3 comments about Mountain Rain: A Biography of James O. Fraser : Pioneer Missionary to China (An OMF book).

1. "Mountain Rain" is the amazing story of what the Lord can do in the life of one man who is willing to surrender everything and follow Him. In 1906, James O. Fraser was twenty years old, a student with a bright future in engineering and a brilliant pianist about to give his first London recital, when a booklet from a fellow-student challenged the plans he had made for his life. "If our Master returned today to find millions of people unevangelized, and looked, as of course he would look, to us for an explanation, I cannot imagine what explanation we should have to give. Of one thing I am certain--that most of the excuses we are accustomed to make with such good conscience_now_, we shall be wholly ashamed of_then_." Through this booklet and the Lord's leading, Fraser embarked on a course of faith that led him to the remote valley of the Salween River in the western province of Yunnan, China. Here he would spend years at work among the tribal Lisu people, bringing them the message of salvation in the name of Jesus Christ alone. The remarkable story of his work there and in other regions of China is no less striking than the record of God's working in his own heart, and the deep and loving lessons that the Lord taught him along the way. The Lord taught him the power of the prayer offered in faith as he saw and felt the answers to the prayers of Christians for himself and his work, and the vital necessity of resisting the devil and being filled with the Spirit. Much of the book is in Fraser's own words, taken from journals and letters to those praying back home. His absolute determination to follow the Lord_whatever the cost_, the force and clarity of his writing on living a life of faith, forceful and impassioned because it was what he himself was experiencing, his longing to be filled and led by the Holy Spirit, and the depth of his knowledge and his love for the things of God are amazing. It was not that J.O. Fraser was a great man in himself, but that he had surrendered himself to be used by God, and his abilites and accomplishments are not a memorial to the greatness of a man, but to the inexpressible greatness of the God he served.
   That same God is ready and willing to use each of us who realize that we have sinned against Him, and who place our only hope of forgiveness and salvation in His Son Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins and raised from the dead that we too might live with Him forever, to do great things if we will only surrrender and follow His leading.
   
   Review by Emily Potter



2. This book teaches so much about all aspects of missions work. Through letters, antedotes, and short snipets, the missionary's daughter brings his travels to life. The book teaches much about leadership and true surrender to Jesus.



3. This is an excellent book about a true man of God. The book tells of James Fraser missionary to the Lisu people. It emphasises the power of prayer both by those on the field and supporters at "home". By doing so it also offers a challenge to us all in our responsibilities to pray for those who have gone overseas for the Lord. The book deals honestly with Frasers struggles and doubts. Overall the picture is painted of a man willing to sacrifice everything for God and the spread of the gospel to the people he was so burdened for. This book should inspire us to rise above our mediocrity and be willing to give all for Him who gave all for us.

5 comments about Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence.

1. Continuing his desire to share what he has learned in his journey to greatness, Dr. Carson lays out in very plain terms his philosophy of life and how it has become so important to him. T-H-I-N-K-B-I-G could completely overhaul this country in profound ways. It's worth the time to dig into this and find out how it can affect your life.



2. I read this book years ago when I was still in school. I read it quite a few times since then. It inspired me to be more and do more. I admire Dr. Carson, and I thank him for sharing his story and road to success with me.



3. One of the greatest stories I have ever read. It is a true reflection of one who leads by example in what he says. The author's recognition of the importance of reading and a refusal to dwell on the negatives is a true understanding of what it takes to maximize one's potential. His recognition of God is also significant in the fulfillment of one's purpose. The author is in agreement with the author of Breaking Free: The Key to Empowerment, Happiness & Fulfillmentin his understanding of the power of the mind and positive thinking. This book is a must read for all persons from the moment they can read!



4. Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
   
   This is an awesome book. It is a must read for students struggling in school or struggling with life.



5. Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
   
   This is a MUST book for young people of all types and ages. The philosophy expressed herein is essential to their success. We have ALL our students read and absorb it. Mary Kessler, Beehive LDS Schooling, LLC. St. George, Utah

2 comments about The Lost Messiah: In Search of the Mystical Rabbi Sabbatai Sevi.

