I will be taking a break from blogging and all forms of social media for a season in order to devote my energies to some personal items that require immediate and undivided attention.

I will be back on Monday, February 27th with a giveaway and a review of our beloved Jon Cardwell’s, “Christ and Him Crucified” — a book I look forward to finishing during my time away.

In the meantime, may the Lord bless you!

Your sister in Christ,

Christina

Whether reading for pleasure or academic purposes, the story of Olympia Morata will inspire. Weight of a Flame is a well told narrative which helps to illuminate a critical time in the church’s history.  Set in Italy during the early 16th-century, Olympia Morata lived in an age of great upheaval and violence for Italian Protestants. It was a time when a profession of faith in Christ alone meant a choice between compromise, death, or exile.  With imagination and creativity Carr brings to life one of the most beautiful and compelling female figures of the Protestant Reformation.

Born at Ferrara in 1526, Olympia Morata is a child prodigy trained by her father, Fulvio Morata, in the classics.  Having made remarkable progress in her academic studies, her fame quickly spread. At the age of fourteen she was invited  by Duchess Renee of Este to be a companion and tutor to her daughter Anna.  Upon arrival Olympia quickly falls into favor in a court filled with scholars. Surrounded by volumes and shelves of books, the young Olympia was in her element. It wouldn’t be long though, before signs of tension would show as the doctrines of the Reformation took hold in Ferrara in the midst of a divided court.  Shortly after her father’s conversion from humanism to Protestantism he took ill and Olympia was called to leave court and nurse her ailing father. In the course he dies, leaving Olympia and his family a beautiful testimony of Christ.  This is the beginning of what would be a short and painful life characterized by hard lessons and self-denial.

With an allegiance to history that is as good as any historian, Carr takes us inside the young Olympia’s world. We suffer disappointment with her upon being told her services were no longer needed at court. Our hearts flutter with excitement as Andreas Grunthler, a young physician, desires her hand in marriage.  We cannot help but agree with the young couple as they discern the ominous clouds of persecution gathering around the Reformed church at Ferrara. We travel  with them on an exhausting journey to Germany that is fraught with perils and dangers of all kinds.  We praise God with them for His sovereignty and providential care throughout.  We breathe a sigh of relief as they arrive and settle in Schweinfurt only to discover the place where they expected to find refuge would be the place of greatest danger.

In each dramatic chapter, Carr helps us absorb all the historical data while we empathize with the human qualities of our heroine.  More important, we identify with the young Olympia as a Christian. The stakes are high at every turn and as conflict after conflict unfolds, the reader is challenged by the faith of this young woman who did not love her life so much as to shrink from death (Revelation 12:11).

Olympia’s last days were marked by great physical pain as she was struck with an incurable plague. Carr gives us a glimpse into the soul of a saint who, rather than despair over tragedy rejoices at the prospect of entering into eternal life. “God has measured out a definite course of life for me…brief and full of work and woe. I have almost arrived at the finish line, and then I will be with Christ forever.  Why would I want to turn back to the starting gate?”

In a culture characterized by heedless self-indulgence and that extols the virtues of selfishness and ambition stands Olympia Morata, a woman whose short 29 years consisted of troubles, reproaches, persecutions, and death. Having forsaken all worldly pleasures and satisfactions for the sake of the cross, Olympia’s story encourages us to run the race marked out for us with perseverance (Hebrews 12:1). It is my pleasure to recommend this book to all readers, but particularly young women, who will find in Olympia Morata, a shining example of strength and courage. May we pass the legacy of Olympia Morata to our daughters as she faithfully followed our Lord in duty, and in glory thereafter.

You can purchase Weight of a Flame here and also explore other books in the “Chosen Daughter” series here.  Additionally, the author has done the readers a great service by posting a four-part series on her blog called “Truth and Fiction” in which she discusses what is historically true and what is fiction in each chapter.  Not only is this a fun thing to do while reading, but you will learn how writers of historical fiction use primary and secondary sources, and other historical data to help direct their imagination. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Also, if you have not done so, take a moment to read my interview with Simonetta Carr here. I trust you will see that Carr’s contribution to the body is nothing short of a labor of love.

