Reviewing: Raising Uncommon Kids

Raising Uncommon Kids – 12 Biblical Traits You Need to Raise Selfless Kids

By Sami Cone

So I started reading Raising Uncommon Kids and then quit reading it at the 13^th paragraph: “If I wanted my daughter to change, I realized, the change had to start with me.”

Wait.  What?  I went back to the cover.  What had I missed?  How was this book meant to change my children from self-absorbed drama queens into beautiful Proverbs 31 women about changing me first?!  “12 Biblical Traits YOU NEED to Raise Selfless Kids.”  I missed the two simple words in all caps.  “YOU NEED.”  (So then I laughed nervously at my oversight, picked myself up off the floor, and took a few cleansing yoga breaths before I started reading again.)

Me.  It’s about me.  My children model so much about who my husband and I are . . . and their “uncommonality” and selflessness is bound to be no different.  Cone introduces and then dissects the 12 Biblical Traits we need to produce in our lives what we hope our children will emulate.  From Love and Harmony to Wisdom and Patience to Humility and Compassion, each chapter provides an explanation, a mirror to hold up and examine ourselves, a mentor moment that will allow us to share these truths with our children, and practical tips to cultivate these traits in our children.  And cultivate is the right word.  While Colossians 3:12-17 can feel like a giant to do list for creating peaceful homes, it is really a guide for what God can do through our homes and families as we submit to His way of thinking, parenting, and living together. 

These blog reviews always mean I have to read a book too fast to fully chew it, embrace it, and measure its change in my life.  As a result, some of them require deeper reading.  This is one of those books.  I hope I can find a group of parents to chew it and embrace it and measure its change in our families with me.

DISCLAIMER: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers Program in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review, and all views expressed are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance with Federal Trade Commission guidelines.

Reviewing: A Glorious Dark

A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension Between Belief and Experience
A.J. Swoboda

When I read a book, be it fiction or nonfiction, and I come across something that strikes me—a turn of phrase or an important point—I fold the corner of the page over, marking that spot.  Then, when I’m finished with the book, I go back to that page, reread it, and see if something strikes me again.  If it does, I must have really meant it, and I underline it. 

In A Glorious Dark, I had 23 pages folded over.  In a 15-chapter book.  And I almost skipped the folding over and went straight to the underlining.

A.J. Swoboda has a way with words.  He mixes humor with heartfelt vulnerability and thought-provoking seriousness, and he does it all against a backdrop of Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and the in-between Saturday. 

It has been said, “It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming.”  That is almost always spoken to move us quickly from the trauma, the sadness, the fear of Jesus’ death and into the celebration of His resurrection.  And Swoboda does start with Good Friday.  He starts with Jesus’ death, and he asks us to sit there in the numbness of it.  But then he doesn’t rush from that into the joy and celebration.  He calls us to pause and fully enter in to Saturday first.  Saturday, when Jesus had been killed and was dead in the tomb.  Saturday, when nobody knew Sunday was coming.  Saturday, when it seems like my life is falling apart, and I can’t even find a friend let alone God.  Saturday, where we live a good portion of our lives.  Saturday, where Jesus may have lain dead in a tomb but, just like a river in the winter, there is a glorious dark underneath.

I have truly never read a book like this.  It is with regret that I can only recommend A Glorious Dark to anyone who reads this review, and I can’t actually go out and buy a copy for every one of my friends, my family members, and people I don’t even know very well.


 Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers www.bakerbooks.com/bakerbooksbloggers program. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.

Reviewing: The A to Z Guide to Bible Signs & Symbols

The A to Z Guide to Bible Signs & Symbols: Understanding Their Meaning and Significance
by Neil Wilson and Nancy Ryken Taylor

The subtitle of this book is "Understanding Their Meaning and Significance," and therein lies the beauty of this book. It is certainly not the easiest book to just pick up and read, from page 1 through the end, but I think it is an important book for every Christian's shelf.

Very few of us have the calling to attend seminary (or the desire to sit and read commentaries), so our understanding of the meaning and significance of the signs and symbols in the Bible is limited to sermons presented by our pastors who have done the studying. And, because there is so much to get from those Sunday or midweek sermons, we run short on time to truly soak in the significance of a symbol or a sign found scattered throughout the Bible. That leaves most of us with little to no knowledge of what was packed into the Scripture--things that will enrich not only our understanding of God's word for us but also our faith.

