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Book Review of BONHOEFFER by Eric Metaxas

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Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson: 2010), 544 pages plus Foreward by Timothy Keller, 20 pages of Notes, 3 pages of Bibliography, 12 pages of Index, 15 pages of Reading Group Guide which altogether puts the number of pages of this book at 608.

It took me two years to read this book.  Mostly because I started it one summer, then became involved in a volunteer position with adults and small children which takes a lot of my time and energy during the school year.  If you enjoy reading and are less encumbered, then you can probably read this book much faster.

Bonhoeffer is a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who lived in Germany from 2/4/1906 – 7/27/1945.  Hitler, personally, ordered his execution one week before taking his own life and ending WWII.  Hitler wanted Dietrich Bonhoeffer executed because Bonhoeffer was from a wealthy, prominent German family –what Hitler considered the super race—and yet Bonhoeffer and many of his family and friends had worked together for years to remove Hitler from office and restore Germany to a free and democratic state not a socialist, Nazi regime.  Bonhoeffer personified Hitler’s ubermensch, his superman.  Dietrich was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, young, strong, healthy, wealthy, intelligent and well-connected.  The problem for Hitler is that Bonhoeffer rejected Hitler.  Bonhoeffer, his family and friends rejected Hitler from the beginning.  Dietrich and his family went so far in their rejection to plot to assassinate Hitler.  Bonhoeffer also talked to Heads of State in England and Switzerland about Germany’s place in the world if it was not ruled by Hitler and no longer a Nazi regime.  Hitler wanted to create a master race.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a poster boy for that master race, but he could not submit to Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Bonhoeffer’s Sermon the Day Hitler Took Office:

“He began by explaining why Germany was looking for a Fuhrer.  The First War and the subsequent depression and turmoil had brought about a crisis in which the younger generation, especially, had lost all confidence in the traditional authority of the Kaiser and the church.  The German notion of the Fuhrer arose out of this generation and its search for meaning and guidance out of its troubles.  The difference between real leadership and the false leadership of the Leader was this: real leadership derived its authority from God, the source of all goodness. Thus parents have legitimate authority because they are submitted to the legitimate authority of a good God. But the authority of the Fuhrer was submitted to nothing. It was self-derived and autocratic and therefore had a messianic aspect.

“The good leader serves others and leads others to maturity.  He puts them above himself, as a good parent does a child, wishing to lead that child to someday be a good parent.  Another word for this is discipleship.  He continued:

‘Only when a man sees that office is a penultimate authority in the face of an ultimate, indescribable authority, in the face of the authority of God, has the real situation been reached.  And before this Authority the individual knows himself to be completely alone. The individual is responsible before God.  And this solitude of man’s position before God, this subjection to an ultimate authority, is destroyed when the authority of the Leader or of the office is seen as ultimate authority.…Alone before God, man become what he is, free and committed in responsibility at the same time.

“Forty-eight hours had passed since Hitler’s election, but with Bonhoeffer’s speech the battle lines were drawn.  According to Bonhoeffer, the God of the Bible stood behind true authority and benevolent leadership, but opposed the Fuhrer Principle and its advocate Adolf Hitler.  Of course Hitler never publicly denounced God.  He knew well that there were many churchgoers in Germany who had some vague idea that real authority should come from their God, but unlike Bonhoeffer, they had no idea what this actually meant.  To embody the kind of leadership that rejected this idea of submission to God’s authority, one must at least give lip service to that God, else one would not last very long.  Hitler was ultimately a practical man, and as all truly practical men, he was a cynical man.

Hitler’s Speech the Day He Took Office:

“So Hitler gave a speech that day too.  He was just forty-three and had already toiled in the political wilderness half his life.  Ten years had passed since the Bierhall Putsch that landed him in prison.  Now he was the chancellor of Germany.  The original come-back kid had triumphed over his enemies.  But to convince his followers that his authority was legitimate, he must say the necessary things.  Thus the opening words of his speech that day were: ‘We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk.’  If his conscience was not already a corpse, it might have felt a twinge as he spoke.  Hitler then declared that his government, which was a lie, instantly annulled itself.  He ended with another appeal to the God he did not believe in, but whose Jewish and Christian followers he would thenceforward persecute and kill: ‘May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk!’

