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In their memoir, two American Mennonite women share stories of how they connected with students at a medical college in Sichuan, China, in the mid-1980s. Their host city, Luzhou, had been designated a ""closed city,"" which meant that foreigners could not visit it without special permission. Fran and Mary Ann were initially escorted whenever they left the campus. Even though they eventually were able to roam the city, their interactions with Chinese people were always scrutinized. Still, by hosting English conversation parties, taking taiji lessons, interacting with students in the classroom, meeting people on walks, and going on outings, the teachers made meaningful connections. Educational, cross-cultural exchanges such as the one Fran and Mary Ann participated in suggest a path forward for easing tensions between the United States and China today.

Imagine living in a time and place where lawlessness and violence flood the streets like a raging river. It's a time of rebellion, uncertainty, and chaos. This story is about a man raised in that world, in 1960s China. As a child living in an atheist country immersed in turmoil, he witnesses atrocities and suffering most of us could never imagine. Hoping to get away from the horrors, the man flees to America with limited financial resources and minimal English skills to be educated as a psychologist. Though he physically escapes the clutches of the country where he was raised, the traumas of his childhood remain with him as a dark cloud of depression and despair. Crossroads provides a glimpse into a time in China's history most of us never knew. This man, a survivor of that tumultuous period, spends thirty years of his life seeking peace and understanding. His travels take him across the world as he explores dozens of faiths. When traditional religion fails him, he seeks hope through shamans, mystics, and the supernatural. Crossroads is not as much about one man's struggles as it is a testament to God's love and commitment to remain with each of us throughout the storms of our lives.

Making Sense of It All invites us to experience a good God who actively woos us to himself, even (or especially) through our heartaches and setbacks. With a pastor's heart and fifty years of pastoral ministry, Richard Hipps weaves together biblical truths, storytelling, and the wisdom of fellow strugglers to draw us closer to God's heart. His reflections will have you affirming with him that God is trustworthy--that a good God is telling a good story that will have a good ending.

When a chronic illness shatters your future, how do you pick up the pieces? Three health conditions upended Shannon Cramer's life in her early twenties. Two years later, unanswered prayers for healing broke her heart. One truth she knew for sure . . . if she was going to face a lifetime of suffering, she needed to keep believing in God's love for her. Could Jesus restore her confidence in his goodness and teach her to survive this ""new normal""? Twelve years into disability, Jesus has done so much more . . . This is a book for warriors. It is a battle plan for Christians fighting chronic illnesses--written from the heart of a fellow soldier. There is hope in the midst of suffering. When Shannon didn't know how to pick up the pieces of her shattered dreams to live with disability, Jesus became her way maker. One step at a time, he led her out of grief and helped her rediscover his light. Are you ready to reclaim your joy and rebuild your life? May God's comfort empower you to move forward.

"Amen, Lord. So be it!"Dave waited on God and heard him speak. And now he wishes he hadn't. The team is finally unified, ready to declare Jesus. But will they get the chance?When the riots begin, and Jed calls for a lockdown . . . When the mosques shout in anger, and an embassy burns . . . When his daughter's dreams reveal the spiritual battle . . . Dave must cling to what he knows and pray: pray for his students; for his friend who's in prison; for his daughter who's going blind; for the demonic to leave his home.Pray. Pray. Pray. And lie to his teammates. Dave can't go back. There's no un-seeing Jesus.

Salt City Prayers is a collection of Sunday morning prayers offered between 1985 and 1995 at Erwin United Methodist Church in Syracuse, New York. The prayers include themes such as comfort, deliverance, faith, grace, growth, meaning, presence, and restoration.

Who is the beast in Revelation? What does the number 666 mean? Who are the four horsemen of the apocalypse? Who is the author of Revelation? When was it created? Where will be the battle of the judgment day? And when? This book contains the answers to these questions. Events and visions are connected in a clear and logical explanation that corresponds with known historical events. This book is a rational and reasoned interpretation based on the analysis of the text within the book of Revelation itself and its comparison with other religious systems, written with the aim of offering essential answers.

