Tag Archives: Books

December Reflections

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December Reflections

December has been a busy but delightful month. My oldest son came in from RI last week, and the local kids have been over more often to see him (and us, too, of course. 🙂 ). We enjoyed Christmas together as well as a few outings (more about those on Friday’s Fave Five tomorrow), games, and lots of talking and laughing.

Usually during the last week of December, I post the books I read this year, my top ten or twelve of those books, and wrap-ups to reading challenges. Sometimes I also share the top-viewed posts of the year. This week there just hasn’t been time. I wanted to enjoy time with the family as much as possible. So I’ll at least share the bookish posts next week.

We’ve greatly simplified our Christmas activities, but we got to go to a couple of gatherings, a play, a fun Family Night at church (skits, songs, etc.). It all felt like just enough without being overwhelming.

Jim and I celebrated our 44th anniversary. We normally keep it pretty simple since it’s so close to Christmas and such a busy time. We go out to eat at a nice restaurant and exchange cards. It’s a nice time to pause and reconnect in all the busyness.

Watching

We really enjoyed All the Light We Cannot See. It had a bit of bad language. It was set during WWII, so naturally there was violence–some of it may have gone over the top. But overall it was a great movie. I’ve heard the book is excellent, but so far have not read it yet. I want to even more now.

We also enjoyed watching The Muppet Christmas Carol, most of us for the first time.

Creating

This is the card I made for Jim for our anniversary:

Anniversary card

I used a heart punch and then edged them a bit by tapping a foam brush onto an ink pad and brushing it around the edges. The “I” and “U” were stickers.

This was Jim’s Christmas card:

Christmas card for husband

This was Jeremy’s:

Son Christmas card

He likes foxes. The wording and holly border were stickers. The “snow” was embossed with the Cuttlebug.

This was Jason’s:

Son Christmas card

This was Mittu’s:

Daughter-in-law Christmas card

I did the lamppost and tree with the Cricut. The wording was a sticker.

This was Timothy’s:

Grandson Christmas card

The wording was another sticker. With making so many at once, I relied on shortcuts as much as possible. I got the stuffed snowman and hat at Hobby Lobby–they were both stickers as well, but made of fabric.

This was Jesse’s:

The words were a sticker and the tree was made with the Cricut (same tree shape as on Mittu’s card).

Reading

Since last time, I completed (titles link to my reviews):

  • Elisabeth Elliot: A Life by Lucy S. R. Austen, nonfiction (actually finished at the end of November but not reviewed til December). I enjoyed learning more about this woman who has shaped so much of my own thinking. The author did well with harmonizing material from several sources, but I felt she was too critical.
  • Abide Bible study course on 1, 2, and 3 John by Jen Wilkin, not reviewed.
  • Heaven and Nature Sing by Hannah Anderson, nonfiction. This was a reread, linked to last year’s review. I am so glad I read it again this year. Though I fondly remembered some parts, I had totally forgotten others. Excellent, very highly recommended.
  • Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke, fiction, audiobook. A woman in the 70s travels to Germany to learn more about the mother with whom she’d had a difficult relationship and finds some surprising information about the family she never knew. Excellent.
  • Crown of Thorns by Sigmund Brouwer, fiction, is set in Charleston , one of my favorite places. It’s a bit of a departure from my usual preferences, but was still good.
  • The Christmas Angel Project by Melody Carlson, fiction, audiobook. Four friends mourn another who has just died and start a project in her memory. Very good.
  • O Little Town, three novellas by Amanda Wen, Janyre Tromp and Deborah Raney, set in a small Michigan town in three different time periods. Very good.
  • A Cliche Christmas by Nicole Deese, fiction, audiobook, not reviewed yet.
  • The 20th Christmas, fiction, not reviewed yet.

That might look like a lot, especially for December, but the Christmas books were short.

I’m currently reading:

  • Be Skillful (Proverbs): God’s Guidebook to Wise Living by Warren Wiersbe, nonfiction
  • Proverbs for Life for Women
  • Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson
  • Being Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn (mentioned this last time but set it aside for Christmas reading)
  • How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish (had also set this aside for a time)
  • Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon, the Mitford book set during Christmas. Another lovely reread, via audiobook this time.
  • The Best of Christmas in My Heart, a collection of short stories written or compiled by Joe Wheeler.

Blogging

Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

Writing

As you can imagine, there’s not been much activity on that front this month. I’m hoping to be more disciplined and regular about it next year. I’m looking forward to our writing Critique group resuming.