Karl Bonhoeffer’s [Dietrich’s Father] Thoughts on Hitler:

“‘From the start, we regarded the victory of National Socialism in 1933 and Hitler’s appointment as Reichkanzler as a misfortune—the entire family agreed on this.  In my own case, I disliked and mistrusted Hitler because of his demagogic propagandistic speeches…his habit of driving about the country carrying a riding crop, his choice of colleagues—with whose qualities, incidentally, we in Berlin were better acquainted than people elsewhere—and finally because of what I heard from professional colleagues about his psychopathic symptoms.’

“The Bonhoeffer’s saw through Hitler from the beginning, but no one believed his reign would last as long as it did.  Surely the Nazis would have their moment, perhaps even a long moment, but then it would be gone.  It was all a terrible nightmare that, come morning, would disappear.  But morning never seemed to come.”  (pp. 140-144)

From the start, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his father Karl Bonhoeffer and many of their family and friends saw Hitler for the problem that he was.  This book explores an aspect to Nazi Germany that I had not considered before—religion.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor.  He was born into a noteworthy German family.  He recognized Hitler and the Nazis as bad for Germany, so what would he do?  How would he reconcile being a Christian pastor under a government that hated Christians?

“Bonhoeffer went on to say that to ‘confess Christ’ meant to do so to Jews as well as to Gentiles.  He declared it vital for the church to attempt to bring the Messiah of the Jews to the Jewish people who did not yet know him.  If Hitler’s laws were adopted this would be impossible.  His dramatic and somewhat shocking conclusion was that not only should the church allow Jews to be a part of the church, but that this was precisely what the church was: it was the place where Jews and Germans stand together.  ‘What is at stake,’ he said, ‘is by no means the question whether our German members of congregations can still tolerate church fellowship with the Jews.  It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say; here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not’.”  (pp. 153-155)

It was one matter to theoretically understand the situation Germany was facing under Hitler.  It was another matter to act on those principles while still remaining alive and not being killed by Nazis.  While Bonhoeffer was thinking deeply about the church’s role in Germany, the Nazis were busy inventing their own new religion.

“Hitler seems to have believed that Nietzsche had prophesied his coming and rise to power.  In The Will to Power, Nietzsche prophesied the coming of a race of rulers, ‘a particularly strong kind of man, most highly gifted in intellect and will.’  Hitler believed the Aryan race was this ‘race of rulers.’  Nietzsche referred to these men as ‘lords of the earth.’ William Shirer said that Nietzsche’s rantings along these lines met with Hitler’s approval: ‘[They] must have struck a responsive chord in Hitler’s littered mind.  At any rate he appropriated them for his own—not only the thoughts but…often his very words.  ‘Lords of the Earth’ is a familiar expression in Mein Kampf.  That in the end Hitler considered himself the superman of Nietzsche’s prophecy can not be doubted.’  (Page 168)

“Since Hitler had no religion other than himself, his opposition to Christianity and the church was less ideological than practical.  That was not the case for many leaders of the Third Reich.  Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and others were bitterly anti-Christian and were ideologically opposed to Christianity, and wanted to replace it with a religion of their own devising.  Under their leadership, said Shirer, ‘the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.’

“Hitler wouldn’t let them do this at first, hence his constant battle to rein them in.  But he was not opposed to their doing it when the time was right.  He couldn’t take it very seriously, but he thought that  the neopagan stew that Himmler was cooking up would probably be far more useful than Christianity because it would advocate such ‘virtues’ as would be useful to the Third Reich.” (pp. 168-171)

The new Nazi religion wanted to replace the cross with the swastika, replace the Bible with Mein Kampf, and replace Jesus Christ with Adolph Hitler.  Nazi Germany was an unfriendly place for Christian pastors.

