Willow in the Wind

Description

If, as Emerson wrote, an institution is but the lengthened shadow of a man, then Elim is the lengthened shadow of Ivan Spencer. Marion Meloon’s book gives us, not a shadow, but the real substance of the man.

Most institutional histories read like institutional histories — and are therefore unread except by dedicated researchers or harried students pressed into doing term papers about something. This history of Elim, via the biography of its founder, reads like fiction, full of romance, heartache, and victory.

Willow in the Wind portrays Ivan Spencer’s boyhood as he pulled his little wagon across a bumpy oat field to carry the scythe back to the beginning of a new swathe for his father; the day a sled runner cut through the crust of snow and hurtled Ivan and his sister, Emma, into the icy creek; the afternoon Ivan and his brother, threatened with jail — or worse — for hunting out of season were sent away from home. Ivan’s life was full of adventure — and God’s hand was in it all.

Where facts might otherwise have been unexciting, Marion Meloon’s gifted writing imparts life to the events, making them as interesting to the reader as they were vital to the flesh and blood characters who lived them. The reality of history is there — all the birth pangs and refining processes of the earthen vessels God had chosen to bear His priceless treasure. No dry-as-dust facts or made-up fictions that might have happened, but vibrant, real accounts of you-were-there relationships.

Eavesdropping on Ivan’s prayer for his wayward daughter as he sits on a milking stool, squirting the foaming whiteness into a brimming pail, you are convinced that there is no false adulation in this book, no pretending that life was always happily-ever-after, but God was always real.