Bookish Projects

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Barbara Harper

One of my Christmas presents from Jesse last year was this cute little mini reading nook.

It didn’t need painting or putting together–that was already done. Although I suppose I could paint the wooden parts. But for now I’ll leave well enough alone. The only thing I had to do was put these tiny books on the shelf. Here’s an idea of how small they are.

They do have covers of real books, but there are no individual pages.

Another Christmas present, this one from Jim, was a Lego floral kit. I don’t know why, but I just really don’t like the floral ones. So I asked if we could exchange it for a Jane Austen-themed one. He was happy to make the exchange.

However, I hadn’t found time to put it together until now.

If Jim and I aren’t watching TV together in the evenings, I usually read from the Kindle app on my iPad mini. But if we are watching something, I usually use the coloring app on my iPad while we watch. I’ve been thinking for a while that perhaps I could work on this Lego kit at that time instead. I finally did that this week and completed it in a couple of evenings. Here’s the finished product:

I love the details–the bookcase, fireplace, piano, ink stand, and flowers seen through the window. I don’t like the “portraits” quite as much, but, oh well.

The back is supposed to look like a book.

I had fun putting it together and love how it came out.

Some of you may remember a previous bookish Lego kit I completed last year.

Right now this one is on my desk. There’s not really room for the new one on my desk, so I am trying to decide whether to put it on a bookshelf in the living room or guest room and whether to move this one near the new one or not.

I got this kit two Christmases ago.

It’s not Lego. It seems to be made out of kind of a heavy cardboard. I opened up the instructions and pieces . . .

. . . and promptly closed them back up again. 🙂 This one looks complicated. I may try to lure Jesse (my youngest son) over with dinner one night and see if he’ll help me at least get started on it. He’s always been good with technical instructions–he’s navigated them while helping his dad and brother put things together. Plus he likes to build Metal Earth kits.

When I get this one together, I’ll let you know!

Review: The Gospel Comes with a House Key

Posted on April 28, 2026 by Barbara Harper

In Rosaria Butterfield’s book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, she advocates for “radically ordinary hospitality.”

For a bit of background, her first book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, tells how she, as an atheist, leftist, feminist, lesbian professor who hated Christians, ended up becoming one. A major tool in her conversion was a pastor who contacted her and invited her to dinner with him and his wife. They didn’t attack her or argue with her–they just discussed their mutual views. She spent two years meeting with them and studying Scripture before setting foot in a church. God slowly transformed her thinking and then her life.

Also, hospitality was a big part of the LGBTQ+ community she had been a part of. Many lost family and friends when they “came out” as gay, and they became family for each other. She saw how hospitality can build bridges and bind people together in the Christian community as well.

She defines “radically ordinary hospitality” as “using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God. It brings glory to God, serves others, and lives out the gospel in word and deed” (p. 30).

“Ordinary hospitality is the hands and feet of Jesus, and it holds people together with letters to prison or hugs. Hospitality reaches across worldview to be the bridge of gospel grace” (p. 208).

The author combines memoir with instruction. She makes several good points, among them:

“Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom” (p. 11).
“The truly hospitable aren’t embarrassed to keep friendships with people who are different. They don’t buy the world’s bunk about this. They know that there is a difference between acceptance and approval, and they courageously accept and respect people who think differently from them. They don’t worry that others will misinterpret their friendship. Jesus dined with sinners, but he didn’t sin with sinners. Jesus lived in the world, but he didn’t live like the world” (p. 13).
“Where else but a Christian home should neighbors go in times of unprecedented crisis? Where else is it safe to be vulnerable, scared, lost, hopeless?” (p. 19).
“Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God. It brings glory to God, serves others, and lives out the gospel in word and deed” (p. 30).
“The Christian home is the place where we bring the church to the people as we seek to lock arms together” (p. 32).
“Christian hospitality cares for the things that our neighbors care about. Esteeming others more highly than ourselves means nothing less. It means starting where you are and looking around for who needs you. It means communicating Christian love in word and deed. It means making yourself trustworthy enough to bear burdens of real life and real problems” (p. 166).
“Hospitality shares what there is; that’s all. It’s not entertainment. It’s not supposed to be” (p. 216).

