Sep
30
2010
Two Books I’d Highly Recommend
If you’re going to the DG conference this weekend, here’s a new book you may want to look for: Wrestling with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disablity and the Lessons of Grace . (If you’re not going, it’s already available from Amazon.)
You can download and read the first chapter for free. Quite simply, it’s beautiful book—a true parable to illustrate that life is hard but God is good.
Here’s the blurb I wrote:
I didn’t want to read this book. I knew these tear-stained but hope-filled pages would jostle me out of my comfort zone and shake me up. C.S. Lewis wrote that he paradoxically loved The Lord of the Rings because it “broke his heart”—and Greg Lucas’ writing does the same for me. And it’s for that reason that I heartily commend this book—especially for dads. This is just the book many of us need to taste afresh the goodness of God and the grace of the gospel even as we long for the day when this broken world will be made right.
And here’s one from Joni Eareckson Tada:
Witty . . . stunning . . . striking . . . humorous and heartfelt. In our culture which is so quick to devalue life, Wrestling with an Angel provides a fresh, honest look at one father’s struggle to embrace God in the midst of his son’s disability. Can sheer laughter and weeping gracefully coexist in a world of so much affliction? Greg knows all about it. And inside these pages he passes on his lessons of grace to us. I highly recommend this wonderfully personal book!
The other book I suggest you look for at the DG conference, if you’re going, is also related to faith, grace, and disability. It’s Krista Horning’s Just the Way I Am: God’s God Design in Disability, published by Desiring God. (If you’re not going to the conference, you can order it through DG.)
Here is a description:
Through photographs, Bible passages, and her own story, Krista Horning’s book tells of a wise and sovereign God who turns all things for good, including disability.
Born with Apert syndrome that has required more than 60 surgeries and countless hours of therapy, Krista and her family understand the severe pain and suffering associated with disability. Yet they also experience God’s grace and are able to live with hope in God because they are anchored in God’s word.
DG development director John Knight writes:
As the dad of a boy with multiple disabilities, I have read dozens of books on disability. None have approached what Krista Horning has created. No other book on disability as clearly portrays God as he is: Sovereign, good, and caring about all the children he has created for his glory.
And John Piper begins the following video in this way:
I’m often asked how I respond as a Christian and as a pastor to calamities in the world . . . and I try to give my answers from the Bible. Often these questions become very personal because a child is born who isn’t as whole as the other children, and the parents don’t even know how to talk about it. It’s like a calamity in their hearts at first, and yet they love this child. I think the answer I’m going to give from now on is just to take this book, Just the Way I Am, and just give it to people.