I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having It Out with God

By Erin Hicks Moon (Baker Publishing)

Storyteller and host of the popular Faith Adjacent podcast Erin Hicks Moon reveals her inner wrestling with faith and why deconstruction is a necessary component of the faith journey in I’ve Got Questions.

Moon breaks the deconstruction process into five segments, beginning with the origins of our faith and how worldly influences affect faith perception and concluding with the rebuilding process.

Written in a fun, conversational style, I’ve Got Questions offers readers a personal and general approach to questions about the faith. Growing up in a traditional, Southern Baptist home, Moon did not feel the need to question her faith until she was exposed to other religions and hypocrisy within her own denomination.

Moon learned to “sit Shiva,” the Jewish process of mourning a death. Learning to practice Shiva by lamenting the roots of her faith allowed her to examine where she had questions.

The writer describes experiences of feeling like an outcast in the church for questioning her faith, resulting in isolation.

A turning point came during a church service where she was told about a class helping reclaim communities for God while battling against worldliness. She began questioning the disparity between serving in love and fighting against the world. She wondered how she truly could love those she felt at war with.

Moon addresses this idea and questions Christians may have during their faith journey. She includes quotes, historical references, personal stories and testimonies to walk the reader through her deconstruction process and how it helped strengthen her faith in God.

In the chapter “What If the Wrestling Is the Point,” Moon addresses how Christians have disrupted the status quo throughout history by asking questions. She cites examples such as the Reformation to contextualize how questions in the life of faith have resulted in spiritual growth and new insights.

Moon offers a friendly hand, compelling readers to explore their faith, while acknowledging the roots that make faith unwavering.

This book is for anyone who needs to know it’s OK to ask questions, offering a safe space to lament a changing faith and make peace with the process. Moon encourages readers to think of active faith as one that recalibrates. Our spiritual inheritance involves wrestling with a God unafraid of our questions.

Faith Pratt, Baptist Standard student intern

East Texas Baptist University, Marshall

Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere 

By Savannah Guthrie

NBC News Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie offers honest glimpses into her life-long struggles and faith journey in Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere.

Although neither memoir nor autobiography, the lawyer-newscaster seamlessly weaves in personal stories, Scripture and spiritual discernment for the “faith-full, faith-curious and faith-less” and the “churched, unchurched and never-churched.”

Written as 31 conversational essays, the reader can experience them in order or randomly, one or two a day over coffee, a section at a time, or all at once.

The journalist shares her growing up days in a traditional be-at-church-when-the-doors-are-open Southern Baptist home, referring to God as the sixth member of the Clark family. As a child, she loved learning about Jesus but heard more guilt than grace, grew terrified by a preacher’s story illustrating that lack of humility led to humiliation and shyly shied from youth group pressure to witness.

As a college student and adult, Guthrie confesses she went through periods of fervent prayer, consistent Bible study and regular worship along with other times of not-so-much.

However, Ephesians 5:1-2 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message inspired a perspective shift and a statement that Guthrie returns to throughout the volume and is the title of her new children’s book, Mostly What God Does Is Love You. With that in her heart, the author breaks the work into six parts that she considers faith essentials: love, presence, praise, grace, hope and purpose.

 The essays incorporate Scripture, illustrations, quotes, Bible characters and remembrances, though the writer never “airs her dirty laundry.” For example, the love chapter “Like a Mother” honestly shares her journey as mom to Vale and Charley, and the praise section includes how the co-anchor prayed Psalm 121 when lying on her dressing room floor with a migraine her first day on Today. Every chapter ends with a call for 30 seconds of silence before God.

 Savannah Guthrie fills the pages with information, inspiration and insights along with fresh advice for feeling God’s love. She suggests imagining God in the air and on the breeze. She understands God uses what the world may view as failures as long-term blessings—like being fired from her first on-air broadcast job in only ten days.

After discussing a shattered Sandy Hook mom’s unshakeable faith with her, the journalist voices the reality that on this earth, there simply are no answers to the why of such devastating tragedies or to her own rich blessings.

 In the end, Guthrie says, God gives each of his children a purpose, sometimes more than one in a lifetime. The author explains that as a young girl Oprah knew the first time she spoke in church, hers was to inspire. Guthrie sees hers as sharing, which she illustrates through serving communion and using the platform afforded by her profession and position.

