Good books for summer:
If you’re still hunting for just the right book to pack for the beach, cottage or campground, we asked Christian Courier’s staff for recent favourites. Here’s what they came up with:
The light through the cracks
I love the law. I love the rules, and I love the mess. And our criminal justice system is a mess. People can be so dumb and also so cruel. Poor people have little access to justice, and there are no easy answers.
The Light Between Oceans
Looking for a page-turner this summer? I can’t stop thinking about the novel I recently finished. It came along on our family’s beach vacation as an easy read, and it was easy in a “can’t-put-it-down” sense.
Recovering Muriel Spark
“Fiction to me is a kind of parable,” she once said. “You have got to make up your mind it’s not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it.”
Ehrenreich’s ineffable
Resolutely analytical and critical, Ehrenreich is a ruthless puncturer of platitudes and soft-headed consolations about the way the world works.
How then shall we live?
What do we expect from family members? As brothers and sisters together, working out our faith in fear and trembling? We’re justified, we’re adopted . . . and so how then shall we live with one another in the bonds of love that God the Father has lavished on us?
Surrendering to a higher purpose
In this lively, inspiring, and sometimes humorous synopsis of the lives of seven men, Eric Metaxas explores the secret of their greatness.
Egypt’s revolution through the eyes of those on the front lines
“This is normal,” says a young man named Ahmed as he lights a candle to brighten up a Cairo room. “The lights are out all over the world.
Just farming
Amish people are often looked upon as quaint cultural curiosities by those of us who are, well, not Amish. The idea of a horse and buggy on a country road makes for a fuzzy feeling. It is tempting to think something like this: “Is it just wonderful that some people still live in this old-fashioned way?” Or to remark, “I’ve heard that they hire people with tractors, but won’t own one. And some of them have propane refrigerators but won’t have electric ones; quite inconsistent.” We condescend to what we don’t understand.
Heartfelt heroics
Five minutes into The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and characters are already acting stupidly. Or at least not acting how you or I might act, were we placed in a similar situation. There’s this scientist on a plane, secreting away some high-clearance research data on his laptop. The plane is hijacked, but the scientist is able to overcome his attacker, and get back to securing the data. The hijacker wasn’t subdued enough, of course – no handcuffs, no incapacitating blow to the noggin – and he springs back up, attacking our beleaguered scientist. Chaos ensues.
This is our Story
No, the New Jerusalem,
that better city that we seek,
that city of refuge,
that city of safety and hospitality,
that city of justice and restoration,
that restored city of shalom,
that city where God will dwell,
is a city built on the foundations of suffering love,
or it is not built at all.