Rosaria shares many examples mainly from her own family, but also from others. One story woven throughout the book is that of a reclusive neighbor named Hank. It took months of friendly overtures, short encounters, and befriending his dog before he opened up to their family to any degree. And then he was arrested for operating a meth lab in the basement of his house. The Butterfields continued to pray for him, write to him, send books as allowed by the prison, and send pictures colored by the children.

One area of hospitality I hadn’t considered was how befriending such people might tarnish one’s own reputation. When Hank was arrested, some of the neighbors assumed the Butterfields had to have known what he was up to (they didn’t). As mentioned above, Jesus was known as the “friend of sinners” and scandalized the Pharisees by eating with them.

Another topic I had never connected with hospitality was the area of church discipline. She tells of a season in their church when two men were outed for committing grievous sexual sin. One repented, the other did not. When someone persists in unrepented sin, fellowship with them has to be broken–but the point is not to ostracize them, but to bring them to repentance and reconciliation.

We’ve known of situations in other churches where a man has preyed on a woman he was not married to or on a teen. When the situation came to light, it was hushed up lest there be a scandal, and the victim was urged to forgive. But no counsel or comfort was given to the victim. Plus there was no thought of future victims if men like this were not dealt with. It’s much more scandalous to avoid dealing with sin like this rather than to handle it in a biblical way.

Back to Rosaria’s book: there was much to convict me. This is an area where I have failed many times over.

However, there were also aspects of the book I disagreed with. The Butterfields have neighbors and others in their home most nights of the week–in fact, she said it’s unusual to have dinner with just their family. That’s fine if that is how the Lord has led them, but there’s nothing in the Bible that says every dinner needs to include guests. There are times you need to be with just your family to minister to them.

Plus, all her examples seem to be really big. In sharing examples of other people’s hospitality, she mentioned one woman who liked crafts, so she invited some neighbors over to work on projects while they memorized Scripture. She ended up with fifteen ladies coming regularly. Again, that’s fine–in fact, that’s wonderful. But hospitality doesn’t always have to be a big group. It can involve one other person. In fact, some people are less likely to open up in a group setting.

She says her home looks on the outside like a “Christian commune. And we do not believe that this is excessive. We believe this is what the Bible calls normal” (p. 34). I disagree. There was a time in the early church when “all who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44), but this is descriptive, not prescriptive. It’s the only place something like this is mentioned. The Bible tells us to welcome the stranger and exercise hospitality, and to be open-hearted and open-handed with each other, but it doesn’t tell us to run communes.

She says things like being a barista and having an Air B&B are “counterfeit hospitality,” but she doesn’t explain why she thinks that.–maybe because people are being paid for those services? I don’t know baristas–I’m happy with my instant Taster’s Choice decaf at home–but a waiter or waitress can either be hospitable or detached as they serve. I think being kind and welcoming in one’s job counts as being hospitable even if one is getting paid.

Some of her statements border on arrogance, like this one: “If Mary Magdalene had written a book about hospitality for this post-Christian world, it would read like this one” (p. 14).

And, her tone comes across so strong sometimes that it’s off-putting.

However I think she does have some important things to say about exercising hospitality. As I said, I was convicted many times over. I loved some of her summations:

Imagine a world where neighbors said that Christians throw the best parties in town and are the go-to people for big problems and issues, without being invited.

Imagine if the children in the neighborhood knew that the Christians were safe people to ask for help . . .

Imagine a world where every Christian knew his neighbors sufficiently to be of earthly and spiritual good (pp. 218-219).

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: All the Beauty in the World

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Barbara Harper

I don’t remember where I saw All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley recommended. I had somehow gotten the impression that the book was written from a Christian viewpoint. It was not.

I don’t restrict my reading completely to Christian sources. But I read and evaluate everything through Christian eyes. Wanting to avoid bad language and sexual elements doesn’t leave me a lot of secular choices. I understand that unbelievers are not going to act like believers. But I don’t want certain words and images floating around in my head.