Finally, last year Heavenly Springs commemorated the Reformation with a special series called, “Women of the Reformation”.   Lord willing we will do it each year.  I invite you to visit Petra Hefner’s moving tribute to Olympia Morata here.

“There can at the same time by no doubt that the Holy Ghost is to be viewed as commending in this passage that mutual harmony which should subsist amongst all God’s children, and exhorting us to make every endeavor to maintain it.  So long as animosities divide us, and heart-burnings prevail amongst us, we may be brethren no doubt still by common relation to God, but cannot be judged one so long as we present the appearance of a broken and dismembered body.  As we are one in God the Father, and in Christ, the union must be ratified amongst us by reciprocal harmony and fraternal love. . .We are to set ourselves against those turbulent spirits which the devil will never fail to raise up in the Church, and be sedulous to retain intercourse with such as show a docile and tractable disposition.  But we cannot extend this intercourse to those who obstinately persist in error, since the condition of receiving them as brethren would be our renouncing him who is Father of all, and from whom all spiritual relationship takes its rise.  The peace which David recommends is such as being in the true head, and this is quite enough to refute the unfounded charge of schism and divisions which has been brought against us by the Papists, while we have given abundant evidence of our desire that they would coalesce with us in God’s truth, which is the only bond of holy union.”

John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979, 1:189

There is another way to look at these verses, however—not as an expression of fatalism but of Calvinism! In other words, the Preacher is telling us that whether things seem crooked or straight, we need to see our situation in terms of the sovereignty of God. According to Thomas Boston, if God is the one who made the crook in our lot, then we need to see that crook as the work of God, which it is vain for us to try to change. “What God sees meet to mar” we “will not be able to mend.” “This view of the matter,” said Boston, “is a proper means, at once to silence and satisfy men, and so to bring them unto a dutiful submission to their Maker and Governor, under the crook in their lot.”

“We cannot change what God has done unless and until God wants to change it. We are under the power of the sovereign and omnipotent ruler of the entire universe. We do not have the power to edit his plan for our lives. But far from driving us to despair, the sovereignty of God gives us hope through all the trials of life. We do suffer the frustration of life in a fallen world. But the Bible says that we suffer these things by the will of a God who is planning to set us free from all this futility and who is working all things together for our good (see Romans 8:20, 28).”

Philip Graham Ryken, Preaching the Word, Ecclesiastes: Why Everything Matters, Wheaton: Crossway, 2010, pages 162-166. (Logos)

Click here to read Thomas Boston’s The Crook in the Lot in it’s entirety.

In his book, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? James Montgomery Boice talks about recovering community. As someone who was nurtured back to spiritual health by a community of believers, I can only concur with the statements that are expressed here.  May God help us to get beyond our individualism — the individualism that is so deeply ingrained in our culture, and free us to love and care for others.

“A fourth area in which we need to seek renewal is for our churches to become true spiritual communities: “community” because it is only as a community that we can model relationships, and “spiritual” because what we want to model is the unique qualities of life that being Christian brings.

The church of Jesus Christ can model community as no secular organization can – not businesses, not schools, not the centers of entertainment or social life, not government or city agencies- only the church! Because the church gets us outside of ourselves as those who together have been made into the one body of Jesus Christ, we can think about and care for others. Churches have an extraordinary opportunity for reaching people for Christ through their communities at a time when other forms of community have broken down. There is no better place than the fellowship of Christians for embracing those suffering from ruptured marriages, fractured homes, and other destroyed relationships.

Christianity offers something different at this point.  God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). Both of these statement concern relationships and show how necessary and desirable relationships are.

What makes a community?  A community holds together because of some higher allegiance or priority. Christians are the community of those who are formed by Scripture alone and who, because of that, know that they are all sinners saved by grace alone because of Christ alone. They are not wrapped up in themselves. Therefore, they love each other and are able to stand together and welcome all types of people and races to their fellowship.  They have a commitment that goes – or should go- beyond mere individualism; and if they do, they inevitably model genuine community in church settings. Such communities provide an unsurpassed opportunity for reaching the unsaved world for Jesus Christ.”

James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? Rediscovering the Doctrines that Shook the World, Illinois: Crossway,  pages 177-179.