The Making retells the universe through science and story, tracing the arc of the cosmos from its origin to the present. The poem recounts the early transformations of the universe, the emergence and development of life on Earth, and the broad span of human history, pairing each new phase with a story--stories drawn from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as from North American Indigenous traditions, Greek myth, and international creation tales and folktales. Coaxing science and history into evocative language while braiding them with tales, the poem sets a human perspective on the pageant of the cosmos and provides an unprecedented synthesis of evolutionary history with literary and religious imagination. The Making is a lyrical and pluralistic creation story of epic scope--a story that illuminates our time of planetary crisis and imagines ways we might press forward.

This book offers a critical understanding of the interface between holiness and intercession. The author reflectively narrates some of the selected biblical personalities and how holy living was exemplified in their interceding for others. Critically, the book argues that holiness in its intrinsic nature is about intercession for others. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, holiness is all about intercession, as has been ably demonstrated in this book starting with Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon and going all the way to Jesus Christ, who sits on the right hand of God interceding for us.

A mother's love should welcome every child entering this world. For Andrea Skeeter, shame instead of joy greeted her at birth. Skeeter's profound and harrowing story, while unfamiliar to persons who may have experienced the opposite, will captivate readers nonetheless as they empathize with her struggles and rejoice in her deliverance from the crushing familial lies, deceit, and treachery that sought to destroy her infancy, childhood, and adolescence. For readers who recognize their own harsh and tragic beginnings as all too similar to Skeeter's, hope will be born anew from what can be described as nothing less than the mysterious and miraculous light of redemption that visited Andrea in the midnight of her deepest and most precarious suffering.

This is a book for people who take their faith seriously, for those who are willing to wrestle with difficult questions, for any who believe the church can and should do better. Whether a church leader or a church dropout, this book invites the reader to join a conversation surrounding some important and overlooked issues that demand attention. Read alone or with a group of friends. This book is designed to stimulate meaningful dialogue among people who seek Jesus and care about the future of his church. The author does not expect every reader to agree with him or like everything in these pages. The point is to consider an idea or two and discuss with others. To God be the glory!

A Little World Made Cunningly brings together the author's best poems written over the past ten years in free-form verse and traditional forms, including the sonnet. Many of the poems rely on classroom experiences garnered from a teaching career of fifty-seven years. Family memories account for other poems, and the author's reactions to artistic creations, especially paintings and ceramics, inspired many of the pieces. An undercurrent of religious sensibility is rarely far from the poems, but creed and doctrine never comprise subject matter. This is a collection for multiple readers, an audience not far from ordinary experience.

Nathan Feldman, a fortyish Jewish professor of philosophy, returns to his condo complex after a Saturday morning walk only to find that his name is no longer on his mailbox. The key to his condo isn't in his pocket, and a resident across the hall, a good friend, refuses to buzz him in because she claims not to know him. As it turns out, no one recognizes him. He cannot find his wallet or cell phone. He suddenly has no way to prove who he is. He walks to his university and finds a different name on what he thought was his office door. Although he can provide detailed information about their lives to individuals whom he thought were friends and acquaintances, they treat him as a complete stranger. The life he remembers, including his name, seems to be nothing more than fiction. He suddenly finds himself homeless and penniless. Is he suffering from a strange form of amnesia characterized by false memories? His nightmare is only beginning. What he ultimately discovers about his true identity will completely unnerve him.

Throughout life, everyone has opportunities to experience some form and depth of love and romance, and most people have experienced, at one time or another, a broken heart. Love, Romance, and the Broken Heart is intended to be a deep expression of feelings that emanate from the heart of every human being and is also intended to illustrate the fragility of love in its human form. Love, Romance, and the Broken Heart is an outpouring of the soul, a probing of the mind, and an exploration of human expression. The poems in this book were the culmination of the author's observations of the deep emotional crevasses folks traverse when going through a divorce, from the moment love begins through the broken hearts which often bring an end to that relationship. Many poems in this book explore the vast array of deep thoughts and introspection that accompany that experience.

