Introverted. Self-Reliant. Opinionated. Determined. Strong-willed. Creative.<\/p>\n
With that said, naturally, I am a voracious reader. Diving into a world created by another imaginative writer brings joy to my heart. I love knowing that God blessed the author with a gift for words and and the ability to worship the ultimate Creator through their abilities.<\/p>\n
Fiction and philosophical works generally pique my interest before any others. However, recently, I have had an appetite for biblical fiction. From what I have seen, authors take an idea, incident or character and expand it by embellishing the original Biblical story. Out of the handful of biblical fiction I have read so far, \u201cRedeeming Love\u201d by Francine Rivers is at the top of my list.<\/p>\n
I have to be honest though \u2013 as I searched through Barnes and Noble for a worthy piece of work, I initially plucked \u201cRedeeming Love\u201d out of the heaping mass of pages based on its eye-catching cover. Yes, I did. I went against the age-old adage of \u201cDon\u2019t judge a book by its cover.\u201d<\/p>\n
All I have to say is that I got lucky this time!<\/p>\n
I had heard that \u201cRedeeming Love\u201d was a spin-off of \u00a0Hosea from the Old Testament. So before I cracked the cover of my beautifully designed book, I decided to do a short study on the storyline of the biblical book.<\/p>\n
Hosea, the prophet, was ordered by God to marry a prostitute \u2014 a woman who would sell her body for earthly things out of selfishness and disobedience. He was to love her unconditionally, redeeming her through his righteousness. The story is a parable of how God (Hosea) unconditionally loved Israel (Gomer, prostitute), and how Israel consistently and deliberately disobeyed God. Finally, the story illustrates God\u2019s attempts to redeem Israel through his steadfast love and discipline. What a beautiful picture already. While painted figuratively, it forms an image of God\u2019s redeeming love in our brains.<\/p>\n
The entire time I flipped the pages of Rivers\u2019 book (all of about 27 hours), a box of tissues lay in my lap. Tears were shed and my nose was blown. Her ability to weave a story, which had a preexisting plot, in a way that I could relate to without highfalutin jargon was captivating. I could not put it down. The idea of taking historical events and characters to fill out a plotline with detail wasn\u2019t a new concept to me, but I definitely thought openly embellishing Biblical characters was risky business. However, I truly did not feel any sort of awkward tension between the fictional book and the biblical account; if anything, I thought Rivers\u2019 adaptation assisted in my understanding of the book of Hosea. I remember thinking after finishing the book, \u201cNow, why isn\u2019t there a fictional book for every<\/em> biblical story? I would understand the Bible with such a new clarity!\u201d<\/p>\n That is what makes \u201cRedeeming Love\u201d <\/em>a gem of a story, though \u2013 the fact that biblical fiction isn\u2019t as easy to find as mainstream fiction .Francine Rivers is just brilliant. Please go buy the book. Now.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/redeeming-love-francine-rivers\/1100387990?ean=9781590525135<\/p>\n Now my introverted, self-reliant, opinionated, determined, strong-willed and creative self is on the hunt for a new biblical fiction.<\/p>\n Where can I place an order for a great book, mug of richly aromatic coffee and foggy, frigid outdoor conditions? Put me down for approximately 150 days worth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Introverted. Self-Reliant. Opinionated. Determined. Strong-willed. Creative. With that said, naturally, I am a voracious reader. Diving into a world created by another imaginative writer brings joy to my heart. I love knowing that God blessed the author with a gift for words and and the ability to worship the ultimate Creator through their abilities. Fiction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abigail-pless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.calbaptist.edu\/lancerdiaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}