1. The Donme are one of the most remarkable groups in the Middle East. A Jewish sect that had converted to Islam but still retained much of it's previous faith and practice, carried out in secret, they dont intermarry with other Muslims while have becoming influential in various political positions in the Muslim world (Ismail Cem and the Ipekci family for example).
   
   This (and perhaps Bernard Lewis' book but I tend to avoid anything written by him) is perhaps the only decent study of the Donme sect and its founder Sabbatai Sevi. The term Donme is a Turkish word meaning 'turncoat' it seems from the book that they were never realy recognised as true Muslims (such examples are the fact that there were specific 'Donme Mosques' in Salonika, there were never for example 'Albanian' or 'Bosnian' Mosques even though they were a distinct group that had converted to Islam) But I have no idea why a previous reviewer chose to say that Sabbatai Sevi was forced to convert to Islam as the book itself makes no such claim.
   
   Their history is remarkable and Mr Freely goes into great detail discussing the life of the founder Sabbatai Sevi and his main student Nathan of Gaza. How the group developed and the controversy they caused in the major cities of the Ottoman world such as Izmir and Istanbul, the leaders arrest and his conversion to Islam. The book then goes into some detail to suggest where he may be buried and then the mass conversion of his followers in Salonika, how they became greatly involved particually in politics such as the Young Turk movement and even the Mevlevi order in Salonika. The book then goes on to detail their expulsion from Greece (along with all other Muslims) to Turkey and their settlement in Istanbul. How even they have a sepperate cemetary from other Muslims and their gravestones are distinct from other Turkish Muslim ones. The book also covers the history of the followers of Sabbatai Sevi in Europe who did not convert to Islam but Catholicism particually in Poland and Eastern Europe and some of the famous descendents of that group.
   
   It is even more interesting that at the same time this book came out a similar one in Turkish was published. It would seem that this is yet another small effort of Turkey comming to terms with its past.
   
   Well worth a read for anyone with an interest in either Islamic studies or Jewish history.



2. The crucial year is Anno Domini 1666 - Hegira 1067.
   In that year "Jews in various part of the Middle East and Europe were taken by a messianic frenzy... began selling their goods... preparing for their joint return to the Holy Land".
   A hectic exchange of letters span the Mediterranean, but also the New world is interested: in far away Brazil Portuguese Marranos talk about unfolding events, in Boston the sermons of reverend Cotton Mother wonder about the coming end of the Diaspora.
   A sense that something important is going to happen grips the entire world. For a few months time seems to stop.
   Oldenburg, the secretary of the British Royal Academy writes inquisitively to Spinoza, the ten lost tribes of Israel are reported to have put Mecca under siege, the anointed Messiah is coming to restore the Jewish nation to the promised land and will humble the infidel enemy.
   The world upside down.
   
   But the climax comes to a strange result: Sabbatai Sevi, the self appointed messiah, is forced by the Turkish authorities to abjure the Jewish faith and become a Muslim.
   In a sense this is the turning point but not the end of the story, like one could be easily led to think: a definite change none the less. Because most of his followers kept their faith remaining in the Jewish religion (the still existing Sabbatian Jews), some joined him in the apostasy (the still existing Muslim Domne community), some of them, still faithful to his message, joined the Catholic Church (Yes! The picturesque Frankist community).
   
   In the tumultuous unfolding of events we are guided by John Freely to the discovery of a vanished world: the many Jewish communities (Romaniotes, Sephardis, Askenazi, Karaites, Mustaribs,...) and the many cradles of the Diaspora (multinational Salonika, Alexandria, Cairo, Izmir, Istanbul, but also far away places like Amsterdam, Ferrara in Italy and the too many communities in Central Europe).
   In a sense, this book can be read as well as a travel book: to search the material, Freely followed physically the footsteps of the Sabbatians and his effort to unearth that world is in itself a real pleasure.
   Most of that world has gone, wiped by two world wars and by the mad specter of nationalism: the great Jewish communities of Greece are no more, gone the royal palace in Edirne, gone the Jewish quarter in Salonika, gone the Jewish quarters of Alexandria and Cairo, but sometimes a place has been able to defy time: Berat in Albania (truly gripping the description of the city), but also the valley of Nightingales in Istanbul.
   