Enter The A to Z Guide to Bible Signs & Symbols. Neil Wilson and Nancy Ryken Taylor have compiled a user-friendly resource rich with examples and references from the Old Testament to the New Testament. From the cross to darkness to quail to wind--and everything in between--Wilson and Ryken Taylor break down the sign or the symbol, explain its significance (either positive or negative), and challenge the believer to learn from its inclusion. I'm thrilled to have this reference on my bookshelf to enhance my personal devotions, and I recommend it for everyone who wants to dig a bit deeper.

Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggerswww.bakerbooks.com/bakerbooksbloggers program. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Reviewing: 30 Events That Shaped the Church

30 Events That Shaped the Church: Learning from Scandal, Intrigue, War, and Revival
by Alton Gansky

How can one not eagerly pick up a book with a subtitle like that?!  I love to learn from scandal and intrigue!  I'm happy to report that Gansky's book did not disappoint.  There was scandal and intrigue and war and revival . . . and a lot in between.

I can't even imagine how many years Gansky spent researching the 30 events he chose to include in this book, but each hour is obvious.  While this book was interesting and a fairly quick read, it could certainly serve as a starting point for further research into any of the events he mentioned.  In fact, I often thought, "If my kids ever need to write about the history of the church, this is the perfect primer for them."  From obvious events like Pentecost to the less obvious "Rise of the Neo-Evangelicals," every one of the 30 chapters can stand alone while also flowing from one to the next in a cohesive timeline.  Gansky often refers back to another chapter as he's explaining a new event.  Then, in the end, he ties the rise of atheism back to the birth of the church and offers hope that we can again come through these current days stronger and more unified.

Through this journey from AD 30 to the present day I found my faith sharpened and reaffirmed.  It was fun to read about the birth of Protestantism and see where the church I love today--and the Church I love today--got its start and has been forced to change and grow in order to stay alive . . . and where it refused to compromise.  This book is a great journey for the seasoned follower of Christ, the new believer, and everyone in between.  I think it would also be great for an adult Sunday School as it would spur conversation and a critical look at where we were, where are now, and where we need to go.


Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers program.  The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.

Reviewing: Empowered By His Presence

Empowered By His Presence: Receiving the Strength You Need Each Day
by Kevin G. Harney

Wow.  This is a great book.  The format, the content, the application--all of it is a wonderful tool for the Christian's journey.

Kevin Harney breaks this book down into a four-week devotional journey (for individuals, small groups, or churches) consisting of a short reading six days a week and a "for further study" portion that can be broken down throughout the week or used for more in-depth study and discussion on the 7th day.  In his introduction, Harney discusses power, its origins in our lives, and its usefulness in our lives.  He also notes there are three types of people: powerful, powerless, and empowered.  Our goal as Christians is to live lives that are empowered by the presence of God and the Holy Spirit.

Through each of the four sections--"Experiencing God's Presence in Suffering, Loss, and Pain"; "Encountering God in the Community of His People"; "Empowered for the Journey by Receiving God's Rest"; and "Propelled Onward by the Call and Mission of God"--Harney tells a story of someone in the Bible and often someone from current times to demonstrate the empowering of God for each step of everyday life.  He then concludes every day's reading with a description of how the powerful, powerless, and empowered individual would respond in that situation.

I found these descriptions to be incredibly helpful.  I tend to be self-critical and read books like this from a place of exhaustion recognizing (and quickly becoming overwhelmed by) all the steps I have to take to "arrive" at some impossible pinnacle of piety.  In reading Empowered, I found each day's reading to be in turns challenging and affirming and encouraging.  Then, reading the descriptions I was able to find myself in each reading and note where I need to work to deepen my dependence on God and His power for my day.  Sometimes I was surprised to see where I fell; other times I was encouraged.  Every time I was challenged by the faith of those who have gone before me and the desire to rest in God's power to meet the needs in my own life and in those around me.  The best news of all is that this power exists and is available to each of us . . . and it is the same power and spirit that dwelt within Christ and empowered Him for His daily journey.


Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers (www.bakerbooks.com/bakerbooksbloggers) program.  The opinions I have expressed are my won, and I was not required to write a positive review.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 (http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html).

Reviewing: The Making of an Ordinary Saint

The Making of an Ordinary Saint: My Journey from Frustration to Joy with the Spiritual Disciplines
by Nathan Foster

Three brief moments of disclosure before I begin:
1) This book took me months to read. That was all on me.  I slowly and carefully digested each word.  I'm certain it could have been read faster, but I couldn't do it.
2) I haven't read Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.  Still, I have my preconceived notions about the spiritual disciplines and Richard Foster's beautiful (and comical) use of antonyms in his title.
3) One of my dearest friends edited this book.  She knows me well enough to know that means nothing as to my liking this book.

Now.  On to the review.

