Book Talk

   I think Rachel Held Evans' goal with her book, Searching for Sunday , is to help the reader fall back in love with the church--that is, the universal/international/global church; as in the body of believers that makes up Christ's bride.    I don't know if it helped me in that at all. I think it was meant to show me the beauty of the church, and there were definite glimpses. But Rachel described to me the indescribable: the mysterious beauty of Jesus Christ and the person he could be to me. She made me want to love Jesus again.    Searching for Sunday is formatted into seven parts--seven sacraments:  Baptism: the church tells us we are beloved Confession: the church tells us we are broken Holy Orders: the church tells us we are commissioned Communion: the church feeds us Confirmation: the church welcomes us Anointing the Sick: the church anoints us Marriage: the church unites us (Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday . Nelson Books: Nashville. 2015. p.

The Heart Between Us by Lindsay Harrel opens with this: "That's why she had me write a bucket list... twenty-five things that will make my future brighter, that will stop giving my memories so much power over my life. I've been in therapy for seven years, but I still struggle. Not every day--like at the beginning. But sometimes still, the memories sneak up on me when I least expect them. They drag me down and pull me under like a riptide. And even though I long to fight them, my arms and legs gets tired. I grow weak. In those moments, I'm maybe kind of okay with letting and drifting away, allowing the sea to carry me wherever it wants to go. But now when that happens, I have a new tool. I can try and focus on the dreams, the plans, the goals I have. And say, "Not today. I won't let you rip them from me." It's not necessarily about avoidance or forgetting. There are some things you never forget. Instead it's about learning to sw

   When Ted Dekker released the final title, Green , in his four-part series called The Circle , I thought that would be it for Thomas Hunter and his dreaming dance between worlds. I devoured that series like the book-monster that I am, and the subsequent parallel series of seven called The Lost Books . That he would release yet another book tied into this dream-world wasn't anywhere in my horizon of hopes or daydreams, and yet here we are:    The 49th Mystic .    This is book one in a two-part series called Beyond the Circle , and the second book is supposed to release this Fall, 2018. I snatched up The 49th Mystic and finished it in two days, and while it did start slow, the signature breakneck-pace that I've come to expect from Ted Dekker shone through. At about the 1/3 mark, the story really picked up and didn't stop again until the very last, exquisite, jaw-dropping, cliff-hanging page.    The 49th Mystic follows a young blind woman named Rachelle who dreams of

I had the privilege about five years ago to meet Bob Goff. If you are familiar with Bob and his book Love Does , he talks about his lodge that he and his family built up in an inlet on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. It so happens, there is a Young Life camp maybe a mile away from his lodge. While working up there as a Summer Staffer, on one of our days off we got to go to his lodge and sit in his living room and hear him tell his amazing, and often crazy, stories. I think we got this opportunity because Bob's son Adam was on my Summer Staff team. It's one of my absolute favorite memories from one of my favorite summers. If you've ever wondered what Bob is actually like, stop wondering. If you've read either Love Does or Everybody Always he is exactly the same. He writes exactly how he talks. And he's the most hilarious, loving, excited-about-life guy I think I've ever met. Reading Everybody Always is like sitting at a table in a coffee shop with Bob while h