Mostly what Savannah Guthrie does in Mostly What God Does is to share how to seek and find the Heavenly Father’s love everywhere. Whether you listen to her read the audible book or savor a print copy, you’ll be glad you did, and maybe like me, you’ll do it more than once.

 Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco

Tricky Times: Patrick Wigglesworth’s Bizarre Bible Adventure

By Liz and Jack Hagler (Tyndale Kids, 2023)

Tricky Times not only describes those tween and early teen years, but also defines the Bible stories in Joshua through Job as seen through a 5th grader’s eyes in Book 2 of Patrick Wigglesworth’s Bizarre Bible Adventure. Once again, Liz and Jack Hagler have combined Liz’s sequential black and white art and Jack’s blend of fact and fiction to create an engaging, funny graphic novel about Patrick’s weird life and bizarre adventures when he’s transported into Scripture.

Patrick starts his second journal upside-down as he begins 5th grade in a redistricted school with few kids from his old campus. As Joshua drags him into his Bible trek, the tween reviews Genesis through Deuteronomy in single sentences like, “Exodus: I saw Moses blast Pharaoh” and “Leviticus: I got squished by God’s rules.”

After checking out Joshua’s worn-out sandals from 40 years of wandering and preparing for “Promised Land Move-in Day,” the two crash through Jericho. Later, in Judges 6 when Gideon puts out a fleece, Patrick decides to put out his own fleece to decide whether or not to run for student council president.

Interspersed among Bible adventures, the reader meets a real boy who struggles to fit into a new school, whines about having his mom teach him Sunday school and suffers a computer crash as he finishes his history report—no, it’s not saved. He also grumbles about his annoying little sister and her friends “helping” with his political campaign, and comes in third (last) in the student council race, meaning he’s stuck as secretary, treasurer and historian.

Patrick’s journal and the art make the Bible relatable and allow him to draw sometimes humorous life lessons. Patrick tells Joshua that Ruth “is the saddest book-hop ever” beginning with a funeral and moving from a land with no food to a land with food but no money. Later, though, he gets to burp Obed and watch as Samuel passes over his big brothers to anoint David.

With David as his guide, he compares his friend’s 5,149-plus science project fire ants that got loose to David’s encounter with Goliath and makes a list of “5 things I learned from David’s tough spot of being anointed king when there’s already a king!” He flies over 1 and 2 Chronicles, learns about temple-building and observes Babylon was no picnic.

Later, Patrick describes Esther’s “beauty school” and how she spoke truth to power—although when his parents tell the story, they leave out “some of the juicy details.” On his very worst awful day, the 5th grader explains it was nothing compared to Job’s, and at least his close friends make him feel better.

Liz and Jack Hagler’s Tricky Times from the Bizarre Bible Adventure series isn’t a Bible storybook, although it contains Bible stories. Instead, the graphic novel offers a friendly way to dig deeper into understanding Scripture and to apply biblical concepts to life’s tricky times. As Patrick Wigglesworth observes, “What a lot of work to get people to follow God.”

Reading Tricky Times isn’t a lot of work, but it can help girls and boys learn about following God.

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry

By Beth Allison Barr (Brazos Press)

Beth Allison Barr is a pastor’s wife with her own call to support her husband in his pastoral ministry. She loves being a pastor’s wife. She also is a Baylor University history professor specializing in medieval, women’s and church history. Her latest book—Becoming the Pastor’s Wife—marries the personal and professional to properly situate being a pastor’s wife within a woman’s call to ministry.

Barr describes how the role of pastor’s wife took shape over the last century by analyzing, along with her research assistants Katie Heatherly and Brooke LeFevre, 150 books for ministers’ wives published from 1923 to 2023. The authors of these books represent evangelical, mainline and Black denominations and lay out expectations for how a pastor’s wife will look and conduct herself.

During the period they studied, they determined the highest—and sometimes only—ministry role for a woman was to be a pastor’s wife, even if a woman sensed no such call herself. Barr differentiates between a woman’s identity and a woman’s activity. A woman might marry into ministry, but is she called to ministry?

Archaeological evidence suggests women led in ministry for centuries, with or without husbands. This changed with the Reformation and industrialization, as Barr explains, arguing the complementarian conception of a pastor’s wife is a product of those seismic cultural changes rather than Scripture. Even so, Barr points out the New Testament is not an egalitarian document. Yet, Scripture does not relegate women to secondary status.

