On April 17, 2012, Chandler Gerber did as many people do--text and drive. Tragedy followed as he hit an Amish buggy with his automobile. Three children died as a result. Ironically, Chandler had been seriously injured by a distracted driver in 2009. This is Chandler's story of surrendering the anger, bitterness and resentment to Jesus Christ and how the ability to forgive emerges.
“I don’t know how to say what the grace of God is. What I can say is what it’s like for me.” We all know about grace being amazing—after all, there’s a whole song about it—but Patrick Henry reminds us that that’s not all it is. It’s also intimidating, disorienting, demanding, reassuring, and sometimes even just downright mind-boggling. Describing thirty-three different aspects of grace based on his everyday experiences, Henry tells the story of a grace that is wide-ranging and comprehensive—if not always comprehensible. Rather than trying to capture and tame his encounters with God, he lets the mystery of memory speak for itself, exemplifying his mantra that being a Christian is about being “an explorer, not a colonizer.” Flashes of Grace is wise and grounded, earnest and light, faithful and quirky. Henry describes encountering grace in airports, baseball, hazelnuts, and just about anywhere else you can imagine, while engaging with dialogue partners ranging from King Saul and Saint Augustine to Yogi Berra and Captain Picard. For anyone longing to connect (or reconnect) with God, this book provides a surprising journey that broadens perspectives and explores strange new worlds, while loosening stiff spiritual joints so movement can be free and spontaneous.
Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl meets Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty in this contemporary YA about what it means to be a fan—and what it means to be a friend—when your whole world is in flux. In middle school, everyone was a Fever Dream fan. Now, a few weeks after her high school graduation, Grace Thomas sometimes feels like the only one who never moved on. She can’t imagine what she’d do without the community of online fans that share her obsession. Or what her IRL friends would say if they ever found out about it. Then, one summer night, the unthinkable happens: Grace meets her idol, Jes. What starts out as an elusive glimpse of Fever Dream’s world turns into an unlikely romance, and leads her to confront dark, complex truths about herself and the realities of stardom. From the author of A Song to Take the World Apart, Grace and the Fever is a heart-clutching reminder of what it’s like to fall in love—whether it’s with a boy or a boy band—and how difficult it is to figure out who you are after you’ve fallen out of love again. "Grace and The Fever crackles with sharp cultural commentary and deep emotional resonance." —Bitch Magazine "Grace and the Fever is a clear-eyed portrait of 'the girls of the internet' . . . a YA novel that does the fangirl justice."—The Verge "A wise, bittersweet coming-of-age story for the thinking fangirl." —Anna Breslaw, author of Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here "Super addictive." —Goldy Moldavsky, New York Times bestselling author of Kill the Boy Band "A smart, warm, feminist ode to anyone who has ever been eighteen, made a mess of their own life, spent their late night hours on Tumblr, or loved a band so much it hurt." —Katie Coyle, author of Vivian Apple at the End of the World
Winner of a 2021 Carol Award There's a lot of irony in hitting rock bottom After a heartbreak leaves her reeling, January Sanders is open to anything--including moving into a cabin on her aunt's wedding-venue property and accepting a temporary position at her aunt's church despite being a lifelong skeptic of faith. Choosing to keep her doubts to herself, she's determined to give her all to supporting Grace Community's overworked staff while helping herself move on. What she doesn't count on is meeting the church's handsome and charming guitarist. It's a match set for disaster, and yet January has no ability to stay away, even if it means pretending to have faith in a God she doesn't believe in. Only this time, keeping her secret isn't as easy as she thought it would be. Especially when she's constantly running into her aunt's landscape architect, who seems to know everything about her past-and-present sins and makes no apologies about pushing her to deal with feelings she'd rather keep buried. Torn between two worlds that can't coexist, can January find the healing that's eluded her, or will her resistance to the truth ruin any chance of happiness? "In this touching inspirational from Gray, a faithless woman gets more than she bargained for as she rebounds from a broken heart. . . . Gray's entertaining tale showcases the power of love and faith in unexpected places."--Publishers Weekly "Once Jan opens up her heart to God, a family rift starts to mend, and she finds love and a place she belongs. Gray has crafted a sweet story."--Library Journal "I found this book to be both enjoyable and entertaining. There is quite a bit of well-written humor that is dispersed within the story. The plot is believable, and the characters are realistic. Love and a Little White Lie by Tammy L. Gray is a quick, easy read that would be perfect for reading beside the pool or at the beach. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys sweet romance novels."--Fresh Fiction
The cross of Christ is the greatest irony in the history of the universe. It is far too easy to lose track of the paradoxical details of Christ's death. Familiarity replaces what should be shock as we read through the Passion narrative. The Irony of the Cross puts the shock back in the cross by highlighting the ironies of Christ's death. Examining Mark 15:21-29, this book identifies eleven ironies of the cross that will deepen your understanding of the death of Christ and the gospel of grace. Each of these presents Jesus eschewing the prerogatives of his power for the salvation of his people. There is no other point in time when Christ was more emptied and stripped of his divine dignity, and yet there is no other place where Christ's glory is more prominently displayed.
