One.
Holidays have a way of bringing out all kinds of stress and awkward situations, don't they?
This is an excellent article about how to handle some of those sticky, frustrating times in the most grace-filled possible ways. From special dietary needs among dinner guests to kids who blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time, there are some great solutions found here!
Two.
Some unique gift ideas in
this list! If you're looking for some gifts with a twist, check it out!
Three.
How many of these Christmas movies have you seen? I thought I would clean right up and I've only seen TWENTY of the fifty! Time to sit in front of the TV!
Four.
My goodness - we sure do have some friends in major trenches right now. Places of deep hurt and devastating life situations. Maybe you're among them. If so,
read these words from Barbara Rainey. Hope they comfort you!
Five.
If you're dreading the increase of
stuff as you enter the holidays, maybe it's time to do a pre-Christmas de-clutter?
Here's a great list of things to easily clean out of your house so you can breathe a bit more easily and have more space! (I must say I can't agree with the books part. That's just the writer in me. Normal people would be okay with it, I'm sure!)
Six.
Photo provided by author
This week I went a little bit of a different direction with my book of the week. (And I didn't have time to sit and savor nearly as much as I would have liked. You know: holidays, houseguests, hosting, and more!)
A few weeks ago, an author named Kathryn Collett emailed me and asked if she could send me a copy of her book called
Phoebe's Journey Part One: Of Pride and Passion. I wasn't familiar with Kathryn's writing, but I'm always willing to read someone new (to me) so I said yes! She sent me an electronic copy of the book, and this week, I read it.
Phoebe's Journey is based on a woman in the New Testament, but she's only mentioned briefly, so you may not even be familiar with her! (Kathryn said she's actually described with a total of fifty words.) She was a believer in the early church and carried Paul's letter to the Roman church on his behalf. Obviously, since Phoebe only gets fifty words in the Bible, very little is known about her. Therefore, Kathryn's work of fiction is purely speculation on her part of what Phoebe's life might have been like.
The book takes readers back to Phoebe's younger life and the trials she faces when her father dies very unexpectedly. Phoebe and her mother struggle with not only the deep grief that accompanies their loss, but also the logistics of what to do with his successful shipping company, since women of that day typically did not conduct business affairs. As you read, you begin to see some of the character traits within Phoebe that might explain why she was chosen to work so closely with the Apostle Paul.
Some people get very nervous when authors write biblical fiction. Some find it crossing a line to take the Word of God and make it fictional. But I understand why Kathryn wanted to do it. I did similar things in my Advent devotional, because as Kathryn says in her introduction, we have a tendency to forget that the people we read about in the Bible were
real people. They all had regular lives with successes and failures, hopes and heartaches, and all the same kinds of things we have now.
For that reason, I found the book interesting. It was interesting to think about Phoebe and Paul (in particular) in a real-person light. I hadn't considered what some of their day-in-day-out life might have been filled with, and this book gave me at least some options. (Whether or not they were true.) I like that about biblical fiction.
I also haven't done a ton of research on what first century life was like. The habits and customs of that day are foreign to me, so learning about them through the fun lens of fiction was interesting for me.
I will say this book has a
lot of characters, and most are purely fiction. Kathryn acknowledges this in the beginning and even provides a list of characters for your reference. If I'd been reading a physical book in my hand, this might have been more helpful to me, because I could have flipped back and forth. It was too much of a pain to scroll and then find my place again, so I just tried to wing it with keeping everyone straight and it didn't always go so well for me. The names, being first century names, were unfamiliar to me and I kept getting confused on that part.
If you like biblical fiction and are interested in reading what life
might have been like for one character we really know very little about in truth, this book would be a good pick for you. The stories of the shipping industry, gladiators, and the treatment of members of the early church are enlightening, if you don't know much about that part of history.
Kathryn plans two more books in this series, and the next one releases in the spring, so if you read the first book and love it, you'll have more chances to spend time with these characters!
* The author provided an electronic copy of this book to me at no charge. *
