In the beginning...

So I'm readying a couple of books right now, each for its own reason. Atlas Shrugged was recommended by a good friend and it's probably the first book I've read for pleasure in.. well since I can remember. It's quite a large book, just over a thousand pages and I'm about a third of the way through. It's one of the most interesting fiction books I've ever read. While it was written to show the clash between communism / socialism and capitalism (of course from the authors point, capitalism is what allows the atlas' of the world to thrive) While I agree with the political and economical implications of removing or shackling the great work horses of our time, but I don't know how I feel about the way the book works with emotions or the point Rand is trying to convey. (granted I'm only a third through the book).

I also picked up A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy. I'm going to go out on a limb and call it an amazing book. I'm going out on a limb because I haven't been able to get past the opening prayer of the first chapter! I seem to be getting stuck on:

...therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou are, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee...

It's pretty substantial to me that those who claim to be Christians, myself included, often go around thanking God and giving him what we would consider the praise that He's due, and really the praise we offer, the love we profess are unworthy of him. Tozer mentions in the preface that it's because we really don't take the time to truly know God. He says...

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils... With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of divine Presence... Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate...the words "Be still, and know that I am God," [the words] mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper.

So this is where I'm at right now...