Review: The Three Hardest Words by Leonard Sweet
By Fred Peatross |
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 During his tenure at a downtown church in Miami, Florida, Max Lucado wrote a weekly article for the church bulletin. Those same writings were compiled and published in his first book, On the Anvil. The stories were simple, thoughtful and stylish. Each chapter ushered the reader into the life of Christ. Lucado’s skill touched both heart and emotion. The popularity of his writings grew, his book sales increased. But not long after signing a contract with Word Publishing, new deadlines and demands forced Lucado to exchange his storytelling talent for mainstream, word-press fluff.
Like Lucado, Leonard Sweet is a prolific author (thirty books; five in the last two years). Yet Sweet’s writings continue to challenge with each new offering.
Three of the Hardest Words is a metaphorical journey into the bowels of three of the simplest words in the English language–“I love you.”
Circumstances and situations give all of us ample opportunity for applying healing and forgiveness to our damaged relationships, but when those times come the three simple words become very difficult to give up. An even greater challenge may be to consistently live the three simple words.
Combining anecdote and an encyclopedic mind, Sweet skillfully leads his readers on a journey deep into the postmodern mind contrasting the concepts of life and lifestyle, a.k.a. deathstyle, a type of secular religion where metanarrative is sacrificed for the smaller consumer story of the American lifestyle.
The first three chapters serve as a segway [sic] to love.
Interestingly, the last three chapters when vertically aligned spell the three most difficult words in the English language, “I love You.”
- “I— Receiving a New Identity”
- “Love—Receiving a New Integrity” and
- “You—Receiving a New Intimacy”
If this book doesn’t convince you of the wide spread “me” syndrome in Western society then maybe listening to the constant "you and yours" referenced in your prayer life will sway you. The capacity to love will be evidenced when we de-idolize the “me” and the “I” and find others as primary in life. Sweet's latest work leads the reader from “I” and “me” (ego is an acronym for “edging God out”) to the shaping of self in relation to God.
One of the most powerful sections is when Sweet tells a childhood story of his mother’s constant habit of humming while running errands and doing her daily chores. When he asked his mother why she always hummed she said, “I’m thinking of Jesus.” The suggestion? Daydreams have the ability to shape one’s story.
Are we “daydreaming” of hitting it “big” in the lottery, hitting a “home run” at work, at school, at church, hitting the bulls-eye of the American Dream?
Or are we daydreaming like Sweet’s mother?
“Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all?”
Buy this book. Read it slow. Absorb it. Then read it again.
Fred Peatross is a Christian who lives and worships in Huntington, West Virginia. He has been a deacon, a missionary, a pulpit minister, and shepherd. Presently Fred is responsible for carrying out the Great Commission and directing a Nuclear Medicine department. He has been married to his wife Paula for twenty-seven years. He is currently giving his blog a rest. |
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