THE STORY: At a small college with virtually no admission requirements, two aging professors deal differently, but disastrously, with the students whose S.A.T. scores are lower than their cholesterol counts--and with their own obsolescence. Victor R
Paul and the Gift transformed the landscape of Pauline studies upon its publication in 2015. In it, John Barclay led readers through a recontextualized analysis of grace and interrogated Paul’s original meaning in declaring it a “free gift” from God, revealing grace as a multifaceted concept that is socially radical and unconditioned—even if not unconditional. Paul and the Power of Grace offers all of the most significant contributions from Paul and the Gift in a package several hundred pages shorter and more accessible. Additionally, Barclay adds further analysis of the theme of gift and grace in Paul’s other letters—besides just Romans and Galatians—and explores contemporary implications for this new view of grace.
A stunningly innovative visual edition of the award-winning What's so amazing about grace? by bestselling author Philip Yancey. This visual edition takes the text of the Gold Medallion Award-winning original and illustrates its themes and message with provocative full-color photography and illustrations. You'll 'experience grace' as you interact with its engaging visual content.
The Operation of Grace collects a decade's worth of essays by Gregory Wolfe taken from the pages of Image, the literary journal he founded more than a quarter century ago. As he notes in the preface, his Image editorials, while they cover a wide range of topics, focus on the intersection of "art, faith, and mystery." Wolfe believes that art and religion, while hardly identical, offer illuminating analogies to one another--art deepening faith through the empathetic reach of the imagination and faith anchoring art in a vision beyond the artist's ego. Several essays dwell on how aesthetic values like ambiguity, tragedy, and beauty enlarge our understanding of the spiritual life. There are also a series of reflections that extend Wolfe's campaign to renew the neglected and often misunderstood tradition of Christian humanism. Finally, there are sections that contain more personal meditations arising from Wolfe's involvement in nurturing and promoting the work of emerging writers and artists. The Operation of Grace demonstrates once again why novelist Ron Hansen has spoken of Wolfe as "one of the most incisive and persuasive voices of our generation." .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }
Jesus was quite clear that we must lose our life before we find it. This book gives a hopeful and realistic look at what losing our life entails, articulating how “growth” in the Christian life is not our ascent to God but the process by which our eyes are opened to the beauty God has already given to us. It is a book about descending into God, and into our own inner depths, about the deep waters of the Christian faith. “Put out into the deep and let your nets down for a catch.” (Luke 5:4) We live in a world that values productivity and success, and we vainly imagine that God expects us to be spiritually productive and successful, too. It doesn’t matter how much we talk about grace, our conversation is often narrowly focused on what we need to do for God—so much so that we often block the work God longs to do in us. This book does not articulate God’s work as a process by which we become spiritually strong, but rather as the process by which we embrace our weakness as the place where we most fully experience God’s perfect strength (2 Corinthians 12:9).