There’s a smattering of bad language (3 uses of the f-word, taking God’s name in vain, and others) in this book. I almost set it aside a few times. But, for whatever reason, I kept reading.

The book is a memoir of the time Patrick Bingley worked as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had begun work at the New Yorker. But when his older brother, Tom, died of cancer, Patrick felt the need for a change. His mother had taken him to art museums when he was a child, and he had visited the Met then and in college.

When in June of 2008, Tom died, I applied for the most straightforward job I could think of in the most beautiful place I knew. This time, I arrive at the Met with no thought of moving forward. My heart is full, my heart is breaking, and I badly want to stand still awhile (p. 12, Kindle version).

Bringley worked as a guard at the Met for ten years. Part of the book tells details about what’s involved in being a guard, how the Museum is laid out, what’s on display in the different sections, what it’s like to work amidst the art, and the various people who come to see it. The backstory of his relationship with his family and Tom’s illness and decline are woven into the narrative.

But to me, the best parts of the book are the ones where he discusses some of the art that touched him. He describes some of it in great detail, often giving some background of the artist or the painting. But sometimes he just shares the feeling that overcame him when connecting with a great work of art:

I responded to that great painting in a way that I now believe is fundamental to the peculiar power of art. Namely, I experienced the great beauty of the picture even as I had no idea what to do with that beauty. I couldn’t discharge the feeling by talking about it—there was nothing much to say. What was beautiful in the painting was not like words, it was like paint—silent, direct, and concrete, resisting translation even into thought. As such, my response to the picture was trapped inside me, a bird fluttering in my chest. And I didn’t know what to make of that (p. 10).

I startle at the picture because I can’t believe he’s captured it—that feeling we sometimes have that an intimate setting possesses a grandeur and holiness of its own. It was my constant feeling in Tom’s hospital room, and it’s one that I can recover on these church-mouse quiet mornings at the Met (p. 17).

When we adore, we apprehend beauty. When we lament, we see the wisdom of the ancient adage “Life is suffering.” A great painting can look like a slab of sheer bedrock, a piece of reality too stark and direct and poignant for words (p. 33).

I was struck by how often Bringley used words like “sacred” and “holy” in connection with art. He speaks of some visitors who regard the Met as a “secular church” (p. 70). I don’t think he was talking about idolizing or worshiping the images, but rather the experience of looking at something which takes us out of ourselves. Bringley speaks of a photograph of Georgia O’Keefe:

There’s a frame around her, putting space between her sacred beauty (an older meaning of the word sacred is “set apart”) and the profane, mundane world. I think that sometimes we need permission to stop and adore, and a work of art grants us that (p. 80).

I think God has put in the human heart a longing for something transcendent. That’s Russ Ramsey’s theme in Rembrandt Is in the Wind–that truth, goodness, and beauty are attributes of God. He points out that as Christians, we look for and emphasize truth and goodness, but often neglect beauty. “This is the gift of beauty from an artist to their community—to awaken our senses to the world as God made it and to awaken our senses to God himself (p. 14).

A couple of other quotes from Bringley’s book that stood out to me:

Art often derives from those moments when we would wish the world to stand still. We perceive something so beautiful, or true, or majestic, or sad, that we can’t simply take it in stride. Artists create records of transitory moments, appearing to stop their clocks. They help us believe that some things aren’t transitory at all but rather remain beautiful, true, majestic, sad, or joyful over many lifetimes—and here is the proof, painted in oils, carved in marble, stitched into quilts (p. 177).

I am sometimes not sure which is the more remarkable: that life lives up to great paintings, or that great paintings live up to life (p. 88).

In the Kindle version of this book, there is an appendix titled “Artwork Referenced in the Text.” Chapter by chapter, works of art referred to are listed with a link to them at the Met’s website. I wish the publishers had included these links in the text, like a footnote. It would have much more enjoyable and seamless to click on the link to the art right there while reading about it rather than having to go back and forth from the text to the appendix.