We’re soaking up family together time for the next few days. I have not even thought much about next year yet. Time enough for that next month. I don’t choose a word for the year or make resolutions per se, but I like to evaluate different areas and set goals.

Have a wonderful and safe rest of 2023!

Review: O Little Town

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O Little Town Christmas novellas

O Little Town is a collection of three stories by three different authors. The town in question is not Bethlehem, but Mapleview, Michigan. Each author’s story takes place in a different time.

Hopes and Fears by Amanda Wen begins in a two-room schoolhouse in November, 1912. Emma Trowbridge teaches the younger students and loves her job. She’s dismayed to learn that her mentor and boss who teaches the upper grades has to take leave due to a family emergency. But she’s totally floored to find out that his replacement is Frederick Oberstein, her rival and nemesis all through school.

Frederick went away for a four-year degree, but Emma took classes at a nearby teaching college. They had not seen each other in years. They start clashing almost immediately. What Emma mistakes as Frederick’s curmudgeonly ways actually reflect weariness and grief. Can they learn not only to work together, but to actually appreciate each other’s gifts?

While Mortals Sleep by Janyre Tromp takes place during WWII. Eleanor Sweers had left her dysfunctional family years ago to become a reporter in California. She comes home due to her sister’s death, the only relative with whom she had a bond. She’s shocked to discover her sister named her as her daughter’s guardian. An old family friend, Gideon Braum, is a lawyer who helps Eleanor (nicknamed Lennie) through the legal process.

Something about Lennie’s sister’s death doesn’t add up, though. Lennie can’t turn off her reporter’s instincts and begins to investigate. She’s stunned to find evidence of a Japanese balloon bomb, similar to one she researched in CA. What is a Japanese bomb doing in Mapleview, MI? Gideon helps her learn more.

The Wondrous Gift by Deborah Raney takes place in present time. The faculty of a small Christian school is stunned to learn the school is closing due to low enrollment and high costs. After the announcement, some of the teachers agree to meet and talk about the situation further. Music teacher Rachel Hamblin and coach Caleb Janssen end up riding together, but they misunderstood where the other teachers were going. As they get to know each other, they hit it off and wonder why they had not noticed each other before.

Though sad about losing their jobs, they each harbor dreams about what they’d really like to do. They cheer each other on as they think, pray, talk, and take tentative steps in their new ventures. Things are going amazingly well until they realize that only one of them can have what they both wanted. Can they work through the issues, or will this derail their fledgling relationship?

I enjoyed experiencing stories in the same small town in different eras. It was fun to occasionally recognize a person or item from the previous era, though I probably missed some of those connections.

I’m afraid the characters in the first story didn’t resonate with me quite as much. Emma’s “force of nature” personality and Frederick’s faulty reasoning both hit me the wrong way.

And the second story’s writing seemed excessive in places. For example, “The hot, laughing breath of the reaper sighed on my neck even as he shoveled dirt over my self-made grave” and “It was a missive from the devil written in the blood of my regrets.”

Plus the narration of the audiobook I listened to seemed overwrought in the first two stories.

The third story was my favorite. I enjoyed the banter between the two characters and the progression of the story. The narration seemed more natural here.

Overall this was an enjoyable Christmas read. I liked that it wasn’t light and fluffy: each story dealt with serious issues and feelings. Each story was clean and seamlessly incorporated Christian truths and principles.

Review: The Christmas Angel Project

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In The Christmas Angel Project by Melody Carson, five friends who are different ages and from different walks of life have been meeting together regularly for a book club. Just after Thanksgiving, one of the women, Abby, dies unexpectedly. She seems to have been the glue that kept them together and inspired them.

Some days after Abby’s memorial service, the other women meet together to decide what to do about the group–whether to keep meeting, invite more people, or disband. Abby’s husband gave the group a bag of Christmas gifts that Abby had prepared for them before she passed. They opened them together at their meeting. Abby had made an angel ornament for each of them with their individual characteristics.

Inspired by Abby’s example, the women decide to change their book club to a “Christmas angel” club. Each will choose a project involving their own unique gifts, talents, and resources and report back to each other once a week in lieu of reading books.

Belinda is Abby’s long-time personal friend, divorced with a college-age child. She started a thrift shop years ago that has become something of a boutique.

Cassidy is the youngest, a single veterinarian who struggles with self-confidence.

Grace is newest to the group. She and Belinda had an undercurrent of rivalry for Abby’s friendship. Grace and her husband argue over their twin’s lack of effort in college, among other things. Grace has her own home design business.

