Tag: tales that tell the truth (page 1 of 3)

June 3, 2022 / 0 Comments

The Awesome Super Fantastic Forever Party

One night at sleepover, a friend asked, “What do you think heaven will be like?”

A second friend chimed in wistfully, her voice sleepy and half-muffled by her pillow: “I think it will be like the happiest moment of your life, but it’ll last, like, forever.”

But, I wondered, what would be the happiest moment? And who gets to decide which moment I’d relive? What if that got boring—could I change moments later if I wanted to? (Yeah. I was that kid.)

The vision she volunteered, out of the sweetness of her heart, didn’t satisfy me: it was like being told I’d get to eat ice cream, which I adore, forever—which actually sounds pretty awful.

So, really. What will heaven be like? Joni Eareckson Tada’s description of it (drawn from Scripture, of course) is far more compelling: in The Awesome Super Fantastic Party, she shows how the snippet we see in Scripture of the new heavens and the new earth sounds varied, exciting, and wonderful. Unlike a loop of one feeling, this party will be tangible, a real place full of delights we can’t yet imagine—endlessly surprising and perfectly satisfying.

Because at the heart of it is a host who knows us perfectly, who draws us forward toward him. The future with him is full of wonders, and Tada and Catalina Echeverri capture this pull in a way that will draw young readers (and parents, too) into the story of Christ’s restoration. They remind us that this party won’t be abstractly warm and fuzzy but concrete, solid, and real. And everyone is invited!

The Awesome Super Fantastic Forever Party: A True Story about Heaven, Jesus, and the Best Invitation of All
Joni Eareckson Tada; Catalina Echeverri (2022)

Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review this book or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.

The Big, Wide Welcome, by Trillia Newbell | Little Book, Big Story

March 11, 2022 / 0 Comments

The Big Wide Welcome | Trillia Newbell

If you’ve ever spent time on a playground, you know “Can I play, too?” is a loaded question. Some days, it’s met with warmth and welcome—and other days with, “Nope! There’s no room in our game.” My daughter came home from school a few weeks ago, feeling the sting of a game that’s “only for three people” when she wanted to make a fourth. What could I tell her? That her friends will outgrow it and all this will get better on its own? Or could she take comfort in the fact that she’s never ever done this to a friend (or a sister)?

No, of course not. She knows I know she can’t. Just as I can’t pretend I’m not guilty of picking and choosing who I greet at church, or even which clerk’s line I join at checkout. Favoritism doesn’t disappear when we graduate second grade; adults aren’t immune to practicing it. We continue to be drawn to people who are like us and who we think will make friendship or social interactions smooth and easy.

And so I’m grateful that, in this newest volume of Tales That Tell the Truth, Trillia Newbell takes a look at favoritism. What is it? What does Scripture have to say about it? Through the story James tells in James 2, she studies what it looked like then, in the church James was writing to, and today—in our own churches, on the playground, and in the classroom. And she shows us, best of all, that Jesus is a king who welcomes us in—a king who doesn’t play favorites. To the question, “Can I come in?” he responds with a glorious yes.

This post is part of my “Hooray! We’re launching a book!” blog series, celebrating the upcoming release of Wild Things & Castles in the Sky—a book I both contributed to and, alongside Leslie & Carey Bustard, helped edit. Today’s post features an author whose books are warmly recommended in Wild Things.

The Big Wide Welcome: A True Story About Jesus, James, and a Church That Learned to Love All Sorts of People
Trillia Newbell; Catalina Echeverri (2021)

Disclosure: I did receive a copy of this book for review, but I was not obligated to review it or compensated for my review in any way. I share this book with you because I love it, not because I was paid to do so.

October 22, 2021 / 0 Comments

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer

Teaching kids to pray can be tricky. When we talk to other people, we take in all kinds of cues, from their posture to their facial expression to what they do with their hands. They interact with us as we speak, even if they respond only with a distracted “Mmm-hmm.” But the act of prayer itself requires some degree of faith that the person you’re talking to—that you cannot see or hear (at least not in the way we’re used to)—is listening and will respond. Though they are experts at imagining the unseen, I know my daughters find this difficult sometimes; sometimes I do, too. Recently, my seven-year-old lamented, “I wish God had a body so we could see him.”

Ah, I told her. But he does! And one day we’ll see it— “No,” she said. “I mean, right now.”

And so I appreciate Laura Wifler’s book Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer and the way she translates the subject from prayer from an abstract concept to a concrete one. She gives young readers (and their parents) language to discuss this central part of the Christian life, and she does so without diluting it. She trusts that her readers can understand this idea, no matter how big it is, and she offers lots of specific examples that help children (and parents) visualize the role of prayer in the Christian life.