Each epoch of history brings stories of pain, triumph, oppression, freedom, purpose, suffering, grief, and joy. Silent Suffering explores the depths of the human experience through an exploration of the present moment, a time in which postmodern, progressive ideas reign as the societal benchmark for goodness, justice, beauty, and--ironically--truth. This poetic critique of progressive values invites the reader to doubt progressive dogma by critiquing the foundations of the progressive approach to morality and justice. The combination of social and cultural commentary pairs with traditional elements of classical poetry to immerse readers and listeners in the experience of modern nonconformists who silently suffer in the shadows of culture's ever evolving progressive doctrinal creeds. Throughout this critique, readers and listeners are called to ponder the mystery of the human experience, the call to faith in a godless era, and the eternal need for hope amidst the senseless suffering humanity inflicts upon itself.

Have we forgotten how to pray? Have we forgotten the purpose of prayer? There is a huge need to rediscover prayer--to rediscover the genius of the greatest template ever presented to mankind: the Lord's Prayer. Why? Because Jesus is the ultimate teacher, who brings us back to the basics and coaches us in praying the Lord's will--not ours. This book will encourage the reader to confidently pray God's will, not theirs. Meditating on the Lord's Prayer will lead the reader from a frustrating exercise in wish fulfillment to faith in the Lord's sovereignty that God does what is best. Prayer as a means to instant gratification or a pleading for a cause will yield to prayer as an expression of partnership with the Lord, providing a calm sense of spiritual security. Those who pray will be secure in the knowledge that the Lord's will is being done. James Cantelon's reaffirming of the power of the Lord's Prayer is informed by more than fifty years of Christian ministry, researching the scriptures, and ministering to the needy and spiritually insecure. His perspective is informed by four decades of praying with various and foreign cultures (Israel, many African nations, and India).

Rich, complex, exciting, confusing, life, death, and beyond--all words to capture a bit of truth about this very rich, complex world inhabited by all kinds of individual particles emerging into flora, fauna, animals of all kinds, including humans who together make up a unity. This book is my attempt to celebrate the unity and the diversity. Poetry hints of an openness to complexity while certainty tends to become restrictive dogma. Other Ways means to hint that full meaning, complete certainty, is beyond any human capacity ever to establish. Poetry intends to celebrate the richness that is to be enjoyed even though never fully comprehended.

The United States is more fractured today than it has been since the Civil War. What hope do we have for the healing of our communities, shattered by a global pandemic and a toxic political environment? War Bug opens a window on the riverfront town of Occoquan, Virginia, and offers glimpses of social upheaval through chapters that alternate between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. In 1862, Quaker resident Ann Bagley fears that her sons will abandon their pacifism and join the newly established Confederate army. Troops march through the town and shots are fired, enflaming secessionists and Unionists alike. Many pledge their support to the South and send their sons to fight, while others favor the North and take stands as abolitionists. In 2022, Harley Camden, the pastor of struggling Riverside Methodist Church, fears that civil war will return to Occoquan. Facing cultural and political polarization, he tries to care for his congregation and keep the peace, even as he lends a hand in the archaeological dig of a Quaker house with a mysterious grave. But when people begin to die in acts of brutal violence, he encounters an evil that is deeper than history and more deadly than partisan strife.

The Hay and the Barn is a joyful, profound poetic meditation, based on the penultimate year of Gabrielle Bossis's devotional classic, He and I. One might even call it a conversation. Jesus reveals Himself in both her entries and in the poems which come out of them. (This should not surprise us, as He does so in every moment of our lives.) In this book we see Bossis move toward her last passage, and we are privileged to see Our Lord lovingly lay the groundwork for their ecstatic meeting. We get to witness His great tenderness. What we see is a kind of tender memento mori.