Louisa is the oldest of the group. Her husband passed away the year before. Now Abby’s passing has really affected her. She had been an artist, but hasn’t been inspired to create anything since her husband died. She wonders what she’s still doing here, why God didn’t take her instead of Abby.

As each woman struggles to decide what to do for her project, they each experience ups and downs, successes and failures, and learn more about themselves and others in the process.

It’s understandable that the book would start off sad. But it did seem a little depressing at first, especially for a Christmas story. The years when we were most grieving a loss, I don’t know if it would have been helpful to read a book like this or not.

But once they got going on their projects, the story picked up. I did enjoy the book overall. I was happy I discovered the audiobook free in Audible’s members’ Plus Catalog.

Review: Crown of Thorns

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Crown of Thorns is the second in Sigmund Brouwer’s Nick Barrett Mystery Series, the first being Out of the Shadows (linked to my review).

Nick Barrett had grown up in Charleston high society as an outsider. His father was from an old, established family, but his mother was a waitress. In the first book, he had come back to Charleston after several years’ absence when he received an unsigned note promising information about his mother’s disappearance.

At the beginning of this book, Nick is still in Charleston, on a break from his teaching duties in New Mexico, embroiled with his half-brother in a court battle over the family inheritance.

While he waits, he visits frequently with a couple of old friends from his former years in Charleston, elderly twin sisters who own an antique shop. They ask him to help with a dilemma. A young girl from a crime-ridden side of town had come to them trying to sell a four-hundred-year old valuable painting that had been stolen from one of Charleston’s elite families fifty years earlier. They wanted to know, among other things, how this girl had come by the painting.

When Nick meets the eleven-year-old girl named Angel, he has no idea what he’s about to get into.

The plot weaves threads from a fifty-year-old murder, a young mother trying to escape from an abusive cult run by her father-in-law, and Angel’s voodoo-practicing grandmother.

If I had just started with this one and hadn’t read the first book or others of Brouwer’s, I probably would not have gotten past the prologue with its talk of voodoo spells. I just like to stay as far away as possible from that kind of thing. But I had read enough of the author’s work to trust he wouldn’t steer me wrong. He’s not promoting those practices and doesn’t go into gratuitous detail. And, as Nick’s journey has been spiritual as well as familial, the author clearly includes the offsetting truth of the gospel.

I look forward to reading the concluding book in the series.

Review: Secrets She Kept

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Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke

In Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke, Hannah Stirling’s mother has just passed away. More than mourning her mother, she mourns the loss of what could have been. Hannah’s mother had been distant from Hannah and her father for as long as she could remember.

Going through her parents’ home for some clue about her mother’s past turns out to be fruitless. When she sees the lawyer to finalize her mother’s affairs, Hannah is surprised to be given a key to a safe deposit box that Hannah had never known about. But all she finds there is her parents’ wedding certificate, her father’s military discharge papers, and a few empty envelopes with German addresses and stamps on them.

The paperwork, however, lets her know a shocking surprise: the man she called Daddy all her life could not have been her real father.

The point of view switches to thirty years earlier in Germany, when Hannah’s mother, Lieselotte Sommer, was a teenager just before Kristallnacht. Her mother lay dying, her brother was a whole-hearted member of the Hitler Youth, and her father was a rising member of the Nazi party. Lieselotte had loved her brother’s friend, Lukas Kirchmann, for as long as she could remember. She helps him and his family help Jews with food, false papers, and anything else they can. She longs for the day they can marry.

But Lieselotte’s father puts pressure on her to marry a Nazi officer and raise Aryan children for the Fuhrer. Her father has been distracted, but she never guessed the depths he would go to to further his own ends.

Switching back to Hannah again, her lawyer researches the German addresses on the envelopes in her mother’s safe deposit box. He discovers that she has a grandfather she never knew about. Her mother, Lieselotte, had said she was from Austria and her family all died in the war.

Hannah travels to Germany to meet her grandfather, to try to find out more about her mother, and to discover who her father was. At first she enjoys the connection with her grandfather. But her research uncovers horrifying family secrets.

This book was riveting. I listened to the audiobook, free at the time from Audible’s Plus Catalog, and eventually began looking for extra time to listen more. All the characters, including side characters, are well-developed and the plot. There’s so much more I’d love to say, but I don’t want to spoil anything for potential readers. So I’ll just say it’s a really good book and highly recommended.

Review: Elisabeth Elliot, A Life

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I’ve mentioned many times that I considered Elisabeth Elliot my “mentor from afar” for most of my adult life. I discovered her books in college, four decades ago, beginning with Through Gates of Splendor, Shadow of the Almighty, and The Journals of Jim Elliot. I’ve read almost all her books ever since, some of them several times, as well as her newsletters.

