An inspiring and scripturally literate guide aimed at helping Christians overcome heartbreak.
A debut manual on heartache focuses on Christian worship.
In her slim, beautifully designed book, Brown is concerned with endings and how to survive them. Her main topic is the spectrum of sickening emotions that accompany the end of close relationships, especially hopelessness. “There is that gasp of ‘oh no,’ ” she writes, “that suffocating feeling that you will never breathe again and if you do, perhaps you’ll not have enough strength to finish that breath.” Her guide, which features stock photographs, looks at many kinds of endings, from failing marriages and loneliness to a general feeling of despair. In all cases, she is clearly writing to an audience of her fellow, ardent Christians when she counsels hope in their darkest hours. Each of her book’s short chapters starts with a poem by the author, continues with a concentrated (and scripturally grounded) meditation on some aspect of enduring a failed relationship or marriage, often drawing on Brown’s own personal experiences, and concludes with a prayer and some keynote biblical passages. There is no real, coherent narrative; readers can just as easily pick chapters at random as read from cover to cover. In each section, the author is both sympathetic and unsentimental, offering support but forbidding her readers to sugarcoat the past. “The nights are long and lonely now that he is not next to you,” she writes. “To be honest, there were times that you felt the same when he was there. But now you’re not only lonely but alone.” Brown’s fellow Christians are reminded that God does not intend for them to be miserable and that he will never desert them: “Father, help me to know that though all may leave me, you never will.” The author’s prose is sympathetically personal, and her tone, though realistic, is always optimistic: With God, even the most wretched believer can expect a brighter day. Forlorn Christians will find this a quick, uplifting read.
An inspiring and scripturally literate guide aimed at helping Christians overcome heartbreak.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-973643-27-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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