Reviews and recommendations for books from the Church Library
We have a magazine in the Church library called Creation Illustrated. The current issue is taking a look at the seven days of creation with illustrations. It is a great experience for you eyes and taking time to appreciate the beauty of the Creator’s work. It will be on the cart that goes to Bible Class plus a few back issues for you to choose from.
For more than a decade, Matthew C. Harrison has served as the president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. During this time, he has faced many discouraging days and witnessed the decline of the popularity of being a Christian in our modern era. He knows that even faithful Christians can feel as if everything in life is against them. The world wants them to abandon faith in God, who is so particular. Many of their family and friends no longer sit next to them in the pew. The worldview promoted by culture is so different from the one they hear from the pulpit and in the pages of the Bible. But this is not another book telling you everything that is wrong in the world. This is a book reminding you of the one thing right in the world, the person who alone has overcome the world.
Through Jesus, Rev. Harrison has found constant encouragement. He now writes these words as encouragement to you. As your words and prayers have sustained him for years, so now these words of encouragement are for you. Jesus alone has overcome the world. He alone is risen from the dead. No matter the uncertainty of our times, no matter the discouraging state of affairs around us, these truths are certain.
God, I Need to Talk to You about Worrying applies God’s invitation to His children to pray about everything and His promise to listen. Colorfully illustrated and written from a child’s point of view, this book describes everyday situations children encounter, along with the reassurance that even if something bad happens, God still is with His children and loves and cares for them. Comforted by God’s promises to always be with His children and listen to their prayers, children finish the story reminded of God’s love for them.
God, I Need to Talk to You about Being Patient applies God’s invitation to His children to pray about everything and His promise to listen. Colorfully illustrated and written from a child’s point of view, this book describes everyday situations children encounter, along with the reassurance that even though His children are not always patient, God will forgive them and help them to be patient. Comforted by God’s promises to always forgive, help, and listen to prayers, children finish the story reminded of God’s love for them.
God, I Need to Talk to You about Loving Others applies God’s invitation to His children to pray about everything and His promise to listen. Colorfully illustrated and written from a child’s point of view, this book describes everyday situations children encounter, along with the message that God made each of His children to be different and that He blesses them with friends. Comforted by God’s promise to always listen to prayers, children finish the story reminded of God’s love for them.
Luther’s Small Catechism for Kids is a resource on concepts from the 2017 Explanation of the catechism for elementary-aged students. They will learn tenets of faith through illustrations and easy-to-understand language.
This workbook is for use alongside the catechism for kids. Helping to explain the language, terminology, and contexts of the catechism, this student book allows for deeper understanding and engagement. Students will answer questions, practice memorization, learn definitions, and fill in the blanks.
The next three books were given to the library by a member. We thank her for sharing with us.
New Fiction –
Jacob’s Way by Gilbert Morris ‘The army makes a man hard sometimes. I remember a young girl no more than ten who gave me a glass of buttermilk just outside of Chancellorsville. I still remember that. I guess that’s all my life is. Some pictures fading out behind me, and there’s not much before me.’ Reisa listened as he spoke. She knew that he was a man who longed for goodness, and longed for friends, and perhaps even a wife and family. Finally she said, ‘I hope you find your way, Ben. God is real, and love is real.’ Fleeing a bloody pogrom that threatens their tiny Russian village, Reisa Dimitri and her grandfather, Jacob, sail the ocean to a new life in America. They are swiftly embraced by New York’s Jewish community. But God has other plans that will call them far from the familiar warmth and ways of their culture. Accompanied by their huge, gentle friend, Dov, Reisa and Jacob set out to make their living as traveling merchants in the post-Civil-War South. There, as new and unexpected friendships unfold, the aged Jacob searches for answers concerning the nature of the Messiah he has spent a lifetime looking and longing for. And there, the beautiful Reisa finds herself strangely drawn to Ben Driver–a man with a checkered past, a painful present, and a deadly enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy him. Fast-paced and tender by turn, Jacob’s Way is a heartwarming novel about human love, divine faithfulness, and the restoration of things that had seemed broken beyond repair.
Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin Alice Grace Ripley lives in a dream world, her nose stuck in a book. But happily-ever-after life she’s planned on suddenly falls apart when her boyfriend, Gordon, breaks up with her, accusing her of living in a world of fiction instead of the real world. Then to top it off, Alice loses her beloved job at the library because of cutbacks due to the Great Depression.
