A Time to Grow

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

The author of George MacDonald: Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller presents a wealth of Christian wisdom culled from the works of the great Victorian writer

The nineteenth century author, poet, and Christian scholar George MacDonald has inspired generations with his powerful stories and sermons. Writers from Lewis Carroll to W.H. Auden cite MacDonald as a major influence, while C.S. Lewis has said his books were pivotal in leading him toward Christianity. In A time to Grow, MacDonald scholar and biographer Michael Phillips combs through the author’s many works to provides a selection of brief daily readings.

Culled from MacDonald’s beloved stories and novels, such as Robert Falconer, At the Back of the North Wind, Sir Gibbie, and many others, each selection imparts a thought-provoking Christian message and is accompanied by a relevant Bible verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795351723

George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a popular Scottish lecturer and writer of novels, poetry, and fairy tales. Born in Aberdeenshire, he was briefly a clergyman, then a professor of English literature at Bedford and King's College in London. W. H. Auden called him "one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century."

Book preview

A Time to Grow

Inspiring Devotional

Selections from the

writings of George

MacDonald

George MacDonald;

Compiled and Edited

by Michael Phillips

A Time to Grow

Copyright © 1991 by Michael Phillips

A Time to Harvest

Copyright © 1991 by Michael Phillips

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5172-3

www.RosettaBooks.com

About the Author

MICHAEL PHILLIPS is a devotional writer and best-selling novelist who has published more than a hundred original titles spanning a forty-year writing career from 1977 to the present. In addition to his own fiction, he is widely known for his work in bringing the writings of Victorian George MacDonald back into print in the 1980s when MacDonald’s reputation was nearly lost to public view. His major biography of MacDonald (George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller) accompanied twenty-six reissued edited fiction and non-fiction titles by MacDonald that reestablished MacDonald’s stature in the twentieth century as a Christian visionary with singular insight into the nature of God and his eternal purposes. Phillips is also editor of The Masterline Series of studies about George MacDonald, and publisher of The Sunrise Centenary Editions of the Works of George MacDonald. Through the years Phillips has come to be recognized as a man with keen insights into the life, ideas, theology, and heart of George MacDonald.

Phillips has continued through the years to illuminate MacDonald’s vision of the divine Fatherhood. His ongoing MacDonald studies and research have produced the titles: Discovering the Character of God, Knowing the Heart of God, George MacDonald’s Spiritual Vision, George MacDonald and the Late Great Hell Debate, George MacDonald’s Transformational Theology of the Christian Faith, Bold Thinking Christianity, The Commands, and The Commands of the Apostles.

This compilation of devotional selections (combining the two former titles A Time to Grow and A Time to Harvest from 1991) is published in conjunction with the 38-volume series from Michael Phillips, The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald, which includes his new biography, George MacDonald A Writer’s Life.

The books of Michael Phillips and George MacDonald are available from TheCullenCollection.com, WisePathBooks.com, FatherOfTheInklings.com, and from Amazon. Most are now also available on Kindle.

CONTENTS

Tears of Winter/Winds of Summer

The Glory of a Country Summer

The Mystery of the Wood

Awake to Joy

The Budding Philosophy of Youth

The Gladness of Summer

Who But God Could Invent Roses?

Nature Embodies the Character of God

The Sweet Music of Summer

The Lifting of the Heart with a Sense of Presence

Radiant with Expectation

A Little Wonder Is Worth Tons of Knowledge

Nazareth Carpenter

The Greatest Need of the Human Heart

Remembering God

Kindness

You Cannot Be Convinced There Is No God

A Man Is a Man No Matter How Far He Is from Manhood

A Glorious New Day

Someone to Say Must to Me

The Eternal Joy of the Universe

The Story of God's Universe

A Spirit of Prophecy

The Deepest Truth of an Evil Theology

The Idea of God Grows Slowly

Thorough and Ideal Love

Trust Work, Not Money

He Is Your Father, Whether You Wish It or Not

Thought and Feeling

Shame in Making Apology or Shame in Doing Wrong

Nothing Pleases God Like the Truth

Smoked Glass Held Up in Front of God

The Compulsion to Seek Help

What Doth Every Sin Deserve?

