Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Reading

The kids are gone this week and I have really enjoyed a little down time and even a bit of time to read. I picked up a book this week at the public library by a familiar autor, Francine Rivers, thinking it would be a nice read. A novel type book. I'm not sure if any of you have read her books buts she often takes characters from the Bible and uses things that are facts about the culture at that time period and makes a story out of them. Add dialouge that I know probably didn't happen, but the facts of the story are there. I just read "Unvelied" the story of Tamar. It was such a great book and challenging too. Here is a woman that was sold to the family of Judah that had some serious problems all its own. I.E. selling Joseph into slavery. Her first two husbands die and she has to trick Judah into giving her a son but pretending to be a prostitue. All because she was convinced the God of Jacob, Judah's father, had so much more to offer than Baal. There were several challenges to me personally in this book. First, to get into Genesis and read the story for myself. Second, how much am I willing to do just to be near God. That was the only way she knew how to be near a true God. We have the Holy Spirit always and so many times He is put on the shelf because of something we think is more important. Like sleep. So many times I'm tempted to sleep in because I can. James leaves for work and I really could just roll over and go back to sleep. My personal challenge to myself is to get out of bed and use that time before the kids get up to read and get into God's Word. Tamar put all of her efforts into pleasing God before she even knew Him. God definately drew her to Him. She is one of the women in the lineage of Jesus Christ. I encourage you readers to pick up these books, there are 5 in the series. I know the Immanuel Church library has them, and I found them at the public library. Just my thoughts :)
Love you all!

2 comments:

Jenny LaBo said...

I love F.Rivers!!! Have you read "The Sin Eater"?
VERY good

jan@theviewfromher said...

okay, I know I'm like a month behind commenting on this post, but I hope you still get notification. Since you were posting on Francine Rivers, I thought you might like to know they are currently making one of her novels, "The Last Sin Eater," into a full-length movie. I wrote about it at theviewfromher.com, if you're interested.