Into the Fire

Do not fret because of evil men

    or be envious of the wicked

for the evil man has no future hope,

    and the lamp of the wicked will

    be snuffed out.

Proverbs 24:19-20 (NIV)

Let's keep it simple because I got next to "nuthin'".

Five recent favorites:

Portrait of Vengeance by Carrie Stuart Parks (review coming soon)

The Promise of Jesse Woods by Chris Fabry

Anything by Sibella Giorello!

Scared to Death by Karin Kaufman

Guilt by Association by Heather Day Gilbert

Lord, thank you for these outstanding authors and for their obedience in telling the stories you've given them. Bless them all. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

             
(Originally posted on July 31st, 2014 , as "Broken and . . . Unwritten".)

I've been the straggler when it comes to reading Charles Martin's novels. Shame on me. Unwritten is my third venture into Charles Martin's work, and it seems he has yet to disappoint. A few years ago – you Charles Martin experts will know exactly when – he switched from the Christian fiction genre to the general market. Some of his devoted readers were disappointed with a book or two of his after his decision. After reading Unwritten, I can imagine he decided to do this because of the restrictions generally placed on certain language and innuendoes in Christian fiction, but that would be a guess based on this particular novel. Those who are more familiar with him probably have read or heard his explanation for making this change.

Unwritten, published in 2013 by Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group, is a story about two individuals who have been shattered by life's experiences and have one person in common before they meet each other in the worst possible way. Their common denominator is an 80+ year old Catholic priest who goes by the name of Steady. He's in the rescuing business and has a phenomenal ability to plan the merging of two broken people, who couldn't be more different from each other, in order to save them both.

Katie Quinn is a world famous actress of the stage and screen who's carried unrelenting pain which originated in her childhood, carried over into her youth, and has intensified to a level she can no longer bear.

"Sunday" is a mystery man, a recluse, who fishes and hides out on the shores and islands off the Florida coast. Somehow he's made enough money in his younger life to sustain his minimalist existence. His friend Steady joins him to fish and visits with him when Sunday stops by the church to talk.

When Steady realizes what Katie is about to do, he convinces Sunday to go with him to see her. Once they are able to reach her, life changes for both Katie and Sunday in a huge way – a way neither of them appreciates in the beginning.

What Charles Martin is able to do throughout this interesting story with three unusual characters is to slowly develop each one and weave their lives together as their revelations sneak out from the obtrusive walls Katie and Sunday have built to conceal them. Broken by different assaults, Katie and Sunday share empathy they're slow to discover, mutually unwilling to allow trust to be a factor in their odd new friendship.

Damaged and disguised, they venture together toward a realization neither of them expects to find – or really even wants to. A tiny hope on life support flutters in each of them, neither ready for what happens when clarity strikes them.

Unwritten is a contemporary story of breaking free from those things which hold us captive and torment us with their painful prodding and terrifying threats of even more hurt. Those things that keep us bound to the pain and refuse to relinquish us to find a workable freedom enabling us to live.

Although Steady brings the presence of godly wisdom and faith, both Katie and Sunday in particular never quite embrace the fullness of God. There are still some grudges and blame placed on God which Sunday can't quite overcome, but the story leads us to believe the faint glimmer of hope recognized and experienced in the ending of this tale could lead to a recognition and amplification of faith.

I would say the appearance of God is visible but obscured by the elements of the story which features two people who haven't decided to allow Him a place in their aching hearts. Steady keeps them aware of the goodness of God and the unconditional love he and God has for them. He is the one constant in their tumultuous emotional reckonings.

Unwritten displays the unique storytelling and imaginative, lovely, and intricate prose of Charles Martin. With compelling characters precisely because of their oddities, they lead us on a journey of discovery which elicits raw and all-consuming pain with the hope that in the end they will survive its terror. The ending of which remains unwritten.

Highly recommend the work of this gifted novelist.
 
Father, please continue to supply the stories to Charles and give him what he needs to write for your glory. Bless and encourage him as only you can do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

                                         Heartbreaking but effective.

Father, there is hard heartbreak in this evil world. Thank you, Jesus, for bringing the true Light into vast darkness. We need you, all of us. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

If you've read the previous stories in this "A Murder in the Mountains Series", you know the heroine Tess Spencer is a plucky, intelligent, courageous, and tender-hearted young woman, wife, and mother who never does anything halfway. She's earned the respect of the local sheriff from previous experiences with investigations, and he wants to hire her to be his secretary.