Most of you know that Elisabeth was the wife of Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries killed when trying to reach a tribe in Ecuador then known as “Aucas” (now known by their name for themselves, Waorani). A few years later, Elisabeth, her young daughter Valerie, and Rachel Saint, sister of one of the other missionaries, were invited to live with the Waorani. After writing Through Gates of Splendor about “Operation Auca” and the five missionaries, then her husband’s biography, and several articles, Elisabeth began to feel God called her into a ministry of writing. She and Valerie came back to the USA, where Elisabeth spent decades writing, speaking, and teaching.

Elisabeth’s public ministry ended in 2004 when her dementia began to make travel and speaking impossible. She passed away in 2015 at the age of 88. She’s regarded as one of the most influential Christian women of the last 100 years.

It was only a matter of time before biographers started telling her story. In Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, Lucy S. R. Austen harmonizes Elisabeth’s public writing with the journals and letters Austen had access to, which I feel is the strength of this book.

Elisabeth never put herself on a pedestal. She was quite honest about her faults and foibles. Austen takes care to present Elisabeth realistically, not idealistically.

However, I felt that Austen often sat in judgment on Elisabeth’s writing, criticizing such things as her approach to discerning God’s will in her early years, Jim’s behavior as they dated, the difference between what Elisabeth wrote in her journals and what she wrote publicly thirty years later, and so on. I have questions marks and notes of “author judgment” in several margins.

I knew much about Elisabeth’s earlier life from her books and writing. I was looking forward to learning more about what happened after she came back to the USA. But Elisabeth’s earlier life takes up two-thirds of the book, with her last fifty-two years filling only a third. That may be due to several factors: people’s interest in her missionary career; a number of questions and issues about that time; the decreasing number of family letters sent. And then, a lot of the narrative about her time in the States reads like lists of where she traveled and spoke, along with whom she visited and who visited her.

I was heartened to see some of her questions and struggles that emphasized that she was in many ways an ordinary Christian woman dealing with some of the same issues we all do. I was sad to hear of serious issues in her second and particularly third marriages.

Elisabeth seemed, by all accounts, to be a classic introvert. I was sad to see that introversion was thought to be unspiritual in her early life and that she fought against it rather than seeing it as the way God made her.

I was surprised to read that she thought speaking was not her main ministry and, in fact, took away from her writing ministry. I’m thankful to have heard her speak in person twice.

Her views on many things changed and solidified over the years, as happens with most of us. Her journals and sometimes her letters were ways of processing her thoughts. I wouldn’t be too alarmed by some of the views she seemed to hold or wrestled with along the way.

As it happened, I was midway through the book when I turned on the replay of Elisabeth’s radio program, Gateway to Joy, on BBN Radio one morning. She was doing a series called “Jungle Diaries,” reading from her journals of her time in Ecuador. She said she had not looked at them in forty years. She commented that people think she “has it all together,” but her diaries assured that she did not then, and she still did not claim to.

She also commented that her “theology has been developed” since those writings, but what she wrote was raw and real and honest. Then she mentioned that she was shocked to read of her desire to go to the Aucas. She “had no recollection of wanting to go to the Aucas, certainly not that soon after Jim died” (“Jungles Diaries #1:Journal Beginnings,” aired October 16, 2023).

I was quite surprised to hear her say that, as her books indicated that she strongly wanted to go. But then I thought about my own life forty years ago. I was four years married and would soon be expecting my first child. I remember where I worked, where we went to church, who our friends were. But there’s more I don’t remember than I do.

So I feel that Austen often made too much of the differences between what Elliot wrote over a span of forty or more years. But I think Austen tried to be faithful with the material she had.

In writing circles, we’re often told that we might have a perfectly fine manuscript that may be rejected because a similar book has just been published. For that reason, I was surprised to see Austen’s biography come out in-between the two parts of Ellen Vaughn’s “authorized” biography. Perhaps the publishers felt there was sufficient interest in Elisabeth to warrant two biographies of her published so close together. If so, I think they were right.

But I hope sometime someone writes a simple biography of Elisabeth, not analyzing or explaining or annotating, but just telling her story.

One of the main take-aways from listening to or reading about Elisabeth is that her supreme desires were to know and obey God. She was no-nonsense, yet she had a sense of humor. She was sentimental, but she wasn’t unfeeling. She wasn’t perfect, and she wouldn’t say this, but I think she went further than many of us in her spiritual journey.