The draft was calling many young German men to fight for the Fatherland—Nazi Germany—and that included Christian pastors.  Bonhoeffer first considered being a conscientious objector and not fighting at all.  Eventually he decided that was unfair to other young Christian pastors who were fighting and that he would be turning his back on the greater problems Germans were facing.  So, he decided to join the Abwehr to be a spy.  As a German spy he was involved in several plots to assassinate Hitler.

Abwehr:

“On February 24, the Abwehr sent Bonhoeffer to Geneva.  His main purpose was to make contact with Protestant leaders outside Germany, let them know about the conspiracy, and put out feelers about peace terms with the government that would take over.  Muller was having similar conversations at the Vatican with Catholic leaders.  But at first, Bonhoeffer couldn’t even get into Switzerland.  The Swiss border police insisted that someone inside Switzerland vouch for him as his guarantor.  Bonhoeffer named Karl Barth, who was called, and assented, but not without some misgivings.

“Like others at the time, Barth was perplexed about Bonhoeffer’s mission.  How could a Confessing Church pastor come to Switzerland in the midst of war?  It seemed to him that Bonhoeffer must have somehow made peace with the Nazis.  This was one of the casualties of the war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths.

“Such doubts and questions from others would plague Bonhoeffer, but he certainly wasn’t free to explain what he was doing to those outside his inner circle.  This represented another ‘death’ to self for him because he had to surrender his reputation in the church.  People wondered how he escaped the fate of the rest of his generation.  He was writing and traveling, meeting with this one and that one, going to movies and restaurants, and living a life of relative privilege and freedom while others were suffering and dying and being put in excruciating positions of moral compromise.

“Even if Bonhoeffer could have explained that he was in fact working against Hitler, many in the Confessing Church would still have been confused, and others would have been outraged.  For a pastor to be involved in a plot whose linchpin was the assassination of the head of state during a time of war, when brothers and sons and fathers were giving their lives for the country, was unthinkable.  Bonhoeffer had come to a place where he was in many ways very much alone.  God had driven him to this place, though, and he was not about to look for a way out any more than Jeremiah had done.  It was the fate he had embraced, and it was obedience to God, and he could rejoice in it, and did.”  (pp. 376-377)

Bonhoeffer was very much alone as a spy.  The aloneness caused him to surrender his life even more fully to God.

Spy:

“In light of the events in Germany at that time, everyone was trapped in a situation of ethical impossibilities.  In light of the monstrous evils being committed all around, what could one do and what should one do?  In letters from his ordinands, we read of how tortured they were in knowing when to protest and when to accede when to go to war, even if they knew it was unjust, and when to take a stand.  One of them wrote to Bonhoeffer about having to kill prisoners and was obviously torn up about it, knowing that if he didn’t comply, he would himself be killed.  This sort of thing had become commonplace.  Who could fathom the horrors of the concentration camps where Jews, hoping to preserve their own lives, were forced to do unspeakable things to other Jews?  The utter evilness of evil now showed itself clearly, and it showed up the bankruptcy of man’s so-called ethical attempts to deal with it.  The problem of evil is too much for us.  We are all tainted by it and cannot escape being tainted by it.

“The solution is to do the will of God, to do it radically and courageously and joyfully.  To try to explain ‘right’ and ‘wrong’—to talk about ethics—outside of God and obedience to his will is impossible: ‘Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.’  We must look only at God, and in him we are reconciled to our situation in the world.  If we look only to principles and rules, we are in a fallen realm where our reality is divided from God:”  (pp. 468-471)

Bonhoeffer was an intelligent, educated, cultured, connected and privileged man with family and friends scattered throughout the world who decided to surrender his life to Jesus Christ.  Dietrich’s father was a prominent atheist.  Dietrich’s mother was a Christian.  Dietrich felt God called him to himself at a young age.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer attempted to lead a life of excellence, surrendered to Christ Jesus.  During the course of his life, Adolf Hitler came to power and created Nazi Germany.  Largely this fact forced Bonhoeffer to think deeply about God, the Bible and Jesus Christ and what it all meant to be a Christian pastor at that time and in that place.  The more deeply he thought, the more bold and surrendered his claims became. This biography follows that journey for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together, The Cost of Discipleship and Ethics.