When Tess goes to see her mom (Pearletta Vee) after she's released from serving her jail sentence for drug-related activities, Tess wants to believe she's changed as she and others insist she has, but too many things happening after Tess arrives point to the opposite – especially when Pearletta vanishes at the first evidence of trouble.

Tess's gorgeous and daring friend Rosemary drives her big pickup truck into Scot's Hollow Trailer Park to stay with Tess in her mom's old trailer after securing a job at the local drug rehab facility. She and Tess are trying to discover who killed a young man with a fatal dose of fentanyl-laced heroine while employed at the rehab center. With a plethora of suspects, Tess wants so desperately to go home to her hunky husband Thomas, her toddler daughter, and the stability of her wonderful in-laws, but she feels compelled to find the killer since her gut instinct says her mother couldn't - and wouldn't – have done it. To her relief Sheriff Zeke agrees with her.

A runaway teen girl, an abused four year old boy, a lecherous drug dealer, and the crew at the rehab facility, Tess struggles to establish the whys and whos of a murder, the distractions of a mistreated child, the memories of her unhappy and neglected childhood, and learning the exercise of forgiveness.   

As a reader, you can count on Heather Day Gilbert to give you a fast-moving, interesting tale, well-written with strong characters. Guilt by Association is no exception to her rule, and the interesting conclusion to this multi-faceted story adds an unexpected element to whenever the next book arrives. Good, entertaining series. Do recommend it for lovers of contemporary romantic suspense/mystery, light on the romance, heavy on the mystery.

Father, please continue to bless Heather's life with many more stories to tell. Encourage her as only you can do and provide all that she needs for what you have for her to do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

We welcome the new year with all kinds of celebrations, observations, meditations, reflections. Some of us have lost loved ones while some of us have welcomed new lives into this fallen world. The gamut of emotional, physical, and spiritual experiences have accompanied most of us along the way. Some will say "Good riddance!" to 2017 while others hope its successes will carry over into 2018.

Whatever your take on the arrival of this new year, I hope at some point you will consider the ever poignant and critical importance of knowing the Savior of the world. This "place" is overrun with sin and its inescapable draw. Without Jesus Christ it's the place where we live a life of death and dying without realizing it. No reward awaits those without a Savior. We're all desperate for the One who created us and longs to save us from the end results of sin. Desperate whether we know we are or not.

So for truly new life and new hope in this new year, ponder the possibility of surrendering to Jesus. Nothing is as meaningful in this life as preparing for our eternal lives. Jesus waits for you.

Thank you, Lord, for your patience, benevolence, love, kindness, and yearning after us. We don't deserve it, but you make us worthy. Thank you is never enough. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

     When they [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."

     So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

Matthew 2:13-15 (NIV)

Are you a goal setter? Do you make resolutions? What are the five things you're looking forward to doing, hoping to accomplish, thinking will occur, or wanting to make happen in the New Year?

I'm not a resolution maker nor a goal setter, but there are three things I hope to accomplish in 2018. I have three novels to finish.

I hope to become more obedient to the Lord's leading.

Simple but not easy.

How 'bout you?

Father, only you can help me do what you want me to do. Help me listen, obey, work hard to accomplish what you have for me to do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

    
     (Originally posted as "For Women Only . . . Be A Mary")

If you’re anything like me, you have an opinion on a lot of things. And you’re not afraid to express it. In the flesh you’ll jump in with unsolicited commentary and in the Spirit you’ll regret some of what you said.

I grew up—or attempted to—during the heyday of the “drugs, sex, rock ‘n’ roll” generation. I resisted it for as long as I could before I wondered why I was still holding out or holding onto any kind of innocence. I believed in God but didn’t know His Son. 

My generation saw the ushering in of the “Ms.” women, better known as the decline and fall of real womanhood. Don’t get me wrong here. If you’re a woman doing the same work as a man as well as or better than a man, you deserve to be paid accordingly. If in your family, you have to work outside your home and put in as many or more hours than your husband, work together to manage your household chores. If you feel called to engage a job or service in a predominantly man’s field of endeavor, go fulfill your call.

But through all these trials and decisions, never ever forget who God made you to be . . .  “But for Adam, no suitable helper was found.” (Gen. 2:20) Many women cannot accept their God-given roles, as if it’s degrading to be a “suitable helper” to the man God has for them. God saw the need, and he filled it with the perfect complement, the one who could meet the loneliness, the one who could inspire the desire to lead, to be responsible, to love emotionally, physically, and spiritually, the one who could maximize who he was made to be. Only a woman made just for him could fill that incredible order. 