I enjoyed reading about Bringley’s experiences and observations.

Review: The Prince of Spies

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Barbara Harper

The Prince of Spies is the third novel in Elizabeth Camden’s Hope and Glory series. Luke Delacroix is the younger brother of Gray, who heads the family’s spice business. But Luke doesn’t have a head for business. His one attempt was a drastic failure that continues to haunt him.

Instead, Luke has become a journalist. He’s just returned from a fifteen-month stint in a Cuban jail. He was thought to be supporting insurrectionists there, but he was actually on an undercover assignment that outed a traitor in the US military.

Now he has set his sights on five Congressmen whom he would like to see removed from office by research and articles showing their downside.

Enemy number one is Congressman Clyde Magruder, the head of Magruder Foods, the rival to the Delacroix company. But it’s not just the business rivalry. The Magruders cut costs by using additives and chemicals in their products. There were no laws about food labeling in the early 1900s. Luke knows personally of people who have been harmed by contents from Magruder’s.

In addition, Clyde is known to have had at least two children from affairs.

One day, Luke spies a young woman trying to rescue a dog who had fallen through ice in a pond. He jumps in to help her, depute Gray’s admonitions not to. Luke and the young woman, whose name he learned is Marianne, successfully rescue the dog, and Gray whisks Luke away to get him into dry clothes. Luke tracks down the fact that Marianne works as a photographer for the government and eventually finds her. But he’s stunned to learn she is Clyde Magruder’s daughter.

They decide not to see each other, but they keep crossing paths–sometimes on purpose.

Luke learns of an opportunity to join a group of volunteers for experiments testing the effects of additives in food. He applies and is accepted, planning to use the information in his articles. The volunteers nickname themselves the Poison Squad. The author says in her end notes that there really was such a group. The experiments eventually led to laws to protect food products.

There were several layers to this novel: Luke’s finding his place after not feeling he fit in for so long, the Romeo and Juliet-type romance, the food safety issues. Also, Marianne struggles with wanting a “normal” family. She loves her family, but their constant bickering and her father’s indiscretions are hard to deal with. Then, as she joins Luke in his research, she finds her family’s business has not always operated candidly. Trying to find the right perspective and balance with them is difficult. And Luke has to learn that, in the course of righting wrongs, it’s all too easy to forget that innocent people who could be hurt by his actions.

I enjoyed this book, and the series, a lot. I’ve missed visiting with the characters since I finished.

Review: The Characters of Easter

Posted on April 14, 2026 by Barbara Harper

I enjoyed Daniel Darling’s The Characters of Christmas quite a lot. So when I saw he had also written The Characters of Easter: The Villains, Heroes, Cowards, and Crooks Who Witnessed History’s Biggest Miracle, I got it in time for Easter season this year.

Normally I like my seasonal reading in the form of shorter devotionals, because I don’t want them to replace my regular Bible reading. This book was not written in a short devotional style, but it only had ten chapters, so it was easy to work in.

The introduction discusses why Easter is so important and encourages us to look at it through fresh eyes.

Daniel devotes a chapter each to several individuals connected with Easter: Peter, John, Judas, Barabbas, Pilate and Thomas. The remaining four chapters discuss groups: the religious enemies of Christ (Pharisees, scribes, and Sadducees), the women who discovered the empty tomb, the secret disciples (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea), and the Roman executioners.

Each chapter gives what background we know from the Bible of each person, as well as their actions and sayings connected to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The chapter about John shows that the writer of a book and three letters bearing his name, as well as the book of Revelation, did not start out as the “Apostle of Love.” He and his brother were called “the sons of thunder.” They wanted to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village that did not receive Jesus. They wanted places next to Jesus when He established His kingdom. “When John became a disciple, he was far from ready for spiritual leadership. This is a reminder that Jesus didn’t choose His disciples because of their impressive résumés” (p. 47). It was good to follow John’s transformation and to be reminded we’re all in a state of growth. I’m thankful for God’s patience and kindness in dealing with us as we mature spiritually.

