In a world filled with ambiguity, we want faith to act like an orderly set of truth-claims to solve the problems that life throws at us. While there are certainties in Christian faith, at the heart of the Christian story is also paradox, and Jen Pollock Michel helps readers imagine a Christian faith open to mystery. Jesus invites us to abandon the polarities of either and or in order to embrace the difficult, wondrous dissonance of and.
Isn't desire sinful and selfish? The story of each person is a story of want—desires unmet, hopes dashed, passions pursued and ambitions fulfilled. Jen Pollock Michel guides us on a journey that reintroduces us to a God who purifies our longings and gives us the desires of our hearts.
Today's neurological research has placed habit at the center of human behavior; we are what we do repetitively. When we want to add something to our life, whether it's exercise, prayer, or just getting up earlier in the morning, we know that we must turn an activity into a habit through repetition or it just won't stick. What would happen if we applied the same kind of daily dedication to faith? Could faith become a habit, a given--automatic? With vulnerable storytelling and insightful readings of both Old and New Testament passages, Jen Pollock Michel invites the convinced and the curious into a 40-day Bible reading experience. Vividly translating ancient truths for a secular age, Michel highlights how the biblical text invites us to see, know, live, love, and obey. The daily reflection questions and weekly discussion guides invite both individuals and groups, believers and doubters alike, to explore how faith, even faith as small as a mustard seed, might grow into a life-defining habit.
Home is our most fundamental human longing. Jen Pollock Michel connects that desire with the story of the Bible, revealing a homemaking God with wide arms of welcome—and a church commissioned with this same work. Keeping Place offers hope to the wanderer, help to the stranded, and a new vision of what it means to live today longing for eternal home.
If we were made for relationship with God, why do we often feel lost and distant from Him? The life of Christian faith is and always has been a beautifully awkward reality. Following Jesus is done—can only be done—in the messiness of this world into which we were all born. Yet many Christians expect the walk of faith to be easier, neater, and relatively devoid of hassles. So perhaps it’s time for a frank conversation about the true nature of Christian faith. Maybe there are many desperately in need of a clear dialogue about how—despite living in a turbulent, chaotic world—our greatest joy is found in our pursuit of God. In The Grand Paradox, Ken Wytsma seeks to help readers understand that although God can be mysterious, He is in no way absent. God’s ways are contradictory and counter to the way the world tells us to pursue happiness. Doubt is okay, it will accompany in the life of faith. What looks like struggle can actually be the most important and meaningful season of our lives. This book is an exploration of the art of living by faith. It is a book for all those wrestling with the paradoxes that confront those who seek to walk with Christ. It’s an honest look at how faith works, here and now, in our culture, our time—and how to put down real roots and flourish in the midst of our messy lives.
The complexity of the contemporary world is sometimes seen as an embarrassment for Christianity. But law professor David Skeel makes a fresh case for how Christianity offers plausible explanations for the central puzzles of our existence and provides a comprehensive framework for understanding human life as we actually live it.
Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in this wild, warm-hearted, and hilarious sci-fi adventure about a brainy young girl who is recruited for a very special boarding school. Nikola Kross has given up on living in harmony with her classmates and exasperated teachers: she prefers dabbling in experimental chemistry to fitting in. But when her life is axially inverted by a gang of extraterrestrials who kidnap her dad and attempt to recruit her into their service, she discovers he's been keeping a world of secrets from her--including the school for geniuses where she's sent for refuge, a place where classes like Practical Quantum Mechanics are the norm and where students use wormholes to commute to class. For Nikola, the hard part isn't school; it's making friends, especially when the student body isn't (entirely) human. But the most puzzling paradox of all is Nikola herself, who has certain abilities that no one understands--abilities that put her whole school in greater danger than she could have imagined.
Like her art, Marilyn Monroe was rooted in paradox: She was a powerful star and a childlike waif; a joyful, irreverent party girl with a deeply spiritual side; a superb friend and a narcissist; a dumb blonde and an intellectual. No previous biographer has recognized-much less attempted to analyze-most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has. With new details about Marilyn's childhood foster homes, her sexual abuse, her multiple marriages, her affairs, and her untimely death at the age of thirty-six, Marilyn is, at last, the nuanced biography Monroe fans have been waiting for.
When Carolyn Weber set out to study Romantic literature at Oxford University, she didn't give much thought to God or spiritual matters—but over the course of her studies she encountered the Jesus of the Bible and her world turned upside down. Surprised by Oxford chronicles her conversion experience with wit, humor, and insight into how becoming a Christian changed her. Carolyn Weber arrives at Oxford a feminist from a loving but broken family, suspicious of men and intellectually hostile to all things religious. As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of truth, love, and a life that matters. From issues of fatherhood, feminism, doubt, doctrine, and love, Weber explores the intricacies of coming to faith with an aching honesty and insight echoing that of the poets and writers she studied. Surprised by Oxford is: The witty memoir of a skeptical agnostic who comes to a dynamic personal faith in God Rich with illustration and literary references Gritty, humorous, and spiritually perceptive An inside look at Oxford University Weber eloquently describes a journey many of us have embarked upon, grappling with tough questions and doubts about the meaning of faith—and ultimately finding it in the most unlikely of places.
Centuries of self-imposed isolation have transformed Nulapeiron into a world unlike any other - a world of vast subterranean cities maintained by extraordinary organic technologies. For the majority of its peoples, however such wonders have little meaning. Denied their democratic rights and restricted to the impoverished lower levels, they are subjected to the brutal law of the Logic Lords and the Oracles, supra-human beings whose ability to truecast the future maintains the status quo. But all this is about to change. In a crowded marketplace a mysterious, beautiful woman is brutally cut down by a militia squad's graser fire. Amongst the horrified onlookers is young Tom Corcorigan. He recognizes her. Only the previous day she had presented him with a small, seemingly insignificant info-crystal. And only now, as the fire in the dying stranger's obsidian eyes fades, does he comprehend who - or what - she really was: a figure from legend, one of the fabled Pilots. What Tom has still to discover is that his crystal holds the key to understanding mu-space, and so to freedom itself. He doesn't know it yet, but he has been given a destiny to fulfill - nothing less than the rewriting of his future, and that of his world... Spectacularly staged, thrillingly written and set in a visionary future, Paradox places John Meaney at the forefront of science fiction in this new century.