Barr takes on Southern Baptist proponents of complementarianism directly, such as Dorothy Patterson, Albert Mohler, Jimmy Draper and Adrian Rogers. For example, she notes the silence on the role of pastor’s wife within Scripture and church history, despite modern claims by complementarians—particularly Mohler—to the contrary.

One of the more intriguing explorations is the role of the pastor’s wife in Black churches. Barr sees much for others to learn from the authority held by and the ministry activity of pastors’ wives in Black churches.

While extensive, Barr is fully aware her research on the role of pastor’s wife is not complete. She notes areas for further study, some of which she is conducting already.

Barr doesn’t disparage pastors’ wives or the role of pastor’s wife. Rather, she seeks to situate the role properly.

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is expected to release March 18, with a book launch event at Fabled Bookstore in Waco. RSVP here for a free ticket.

Eric Black, executive director/publisher/editor
Baptist Standard

The Lost Diary of Mary Magdalene

By Johnny Teague (Histria Books)

The foreman on an archaeological dig near the Sea of Galilee discovers a clay pot interesting enough to take back to his room and carefully open. What he finds inside leads him to weeks of translation. This is no Gnostic gospel. These are the brittle parchment pages of a diary, the notes and recollections of a woman profoundly changed by Jesus—Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene is depicted early in the story as a licentious and demon-possessed daughter of a tax collector. Her life before Jesus freed her of demons is difficult to read. Mercifully, her emancipation happens early in the story.

The largest portion of the story follows Mary’s life-changing encounter with Jesus. She reports witnessing firsthand and hearing secondhand about Jesus’ teaching and miracles and processes all of it with what she knows about Israel’s messianic tradition. This is where the story really comes alive.

Johnny Teague humanizes what for many has become little more than the religious text of the Gospels. He contextualizes the text of the Gospels in a way that makes it even more relatable to everyday human experience by describing how a contemporary of Jesus was experiencing his ministry throughout her own life.

As is the case with historical fiction, readers must remember this is a fictional account of actual history. Teague is careful to explain in an epilogue that what he has written is not Scripture. And there is a considerable amount of Scripture seamlessly woven into this fictional diary.

Teague also presents readers with theological considerations worthy of further study beyond the book. These arise as natural implications of various conversations and Mary’s thoughts. Readers do well to remember such theological points are Teague’s perspective and not necessarily gospel.

Teague tells the story with infectious joy, marvel and wonder. He imagines Mary navigating the implications of forgiveness and new life given to her by a person she comes to believe is the long-awaited Messiah—Jesus.

Eric Black, executive director/publisher/editor
Baptist Standard

The Message: Mankind’s Final Destiny

By Don English (Xulon Press)

If you seek to understand and teach the book of Revelation, Don English’s new The Message: Mankind’s Final Destiny could be a key resource for you. In fact, I wish I had this book in college and seminary when my study of Revelation began.

God’s message to us in Revelation—which English advises should be read in one sitting—touches on everything we know about ourselves: our gift of free will, our sin and the limited influence of Satan, our work subduing the earth, our business dealings, warfare, power struggles with other nations, famine and pestilence, death and final judgement.

We are shown the mess in our world as God sees it, and we see how the evil of man leads God to pour out wrath on the world. Yet, we also see God’s mercy.

There is much to glean from English, but standing out strongly is his use of Old Testament Scripture—such as prophecies in Daniel—rather than teaching from commentaries to explain difficult or veiled concepts in Revelation.

There are no timelines, catchy labels or curious theories here. There are no human constructs that force Christians into categories or opposing camps.

Calling God, “Alpha Omega Alpha”—the beginning, the end, and the “beginning again” with the new heaven and new earth—English leaves the reader thinking of all God has created that yet is unknown.

English also speaks to current events, such as corrupt business practices and politics that have caused the collapse of governments and led to immigration. Natural disasters have driven multitudes to new lands. He points out Jesus taught us to love our neighbor, even in times when we struggle to survive.

English seems to see crisis events as patterns that can exist for a long period of time. Only God knows when the end will come, not because of man’s deeds, but because of God’s choosing. He also believes the Bible tends to give us general outlines and directions for coping. We are to look for conditions in the world, rather than specific times and places.