The chapter about Thomas was my favorite. We don’t know as much about him as some of the other disciples. Perhaps unfairly, many people only remember him for doubting that Jesus rose from the dead. Earlier, however, he was a brave follower of Jesus when others left because of His hard sayings. When Jesus wanted to go to Bethany after Lazarus died, to an area where His enemies had recently tried to kill Him, Thomas said, “Let us go also, that we may die with him” (John 11:1-16).

It’s kind of a macabre response, perhaps giving us insight into Thomas’s more pessimistic personality. It seems Thomas was the one always counting the cost, weighing the facts, looking for certainty when others like Peter were guided by the more emotional and subjective compass of the heart. And Thomas didn’t understand all that he even said. Thomas or any of the other disciples couldn’t really go with Jesus to die. To pay for the sins of the world, Jesus had to go alone to the garden, alone to the cross, alone to the grave.

And yet in a sense, Thomas understood the call Jesus gives every disciple to come and die with Him . . .

This is a bold statement. Thomas seems like the silent one, who carefully weighs and thinks before coming to a conclusion, and yet when he speaks, it is a profound statement of courage and loyalty. “Let’s go die with Jesus” could be a life verse, the call of everyone who sees and believes Jesus” (pp. 124-125, Kindle version.).

When Jesus began to tell His disciples that He had to go away, “Thomas, the seeker, the inquirer, the analyzer, asked, ‘Lord, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?’ (John 14: 5). This is a good question. Thomas, you remember, was the one willing to ‘go and die’ with Jesus. Thomas is willing to obey Jesus at all costs, but he just needs to know where to go” (p. 126).

But Jesus’ response to Thomas—the question-asker, the seeker, the one who hears things and rolls them around his mind until he can process them—is a stunning declaration, perhaps the most important and most controversial words ever uttered in human history:

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 6)

This is the meaning of Easter. There is not a path or a principle. There is only a Person. Jesus is the way. Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the life. He didn’t merely point to the truth. He didn’t merely show them the way. He didn’t merely tell them how to improve their lives. He’s the end of the journey, the object of our obsessions, what our hearts truly long for (pp. 127-128)

And, finally, Thomas wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus first appeared to them after His resurrection. He refused to believe it unless he saw Jesus in person with His scars. “Like a good shepherd, [Jesus] meets His struggling disciple where he is, carefully tending to his soul” (p. 130). Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God!”

Daniel writes of others like Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur), C. S. Lewis, and Lee Strobel, who didn’t believe until they looked up the facts for themselves. “Thomas’s story shows us the paradox of Christianity: it is both faith and facts, believing and seeing. Our faith is grounded in a mountain of historical facts . . . ” (p. 131).

“Jesus is not inhospitable to those who doubt, those who seek earnestly for the truth” (p. 132).

I enjoyed this book so much. I appreciated the author’s perspective and graciousness and his way of looking deeper into each of these people’s lives and hearts.

Looking at Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection through the eyes of people who were there at the time was an interesting and enlightening way to spend Lent and Easter. My heart was touched many times over. I can “amen” what the author said here: “You’ll notice that nobody in Scripture is ever casual after an encounter with the living God: Moses glowed, Isaiah was ‘undone,’ Ezekiel face-planted in fear, John fainted. Peter was overwhelmed—but he left his nets and followed” (p. 25).

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: A Gilded Lady

Posted on April 2, 2026 by Barbara Harper

A Gilded Lady by Elizabeth Camden is the second in the Hope and Glory series, a sequel to The Spice King.

Caroline Delacroix is the younger sister of Gray Delacroix, owner of the Delacroix Spice Company in the early 1900s. Caroline and her twin brother, Luke, had been frivolous and undisciplined growing up. Gray, twelve years older, was more like a father figure, especially after their father died.

But now Caroline is the secretary to the First Lady, Ida McKinley. Ida has epilepsy and other ailments and has been grieving the loss of her two children. She is excessively dependent on her husband. Plus she is notoriously difficult (the author says in her notes that the medication Ida was given to calm her nerves and help her epilepsy may have actually caused irritation).