Fleeing small-town gossip, Alice heads to the mountains of eastern Kentucky to deliver five boxes of donated books to the library in the tiny coal-mining village of Acorn. Dropped off by her relatives, Alice volunteers to stay for two weeks to help the librarian, Leslie McDougal.
But the librarian turns out to be far different than she anticipated–not to mention the four lady librarians who travel to the remote homes to deliver the much-desired books. While Alice is trapped in Acorn against her will, she soon finds that real-life adventure and mystery–and especially romance–are far better than her humble dreams could have imagined.
City at Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell Will Kiehn is seemingly destined for life as a humble farmer in the Midwest when, having felt a call from God, he travels to the vast North China Plain in the early twentieth-century. There he is surprised by love and weds a strong and determined fellow missionary, Katherine. They soon find themselves witnesses to the crumbling of a more than two-thousand-year-old dynasty that plunges the country into decades of civil war. As the couple works to improve the lives of the people of Kuang P’ing Ch’eng― City of Tranquil Light, a place they come to love―and face incredible hardship, will their faith and relationship be enough to sustain them?
Told through Will and Katherine’s alternating viewpoints―and inspired by the lives of the author’s maternal grandparents―City of Tranquil Light is a tender and elegiac portrait of a young marriage set against the backdrop of the shifting face of a beautiful but torn nation. A deeply spiritual book, it shows how those who work to teach others often have the most to learn, and is further evidence that Bo Caldwell writes “vividly and with great historical perspective” (San Jose Mercury News).
About the Christian Life
The Kingdom Will Come Anyway by Robert J. Luidens The Kingdom Will Come Anyway: A Life in the Day of a Pastor opens a window into the world of a typical minister serving congregations in the midst of soul-stirring delights and heart-rending troubles. Pastor Bob Luidens paints a true-to-life portrait of moments in his life that have been evocative of humor and heartache, as well as inviting of conviction and confusion. This is a memoir that will resonate with church members and pastors, as well as college students and seminarians. The stories embedded in Pastor Luidens’s recollections are rooted in everyday life. But those same stories disclose God’s gripping work of restoration and renewal within that life–of a kingdom unstoppable in its coming into our midst. These stories will inspire and challenge each reader, just as the original experiences did with the author. They affirm Jesus’s soul-lifting reminder that our loving creator is at work in every moment of our unique, precious lives.
Meditations on the Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren A beautiful keepsake gift book, Meditations on the Purpose Driven Life, magnifies the groundbreaking message of Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, in an encouraging way to remind everyone of the bountiful life God has planned for them. Dr. Rick Warren is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church, one of America’s largest congregations and author of the best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Church.
A Life God Rewards by Bruce Wilkinson Those who have read A Life God Rewards have discovered there’s an infinitely richer approach to life — an awareness that the smallest actions of every day have an eternal impact. Bruce Wilkinson has written this personal devotional for those who are eager to reach for God’s amazing and generous best for their lives — starting today! With thirty-one days of inspiring readings, true stories, thought-provoking questions, practical suggestions, classic quotes, and Scriptures, every day becomes a meaningful investment in eternity.
Books for the male reader –
God’s Little Devotional Book for Men by W. B. Freeman Concepts These devotionals will open your mind, spark creative, new ideas, strengthen your spirit, and enrich your life.
Chicken Soup for the Father’s Soul by Jack Canfield New dads, granddads, single dads and dads-to-be – this book offers them all an entertaining and inspiring collection of stories on the triumphs and trials of the amazing journey called fatherhood.
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren The Purpose Driven Life is a guide to spiritual development according to evangelical Christian values and teachings. The Bible instructs Christians to think of the world as a temporary situation and prepare for eternal life in heaven. Humanity was made in God’s image to share his love.
There are five purposes for life, which begin with fulfilling God’s pleasure. Every person is planned for the pleasure of God, so doing what humans were designed to do and performing these acts as worship fulfills God’s pleasure….
The Power of a Praying Husband by Stormie OMartian In The Power of a Praying Husband, you’ll find the excitement and hope that come from inviting the God who hears and answers prayer into your marriage. Packed with real-life examples and refreshing honesty regarding her own marriage, Stormie encourages you to lovingly intercede for your wife in every area of her life, including her:
Each chapter features comments from well-known Christian men, biblical wisdom, and prayer ideas. It’s a resource that makes a great gift to husbands from wives and is also an excellent study for men’s groups wanting to develop the discipline of prayer.
Ann's Book Talks