English believes the church will be taken at some point during the tribulation, but not at the beginning. He believes persecution will go on for a significant length of time, but will involve some people, not all believers.

His book has great strength in its pictures of God’s glory, his throne, Jesus’s victory and Jesus’s prominence in all things. He warns to be ready for the coming of the Lord and for our own death, when our fate will be decided.

English believes as long as Christians come forward to spread the gospel, God allows time for the people of the world to come to him. He also recognizes symbolism, yet teaches with logic and less obscurity than most. He notes whenever God gives a truth in Revelation, he gives a picture.

English writes with sincere concern for the reader. His study of Revelation both could comfort and fire up your church. God is in control of all, Satan is defeated, and heaven is prepared for the church.

Ruth Cook
Carrollton, Texas

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

By Mark Vroegop (Crossway)

What better time than Advent to practice lament? Yes, Advent marks a time of hope, joy, peace and love, worshipping who God is, all he has done, and waiting expectantly for all he will do. But for many, this time can often magnify brokenness, bringing a deep sense of longing that rightly leads to lament.

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy holds a timeless offering, demonstrating “how you live between the poles of a hard life and trusting in God’s sovereignty” (p.36) and showing the real grace found in lament.

Author and pastor Mark Vroegop reveals a personal experience that ushered him into lament—the late-term loss of his daughter, Sylvia. He describes lament as the life raft that buoyed him amidst overwhelming grief. Further, he postures lament as the often-overlooked gift for all Christians. The book brings two contrasting concepts into surprising harmony to illustrate lament, finding deep mercy in dark clouds (Lamentations 2:1; 3:22).

Vroegop proves a trusty guide, gently leading the reader through steps he traveled firsthand, aptly named in his book sections: learning to lament, learning from lament, and living with lament. Noting one third of the psalms contain laments, he advocates for the routine incorporation of lament for individuals and the church. He asserts praise historically includes both celebration and lament.

Beyond historical applications, Vroegop brings present-day importance to the forefront, tying lament into belief. He points out that through lament, “Christians affirm that the world is broken, God is powerful, and he will be faithful” (p.26).

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy gives a memorable model to learn to lament, with key words: turn, complain, ask and trust. Vroegop shows the importance in moving through each step, with biblical examples of lament from Psalms. He warns against the propensity to get stuck on one step. With a teacher’s heart, he uses David as an example of this necessary movement, “His complaints are not cul-de-sacs of sorrow but bridges that lead him to God’s character” (p.59).

Vroegop illustrates how we can learn from lament, helping us remember God’s grand story. Using the book of Lamentations, he explains how the truths within help us profess hope, discover idols, and ultimately see God’s grace.

Finally, he gets practical on how to live with lament. He stresses lament as a gift for all, with individual, community and pastoral applications. He brings forth varied reasons to lament, from big tragedies to small nuisances, on behalf of oneself or others, and even if lament results from one’s own sin.

This book holds diverse application for individuals, home groups and the church. It provides end-of-chapter reflection questions and an appendix full of resources to adequately prepare and encourage the reader to begin the practice of lament. Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy provides a better understanding of lament, bringing a fresh perspective, even excitement, for something needed in the life of all Christians.

Amy Salzwedel, student

Dallas Theological Seminary

Your/Our Identity in Christ: Finding Who We Are in Who He Is

By David Sanchez (GC2 Press)

Your/Our Identity in Christ may look like a book, but it’s more like a map for youth and young adults—or any adult—either new to or exploring what it means to follow Jesus.

With a title like Your/Our Identity during a time when controversies over sexual, gender, ethnic and other identities are swirling, readers might expect the book to begin, end and focus on those issues. But they barely make an appearance. Instead, they place a distant second, third or even fourth to the primacy of Christ as the source of our identity.

David Sanchez, director of ethics and justice for the Texas Baptists’ Christian Life Commission, connects readily with youth and young adults. He understands their language, their worldviews and their struggles. He is compassionate and thoroughly grounded in Scripture. He’s also honest, acknowledging that identifying with Jesus isn’t always easy.

Sanchez is also gentle, lighthearted and doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. He includes testimonies from people hurt by divorce, abuse, bullying and sexual abuse, as well as from people struggling with depression, anxiety, body image, and questions about gender or sexual identity.