Great and Small in Every Class

I Cannot Say What You Should Do

We Must Be Before We Can Do

A Place to Think

Denying It or Denying Him?

The Influence of Ancestors

The Stirring of Hearts

Ignorance—Both Punishment and Kindness

The Place of Misery

The More Manly Occupation

The True Measuring Rod

He Will Be with God

The Secret of Uncertainty

The Will of God Is All

Castles That God Builds

Error and Truth

Wait and See What God Will Do

Finding Truth

The Proper Response to Meanness

We Must Make Good Temper Ours

The Meek Inherit

Who Are You?

The Troublesome Condition of Pride

Have I Done Anything Because He Said Do It?

Doubt May Indicate a Larger Faith

Two Advantages—To Be Poor and to Fear God

How Jesus Loved Women

The Deepest Cry of the Heart

Can the Young Obey?

Qualifications for the Ministry

When Job Saw God, All Was Well

They Would Know Better if They Wanted To

Doing the Truth Is Life Essential

We Cannot Live by Ourselves

Dreams Truly Dreamed

Who Can Say What the Lord Can't Do?

In the Will Is Strength

The First Duty of Married People

Can We Trust Majority Opinion?

Do Not Try to Set All Things Right

No Man Is a Fool Who Does His Work

Does God Give Whatever We Ask?

True Making, True Creating

What Is the Truth?

What Thoughts Demand of Us

Honor for Honesty

The Good News Dwelt with Him

The Call Is to Christlikeness

A Time to Do or a Time to Wait

God Sees Differences of Which the World Takes No Heed

He Knows What You Need

A Live and Watching Readiness

To Admire Does Not Make Us Equal with Our Hero

The Other Side of Death

Better to Deny God than Rebel Against Him

TEARS OF WINTER/WINDS OF SUMMER

IT WAS NOT all fine weather up there among the mountains in the beginning of summer. In the first week of June even, there was sleet and snow in the wind—the tears of the vanquished Winter, as he fled across the sea from Norway or Iceland. Then would Donal's heart be sore for Gibbie, when he saw his poor rags blown about like streamers in the wind.

Donal had neither greatcoat, plaid, nor umbrella wherewith to shield Gibbie's raggedness. Once in great pity he pulled off his jacket and threw it on Gibbie's shoulders. But the shout of laughter that burst from the boy as he flung the jacket from him and rushed away into the middle of the feeding herd, a shout that came from no rudeness but from the very depths of delight stirred by the loving-kindness of the act, startled Donal out of his pity into brief anger.

But Gibbie dived under the belly of a favorite cow and, peering out sideways from under her while the cow went on undisturbed, showed such an innocent countenance of merriment that the pride of Donal's hurt melted away and his laughter echoed Gibbie's.

The Baronet's Song, p. 59

How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.

Psalm 36:7

THE GLORY OF A COUNTRY SUMMER

AFTER SCHOOL WAS out, what a delightful walk of three miles the boys had to Mr. Lammie's farm—over hill and dale and moor and farm.

That first summer walk was to Robert something to remember in after years with nothing short of ecstasy. The westering sun threw long shadows before them as they trudged away eastward, lightly laden with the books they needed for tomorrow's lessons. Once beyond the immediate environs of the town and the various place of land occupied by its inhabitants, they crossed a small river and entered a region of little hills, some covered with trees, others cultivated, and some bearing only heather, now nursing in secret its purple flame for the outburst of autumn.

The road wound between, now swampy and worn into deep ruts, now sandy and broken with large stones. Here and there green fields, fenced with stones overgrown with moss, would stretch away on both sides, sprinkled with busily feeding cattle.

They passed through an occasional farmstead, perfumed with the breath of cows and the odor of burning peat. The scent of the oaks and larches would steal from the hills, or the wind would waft the odor of the white clover to Robert's nostrils, and he would turn aside to pull his grandmother a handful.

Then they climbed a high ridge, on the top of which spread a moorland, dreary and desolate. This crossed, they descended between young plantations of firs and rowan trees and birches till they reached a warm house on the side of the slope, with farm buildings and ricks of corn and hay all about it, the front overgrown with roses and honeysuckle.

From the open kitchen door came the smell of something good. But beyond all was the welcome of Miss Lammie, whose small, pudgy hand closed upon his like a very love pudding to