The World as I Remember It: Through the Eyes of a Ragamuffin

This collection of short "stories", "reflections" and "meditations" are written in a very simple manner, however Rich Mullins has been able to combine this simplicity with a messages that has really opened my eyes and helped me with my understanding of what is important in life and how to get to know our God better. This book is a must read for every Christian regardless of his or her denomination. I have never recommended a book before, but this book I truly recommend as a "must read" for every Christian.

I have loved the music of Rich Mullins for years. Its beautiful, its poetic, and its laced with God's grace. Only this week, did I discover that I also love the writings of Rich Mullins. In THE WORLD AS I REMEMBER IT: THROUGH THE EYES OF A RAGAMUFFIN, a compilation of columns written for the RELEASE publication, Rich eloquently gives us a glimpse into his heart and the journey this ragamuffin took as he sought to be a true follower of Jesus. Here is an excerpt from the chapter I read aloud to the family on the way to church service this morning: "It is the same way with strength. Gad calls us to "be strong" and we mistake that for a call to omnipotence. We confuse strength to endure trials with an ability to walk unfrustrated through life. We convince ourselves that if we were strong we would never fail, never tire, never hurt, never need. We begin to measure strength in terms of ease of progress, equate power with success, endurability with invincibility, and inevitably, when our illusion of omnipotence is shattered, we condemn ourselves for being weak." Rich left us for Heaven on September 19, 1997...but his writings and music will ensure that a wonderful part of him will not only always be with us, but will continue to encourage us on our journey.

Many Christians are lame. Many Christians are insanely boring. Rich Mullins was not one of them. He lived life like a love-struck bandit, taking as much from the pure and holy that he possibly could before God sucked him up and into the next realm. In 'The World As I Remember It', Mullins lets us into his head. He allows us to see God's creation from the eyes of perhaps the greatest Christian poet of our age. Mullins addresses Christ's simplicity in things like His love for lilies, and His love for creation (is that simple?). He also discusses - in a way that is both dreamy and concrete - the wisdom that comes with age, loving people fervently even when we do not see results, the power of Christ choosing when He would lay down His own life, as well as a number of issues that I would not be so unwise to try to do justice to in a simple review. Mullins thought outside the box. You will see that in his writings. He was put here to inspire us to do the same. I highly recommend this book. It is short enough to finish in one day, but powerful enough to remember for the rest of your life.

What a wonderful collection of reflections by Rich Mullins. If you are a Rich Mullins fan, then no doubt you have these articles in a different format. However, this book makes a great gift for those unacqainted with Mullins. A few pages and they will be hooked. What better gift is there to give?

Rich Mullins was a rarity in the music industry, a recording artist who traded in the perks of his celebrity status for an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of real people --- the children who lived on a Navajo reservation in the Southwest. It was there that he lived and taught music when he could have spent his life in relative ease in Nashville, the center of the Christian music industry. He constantly defied convention, especially the Christian convention of the American evangelical variety. When Mullins, best known for the contemporary praise song "Awesome God" and "Sing Your Praise to the Lord," recorded by Amy Grant, died in an automobile crash in September of 1997, his fans and colleagues felt a genuine sense of loss. This wasn't the passing of a superstar; it was the loss of a man who surrendered his life in service to God and verbally expressed his unqualified devotion to him through the utterly stunning poetry of his lyrics and the candor of his off-the-cuff observations about the cultural Christian lifestyle and mindset. Mullins didn't always say what people liked to hear, but he always spoke from his heart. The same can be said about his writing. Seriously, how many Christians do you know who would have the guts to accuse God of playing hard to get --- and ask it in a song, for millions to hear? (That song is appropriately titled "Hard to Get," by the way.) That same kind of honesty appeared in the always perceptive columns Mullins wrote for Release magazine in the early 1990s. Which brings us to THE WORLD AS I REMEMBER IT, a compilation of those columns. Now I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that this book is a repackaging of an earlier book called HOME, released several years after Mullins's death by Voxcorp, which owned Release. The columns may be the same as those published in HOME, but I no longer have access to that book to double-check. At any rate, this one is an entirely different design, published in a small, gift-book format with dozens of beautiful sepia-toned photos of Mullins and the places that were significant to him. The main attraction, though, is Mullins's masterful writing. The same elegance that he brought to his lyrics is evident in his prose. It didn't matter whether he was writing about the lilies and the sparrows Jesus mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount or about growing older or even about fiddles --- profound truth and mundane objects were equal sources of wonder for him. He could glean as much insight from his attic apartment renovation as he could from the rich poetry of Proverbs 30. Every one of his columns is well worth reading. Readers who were familiar with Mullins's work when he was alive will no doubt be able to see his face and hear his voice again as they read the treasures he left behind in print. The negative? There's only one. Reading the words he wrote may make you miss him even more.