Catalina Echeverri’s illustrations use examples from church history and modern kid life to remind readers that prayer is for all of us, all the time—no matter how long ago we lived or how tall we are. And that whatever the size of our requests, God is eager to hear them and to hear from us. We may not be able to sit across from God and watch him respond as we pray, but Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer reminds us that he is listening. And that he will respond.

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer: A True Story of How You Can Talk With God
Laura Wifler; Catalina Echeverri (2021)

March 12, 2021 / 0 Comments

The God Contest

This week, our middle two daughters competed in their first spelling bee: a circumscribed affair, thanks to Covid, of course. But leading up to the Bee, our dinner hour turned into Spelling Bee Practice, with Mitch and I taking turns tossing the girls words to spell while we ate our meal (and occasionally tried to stump each other).

Why it’s so funny to misspell words, I can’t say, but it is. By the end of each of these dinners, at least one of us laughed so hard we cried and the rest of us had succumbed to various stages of helpless giggles. When I asked our first grader to spell “sting,” she stood up beside her chair and said, cheerfully, “Sting! B-E-E, sting!”

Or when Mitch playfully asked Josie (almost five) to spell her name? “J-O-something-something-E!”

But, hilarity aside, this was their first time competing, and excited as they were I know they were nervous, too. What if they lost? What if they won, and had to go on to face the next round of the competition? Standing up in front of your own class is daunting enough. What if they got up there and then forgot the “a” in “each”?

Carl Laferton’s new book, The God Contest, explores a different contest: that between Elijah and the priests of Baal (or, really, between God and Baal). This contest asked the question, “Who is the true God?” In the delightful tradition of the rest of the Tales That Tell the Truth series, The God Contest shares a favorite biblical story, but rather than treat that story as a complete entity, separate from the rest of Scripture, this book shows how the story of Elijah and the prophets points toward Jesus. The Israelites weren’t the only ones to wonder who was the true God, after all, and God settled the question once and for all not in a blaze of fire, but in a blaze of life at Jesus’s resurrection.

Alas, my daughters did not win their spelling bees, though it sounds like they each lasted a while and they sure worked hard. But God’s contest is settled: he is the victor. Yet rather than keep the prize for himself, he has given it—lavishly, abundantly—to those who trust in him. May this book point those young readers to the One who loves them so.

The God Contest: The True Story of Elijah, Jesus, and the Greatest Victory
Carl Laferton; Catalina Echeverri (2021)

The Prisoners, the Earthquake, and the Midnight Song (Bob Hartman) | Little Book, Big Story

August 28, 2020 / 0 Comments

The Prisoners, the Earthquake, & the Midnight Song

The other night as we finished reading about Ananias and Sapphira in For Such a Time as This, one of our daughters sighed happily. “I love when they tell stories I’ve never heard before,” she said.

And I know what she means. The Bible is full of so many stories—some of them whole worlds tucked into two or three verses—that I often come across passages and feel certain I’ve never read them before. “How does that happen?” my husband wondered the other day as he read the story of King Joash for what felt like the first time. “It’s like I’ve never read this story at all.”

Maybe we’re just indifferent readers, or maybe it’s a curious work of the Spirit, to mute certain stories for us until just the right time, and then bring them blazing forth in full choral glory. Scripture being what it is, with the properties it has, I think it’s the last one.

And so, I have a certain fondness for children’s books that veer off the beaten Noah/Daniel/David path and tell stories like this one, the story of Paul and Silas in prison. This story is striking and powerful, but because Scripture is filled with striking and powerful stories, it is sometimes easy to overlook this one, short as it is.

Bob Hartman draws readers into it through sound—the sound of singing, of an earthquake, of the jailer drawing his sword—which makes this book fun to read aloud but also invites young readers into the scene. Hartman doesn’t just tell the story but creates an experience around it, vivid and animate and accessible, and filled with memorable characters.

Like all the Tales That Tell the Truth books, this one is illustrated by Catalina Echeverri, who continues to be one of my favorite illustrators. The way she captures the energy and expression of the figures, the way she uses symbols to show complex things (like the sounds of singing, or an earthquake, or a soldier drawing his sword) makes even a Philippian jail hospitable for young readers.

These books continue to be among my favorite picture books for our family, and, as always, I’m eager to see which story they plan to tell next.

The Prisoners, The Earthquake, and the Midnight Song: A True Story About How God Uses People to Save People
Bob Hartman; Catalina Echeverri (2020)

Tag: tales that tell the truth (page 1 of 3)

The Awesome Super Fantastic Forever Party

The Big Wide Welcome | Trillia Newbell

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer

The God Contest

The Prisoners, the Earthquake, & the Midnight Song

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