This book review originally appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on June 27, 2017.  You can find out more about Eric Metaxas at his website at http://ericmetaxas.com/.  His books include:

Book Review of PARENTING FOR THE LAUNCH by Dennis Trittin & Arlyn Lawrence

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Parenting for the Launch (LifeSmart Pub. 2013), 190 pages text plus 11 pages of appendices and 1 page of endnotes.

Parenting for the Launch: Raising teens to succeed in the real world is written for parents and guardians of teens to prepare children to successfully leave home and launch out into the real world. The authors explain that “25% of U.S. high school students don’t graduate high school, the U.S. ranks last in industrialized nations for graduating our college students, and the current level of unemployment for teens is 23.7%.” (p. 12) Thus there is room for improvement in preparing our children to successfully transition to adult life outside the home. And once our children have launched we want them to be successful, diligent, respectful and good stewards of their resources, whether they go to college, the military or straight into the work force. The authors use a multi-pronged approach for these preparations. The aspects they look at include: 1) family environment, 2) fostering leadership, 3) self discovery, 4) understanding finances, and 5) jobs.

  1. Family. The authors provide a sample mission statement on pages 30-31 and suggest that we try to come up with one for our own families. “MISSION: To inspire, equip, and empower our future adults who are admired for their character, respected for their gifts and talents, and remembered for the love and service they give to others.”
  2. Leadership. The authors discuss nurturing leadership skills in our children. “Helping teens develop a leadership foundation for life is one of our most important parenting responsibilities. It has a huge bearing on whether they will reach their full potential and make wise life decisions.” (p. 39)
  3. Self Discovery. “The DISC ® Personality Profile is based on the work of renowned psychologist Dr. William Marston, a contemporary of Carl Jung. Marston developed the DISC Personality Profile in the 1920’s, after studying the personality traits, behavioral patterns, and instinctual reactions of thousands of individuals. As a result of his work, Marston developed the DISC assessment tool for measuring four primary behavioral traits: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C)….Using the DISC model, we can group people according to their pace (fast or slow) and priority (tasks or people). There is no right or wrong (we all have a style!), and everyone falls somewhere on both of these continuums.” (p. 80)
    1. D—Dominant—Decisive, confident, self-directed, independent, direct, a change-agent.
    2. I—Influencing—Relational, interactive, expressive, visionary, emotional, fun-loving, optimistic.
    3. S—Steady/Stable—Dependable, loyal, committed, supportive, cooperative.
    4. C—Conscientious—Self-disciplined, cautious, detailed, analytical, intuitive.
    5. Where you land in the spectrum will indicate what your personality, motivations, priorities, and comfortable pace looks like in real life, as you relate to the world around you, including and especially your kids.” (pp. 82-83.)“It’s helpful to share this information with your teen. Teens are in an important time of self-discovery. They don’t know that everyone is not wired like they are and they don’t know exactly how their parents are wired, either. They may feel that different is “bad” when it comes to personality differences, relational needs, and behavioral styles. Help them identify their own strengths and weaknesses—and be honest about your own. This is a helpful item for their life skills tool box that will serve them well in their relationships with you and others.” (p. 95). The authors also discuss helping the teen discern all the voices in their lives: friends, parents, teachers, media voices and even make the point that our homes convey messages to our children about who they are. Helping our children discover who they are is critically helpful during the years before the transition. It helps our children make wise choices after they leave home.
  4. Finances. They also recommend we teach our children how to be financially responsible and financially conversant in investments, debt and daily expenditures. “Do they understand that the three best ways to avoid poverty are to graduate from high school, not marry before 20, and only have children after they marry?” (p. 201, appendix)
  5. Jobs. In regard to jobs the authors discuss performance reviews. They suggest we coach our teens to ask their job supervisor what constitutes an “excellent” performance rating and then for the teen to work hard to achieve that excellent rating. The authors also ask “Have you shared the key transition risks with them: social impatience, lack of study disciplines, damaging recreational habits, lack of a support network and spiritual life, excessive personal performance stress, and financial irresponsibility?” (p. 202, appendix).

