Review:Ordering Your Private World

Ordering Your Private World
by Gordon MacDonald

Back in April, I read an interesting article here at Seasonal Soundings about how Janie manages to get so much reading done while working and living a full life. She said that Ordering Your Private World helped her figure out how to get more time out of her day. Naturally, I checked out the book right away.

As I started reading it I noticed that Rev. MacDonald didn't always make his point clear in each chapter so I decided this was a book to take notes on. I would read a chapter, then skim back over it looking for the key points. I am so glad I did. I might have dismissed the book before I'd finished it if I hadn't. Instead I now have 5 pages, front and back, of helpful notes on just how to organize a meaningful and productive time of study and meditation of God, His Word, and His blessings. While I don't always agree with his branch of Christianity, I was able to put that aside and gain knowledge in the organizational advice that will, if implemented consistently, enable me to have a rich spiritual life and an orderly private and public world.

But our inner world is more spiritual in nature. Here is a center in which
choices and values can be determined, where solitude and reflection might be
pursued. It is a place for conducting worship and confession, a quiet spot
where the moral and spiritual pollution of the times need not penetrate.

Thinking is the amazing capacity God has given the human being to discover and
observe the stuff of creation, to compare and contrast each of its parts, and
when possible, to use them properly so as to reflect the glory of the Creator.

I am glad that I went back and took notes. I gained some helpful insights. I will never be an organized person in general but I may be able to implement some of these ideas into my quiet times; and I can only gain from regularly drawing closer to God.