Caroline has been blessed with common sense, political savvy, and a charming manner. She can usually talk Ida down, smooth over her moods, or intervene to avoid political embarrassment, such as when Ida wants to wear a hat with egret feathers to a function, when the papers had just carried news of a shortage of the egret population due to their feathers being used in women’s fashion.

Nathaniel Trask has been hired as the new head of the Secret Service, tasked with beefing up security at the White House. Nathaniel is by the book, no-nonsense–just the opposite of Caroline’s free spirit. So they clash repeatedly.

Furthermore, Caroline must keep her family secret under even tighter reigns. Her brother, Luke, has been arrested in Cuba, charged with helping insurgents there. Luke says he is guilty and has fired every lawyer Gray has hired. But Caroline knows her twin: she knows Luke is not guilty. She hopes that President McKinley will eventually grant Luke a pardon. But if Nathanial Trask ever finds out about Luke, Caroline will likely lose her job as well as Luke’s chance for a pardon.

I had known next to nothing about the McKinleys, so their history as well as behind-the-scenes looks at living in the White House in that era were interesting. The second half of the plot went in a little different direction, which I can’t reveal without spoiling the story. It was good to finally learn what was going on with Luke.

I didn’t like that this story overlapped with the previous book by about four months instead of picking up where the last one had left off. And I didn’t like that Caroline was given a vice in this book–smoking–that was not mentioned at all in the previous book. I think that took away from rather than added to the story.

But, overall, I liked the story and the characters. I listened to the audiobook, which had a much better narrator than the first book.

Review: The Spice King

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Barbara Harper

The Spice King by Elizabeth Camden takes place during the Gilded Age in Washington, DC.

Annabelle Larkin had come to DC from Kansas when her blind sister, Elaine, received an opportunity to volunteer at the Library of Congress. Elaine had been depressed for a long time after her blindness, but now she was venturing out of her familiar safety. But she was still fearful and dependent on Annabelle.

Annabelle was given a temporary position as a junior botanist at the Smithsonian. Her boss promised her a permanent position if she could persuade Gray Delacroix, owner of Delacroix Global Spice Company, to donate his plant collection to the Smithsonian. Mr. Delacroix had traveled the world for his business, bringing back and cultivating plants he found along the way.

But the famously reclusive Mr. Delacroix has no interest in donating anything to the Smithsonian. He flatly refuses all of Annabelle’s requests.

Undaunted and determined, Annabelle shows up at his home with a gift. At first he refuses to see her. But his interest is piqued, so he allows his assistant to show her in. Their mutual love of plants draws them into conversation, but he still won’t give her any.

When Gray was young, the Union Army seized his father’s ships and burned their home to the ground. Gray and his father lived in a shed while they rebuilt their business. His father later remarried and had two more children: twins, Caroline and Luke. The twins had not known privation and hard work, so they tended to spend and act frivolously. But when Luke’s antics go too far, his life as well as the family’s reputation is in danger. And, unfortunately, Annabelle may have had a hand in his troubles.

Meanwhile, Gray’s business’s fiercest rivals are filling their food products with additives and fillers, making them cheaper than his wares and dangerous to people with sensitivities to them. But can he prove it? His distrust of the government makes him reluctant to appeal to them for regulation. He prefers the food industry to police itself, but what if it won’t?

I’ve read a few of Elizabeth’s books, but this one is my favorite by far. First, I enjoyed that the subject matter was different from other historical fiction books I’ve read. Most are situated in WW2, which is fine–I enjoy those stories. But I do get a little tired of them and wonder why authors don’t venture into the multitude of other eras available.

Then, the spice and food industry proved to be really interesting. Elizabeth shares enough detail to be informative but not academic. Good Housekeeping magazine even makes an appearance in the story long before its “seal of approval” days.

None of that would be helpful if the story and characters weren’t good–but they were!

Though this was Christian fiction, there were a couple of little oddities mentioned, like the luck of a horseshoe and the “stars coming into alignment.” Overall, however, faith in God and living by His Word were the main emphases.

I listened to the audiobook which was well done except that the narrator over-enunciated words, ran sentences together as if they didn’t have periods between them, and emphasized odd words in her inflections, like prepositions (“She disembarked FROM the streetcar,” “his empire IN Virginia,” “He stared at her hand BEFORE offering his own,” and so on). It took a concerted effort to concentrate on the story and not get distracted by the narration.

I thought one character’s fate was left hanging, but then I realized this book was the first in a series called Hope and Glory. I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

Review: Light Upon Light

Posted on March 12, 2026 by Barbara Harper

In Sarah Arthur’s introduction to Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, she writes:

Many of us, when charting the timeline of our lives, can point to a moment when a story or poem happened. It happened the way an accident or a record-breaking snowfall happened: it was perhaps expected, perhaps not. One moment we were performing the usual routine–pouring cereal, say, or opening the mail–and the next moment we sat motionless with a book in our hands, eyes unfocused, a wave of words washing over us as relentlessly as a newsreel.

I’ve had that experience of being stopped in my tracks by a poem or piece of literature, staring out the window or up at the ceiling while the words reverberated in my mind. So I looked forward to such experiences in the pieces Sarah compiled.

There are eighteen sections, beginning the first week in Advent and continuing on until the ninth week of Epiphany. I don’t come from a church background that observes Epiphany, but I knew some churches celebrated it as the time the wise men found the Christ child. I didn’t realize it was observed for several weeks.

Each section has a theme, from Annunciations, to Sojourners, to Love’s Offices, etc. The section begins with an opening prayer, usually taken from a poem. A few Scripture passages are suggested, then several readings from different works are included. There are no assigned readings for specified days: the reader is allowed to meander at his or her own pace.

I loved the idea of this book. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy many of the selections. Some I didn’t “get” (my fault). Some were a little off theologically.

I tended to like the classical selections better than the contemporary ones. I don’t have anything against modern literature. I read modern writers all the time. But in this case, the modern pieces were most often the ones I questioned, or the ones that seemed more mystical than biblically accurate.

I did find a few nuggets that spoke to me. There were a couple of old familiar favorites, like an excerpt from Dickens’ The Christmas Carol and G. H. Chesterton’s “The House of Christmas.”

There were some new-to-me treasures, like “Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior” by Ben Johnson, “Moonless Darkness” by Gerald Manley Hopkins, “Ring Out the Wild Bells” by Tennyson, and a handful of others.

The introduction says, “Some of the works in this collection are obviously seasonal, some obviously Christian. Some are neither.” I know even secular work can express spiritual truth, so I don’t have a problem with it being included–as long as it’s not misleading. I have more trouble with spiritual works that are inaccurate.

I suppose if I had looked at the book as a collection of literary pieces on certain themes revolving around the holidays, my expectations would have been different. Looking at the introduction again after finishing the book, I see that’s how it was presented. My disappointment came from thinking the book was from a distinctly Christian viewpoint and finding it wasn’t. It seemed more in the “spiritual” rather than Christian vein.

Review: All We Thought We Knew

Posted on March 11, 2026 by Barbara Harper

In All We Thought We Knew, a novel by Michelle Shocklee, Mattie Taylor was adamantly against the Viet Nam war. So she was stunned when her twin brother, Mark, and his best friend joined the military. She blamed her father for not discouraging Mark from going. Then Mark died in the war. The day after his funeral, Mattie left for the hippie movement in California.

Now, a year later, Mattie receives news that her mother is dying and wants to see her. Though Mattie still bristles with anger over the war, she rushes home to see her mother.

Mattie’s mom, Ava, wants Mattie to read some old letters hidden away in a shoebox. Mattie isn’t very motivated–she doesn’t know the people addressed in the letters nor the senders. But she reads a letter or two at a time to placate her mother.

Ava had become a young widow during WW2 when her new husband was killed at Pearl Harbor. Ava lived with her unkind mother-in-law on the horse farm her husband, Mark, had intended to sell. When the military opens a base nearby and sends out a notice that they are hiring civilians, Ava applies for a job to help support herself and her mother-in-law.

