I grew up with a piecemeal view of history, with some knowledge about Vikings and some about American pioneers and some about the major players in WWII, but without an overarching sense of history’s continuing narrative to pin those pieces into place.
I want our daughters to know that narrative, so they have a strong sense of where they fit in the story of our world and find comfort in the fact that our time is not an island around which the past and future flow but a part of a whole that is shaped by the past and is now shaping the future. That desire has largely informed our decision to educate our kids the way we do, and it influences our decision to bring home books like Stories of the Saints.
Stories of the Saints is a collection of short stories about figures in church history who lived and died for God’s glory. Joyce Denham does not glorify the saints themselves or dwell on what were probably gruesome deaths, but instead points their stories back toward the Lord they served despite opposition. She writes beautifully, presenting imaginative scenes that focus on the history of the saints’ lives rather than on miracles and legends, and Judy Stevens’s illustrations cloak each story in a visible, reverent joy. (I love them.)
Books like this help place our own time within its context and remind us that others came before us and withstood trials, persecution, and hardship, and God wrought something beautiful out of their obedience. I think it will be increasingly important to help our children understand this, for we do not want our children to be surprised by hardship when it comes (and it is coming, for us as much as for Christians all over the world); we do not want them to feel alone in it, either, as though something strange were happening to them (1 Pet. 4:12)
And so we hold up the lives of the saints for them to study and know, and hope that they take away this when they close the book: “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:13).
Christ’s glory will be revealed; he will return. And we long for them to recognize him when he does.
Stories of the Saints
Joyce Denham, Judy Stevens (2007)