Finally, the authors recommend making a blessing packet for our teens and give it to them right before they leave home. “One of the greatest gifts parents can give their children is the loving perspectives of their uniqueness and value. A great example is to put together a “blessing packet.” You don’t need to call it that; you can name it anything you like, such as “Words to Live By,” “Chicken Soup for ___’s Soul,” or, “A Hundred Things We Love about ______.” The point is that you’re collecting and delivering messages of encouragement and affirmation for your son or daughter that will strengthen his or her self-worth, identity, and sense of significance and calling. You’ll need to consider the people who have had the greatest impact on the life of your teen. They can be family members (parents are a must), friends, teachers, mentors, faith leaders, or others who offer a blessing in the form of a letter. As you recruit these VIPs, suggest they share special qualities, memories, inspirational thoughts, pictures, and the like. The purpose is to collect a wide array of well wishes that honor your teen. Then, at an appropriate time, give them an envelope containing these private letters. Some schools in our area arrange for this at a junior or senior class retreat. It is incredibly powerful. And, it offers you, the parent, an opportunity to say the things you wish you had said or said more. It’s especially meaningful for the parents who are less expressive (often fathers). Be forewarned, it can be an incredibly emotional experience for the parent. (Having done two myself, I can personally attest to that!) But, it’s a gift we not only give to our children, but also to ourselves. This keepsake is a profound blessing to your children. You don’t have to wait until launch time, but it’s a great parting gift that honors your teen at this critical time of life.” (pp. 183-184).

After the teen moves away to college or to the military or enters the workforce the parent then needs to move from the driver seat to the passenger seat. Some of this book deals with helping the parent prepare for the next stage of parenthood—coaching and encouraging. It has good advice and a few things I may consider trying myself, such as the blessing packet and taking the on-line DISC assessment with my teenage daughter.

“Frank A. Clark says, ‘The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.’” (p. 155). The authors believe the first three months after a young adult leaves the home is vitally important. (p. 185). You can find out more about Dennis Trittin at his website at http://www.dennistrittin.com/. Trittin also wrote What I Wish I Knew at 18.

I received a free copy of this book from Icon Media Group. No one paid me for this book review. My review originally appeared in https://jaynechaseloseke.com/ on August 6, 2014. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Book Review of NAZARETH NEIGHBORS by Sheila Deeth

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Nazareth Neighbors by Sheila Deeth (Cape Arago Press: 2014), 181 pages.

I just finished reading an advance copy of Nazareth Neighbors by my friend and author, Sheila Deeth. I was charmed. Sheila has taken Jesus’ parables from the four gospels and retold them using the narrative of Jesus’ childhood. She imagines Jesus as a small child, a school age boy and a teenager, growing up in Nazareth in Mary and Joseph’s home. By reimagining the parable of the good shepherd, the prodigal son, the lost coin and the pearl of great worth, and many others through the lens of a child, she is able to make the underlying lessons accessible and easy to understand.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Nazareth Neighbors.

“Do you suppose that sweet little boy, Jesus, growing up in the nice normal town of Nazareth, on its hill above the vineyards of the Jezreel Valley, knew what was going to happen at the end of his story? He obeyed his parents for all those years, growing ‘in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.’ Then he obeyed God, and gave his life for us.” (p. 3)

 

This is the frame of reference from which the narrator tells these stories about young Jesus Christ. In this next excerpt Sheila Deeth examines the parable of pouring new wine into new wineskins, but again from the vantage point of a young boy growing up in his parents’ home.

 

“Mary finally found a piece of cloth that was nearly right for Joseph’s robe. Then she asked Jesus to get a bowl of water from the river for her. He hurried away down sandy streets, feeling the wind on his legs. Then he scooped up water in his bowl and ran back with cold wet trickles dibbling onto his knees.