Anthony Marakovitz nails down what his life was like as an extreme addict for forty years--following his happy childhood, some bad boy middle and high school years, indiscriminate relationships, and normally fatal health complications with enough drugs and alcohol to have killed anyone. Now that he has recovered, Anthony shares facts that most people don't know about addicts, compulsive behavior, and productive, faith-based recovery. Believing that each one of us is within reach of an addict, Anthony launches his story with serious hope for anyone who is dealing with addiction of any kind--anger, drugs (prescription or otherwise), alcohol, sex, control, simply more of anything--the list is long. These addictions permeate every socioeconomic level and impact everyone and everything around them. The author hopes that his story will encourage and benefit anyone who wholeheartedly seeks long-term recovery--no turning back!

Absurd humor questions the meaning of truth. Deep in Southern Illinois, called Little Egypt, the county sheriff and his young deputy scientifically bumble their way through the "Invasion of the Feral Swine." A prosecutor fresh out of law school brings the whole shebang into a court of law for the "Trial of the Man with No Name." Instead of science and law, the everyday people of Greens Point live on the minutia of life, their conversations dotted with nothings. Throughout these absurd events, Sunday evening chats between a reverend and his visitor link essential topics, speared by death, yet caught by hope, and told with a dash of humor. In bits from their talks, the reverend learns about his guest's past and the makeup of the man, including how he came up with the name "Atticus." The story closes with their final Sunday evening chat: from the mouth of an ex-con, truth is told to a dying reverend. Atticus from Shawneetown is the sequel to Tombs of Little Egypt (2022).

This book continues The Shelbydog Chronicles by Shelby Cole, in which Shelby, a sixty-pound Labrador-Boxer mix, narrates the events of the first ten years of her life. As she approaches her twelfth birthday, she has delegated her friend, Mark G. Boyer, to write More Shelbydog Chronicles. Boyer shares the experiences he has had with Shelbydog in twenty-seven short reflections with the goal of fostering reflection on how one's life intersects with one's pet. At the end of each chapter are reflection questions designed to help the readers get to know their pets better and get to know themselves better, too. Just as Shelbydog has changed Boyer's physical and spiritual life, the readers will become aware of how their pets have changed their own physical and spiritual lives.

Adventure, challenges, personal reflections, and deep soul-searching. This was Jared Larsen's life for four years as he ventured through the Middle East and India, all while transforming his life and outlook. To discover one's true self, and to shed who one is not, is a necessary journey, one which only a few will dare to take. Who are you? Who do you want to become? What will you look like after it's all over? If you are willing to push yourself and embark on a life-altering experience, then come and see what Larsen was willing to go through and then ask yourself if you are open and able to go through a similar process.

Red Door Blue Frame is a poignant yet imaginative journey into grief, trauma, and growing up. Centered around childhood abuse and growing into adulthood, this book leads the reader through a cathartic rediscovery of self and seeks to provide a light for readers of all backgrounds.

Comprehensive training and well-established tactics are the trademark qualities of a solid and robust military training program designed to win wars. As a result, well-trained soldiers can think and act soundly while engaged in warfare. Like soldiers, Christians must similarly train to become prepared to make biblically-sound choices while engaged in spiritual warfare--specifically, deception. Deception, as clearly conveyed in the Bible, is Satan's weapon of choice, therefore, if understood properly, can be thwarted effectively. Defying Deception: A Field Guide to Understanding and Countering Satan's Strategy of Deception is a book for those who want to raise their awareness of the enemy's strategies and to mature their spiritual walk by offsetting the enemy's deceptive methods with practical means. That said, this field guide establishes a parallel between Satan's deceptive tactics and military Psychological Operations (PSYOP), operations to convey false information to influence emotions, motives, and reasoning because both seek to lead people into falsehood to influence decision-making in a destructive way. This field guide discusses Satan's deceptive strategy within the context of PSYOP. Armed with this information, practical defensive strategies are developed using well-established, effective military tactics to assist readers in overcoming spiritual deception.

Sand in My Shoes is a memoir about coming to terms with the Mennonite values that shaped Jonathan Edward Rudy's voluntary service in Somalia. Through a tumultuous time in Somali political history, Rudy came face to face with natural and cultural beauty, widespread political violence, and the dismantling of his own idealism about international development.