   A vanished world: a multinational empire where Greeks and Jews, Turks, Armenian and Arabs coexisted. A world that was apparently much more culturally global than our own and with an area that spanned from the new world to far away cities on the edge of India. A world in which many languages coexisted: the official Turkish and the semiofficial Greek, the multinational Ladino, Arabic and Yiddish...(it is curious that Sevi was not fluent in Turkish, notwithstanding his being born and lived most of his life in Izmir).
   
   The story is framed and intersected by the relevant historic events of the time: the fall of Venetian Candia (Crete) to the Turks, the Chminielnicki massacres in Poland and Ukraine in 1648 (one of the first great scale pogroms), the birth of the first ghetto in Venice ("ghetto" is a Venetian word), the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), up to the failed siege of Vienna that marks the beginning of the decline of the Turkish Empire.
   
   I resolved to read this book after I first read about Sabbatai Sevi in the biography of Spinoza (Spinoza. A Life by Stephen Nadler). Many feature stimulated my interest, not the least the strange phenomenon of an unusual revivalist movement in the Jewish Religion, the fact that Freely is also author of respected travel books about Greece and Turkey, my passion for the Mediterranean heritage.
   
   Possibly this book is a perfect blend of history, geography and religion. I enjoyed every page of it and cannot but recommend it.
   I loved this book, and yet there are parts of it that are true cameos. Between the many, this anecdote of the late 50s is sure worth to be cited in full:
   "While in the station in Edirne, Abraham Galanté (one of the leading authorities in the history of Turkish Jewry) waited for a train to take him back to Istanbul, he noticed an old woman who was sweeping up in the waiting room, and singing while she worked. When she came closer he could hear that she was singing in Ladino, and then to his astonish¬ment he realized that the song was one that the Donme sang together to keep up their hopes in the long centuries of waiting for Sabbatai Sevi to return:
   Oh, my beloved's gone from me, God's chosen one, Sabbatai Sevi. Though fallen low and suffering smart, Yet he is closest to my heart. . .
   Galanté questioned the woman, and learned that she was in fact a Donme - one of the very few who still remained in Edirne. He asked why she was cleaning up in the waiting room, and she explained that she did this every day to make sure that it would be spotless when Sabbatai arrived. The Messiah had gone to his rest in Albania she explained, and when he returned he would surely come by train, picking up his faithful followers on the way to Istanbul from where they would set sail for Jerusalem. She was waiting to join him, she said, and then excused herself to get on with her work, continuing her interrupted song."
   (pag.241-242).
   Three hundred years had elapsed but still someone was keeping the faith.
   
   If you've been so patient and kind to follow me so far, there can be a chance you share some of my passions and could be interested in other books I had the opportunity to read in the past about similar arguments:
   Most specifically historical:
   - Steven Nadler - "Spinoza. A Life" , more a survey of the age and times in which Spinoza lived than a specific biography of the great philosopher (see also my review)
   - Dimitry Obolensky - "The Byzantine Commonwealth" an informed survey of the Byzantine legacy in Eastern Europe (see also my review)
   More travel-related:
   - Predrag Matvejevic - "Mediterranean. A Cultural Landscape". Nostalgia over the shores of the dark wine sea (see also my review).
   - Ernle Bradford - "Mediterranean. Portrait of a Sea". Possibly the best book I read on history, culture and traditions of the Mare Nostrum.
   - John Ash - "A Byzantine Journey". A poetic, fragile and luminous evocation of the Byzantine past.
   - Ohran Pamuk - "My Name is Red" a fabulous novel (a must read for sure) that uses Bellini's portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror to illustrate the clash between the artistic tradition of the West (art like mirror of an ideal reality) and the Eastern tradition (art like symbol and not representation) - (see also my review).
   
   You are truly welcome if you can suggest other readings or just share ideas and comments!
   Thanks for reading.

5 comments about All God's Dangers.