(Updated to add: I thought I’d share a couple of other, more positive reviews from friends I know and trust: Ann’s is here, and Michele’s is here.)

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

Recommended Christmas Devotional Books

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Recommended Christmas or Advent Devotional Books

One of the main things that helps me keep a good perspective through December is reading a Christmas or Advent devotional book.

Some years I’ve followed reading plans for Scripture that specifically deal with the coming of Christ, including the prophecies of His birth. I don’t have one on hand, but I’m sure there are plenty online.

Most years, though, I read an Advent devotional book usually in addition to, sometimes instead of, my usual devotional time. So I thought I’d share some of the ones I’ve enjoyed with you. I’ll link the titles back to my reviews.

Heaven and Nature Sing advent devotional.

Heaven and Nature Sing: 25 Advent Reflections to Bring Joy to the World by Hannah Anderson is the newest I’ve read, just published last year. It’s also one of my favorites. Reading this book set me to reading many of Hannah’s other books this year. The title comes from a phrase in Isaac Watt’s “Joy to the World.” Hannah took inspiration from this phrase and wrote twenty-five Advent devotions based on various aspects of nature connected with the birth of Christ. Each devotion is about five pages long and written in an easily readable style.

Sample quote: “Yes, the manger signals something about this baby, but it is not simply his poverty. By being placed in the manger, he is revealed as both the rightful son of Adam charged with caring for his creation and also the eternal Son of God who created them and who provides for them. So instead of filling the manger with hay or corn, he fills it with himself.”

A Christmas Longing by Joni Eareckson Tada

A Christmas Longing by Joni Eareckson Tada is a gorgeous book filled with her art work, drawn by mouth due to her paralysis. It’s made up of 31 readings for each day in December centered on the theme of joy.

Sample quote:”Lives hinge and eternal destinies hang in the balance when men and women come face to face with Jesus the Christ. It isn’t always peaceful. It isn’t always painless. It isn’t always easy. But bowing the knee to Jesus Christ is always right. No matter what.”

The Women of Christmas by Liz Curtis Higgs

The Women of Christmas: Experience the Season Afresh with Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna by Liz Curtis Higgs. The eight chapters here are longer, around twenty pages or more. So it might not work as a devotional unless you divided the chapters up. But I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Liz did tons of research and study, but the book is warm rather than technical and stiff.

Sample quote: “When I hear women rail that the Bible is misogynistic, I wonder if we’re reading the same book. God loves women, redeems women, empowers women – then and now. On the day we call Christmas, he could simply have arrived on earth, yet he chose to enter through a virgin’s womb. On the day we call Easter, he could have appeared first to his beloved disciple John, yet he chose as his first witness a woman set free from seven demons.”

Gospel Meditations for Christmas by Church Works Media

Gospel Meditations for Christmas by Chris Anderson, Joe Tyrpak, and Michael Barrett is divided into 31 pages, one a day through the month of December (or any time, really, since these truths are eternal). Each page lists a Bible passage to read and then delves into some facet of the passage for a handful of paragraphs. The primary focus of the book is various aspects of the Incarnation

Sample quote: “Matthew begins his account of the good news with a record of Jesus’ ancestry. This isn’t some boring list of personal details that Matthew came across in research and decided to include as space-filler. No, this genealogy is Matthew’s attention-grabbing introduction, and it’s jam-packed with significance.”

Expecting Christmas advent devotional

Expecting Christmas is a 40-day devotional by multiple authors. I wished this one was 25 or 31 days so it would fit neatly in December. I didn’t know any of the author names except one (Jennifer Dukes Lee). The selections are short, which is appreciated in a month like December. Each began with a verse or two of Scripture, a page and a half to two pages (at least in the Kindle version) of text, then three questions for refection.

The readings cover a variety of Christmas topics, though several deal with light.

Sample quote: “Mary’s response was one of quiet introspection as she treasured the good news of the gospel in her heart. The shepherds, on the other hand, left young Jesus, glorifying God and praising Him with outward enthusiasm and passion. People celebrate the gospel in different ways.”

Advent readings by C. H. Spurgeon

Joy to the World: Daily Readings for Advent is made up of excerpts from C. H. Spurgeon’s Christmas sermons. I had read a few books like this with lengthier portions from his sermons (like Good Tidings of Great Joy: A Collection of Christmas Sermons), but they were a little too much for morning devotionals. This one, however, had daily readings of just two to three pages on an iPad mini Kindle app.

Sample quote: “The tabernacle of old was not full of truth, but full of image, and shadow, and symbol, and picture; but Christ is full of substance. He is not the picture, but the reality; he is not the shadow, but the substance. O believer, rejoice with joy unspeakable for you come to Christ, the real tabernacle of God.”