Nathan Foster is the son of Richard Foster, whom I have always referred to as "The Disciplines Guy."   Richard's famous book Celebration of Discipline was published when I was one year old and has always felt like a daunting, "must-do" task for me if I want to be a true Christian.  I'm not sure anyone put that on me besides me, but it has always sat there nonetheless.  So, when my editor friend told me what she was working on, I was skeptical and intrigued.  Then I got my hands on the book.  And I spent the next three months eating, chewing, laughing, wiping away tears, nodding my head, and shaking my head in amazement.

For starters, I was glad to find out I wasn't the only one who found the concept of the spiritual disciplines as a formidable but essential checklist in order to reach true Christian status.  Richard Foster's own son felt that way too!  And, in much the same words my own pastor father would use, Richard gently explained to his son (and to the reader--in a coup we get "The Spiritual Disciplines Guy" AND his "Skeptical About the Disciplines Son"!): "This isn't supposed to hurt.  It's not supposed to be a checklist about succeeding or failing.  It's supposed to be about choosing God."

With candid honesty, vulnerable humility, and well-sprinkled humor, Nathan Foster details his four-year journey with the spiritual disciplines.  It's a journey from fear, trepidation, and duty to freedom, love, and joy.  Through his journey, Foster makes approachable what has long felt daunting.  And he helps his reader see the secret Richard Foster tried to share with us all along:

It isn't about twelve rigid practices; in fact, as I go about each day, there are so many simple ways I can intentionally direct my will and actions toward God.  While the categories are helpful, they are only constructed to enable us to frame our experiences.  In a sense there is only one discipline: an active response to a loving God. (p191)

And, in that learning to actively respond to a loving God, through Richard Foster's introductions to each chapter, Nathan Foster's prosaic explanations of his practical implementation of each discipline (sometimes accidental, always simple, and never with mundane results), and a brief essay on a "mother or father" of the faith who lived that discipline daily, we see that this really is practical.  It really is about responding actively to a loving God.  It really is about choosing joy and choosing love and seeing God and needing Him and wanting Him more than anything else.

I'll read this book again.  Next time it won't be for an assignment or with a deadline I already missed.  It will be with a journal and a plan to actively and intentionally walk this journey on my own.


Disclosure: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers (www.bakerbooks.com/bakerbooksbloggers) program.  The opinions I have expressed are my won, and I was not required to write a positive review.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 (http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html).

Reviewing: The First Time We Saw Him

The First Time We Saw Him: Awakening to the Wonder of Jesus
Matt Mikalatos

Mikalatos begins The First Time We Saw Him with a disclaimer: "Remember, the point is not to breathe new life into the Scriptures.  It's to remind us that they're already alive."  And, boy, are they ever!

Let me also include a disclaimer: I have been a Christian my entire life.  There have been moments that I have "taken off" my WWJD bracelet (or attitude), but there is no possible way for me to separate myself from Christ.  I know that.  BUT . . . I find that the stories, the parables, can get a bit stale.  I've read them so many times that I feel like I know them by heart.  There's a danger then in hearing what they are saying to you . . . or even listening long enough to believe they might have anything to say.

The truth is, that I'm exactly the kind of person for whom Mikalatos was writing this book.  Awakening to the wonder.  That's what so many of us need.  Not adding wonder, or uncovering wonder.  Awakening to it.  Because the wonder is there.  It's in every word, and every story Jesus told.

Using modern language, names, and situations, Mikalatos retells Jesus' story as recounted in the Gospels.  From Jesus' birth to a young girl named "Miryam" ("Mary" in Aramaic), through the miracles and signs and wonders, to his resurrection and ascension, each story comes alive with beauty and wonder.  And conviction.  Mikalatos writes lovely prose, and he captures the heart of the reader, bringing us in to the story where we eavesdrop on the lessons and can even nearly glimpse the eye of Jesus Himself as He looks deeply into our hearts, piercing our souls with conviction and grace.  When needed, he adds his own thoughts and narration.  When that will get in the way, he simply lets the retelling of Jesus' story speak for itself.

As he is wrapping up this short book, Mikalatos retells the Great Commission.  For his purposes, he refers to it perhaps more accurately as "The Great Thing Entrusted to Us," where he suggests Jesus' commission to us is more than that.  It's a command and a blessing and a promise and an invitation, all rolled in to one.  This was perhaps my favorite chapter in the book.  It was the heaviest on author narration, because I think we often misunderstand what Jesus was saying and doing as He stood on the mountain with his closest followers.  Where often this message gets bogged down in guilt, Mikalatos reminds us there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.  This isn't an order or a guilt-driven demand.  This is an invitation.  It's an empowering.  It's a gift that we get to share.