1. This is a timeless classic, and not just among memoirs, because the subject was a great American---a man who "had no get-back in him." Nate Shaw (real name Ned Cobb) had an amazing memory, and also an acute understanding of the post-Civil War rural South. The rhythm of the seasons, work routines, knowledge of livestock, nature and people too, combine for a profound view of a vanished America. (If you want to really know about mules, Ned's the man.) But Ned didn't just observe, he worked with the Alabama Sharecroppers' Union and defended powerless friends, serving 12 years in prison for his pains. This activism sets him apart from Kas Maine, a South African sharecropper to whom he's been compared in recent years. The earthy dialect wears out some readers, but otherwise "All God's Dangers" is compelling from start to end. Writers from Wendell Berry to Pete Daniel praise both man and book, while John Beecher's "In Egypt Land" is a moving poetic rendition of Ned's story. R. Kelley, "Hammer & Hoe" vividly recreates 1930s Alabama; on Kas Maine, see C. Van Onselen, "The Seed Is Mine." But Ned tells about his world far better than the others. In living, then narrating, a life of great struggle lived with great dignity, Ned Cobb performed a signal service---for all of us. We are in your debt!



2. In the middle of Rosengarten's book, truly a masterpiece of oral history memoir making, Nate Shaw says "all God's dangers ain't a white man." This would seem truly a remarkable thing for a black man who spent over a decade in an Alabama prison to say, but as a farmer growing cotton in Alabama during the first half of the twentieth century it quickly makes sense once he explains it. Shaw's story of his chaffing under his good for nothing father's roof; his growing prosperity as share cropper and than as a yeoman farmer; his hucksterism when dealing with violent and hostile whites attempting to cheat him; the defense of fellow small farmers that got him thrown in jail during the Great Depression; and his takes on the science of farming, race relations, the American class system and his own life experiences show Shaw to be a master story teller and Rosengarten and master interviewer. The combination of these two was absolute dynamite.



3. Nate Shaw was the father of my Uncle Oscar Turner's best friend. His real name was Nate Cobb and the family of the son, Lorraine, is prominent in the Middletown, Ohio ghetto.

   The author has done a masterful job of illustrating how greatness was thrust upon him. Nate never set out to become a hero, only to protect his own dignity and provide for his children.

   I do not believe that there is a better book for teaching about the lies of 20th century sharecroppers. Theirs is an overlooked legacy.




4. I am hoping that by entering a review here, I can see other reviews that I can use to write a book review on this title. Its due tomorrow! Yikes!



5. Ted Rosengarten is a masterful writer. All God's Dangers is an amazing undertaking that brings Nate Shaw's story to life. After a few pages, it's almost as if you can hear Nate talking. A must read for anyone interested in history and anyone who wants to learn how a book should be written. And Rosengarten's Tombee, if it can be found, is another must read.

2 comments about The Martyr: Luis de Carvajal, A Secret Jew in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Jewish Latin America).

1. The book is very interesting and gives a historical jewish perspective in New Spain during the late 1500's. I became interested in the book because my ancestor Juan Ramirez probably emigrated with Luis Carvajal (Conquistador) in 1580.



2. The archives of the inquisition have been preserved in Mexico, including detailed testimony recounting actual conversations. The book reads like a novel but it's history. Cohen must have been truly obsessed in order to do the research and write such a book. It's a compelling read.

No comments about The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich (2-Volume Set).

5 comments about Rick Warren and the Purpose That Drives Him: An Insider Looks at the Phenomenal Bestseller.

1. Richard Abanes's insider look at the creator of the bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life takes on critics and skeptics to prove the legitimacy of its derivation from the Bible. Abanes addresses everything from accusations of Warren teaching New Age beliefs to misrepresenting the gospel. Step by step, the reader receives behind-the-scenes clarification on Rick Warren and his book.
   
   Richard Abanes, through an in-depth interview and story of Rick Warren's humble pastoral beginnings, shows the path of a growing church and the man who followed God to bring it there. The information in these sections is very thorough and provides the reader with a good sense of who Warren is as a person.
   