Despite his casual approach, Sanchez isn’t light on substance. He delves into the character of Christ, human nature, the Trinity, the shared life of the church and other weighty topics relevant to anchoring one’s identity in Christ.

The book is divided into nine chapters and designed to be read over 36 days in short readings. Kendall Lyons’ illustrations of the daily readings bring additional life and levity to the content.

Readers don’t need a lot of background knowledge about the Bible or Christian doctrine. Sanchez walks them through understanding how they are seen by God, what God desires for them and what God expects of them.

Your/Our Identity in Christ is expected to release mid-January 2025. A portion of book sales will support the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering.

Eric Black, executive director/publisher/editor
Baptist Standard

The Mary We Forgot

By Jennifer Powell McNutt (Brazos Press)

Mary Magdalene was among the last to leave the crucified Jesus on Golgotha and the first to bear witness to the resurrected Christ at the empty tomb. Even so, she has received a bad rap for nearly 2,000 years, author Jennifer Powell McNutt asserts.

The Gospels present Mary Magdalene both as one whom Jesus delivered from demonic oppression, and also as one who supported Jesus’ ministry financially and was numbered among his followers. However, that is not the image most Christians have of her.

In part, she has been the victim of the “Mary muddle”—so many women named Mary in the Gospels that readers have struggled to keep them straight. Even some Church Fathers and Popes mistakenly conflated Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany.

Mary Magdalene also has been confused with the “sinful woman” in Luke 7 who anointed the feet of Jesus and unfairly has been labeled as a prostitute, McNutt maintains. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ didn’t do her any favors in that regard. Webber and Scorsese perpetuated that misinterpretation of Mary as a reformed prostitute with a romantic interest in Jesus, but they were neither the first nor the last to do so.

McNutt, a professor of theology and Christian history at Wheaton College, insists Mary Magdalene rightly should be remembered and honored both as “the apostle to the apostles” and an “apostle among the apostles.” Christ himself commissioned Mary to “go and tell” others he was risen from the grave. Ancient church traditions not only attest to her witness to Jesus’ inner circle of disciples, but also to missionary activity of her own.

Christians long have wondered about the decision by the apostles in Acts 1 to select Matthias as a replacement for Judas Iscariot. Some believe they may have acted prematurely, because God already had in mind Saul of Tarsus as the apostle in waiting.

But in reading The Mary We Forgot, I found myself asking a different question. What if the apostles failed to recognize Christ himself already had named and commissioned Mary Magdalene as an apostle? How would views about women in ministry have been different if Peter, James, John and the others had recognized fully the apostleship of Mary Magdalene?

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard

The Pursuit of Safety: A Theology of Danger, Risk, and Security

By Jeremy Lundgren (IVP Academic)

Is this world safe? No. Is it supposed to be safe, and if so, who’s responsible for making sure it is? Should Christians seek safety? Whether they should, the human instinct is to pursue safety, which Jeremy Lundgren presents as an exacting taskmaster turned idol in the modern age.

In answering questions like those above, Lundgren’s The Pursuit of Safety is a wide-ranging exploration not just of theology, but also the history, philosophy, technology and ethics of safety and security. It is an academic treatment perhaps most appreciated by those of an analytical or philosophical bent.

Lundgren begins by defining a host of terms and concepts related to safety. He then offers an extended examination of human conceptions of danger in the premodern, early-modern and late-modern eras. Premodern people viewed danger in relation to a world filled with gods and spirits. The disenchanted world of the early-modern era understood danger as a natural feature of the material world. For the late-modern world, danger resides within us.

Religious ritual gave way to calculating probability, technological innovation and the fine-tuning of safety measures. In the absence of the gods, the pursuit of safety became an idol, Lundgren contends.

Interesting discussions frequently bog down in what seem to be tangential analyses many readers will find tedious. Dedicated readers will find these apparent asides eventually support the broader argument.

The topic of safety in relation to the Christian life provides Lundgren’s most interesting chapter—the next-to-last. Here, he frames the pursuit of safety as “a perpetual flight away from harm and toward nothing,” the opposite of a “pursuit of life” (p. 222). He describes this pursuit as an end in itself in conflict with obedience to Christ.

The Pursuit of Safety is less interested in ethical and conceptual prescriptions than in a thorough analysis of the whole field of safety and security.