I began my review with a quote from the beginning of the book, and I'll end it with two from the end:

[The new believers] are watching [Thom], leaning forward, eager to hear what he might say.  He smiles and begins another story of what he has heard, what he has seen with his eyes, what he has looked at, and what his hands have touched.

And they stay with him until long after dark, gathered around the great light and enveloping warmth of his stories.

Mikalatos is talking about Thomas and the missionary work he did following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  But he could as easily have been describing how I felt about this book--and what we, as believers, are invited to share in our love and spreading of the Gospel.  Stories of what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at, and what our hands have touched.

One last note.  When Mikalatos closes the Epilogue, he subtly addresses Communion in one of the most beautiful ways I can imagine.

Pete lifts his wine glass.  "In his memory," he says, and we toast together, and we drink, and we tell stories long into the night, and there is raucous laughter and there are tears and comforting arms and hymns and on the way home we link arms and hold car doors for one another and there are kisses on cheeks and warm hugs and we tuck into our beds warmed by our memories and, when the sun wakes us, we rise to make another day of memories together with him, here, in the real world, where he lives.

This, friends, is our world.  The place where we live, and the place where He lives, and the place where we still get to make memories together.  Thank you, Matt Mikalatos, for awakening me to the wonder of that gift.

 

{I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Book Bloggers program.  I have expressed my own opinions, and I was not required to write a positive review.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.}

Reviewing: Dynamic Women of the Bible

Dynamic Women of the Bible: What We Can Learn from Their Surprising Stories
by Ruth A. Tucker

They were wives, mothers, daughters, and friends.  They were faithful and faithless.  They were benevolent and they were brutal.

But always, they were real.

This text from the back cover is intriguing to me.  Because I think that's what is lost about the women in the Bible.  I grew up in the church, and when I wasn't there or at Sunday School I was playing church, baptizing my dolls, wearing my grandmother's fur collars over my play clothes, having fake conversations with the ladies while our imaginary children ran around sneaking cookies.  I know the stories.  Eve brought sin into the world.  Rahab sneaked the spies out of town over the wall.  Esther saved her people.  Bathsheba was an unwitting victim of King David's lust while Potipher's wife, Delilah, and Jezebel made victims of their own.  And then the new testament.  Mary is the sweet, innocent mother of Jesus.  The other Mary followed him around, learning from him and believing in him, even when his other friends didn't.  As I grew up and heard the stories I began to understand they were a bit more complicated than I originally thought--Adam is just as guilty, right?  Rahab was a what?!  Couldn't (shouldn't?) Bathsheba turned down the king's advances?  And how did Mary actually love Jesus (hey, I adore "Jesus Christ Superstar" and can sing nearly every word)?

But how real have these women ever really been to me?

Obviously Sunday School needs to quiet things down and make its subjects rather one-dimensional.  I mean, five year olds can barely sit still and listen, let alone understand who Rahab was when she wasn't aiding and abetting spies.  And then, when you get a little older, and you start sitting through sermons and your own readings of the text, the writers of both testaments give too little time or space to these women to make them any more than two-dimensional characters.

Tucker takes those two-dimensional women who lived and died so long ago and breathes life into them.  Yes, it's conjecture.  It has to be.  There is no one living today who sat with Bathsheba and talked with her about the pros and cons of getting involved with the king while her husband was away at war (but wouldn't that be an interesting conversation?!).  So Tucker looks at what the Bible does give us about fifty Biblical women--both the commonly known and the obscure--and asks the "what if" questions.  In the introduction, she wisely notes that this book isn't about the hows or the whys of the decisions they made and the lives they lived.  There are no real answers here.  Like 17th-century philosopher Spinoza writes (and Tucker quotes in her introduction), "the purpose of the Bible 'is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination.'"  So there are a lot of questions about what makes these women real--and how that relates to us as women today.

Dynamic Women isn't perfect.  I found the sidebars confusing and disruptive to my reading.  Tucker includes those and questions--fluffy and more intentional--that can guide a small discussion group.  There were several chapters I found myself wishing I could talk about with my friends, if only to ask the "what if" questions with them.  But many of the chapters have stuck with me, and I look forward to rereading these women's stories in the Bible with new eyes that long to see beyond the few verses they are given and imagine what depth those women have.

As Tucker writes, "The Bible is a big book, but brevity is too often the rule . . . [these women] are far more . . . than what the Bible tells us."  And, Tucker would have us believe that by considering what more they are, by allowing the wonderings to lay hold of our imaginations, we can learn more about their stories, about ourselves, and about God.  I think she's right.


{I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Book Bloggers program.  I have expressed my own opinions, and I was not required to write a positive review.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.}