   A look at Abanes' past work proves he is well equipped to the task of evaluating Rick Warren. He is recognized as an authority on cults and religions throughout the United States, and his experience is transparent through his writing. His words harbor refreshing proof instead of opinion and leave the reader with no questions unanswered on the subject. This aspect of the book is very effective in proving the author's point of how Rick Warren is a legitimate preacher of the Word of God.
   
   The second half of this book functions as a frequently asked question and answer list where Abanes goes through every angle of criticism in order to refute it. The majority of the accusations against Rick Warren are negated with actual quotes from his books, as well as his sermons. In this part of the book, Abanes repeats himself in different ways seemingly to drive the point home, despite that it was already done in the paragraph beforehand. This becomes too repetitive for the reader who is not looking for that much detail or assurance, but very useful for someone who would nitpick every word.
   
   I enjoyed Rick Warren and the Purpose That Drives Him and would recommend it for the numerous interesting facts about Warren and what he went through to start the church. I was dumbstruck after reading how his body is conditioned to react negatively with adrenaline, which makes preaching in front of large groups of people extremely difficult for him. The latter part of the book is tedious because of its reiteration of reasonings already established. I would easily recommend this book for anyone who has doubts of Rick Warren's views and methods to teach the Bible and its message. -- Jeremiah I. Larkin, Christian Book Previews.com



2. When I first heard about the criticisms of the Purpose Driven Life and thought I needed to examine them, I discovered a very hostile environment within the Christian community. I responded with anger, which was not necessarily productive. However, after being directed to Abanes book, I am now more at peace about it all. I realize that we are all struggling to find the truth. While some tear down others to find it, others become "doers" of the Word. I'm glad I figured out that Rick Warren and Saddleback are "Doers" of the Word.
   
   Excellent job condensing the concerns and answering them.



3. I was fascinated reading Abanes' book on Warren and his ministry and comparing it to Bob DeWaay's new book, "Redefining Christianity, Understanding the Purpose Driven Movement." What was most compelling is that the factual claims made by both Richard Abanes and Bob DeWaay are the same! Abanes claims that Warren has designed a church for unbelievers where they will feel at home. DeWaay is claiming the same thing. In these two books we finally have a contrast that gets to the core of the Rick Warren controversy.
   
   Abanes claims that the message of the gospel has not been altered and that Purpose Driven is a reformation of methods only. DeWaay, with extensive scholarly research supported by footnotes, claims that Rick Warren has redefined every major aspect of the message of Christianity and that he is leading a repudiation instead of a reformation. The contrast is compelling because the polemic and hyperbole have finally been set aside and the basic facts are identical.
   
   We can finally see the issues themselves and consider them without mudlinging or "guilt by association" arguments.
   
   I highly recommend that those with real questions buy both books, understand the arguments, and make up their own minds as to whether Purpose Driven is something to embrace or oppose.



4. I felt uncomfortable at times reading The Purpose Driven Life and The Purpose Driven Church, but after a few reads, I can concur with most of both. Thanks for the personal look inside Rick Warren's ministry. I hope it will encourage many "grace killers" to reach out and minister to our culture.



5. For the past couple of years, The Purpose Driven Life has been making its mark on the bestseller lists and in the lives of those who have read it. Churches across the world are engaging in forty day long campaigns using it as a guideline, and at least one miracle can be linked to it. This has brought a plethora of critics of both the book and the author. Reading this slim volume will give you insight to put to rest any qualms that might arise in your heart from hearing all the cons to the Purpose Driven Life. Mr. Warren's life and the purpose at its center are examined and revealed to be soundly grounded in Christian doctrine. If you have any doubts about Mr. Warren or his writing, then read this book, and you will be able to read the other books with complete freedom.
   
   Reviewed by Amanda Killgore, Freelance Reviewer.

1 comments about Scientists of Faith: 48 Biographies of Historic Scientists and Their Christian Faith.

1. This book is a good place to begin research of the topic of scientists of faith. The religious views of each scientist are summerized over several pages. The writing style is clear and concise. There are references given for more detailed information. Overall, it is an interesting read.

2 comments about The Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez.