Eric Black, executive director/publisher/editor
Baptist Standard

The Church in Dark Times

By Mike Cosper (Brazos Press)

The church publicly humiliated one of its own members, called his salvation into question, stripped him of his livelihood and compelled others in the church to cut ties with him—all because he spoke truth that made church authorities uncomfortable.

That’s what happened to Galileo in the early 1600s, when he dared teach the Earth was not the center of the universe.

It also happened much more recently to some members of Mars Hill Church when they dared question the authority of Pastor Mark Driscoll, who had become—in the eyes of many in the church—the center of their universe.

It also has happened countless other times in evangelical churches, big and small, when members offered dissenting views on varied topics, from hot-button social issues to matters of biblical interpretation. And it most certainly has happened in churches where leaders have been credibly accused of abusive behavior and the powers-that-be failed to see what should have been obvious.

In The Church in Dark Times, author Mike Cosper, host of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, explores factors that have made otherwise-moral people in churches complicit in enabling abuse and other moral failures of church leaders.

Cosper draws deeply from the insights of German-American historian and political theorist Hannah Arendt. In the aftermath of World War II, she sought to explain how ordinary, seemingly decent people supported the evil perpetrated by totalitarian systems. Little by little, increasingly corrupt and immoral practices became accepted as the norm when they were carried out to fulfill the vision cast by a charismatic figure.

The Church in Dark Times does not just identify the problem. In the second half of the book, Cosper offers helpful ideas and guiding principles to equip Christians to resist the darkness. Instead of surrendering to ironclad ideology and grandiose movements centered on celebrities, Cosper encourages Christians to embrace shared life together—praying, worshipping and bearing each other’s burdens.

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard

The Rhythm of Home: Five Intentional Practices for a Thriving Family Culture

By Chris and Jenni Graebe (NavPress)

The word “rhythm” has evolved from primarily associated with music, dance and poetry and with the recurring processes of science to a term reminiscent of its Latin origin likened to a flowing stream. In The Rhythm of Home, the authors apply the term to a framework of flowing but structured life practices that help people purposefully grow around core values. In the case of Chris and Jenni Graebe, their home furnishes the setting for the family of seven as they strive intentionally to build a culture where each member flourishes personally and spiritually and the family thrives as a whole.

That’s a tall order, but the faith leaders in local church ministry fill the pages of The Rhythm of Home: Five Intentional Practices for a Thriving Family Culture with wisdom, truth, grace, honesty and practical ideas gleaned from their own successes and failures. Each chapter begins with a Scripture or quote, and the Graebes stress starting with a shared vision, establishing a loving home and building a strong community of support.

Jenni and Chris then explore five key core rhythms. These include the rhythm of speaking life individually and collectively, the rhythm of serving each other and then serving outside the home, the rhythm of slowing down when life gets too fast, the rhythm of seeking adventure daily, and the rhythm of staying in awe of God’s world and his creation.

The parents share illustrations with the permission of their five children. For example, the rhythm of speaking life can be as simple as each family member offering a blessing for the birthday girl or boy at dinner on their special day. Or they may be as elaborate as a rite of passage event when each turns 13 that includes male or female relatives and mentors depending on the teen’s gender and perhaps a few close friends who speak blessings and sometimes give gifts that remind them of the individual’s wonderful qualities. The stories of the two who have celebrated that milestone, their son and oldest daughter, provide ideas that can be personalized and replicated.

On another occasion, when the family continually feels too rushed, too frustrated and too crabby on Sunday mornings, they meet together, discuss the need to slow down and develop a solution that works by pre-preparing on Saturday evenings and switching to a later worship service.

The Graebes call readers to examine, evaluate, and envision unique rhythms that continue to allow their family to thrive. Some rhythms may have become ruts that should be eliminated. Others may need to be revised as children grow older.  A few may have developed into cherished traditions that will endure.

Finally, the authors offer encouragement to develop a rhythm of home and no matter how hard, to “do it anyway.” The title closes with a beautiful blessing, made even more beautiful when spoken by Jenni Graebe on the audible book.

The Rhythm of Home delivers healthy hope and practical inspiration for the parenting journey. But for empty-nesters and those without children, the book subtly and not-so-subtly provides hints as to how to help and not hinder. Even if the reader or listener uses just some of the ideas, the rhythm of their home will become more loving, more joy-filled and quite simply more fun.

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco