Tag Archives: faith

Mostly What God Does

05 Tuesday Nov 2024

Posted by in Adult

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by Savannah Guthrie

One does not often think of learning spiritual lessons from celebrities, yet I learned a great deal from this one. Guthrie’s honesty about her life and her growing relationship with God spoke to my heart. This well-known news commentator encourages all of us to seek and find God’s love everywhere.

The book is divided into six parts: Love, Presence, Praise, Grace, Hope, and Purpose. She said she thought about calling the book “Six Easy Pieces” which was the title of a piano book she had as a child, but then she realized the six pieces were actually not-so-easy pieces. Each part takes time, thought and prayer on our part in addition to the spiritual part that God does in our lives.

Guthrie provides a glimpse into her personal life as she uses her own life experiences to illustrate each piece of what it take to have a good relationship with God. We do not develop this relationship on our own power. Every part of the list is MOSTLY what God does in us as we learn to live in a deeper relationship with Him. She is open and honest about her faults and her failures in her journey.

Each chapter has blank pages which can be used as a personal journal as you read. They are to as she says “remind us to sit with whatever thought have risen within us. Blank space. Quiet. Nothingness. This is where God has the greatest opportunity to do his thing.”

I highly recommend this book as a personal devotional tool or as a text for a small group study.

Teen Lives Around the World, Karen Wells,ed.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Social Issues, social studies, Young Adult

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This set takes a very in-depth look at the lives of teens in many countries around the world. I was initially impressed by the clear introduction to the set. There is not an emphasis of one continent over another. The set is in alphabetical order by country starting with Australia (Some countries I thought might have been included were Afghanistan and Argentina.)

The lives of the teens living in each country is the main focus, but each section starts with a Country Overview. The discussion then moves to Schooling and Education, Extracurricular Activities: Art, Music and Sport, Family and Social Life, Religious and Cultural Rites of Passage, Rights and Legal Status, and finally, Inequalities. In each section the statistics contain in-text bibliographic referencing. A thorough bibliographical list concludes each section. It is definitely an encyclopedia designed for grades 12 and up since the readability of the text is grade 12 on the Fry chart.

The biographic information at the end of vol.2 tells the reader that the editor and the contributors are all very well-educated; and, thus, one would tend to believe that the factual material being presented would be true and accurate. However, that is not the case in this instance. As I began to read the text, I ran across this sentence: “Egypt also shares borders with Turkey and Jordan.” (The co-contributor is the editor.) That statement I knew to be totally false. Next, I ran across what I believed to be either a poorly formed sentence or an outright lack of knowledge of geography on the part of the contributor – which, by the way was the editor, herself. I submitted that particular sentence for scrutiny to a group of English teachers on a Facebook page, who – much to my surprise – pointed out, not only needed changes in the syntax, but also a flagrant error in geography. This is that sentence: “France is a Western European country bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to the West and the South and the Alps and the Pyrenees to the East.” My teacher friends quickly pointed out that the Pyrenees were to the west of France, not to the east.

In the face of not one, but two, glaring errors in the text, I began to question whether or not to recommend the purchase of the set. At $204.00 it represents a big chunk of a school’s library budget. My main problem lies in the fact that if there are any factual errors in any non-fiction work, the entire piece becomes suspect.

I cannot, in good conscience recommend the purchase of this set. Although there most likely are many things that are true, it is not possible to trust all of them to the editor’s veracity. The reader should be receiving positive truth – not possible truth. Do not spend your limited resources on this set.

 

Her Own Two Feet by Meredith Davis and Rebekah Uwitonze

07 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by in Children's Books, Children's Non-fiction, Social Issues, Uncategorized

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The subtitle of this book really tells most of the story of the book.  It is an inspiring story of a brave little girl who at nine, with the help of her sponsors, came half way around the world by herself in order to have the chance to walk on her own two feet.  Rebekah had been born with twisted arms and legs and her parents were urged by others in her home in Rwanda to abandon her by the side of the road and let her die.  But her parents refused to do that.  Instead, they encouraged her to do everything that she possibly could do and then go beyond that.

  Doctors in Rwanda tried to straighten her legs once when she was about four, but it didn’t work.  Rebekah could not walk to school, so her younger sister taught her everything she was learning each evening when she came home.  Rebekah taught herself to walk, instead of crawling around on the ground.  However, she had to walk on the tops of her feet since her feet were twisted all the way to the back.  Nevertheless, she persisted, and although she never could get her arms to work correctly, she learned how to eat and brush her teeth.  One day she found out that a person from America had sponsored her, providing her family with a guarantee of food and a chance for her to go to school.  This is itself encouraged her to keep up working toward her goal of walking and going to school. 

She did not know that her sponsor was a doctor in America.  One day another family who had sponsored children from her village came to visit them.  Mr. Clay Davis saw her need and realized that he knew her sponsor and that her sponsor, Dr. Rice, might be able to find another doctor who could help Rebekah walk.  Thus began the saga of Rebekah’s struggle to be able to walk.  Her father and mother knew that she had lived for a reason, and so they were able to let their little girl go to a strange land with people they did not know to find the help they could not give. 

The author of the book is Mrs. Clay Davis. Meredith and Clay Davis not only helped Rebekah come to the U.S. They provided a home for her and treated her as their own daughter through the years that she had to undergo treatments and surgeries. She tells Rebekah’s story from her firsthand knowledge and uses Rebekah’s words to explain all of Rebekah’s emotional turmoil.

I think this book deserves a place in every library.  It is a testimony to the power of faith and perseverance.  While the people involved in the story are obviously Christian, the story is not overtly about their faith.  It shines through, though, because faith is like that.  When it exists, people notice, even if editors may have pruned out overt religious references. Buy this for your upper elementary and middle school children – even if it is only for the cultural references which abound in the book.