1. Cesar Chavez has been likened to the American Gandhi, using the powerful tools of nonviolence, including fasting with prayer and mass mobilizations, to affect political change, labor rights and human rights for his people, our people, for Americans now again forgotten, rejected, despised, blockaded, dispossessed. We need him now. We need him again. Read this book. Be him now.
   
   Published by the excellent Catholic printing house Orbis Books, this biography was written by a professor of moral theology at Holy Rosary College in San Jose who briefly and intermittently volunteered for the UFW after the death of Cesar Chavez, whom he had seen once deliver a speech.
   
   I met Mr. Chavez a few times nearly twenty five years ago at Mass in the tiny chapel of the Maryknoll House in Manhattan, as he was visiting during conferences in New York. Mr. Chavez was ever a faithful and a profoundly practicing Catholic, inspired by our Faith to work for peace and justice and labor and human rights for the most poor and despised, just as Our Holy Father His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI recently exhorts us in Sacramentum Caritatis: el Sacramento de la Caridad: una Exhortacion Apostolica Postsinodal that the Eucharist in itself compels us to alter the unjust economic structures which entrap so many of us in desparate poverty.
   
   Ceasr Chavez therefore inspires and guides all Americans and all Catholics in the true realization of living our Faith integrally. Professor of Moral Theology Dalton here examines deeply the life of Mr. Chavez, exploring his moral vision and his true path in Faith.
   
   Briefly the professor sums up this intense and real moral vision thusly:
   
   "Cesar's moral vision centered on sacrificial service, solidarity through voluntary poverty, nonviolent confrontation, and faith in God and others. These virtues shaped the identity and character of the union community just as they shaped Cesar's own identity and character. These characteristics were from Cesar's perspective, non-negotiable (p. 152)."
   
   I fonud the references to the great Bishops Connelly and Curtis of Connecticut tantalizing yet welcome. Despite the revised Code of Canon Law's bias which might throw cold water on such faith necessities, they performed truly Catholic work in line with Pope Leo the Great's famous encyclical Rerum Novarum, a courageous labor which may be studied more fully and thus usefully at Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice. We need them and their truly Catholic hierarchical witness and orthopraxis and deeply moral vision and integral living of our Faith now more than ever.



2. Frederick John Dalton is to be congratulated for this beautifully written and spiritually inspiring study of the moral vision that underlay Cesar Chavez's activism. Following in the tradition of Jesus, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, and the Berrigan brothers, Chavez's orientation was biblical to the core. He preached and practiced nonviolent resistance, personal and group sacrifice, the transformative power of love and forgiveness, and individual prayer and meditation as essential tools in working for peace and justice. Unlike so many activists then and now, Chavez wasn't concerned with protesting and demonstrating just to say "No." More fundamentally, he was interested in working for social and economic conditions that would affirm people with a resounding "Yes!" Chavez's deep faith in God and the Gospel of justice and peace grounded that "Yes" and made it truly prophetic. As he himself said, "What keeps me going? Well, it's like a fire--a consuming, nagging everyday and every-moment demand of my soul to just do it. It's difficult to explain. I like to think it's the good Spirit asking me to do it. I hope so...If you really want something, you have to sacrifice. Because of my faith the concept of sacrifice is understood" (p. 162).

   This is a must-read for anyone who yearns to integrate a passion for social justice with a deep, mystical faith in God. Cesar showed us, as all genuine mystics do, that the two are not only incompatible but necessarily conjoined. Dalton's sensitive and well-written study has done Chavez proud.

5 comments about The Light That Never Dies: A Story of Hope in the Shadows of Grief.

1. I read this book after hearing the author speak on a radio program. This was 2 months after my father died of cancer, and 2 months before my sister also died of cancer. So it was timely. I ordered the book and devoured it--it was hard to put down. The author is just so real. It's not a "how-to" book, just encouraging words from someone who's been there. I have purchased at least 8 copies of the book, and it's what I give to people in my life as they experience the death of someone close to them.