Part of Ava’s job is to update the ever-changing personnel files. One day this takes her to a German detainee, Gunther. She learns that Gunther had come from Germany to America before the war to study medicine and become a doctor. Yet when America joined the war, officials rounded up German citizens and detained them at military bases as enemy aliens. Some were allowed to work on the base. Gunther’s medical experience opens a door for him to work as an orderly while under guard.

The point of view switches back and forth from Mattie in 1969 and Ava and Gunther in 1942, slowly unraveling the mystery of what ties the three together.

Though I have read several novels set in WW2, this is the first one that has touched on German detainees in America. It’s heartbreaking that they were gathered up and treated as Nazis, even though some fled their country because of Nazism.

It was also interesting to see the inner workings of a couple of temporary military bases in the WW2 section of the story and the horse farm in the 1960s section.

Mattie got on my nerves a bit. She’s totally self-centered–her opinion is the only right one in her eyes. But there was hope that she would mature and grow through the novel, and she did. I liked the way the others in her life patiently dealt with her anger, doubts, and questions.

I felt the “reveal” of the mystery was pretty obvious by the time it came out (to everyone but Mattie). But overall I enjoyed the book.

Review: Rebel With a Cause

Posted on March 5, 2026 by Barbara Harper

Franklin Graham’s autobiography, Rebel With a Cause, was not on my radar. However, someone gave it to me. I don’t always pray about what book to read next, but when I did a few weeks ago, I couldn’t get this book off my mind.

Franklin Graham is the son of well-known evangelist Billy Graham. In his earliest days, Franklin didn’t have a clear picture of what his father did. He just knew he was gone much of the time. He was quite a handful as a child. I enjoyed some of his mother’s creative and unconventional ways of dealing with him.

Franklin loved where his family lived in NC, motorcycles or almost anything with an engine, guns, and fun, even if it got him into trouble. And it frequently did.

In his first or second year of college, he went on a trip to help two single female missionaries–not for any spiritual reasons, but for a chance to go to a foreign country. He saw their work and simple trust in God and wanted to help more. He began to organize supplies for them, little realizing that this would eventually lead to his life’s work.

Franklin writes of the different male figures in his life who influenced him, mostly for good, in his father’s absence. One day, everything came together to convince him and help him be willing to surrender his life to God.

By his own admission, he was never much of a student. But he finally got serious about his studies and finished college whole married to his wife, Jane Austin.

I had thought that he began Samaritan’s Purse, but, actually, a man named Bill Pierce did. Franklin went on many mission trips with Bill. When Bill knew he was dying of cancer, he talked to Franklin about taking over SP when he was gone. After thinking and praying much, and waiting for the SP board to come to the same conclusion, Franklin agreed.

The SP website states, “Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970, Samaritan’s Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine with the purpose of sharing God’s love through His Son, Jesus Christ. The organization serves the Church worldwide to promote the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I appreciated that, whenever they heard of a need, Franklin, or, later, one of his team would go investigate the situation first. They’d try to discern exactly what the need was, whether and how they could help, and who could facilitate the efforts there. They made it clear that they would share Christ while there, and most of the time that was not a problem.

Franklin shares story after story of horrific needs and miraculous supply of both provisions and people to help. My heart was touched by those here and in various countries who stepped in to meet needs.

In later years, Franklin felt he might be called to be an evangelist. But he knew he was where God wanted him at SP. He didn’t want to be compared to his father or look like he was following in his footsteps. Then others began to tell him they thought he was called to be an evangelist as well. Finally one evangelist convinced Franklin to come along with him and help with his meetings. Franklin did, and then began to preach at meetings himself. He concluded that Jesus preached as well as helped people with their physical needs, so Franklin did not have to choose one or the other.

This book was published in 1997 when both his parents were still alive. They contributed a few words at the end.

He doesn’t say anything about Operation Christmas Child in this book. I assume that was started after this book was written. I just saw there is a separate book about that ministry.

While I wouldn’t endorse everything written or all the people and organizations Franklin and his ministry associated with, I was blessed by how God worked in and through him.