Finding Christ in Christmas, advent devotional by A. W. Tozer

Finding Christ in Christmas: An Advent Devotional by From the Writings of A. W. Tozer has readings for December 1 – 25, ranging from just a paragraph to little more than a page. So the selections are easily readable. I felt the selections were a little haphazard, taken out of context, and some left the reader hanging a bit. But the book contained several great nuggets. Tozer’s writing is not warm and cozy, but it makes one think.

Sample quote: “The Law was given by Moses, but that was all that Moses could do. He could only ‘command’ righteousness. In contrast, only Jesus Christ produces righteousness. All that Moses could do was to forbid us to sin. In contrast, Jesus Christ came to save us from sin. Moses could not save anyone, but Jesus Christ is both Savior and Lord.”

From Heaven, an Advent devotional by A. W. Tozer

From Heaven: A 28-Day Advent Devotional by A. W. Tozer is similar to the book above and overlaps it a bit, but has some different excerpts.

Sample quote: “Even though you may still be unconverted and going your own way, you have received much out of the ocean of His fullness. You have received the pulsing life that beats in your bosom. You have received the brilliant mind and brain within the protective covering of your skull. You have received a memory that strings the events you cherish and love as a jeweler strings pearls into a necklace and keeps them for you as long as you live and beyond. All that you have is out of His grace. Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us, is the open channel through which God moves to provide.”

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus:Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, compiled by Nancy Guthrie, is one I have enjoyed several times. It contains 22 selections on various aspects of Advent, from Mary to conception by the Holy Ghost to Joseph to the shepherds to Jesus’s humility and others, from such teachers and preachers as Charles Spurgeon, Augustine, Martyn Lloyd-Jones to Tim Keller, John MacArthur, J. I. Packer, and Ray Ortland. I don’t know all of the authors, so I wouldn’t endorse everyone 100%, but I don’t think I read anything in this particular volume that I had a problem with.

Sample quote from J. I. Packer: “The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity–hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory–because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.”

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room, a family Advent devotional by Nancy Guthrie

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: Daily Family Devotions for Advent by Nancy Guthrie is another I’ve read several times. It designed for families to read together, but works well read by individuals, too. There are 31 readings, each ending with a prayer, some discussion questions, and a few more Scriptures on the topic of the chapter.

Sample quote: “Sometimes we are given a gift that we think is not really useful to us, and therefore we never take it out of the box. We stash it away in a closet or on a shelf somewhere in case we need it someday. Sadly, that’s what some people do in regard to Jesus. They want to keep him handy for when something comes along that they can’t handle on their own, but for now they have no interest in making him part of their day-to-day lives, and so they put him on the shelf. They simply don’t believe he is as good as the Bible says he is, and so they have no real or lasting joy in having received this great gift.”

Those are all the ones I can remember reading or find mention of on the blog.

Do you have any favorite Christmas or Advent devotionals? I’d love to hear your recommendations.

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

Review: The Book of Lost Friends

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Book of Lost Friends, a novel by Lisa Wingate

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate follows two different, but connected timelines in Louisiana.

In 1875, the Civil War has ended, but life is dangerous for Black people. Besides the activities of the Klan, unscrupulous men are willing to steal Black people and ship them off to countries that still buy slaves.

Hannie Gossett is a freed slave, having lived with the Gossetts all her life. She and a few others work as sharecroppers, coming close to the time when the land they’ve been working will be theirs. But Mr. Gossett has been gone for ages. Hannie is afraid his wife, who is most unsympathetic to the freed slaves, will somehow find a way out of keeping her husband’s obligations to them.

Juneau Jane has similar concerns. She’s Gossett’s daughter by his Creole mistress. Her father has told her he has provided for her. But she doesn’t trust that she’ll receive her inheritance unless she can get the legal paperwork to prove she’s entitled to it.

In a set of unexpected circumstances, Hannie, Juneau Jane, and Gossett’s legitimate daughter, Lavinia, find themselves on a journey to Texas to find Mr. Gossett.

Hannie had gone along mainly to help the other two when they were in a bind. But the further west she travels. the more she wonders about her people. When she was young, a man who was supposed to take the Gossett slaves to Texas as refugees during the Civil War sold them along the way instead. Hannie was the only one sent back to Louisiana. But her mother urged her to remember who was sold where. Now Hannie holds out hope that she may yet find some of her family.

At one stop, the girls see notices on a church wall from a newspaper column where Black people sought for information about loved ones they’d been separated from. The girls took the notices and added to them as they traveled.