2. The night I read the first chapter, I couldn't sleep. I lay haunted by the sadness of three little girls enduring the death of their mother.
   In The Light That Never Dies, William Hendricks guides his reader from the heart-wrenching sorrow of his 47-year-old wife Nancy's lost fight with cancer to his assurance that she is alive with Christ today. Although he professes to write not just for Christians, but "for anyone who knows grief, loss, pain, or suffering," (p. 21) his story is pervaded by the presence of a loving God. It is also pervaded by the presence of those little girls, Amy, Kristin, and Brittany, and their Daddy. How often I looked back at the photo of the family complete with its mother.
   The first of the book's two dominant images comes from Margaret Wise Brown's children's classic, The Runaway Bunny. Brown's mother bunny vows to pursue her little one every time he runs away. "The little bunny knows that he will always be the object of his mother's affection" (p. 26). This motif entwines the human theme around the theological treatise. God, the ultimate Mother Bunny, manifests the same loyal love. The author himself displays it, assuring eight-year-old Amy that, "Even though Mommy's gone, Daddy's here, and I'm not going anywhere" (p. 83).
   The Light That Never Dies, however, reaches beyond bunnies and their mothers, apt as that image may be. Neither is it only a memoir of God sustaining a family through intense pain, though He clearly does.
   Revealing his Dallas Seminary theological training and didactic writing experience, Hendricks uses a second image, from Ecclesiastes 7:2. "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting." But where was God in the Holocaust, Columbine, and 9-11? In the Challenger explosion and sniper deaths? In personal loss? Why is it better to go to the House of Mourning? From Ecclesiastes come biblical precepts for suffering. Life is brief. Death is not final. God comforts.
   A book that might have become unbearably tragic instead brings hope from one who grieves with understanding. Heartwarming moments intersperse with excruciating times to provide stamina to persevere. As serious lessons creep from the story, so a husband's love glimmers in the little mentions, such as Nancy's favorite Earl Grey tea. And in his visual depictions of their special times. "Our surroundings gradually took form as the light intensified, like a Polaroid slowly developing" (p. 29).
   With tenderness and candor, Hendricks evaluates his journey from the news of Nancy's diagnosis, through her sickness and death, to his own mourning and recovery. He admits his feelings. "Suffering is an a cappella solo" (p. 13). He declares theological truth. "Evil is real" (p. 39). He offers practical advice for those who console. "Loving care is best expressed in emotions and actions, not theology or philosophy" (p. 136). And he proclaims for our comfort that God is "utterly trustworthy" (p. 132). "His lovingkindness is everlasting" (p.131).
   Whether you ache now or seek to understand pain before your own turn comes, I commend to you The Light That Never Dies. The emotions are authentic. The lessons are thought provoking. And the conclusion of the book, an account of 15-year-old Brittany's expression of love, again threatened my sleep.



3. Anyone who will read this book will not just vividly walk with Bill through his "house of mourning," but their own. And, with your own tears and smiles and laughs and questions and a whole lot more, you will come out singing that we matter alot--to God!
   
   Translate the experience of this book into your thoughts and prayers of others you know who are in thier own "house of mourning," and you will be better equipped to "be there" for them.
   
   Read this book slowly! Process it! And share it!
   
   Dr. John R. Hellstern



4. Everyone should read this book. Those currently grieving will find comfort and hope. Those that have been there will find words that describe all they have gone through. Many will find helpful insights into thier experience. Those who have not yet grieved over a loved one, will be better prepared for that day.
   Bill Hendricks puts into words an experience that is difficult to describe. I felt like I was there with him. He does not pull any punches about the pain, doubts or hard questions. He has been there, but through it all there is hope. The Light never dies, and we can all take comfort in that thought.



5. Bill Hendricks has written a book about death and dying that is full of hope. Perhaps the last taboo in our culture, right up there with discussing our income, death is a subject we prefer to ignore for as long as possible until, as in Bill's case, it comes knocking on our door.
   
   With honesty, insight and practical encouragement Bill walks his readers along the shadowy pathways that lead to "The House of Mourning" and beyond.
   
   At once touching, comforting and unsentimental, The Light That Never Dies will encourage many who are grieving with a message of hope in the midst of sadness and loss.
   
   I highly recommend this book. Get it for a friend or loved one struggling with loss. Get it for yourself and be reminded that God can and will bring light out of darkness.