This is our third book giveaway, and the last for the time being. We again thank the Hatchette Group for giving us this opportunity.
Rebecca St. James is a well-known singer, especially in the Christian music industry. She is also a prolific writer, this being one of her ten books that she has edited or written.
Loved: Stories of Forgiveness is a delightful book. Each major chapter leads off with a story about a well-known figure from the bible. In it’s pages you will hear the embellished stories of Rahab, Gomer, Leah, Eve and others. Each will focus on the saving forgiveness each story elicits.
What then follows are testimonials, short stories of real people and the difficulties they have faced in life. In each case, ultimately from the dregs of near ruin, lives have been saved, strengthened, and put back on the clear path to God. Each woman finds at the lowest point, that grace and forgiveness necessary to make the course correction essential to a life of hope and true happiness.
Each story outlines the drugs, alcohol, broken relationships, medical disasters, and other common issues that attack and bring low so many people in their lives. Nothing you have done or have done to you can be so bad that God cannot draw you up into the sunshine again.
As such, this book is an inspiration for anyone going through serious crises in their lives. It points our and shows clearly that you are not alone, that others have suffered your suffering and worse and have come out of it better and stronger.
The book is structured in a way that allows you to read each story and then spend the day with it, and then reading the next on the following day. Each area, identity, addictions, family problems, relationships, and so on has seven stories after the biblical one. Thus you can live with particular problems and the inspiration forthcoming for a week.
But truly, all the stories have meaning and offer empathetic help, for it is the suffering that is always central, and it is the saving grace of God that is always in the end, the turning around point.
If you are facing such a crisis in your own life, then surely you can find solace here. If you know of someone who is in deep despair because of bad choices and/or simple accident, then this book may be offered as a help.
Nothing takes the place of course of professional care and advice, but sometimes just seeing so clearly that others have suffered your same affliction or faulty choice making is a help and gives one courage to take the necessary steps to seek that professional assistance.
If you would like a copy of Loved, leave a comment to this post, with your email address. I’ll contact the winners in a week and notify the publisher of your addresses for mailing purposes. Remember that only US and Canadian citizens are eligible for this giveaway.
(As a disclaimer: The publisher has sent me a copy of this book free of charge. I am under no obligation in my review or otherwise to speak for the company. Their only instructions to me were that five books were available to be given away and that winners were limited to Canada and the US. No other controls were issued to me as to the method of this giveaway. My remarks about the book itself are my own.)
Existential Ennui 