In 1987, Benedetta (Benny) Silva is a first year teacher in a poor school in Louisiana to help work off her student loans. Her students, for the most part, are uninterested in learning. Most of the other teachers just try to make it through the week without any altercations. Gossett Industries is the major business in town. Members of the Gossett family are in control of much of the area, even the school board, though their own children attend a more prestigious school.

Benny’s landlord is a Gossett, but an illusive one who disassociates himself from the rest of the family. She finally tracks him down to ask about borrowing some books for her class: she’s been told they are sitting in the old Gossett home, unused. He grants permission. What Benny discovers sets of a chain of events that might help her students, but might also cause a rift in town.

In-between chapters, various narrators read examples of the real Lost Friends advertisements (the text of which can be seen here).

Some of the quotes that stood out to me:

I’m trying to impress upon my students that everyone has history. Just because we’re not always happy with what’s true doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know it. It’s how we learn. It’s how we do better in the future. Hopefully, anyway.

Books made me believe that smart girls who didn’t necessarily fit in with the popular crowd could be the ones to solve mysteries, rescue people in distress, ferret out international criminals, fly spaceships to distant planets, take up arms and fight battles. Books showed me that not all fathers understand their daughters or even seek to, but that people can turn out okay despite that. Books made me feel beautiful when I wasn’t. Capable when I couldn’t be.

Stories change people. History, real history, helps people understand each other, see each other from the inside out.

I ponder how we can put a man on the moon, fly shuttles back and forth to outer space, send probes to Mars, and yet we can’t traverse the boundaries in the human heart, fix what’s wrong. How can things still be this way?

The past travels with you. It’s whether you run from it or learn from it that makes the difference.

I loved the historical aspect of this book. It’s important to remember that, as wonderful as the Emancipation Proclamation was, it didn’t solve all the problems Black people had. Though they weren’t enslaved in the 1980s, they were still hindered by the policies and attitudes of the times. I love how the book made connections between the two eras.

I thought the characters were well-developed. I especially loved Hannie, Juneau Jane, Granny T, and “Aunt Sarge.”

I thought the ending overall was rather abrupt. It seemed like the author just wanted to wrap everything up by telling us what happened rather than showing us. But I loved how Hannie’s story ended.

The author dropped a lot of new information about Benny’s background right in the last few minutes of the book. I wondered if I had missed something, if there was a previous book or a sequel. But there doesn’t appear to be at this point.

Though there was much I enjoyed about the book, that plot seemed to drag. I finally realized that was because the author had a penchant for interrupting conversations and scenes with backstory, explanations, and descriptions. I don’t know how many times individual lines of conversation, or one person waiting for a response, would be sandwiched in-between several paragraphs of all this other information.

I listened to the audiobook, wonderfully read by several narrators. The author herself came on at the end to tell a bit about how the story came to be.

I would call this historical fiction rather than Christian fiction. Though others of the author’s books are Christian, there’s not much of a Christian nature here. Hannie mentions prayer, but her faith is mixed in with superstition (which is probably historically accurate for her circumstances).

Though I was frustrated with the writing in places, the overall story is good and worth reading.

Review: Be Exultant

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Be Exultant: Wiersbe commentary on Psalms

In my current trek through the Bible, I’ve just finished the book of Psalms. I had not planned to end the book right before Thanksgiving, but I was glad it worked out that way.

Once again, I used Warren Wiersbe’s short “Be” commentary as a companion, along with the ESV Study Bible notes.

Since Psalms is the longest book of the Bible at 150 chapters, Wiersbe divided his commentary on the book into two parts. I reviewed the first one here: Be Worshipful (Psalms 1-89): Glorifying God for Who He Is. The second is Be Exultant (Psalms 90-150): Praising God for His Mighty Works.

As I said in the earlier review, the book of Psalms is Israel’s songbook. The passages cover Israel’s history from creation to the latest happenings of the day, their return after being exiled in Babylon for seventy years.

Though David wrote a majority of the psalms, various other authors contributed as well.

The writers composed in caves, in hiding, in their rooms, under persecution, in celebration.

Many of the psalms are deeply personal, yet benefit the whole congregation.

The psalms are deeply doctrinal, some prophesying of the Messiah to come, many quoted in the New Testament.

But many people value the psalms most for their wide range of emotion, from the highest praise and exaltation to the lowest depths of misery. The psalms give us many examples of someone pouring out their heart to God in confusion, sorrow, pain, or guilt, then reminding themselves of what they know to be true about God.