Nothing is more meaningful than family life. This world can seem a beautiful and loving Eden in one moment and the next you can feel buried alive. Your loved ones become sick, or they grow into hellions. Or they don't even make it into this world at all, or they live a long life and then die, leaving you behind. Life is confusing, life is beautiful, life is sometimes overwhelming. Being a mother is at the center of family life, an all-consuming role that sometimes is invisible and other times essential. This collection is about Meade's world, told through the anatomy of family life. Celia, along with her partner Karl, experienced late miscarriage, the adoption of two beautiful girls, alongside brushes with addiction and loss. These poems are based on feelings that sometimes were fleeting and other times endure. They reflect the life of a poet at a certain point of time, as she is growing older and her children enter into adulthood and continue to evolve.

At the outset of the Civil War, two southern soldiers, one from Alabama, the other from Tennessee, their friendship forged in the fire of battle, embark on a journey of self-discovery. Having escaped capture and destruction at Fort Donelson, they struggle westward to join up with the regiment of the Alabamian's two brothers, only to find themselves, cold, weary, and exhausted, caught in the futile struggle at Island No. 10. Taken prisoner, eventually only one of the four will survive their ordeal. Although a meticulously researched and historically accurate novel, one resonant with vivid detail, it is less about war, in the sense of battles, tactics and strategy, as it is about men at war. It is a journey of identity and self-discovery, as the men struggle to get "home." It is about friendship, family, tenderness, loss, wrongdoing, and redemption. Zevitz and Braswell have crafted a genuinely moving story that evokes emotions such as courage, fear, camaraderie, anger, shame, sadness, and perhaps even hope. It is an authentic tale of men at the grassroots level of war, where life was rough-hewn and precarious. Stephen G. Fritz, Ph.D. East Tennessee State University Author of Frontosldaten: The German Soldier in World War II The Trials and Tribulations of a Confederate Soldier is a realistic novel of historical fiction which shows humans harrowing hell but retaining hope. The writing is consistently very good, often beautiful in its description of persons and places, conveying unobtrusively, the "stamp of verity." Robert J. Higgs Ph.D. Author of God in the Stadium

Brought to light after centuries buried in profound silence, The Advice of Dreams is the story--told here for the first time--of Tynan and the Caledonians, people unremembered by history, and their ardent struggle for life, meaning, freedom, and happiness. Amidst a violent clash of cultures, Tynan is torn from his rural life and flung into the shifting crosscurrents of his generation. Challenged by deeply ingrained personal and social barriers, caught in a maelstrom of political intrigue, swept up in a vast armed confrontation; he becomes an unlikely key in the desperate struggle for his homeland; and a broad kingdom fought over by two ancient enemies. Set in an era roiled by war, revolution, and the conflict of ideas; told in the vivid detail of a contemporary eyewitness; and rendered in remarkable imagery, The Advice of Dreams evokes a world and its people, telling a tale that will fascinate those who respond to the romance of the past. A story from a time and place long vanished, The Advice of Dreams resonates with the valor of the human spirit and speaks of those who fought for something worth fighting for.

Humans are composed by DNA, and through chemical action it maintains and renews us daily. This poetry book explores the many facets of our existence through the lens of our own DNA. Most of us know who our fathers are, but it's not that difficult to find someone who discovered in adulthood the uncomfortable truth through DNA analysis. DNA determines our personal identity, not counting the effects of environment. The topic of DNA covers race, medicine, sexual attraction, procreation, family, gender, vaccines, crime, eye and hair and skin color, COVID, longevity, national identity, mutation, relationships with parents and children, beauty and ugliness, and height, to name a few. For example, the miracle of birth is accompanied by a rush of hormones ensuring the bond between mother and infant. Some medical researchers are recording the DNA of large human populations, which will lead to broad advances in diagnosis and treatment. Some nations are recording the DNA of many or all of their citizens, which will lead to privacy invasion and police suppression. As with computers, such research is a double-edged sword. This book engages these subjects and more surrounding the central force of DNA.