The woman was made from a man indicating she would always be a part of him, and he would always be attached to her. He would be responsible for this one who owned a piece of him. It was a perfect combination. 

Enter the temptation to “do it my way” under the beguiling influence of “female reasoning and logic” and insert the male inertia of not wanting to take responsibility for direct disobedience, and the fatal flaw of sin entered a perfect world setting off the ticking time bomb of utter depravity and eventual destruction.

How generous of God to allow a very young virgin woman named Mary to bear the child who would redeem this fallen mess of humanity. He could’ve done it multiple ways—far more creatively than I could ever imagine—and eliminated the use of a female in the process. This young female was strong in her faith and absolute in her worship of God Almighty. Read Mary’s declaration after her encounter with the angel Gabriel (Luke 1:46-55). Humble obedience.  “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” (Luke 1:38)

Mary would be required to follow her husband to a strange town to have her baby, to a foreign country to protect her son, to return to a new city to start life over again.  And she would do it. Because it was her call to do so. She fulfilled her God-given role. Her faith and her obedience allowed her to live the most important role of all women in the Bible. She was allowed to carry and bear the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Never again. Once for all. But the female gender was redeemed by being obedient, first to God, then to her husband. Was it easy? I highly doubt it. How many of you women could pack in the middle of the night to leave for a foreign country where you wouldn’t know a soul and couldn’t even speak the language because your husband woke up with a start after hearing from an angel. Not many of us would be too willing, perhaps arguing it was bad pizza. Life was not ordinary for this family. Because God was directly and actively involved. Someone had to lead. Someone had to follow. Mary followed. 

Ladies, this isn’t my idea. I’m a strong-willed, independent woman, and my husband gives me a lot of freedom. He respects me spiritually and often seeks my thoughts, even my advice. But when it comes time for the heavy-hitting decision making, he knows it’s ultimately his responsibility to make them because one day he will stand before Jesus Christ and give an account for his manhood. We women will do the same for our womanhood. Do you really want to stand before the Lord and testify that you acted like Eve when you should have acted like Mary?

Every home is different. Every household has its own order. This Christmas I would just suggest to you women who profess to honor Christ, to take inventory of your willingness to obey the One who made the rules, set the tone, gave you life, who adores you, and treasures you, and desires to guide you through the wicked world with His steadying, encouraging, loving hand. He knows you best, and He knows what’s best for you. May we all say along with Mary, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” 
 

Father, it’s been a long and difficult journey for this woman, as you know. But I’m ever more willing with each hour that passes in my life to obey, to seek your face, to be your servant. There is no better place to be. Help me to be the one you want to be. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

With four bestselling contemporary authors writing the voices of four strangely and sometimes compatible characters in Probing (Cycle Three of The Harbinger Series), this episode of the speculative series proves to be both unique and interesting although not completely satisfying. Having not read the previous "cycles" of the Harbinger books, I would suggest it would be beneficial to understand the origin of how and why these mismatched characters came together. (I selected this book from Bethany House for review unaware it was a series – my fault, not theirs.)

The distinct writing voices of these talented authors (Bill Myers, Frank Peretti, Angela Hunt, and Alton Gansky), all experienced in the speculative/fantasy genre(s), claim their characters perfectly in each of the four dedicated sections of the book. As we read their words, we learn about them but we also learn about the other characters from their individual perspectives. From pirate ships to abandoned and time warped towns, there's no doubt these four people following unknown directives are in for danger, intrigue, some resolutions, and definitive purpose. The fascinating youngster in the bunch (whose adult guardian is one of the four) reminds the reader of the amazing insights that can be provided to children regardless of their unusual personalities.

From a writer's standpoint I can hear the fun these authors are having taking on these four characters and bringing their idiosyncrasies to life on the pages. Although not my genre of choice, it's a pleasure reading four wonderfully talented and imaginative authors at work creating lifelike characters.

If you're a fan of speculative fiction, I'm sure the Harbinger series will deliver what you expect from this genre. I highly recommend you begin with the first one and read them through to wherever the end might be.

Lord, I pray you would keep your divine protection and holy hands upon these authors directing them in all they do. Give them many more stories to tell and please continue to bless their lives. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.