Here are some of the quotes from Wiersbe’s book that most stood out to me:

Life is brief, so Moses prayed, “Teach us.” Life is difficult, and he prayed, “Satisfy us.” His work at times seemed futile, so he prayed, “Establish the work of our hands.” God answered those prayers for Moses, and He will answer them for us. The future is your friend when Jesus is your Savior and Lord (p. 25, Kindle version).

It is better to suffer in the will of God than to invite trouble by disobeying God’s will (1 Peter 2: 18–25) (p. 26).

This hidden life of worship and communion makes possible the public life of obedience and service (p. 26).

To rely on our faith is to put faith in faith, but to rely on God’s faithfulness is to put faith in the Lord. Our assurance is in the Word of God and the God of the Word (p. 102).

The Word of God performs many wonderful ministries in the life of the devoted believer. It keeps us clean (v. 9), gives us joy (vv. 14, 111, 162), guides us (vv. 24, 33–35, 105), and establishes our values (vv. 11, 37, 72, 103, 127, 148, 162). The Word helps us to pray effectively (v. 58) and gives us hope (v. 49) and peace (v. 165) and freedom (vv. 45, 133) (p. 110).

What a precious treasure is the Word of God (vv. 14, 72, 127, 162; 61: 5)! It is like a deep mine filled with gold, silver, and precious gems, and we must take time to “dig” for these treasures (Prov. 2: 1–9; 3: 13–15; 8: 10–11; 1 Cor. 3: 9–23). A mere surface reading of Scripture will not put spiritual treasure into our hearts. Mining treasure is hard work, but it is joyful work when we “mine” the Bible, as the Spirit guides us into truth. Then, the Spirit helps us to “mint” the treasure so we can invest it in our lives (obedience) and in the lives of others (witness) (p. 131).

Wrong ideas about God will ultimately lead to wrong ideas about who we are and what we should do, and this leads to a wrong life on the wrong path toward the wrong destiny
(p. 193).

I’m thankful once again for Dr. Wiersbe’s insights.

Review: The Wings of Poppy Pendleton

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In The Wings of Poppy Pendleton, a novel by Melanie Dobson, the newly rich Pendleton family is trying to find a place among the top Gilded Age society families. Mr. Pendleton had built a stunning castle on Koster Island among New York’s Thousand Islands, and the family is hosting a fete for elite guests. Their almost five-year-old daughter, Poppy, is sleeping in the castle’s tower, supposedly under the care of one of the maids, while the guests party.

But in the morning, Poppy is missing and Mr. Pendleton is dead.

Police, detectives, and curious seekers investigate for years, trying to determine what happened. But Poppy’s disappearance remains a mystery.

In 1992, Chloe Ridell is the only resident on Koster Island. Her grandfather, Cade, had been the caretaker of the castle and island in the Pendleton’s time and decades afterward. Mrs. Pendleton willed the property to Cade, who then passed it along to Chloe.

Chloe is uninterested in the castle and has never been in it. She runs a candy store started by her grandparents, and she just wants to maintain their legacy. But her funds are running low.

Then one stormy night, a young girl shows up on Chloe’s porch. Her name is Emma, but she refuses to say much else about who she is or why she is there. She’s frightened, though, especially of a man named Mitch. Chloe feels led to let Emma stay while her situation is investigated by the police. Eventually, Emma lets Chloe see her scrapbook, which is filled with drawings, magazine cutouts, and descriptions of birds. On the last page is a picture from a news article about the magnificent aviary Mrs. Pendelton’s husband had constructed at her request and filled with dozens of birds and their native trees. The aviary burned down decades ago. But Chloe wonders at the oddity of Emma’s connection to the Pendletons.

Then another visitor shows up out of the blue. A reporter, Logan, arrives in Chloe’s candy shop. Poppy Pendleton’s ninetieth birthday is coming soon. Logan thought it would be a good time to look into her case again. Chloe has no interest. But Logan convinces her that solving the mystery will not only bring justice for Poppy, but it will stop the curious from tramping around her island and asking her questions.

The point of view switches between characters and timelines to uncover what happened to Poppy, her mother, and Emma.

So far I have loved all of Melanie’s novels, and this is no exception. She explores some darker themes than usual. But, sadly, the issues in the story are all too real.

I felt the faith element was woven in naturally and not at all preachy or stilted.

I listened to the audiobook nicely read by Nancy Peterson. Many audiobooks don’t include the author’s afterword or notes, but this one did. Plus Melanie tells a little bit about her research for the novel, with pictures from a trip to the Thousand Islands and its castles, here.