Monday, September 28, 2009

"Amish Peace" by Suzanne Woods Fisher
Available October 2009 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

The book, "Amish Peace" is organized around five central themes in Amish life, simplicity, time, community, forgiveness and the sovereignty of God. It tells real-life stories, including Amish proverbs and facts about the culture.

Fisher, whose grandfather was raised as an Anabaptist in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, faces her own heritage and the value of the simple life. The author offers the perspective of a simpler way to look at life in the midst of our overstressed lives.

When in the midst of our hectic lives, we cry for a simpler life with less stress. We fail to know how to reach for simplicity. The author offers a glimpse into the lives of Plain People who have been living simply for generations. Allowing us to confront these values and live apply them into our own lives. We begin to answer the question of how to take these truths back into our busy and often over-complicated lives. Lessons of living with what we have and finding it is enough and not striving for more then our needs, not allowing unnecessary wants to destroy our peace.

"Amish Peace" reveals peace as holding the hand of our children and seeing the wonder in them at their discovery of nature: a curled leaf, the color of a robin's egg. Allwing a task itself to be as important as the end product, and finding joy in the doing of the ordinary that sustains life. Joy in being in the midst of famly and an uncluttered life and does not takes us away from each other.

The Plain Peole make no distinction between the sacred and the ordinary, it is all important. The book show us these people up close and personal in good times, and in times of deep sorrow. Well worth the read.

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“Intimate Conversations” by Alicia Britt Chole
Chole book was selected as MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers)theme devotional for 2009.

Many good devotional to choose from if you browse Christian literature. This is one more for women. Great books you want to read over and over, and I wouldn't put this one in that category. It is great in the sense that it resonants with women in the midst of struggles of raising a young family.

Chloe, the author, is an middle-aged women who adopted young children, and is writing in the midst of daily demands. She offers young mothers a testimony of mature love of God and children. She touches on struggles women face, and gives you encouragement to deal with challenges, grief, and her words bring you close to God.

Her devotional is geared to those who journal, or those who would like to start journaling with suggestions of exercises at the end of each chapter. The book does not offer a great deal of depth, but better it gets you started in your own conversation with God. Guiding you to talk with him, and deepen a relationship in the midst of an everyday world of balancing a hectic life with young children at your feet.

Read with pleasure and a shared intimacy with the author as you see windows into her life, and open windows into your own. She addresses hidden years, and the joy in watching your own children in their everyday life and find them treasures of immeasurable value from God. He is leading, and she is listening.