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While U.S. presidents have traditionally retired to relish in their accomplishments or to undertake lucrative second careers as paid lecturers and business consultants, Jimmy Carter builds houses, hammer in hand, for those who could never afford to repay him.
To many, Carter is an enigma. He's a world leader and a farmer, a Sunday school teacher and a nuclear engineer. He has lived a life of successes and failures. He readily admits both. Yet if you want to know the heart of Jimmy Carter, you don't have to read his lips. Simply observe his actions. In self-help jargon, he walks his talk.
Carter's latest book, Sources of Strength, offers two subtle motifs: serve God in whatever humble way God grants an opportunity, and examine oneself along the way. Act first, perfect the actions second. "If we wait for perfection in our lives . . . we may never act."
To find His way in both areas, Carter relies on the Bible, which he calls the "operating manual for life." The 52 short chapters in Sources of Strength are actually mini-Bible lessons that he has taught over the past 20 years, the majority of them at his home church, the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.
Carter begins each lesson with a passage of Scripture (most are from the New Testament), then uses it to chip away at our society like Michelangelo creating a marble sculpture. In terms of human nature, mankind has changed very little in the past 2,000 years, and Carter highlights the social mores, still present today, that Jesus confronted. By the end of the book, the unrelated essays form a multifaceted collage of what it really means to be a twenty-first-century believer.
We all want to leave a legacy. Carter is no exception. But for Carter, leaving a legacy is not enough. The better question is, what kind of legacy will we leave? "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" asks Carter.
A tough question from a man who gives the impression that he too seeks to know if he is sacrificing enough, even with hammer in hand.
Clay Stafford is an author and reviewer in Franklin, TN.
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