spent some time living in the hutongs south of Tian'anmen Square, hutongs being the Mandarin term for narrow alleys and one story courtyard homes that characterized Chinese living for most of its recent history. These hutongs are being destroyed rapidly to make room for development, and most of the residents are forcibly transplanted to new housing developments outside the main city.

I'm loving this book because I am sucker for anything historical, and I generally err on the side of wanting to preserve it regardless of how impractical it might seem to do so. It also gives a fascinating picture of the culture - not only what it would be like to live in a hutong community, but how the government treats its citizens.

So now I'm feeling sentimental about the hutongs, and want to go explore them more before they're gone completely.