“Mary soaked the new piece of cloth in the water, rubbing it with stones and tugging and stretching at it, until she was ready to sew it onto Joseph’s robe.

‘Why do you do that?’ Jesus asked. ‘Why are you making the cloth all messy?’

‘I have to make it match,’ said Mary.

‘But the colors don’t match,’ said Jesus, and he was right. The robe was brown, and the cloth was grayish white.

‘I know,’ said his mother. ‘But I have to make the material match. If I sew something too new or too old into the hole it will just tear away. Then we’ll have a bigger hole to mend.’

 “When Jesus grew up, he remembered Mary’s cloth, and he remembered how to mend holes. When some important church leaders asked why he’d chosen such poor, uneducated people to be his most important disciples, Jesus explained, ‘I’m teaching something new. I’m filling in the holes in what you’ve learned. But I can’t teach people who think they’ve already learned it all. That would be like sewing new cloth onto an old garment. It would tear away and everything everyone knew would fall out through the hole.’” (p. 8)

 

This sweet vignette helped me better understand the new wineskin parable. Since I’ve never seen a wineskin I always had trouble visualizing what the difference was between old and new wineskins. Sheila points out that the parable isn’t really about the wineskins, it is about the old and new covenants. This final excerpt illuminates the parable of sowing seeds. Some seeds fall in rocky soil, some fall on the path, some fall amongst the weeds, and some seeds fall in rich soil.

 

“One rainy morning, Mary gave Jesus an extra thick slice of bread for his breakfast and some goat’s milk to drink. Then Joseph took Jesus by the hand and said, ‘You’re a big boy today, young man. Today’s the day you start helping me in the fields.’

‘I want to help in the workshop,’ Jesus replied, but Joseph said he’d have to be even bigger to do that.

“Jesus and Joseph set off with their donkey through the streets of Nazareth. Jesus’ friends were kicking a rather soggy ball around. But Jesus splashed proudly in puddles, thinking how nice it was to be doing something new. Soon he’d even be old enough to go to the synagogue school. And after that he’d grow up to be a carpenter, just like his cousins.

The red roof of the synagogue shone in the falling rain. Jesus dawdled, staring at the older children who’d gathered on its walls. He even began to climb the hill toward them, but Joseph pulled him back. ‘Not yet, young man. You don’t start school today.’

‘But I want to study the scriptures,’ Jesus said. ‘I want to learn about God.’

‘Today you’re going to study God’s creation,’ Joseph replied, ‘and learn about seeds.’ So Jesus shook the rain out of his eyes and followed Joseph and the donkey to the field. A heavy sack rattled on the donkey’s back, and Jesus asked what was inside. ‘My tools,’ Joseph replied.

‘Oh good,’ said Jesus. ‘Can we do some woodworking in the fields? Are we going to make a gate?’

‘No,’ said Joseph. ‘These are my tools for plowing. I’ve got my blade and handle and grain, and the donkey’s harness too.’

“When they reached the field, Joseph rested the wooden yoke on the donkey’s neck and attached the plow. The dusty ground had turned into thick soggy mud. But the mud crumbled like cake as Joseph guided the donkey and plow over it.

“Jesus rolled the earth between his fingers. ‘It feels like bread dough,’ he said, but Joseph said, ‘Don’t eat it.’

“Jesus pointed to some stones tossed up by the plow. ‘They look like raisins, Dad!’ But Joseph said don’t eat them either. Instead he asked Jesus to pick up the stones and move them out the way. Soon the field was full of churned up earth, black and shining in the rain, with rows of stones like fences at the edge. ‘What do we do now?’ Jesus asked.

‘We plant the seed,’ said Joseph. He pulled a bag out from the bottom of his sack and hung it around Jesus’ neck. The cloth was scratchy and heavy, and seeds flowed like a river in its folds.

“Joseph tucked a bigger sack under his arm. Then he showed Jesus how to scoop the seeds and scatter them on the ground, like waterfalls of grain. ‘Don’t let too much seed land on the road though,’ said Joseph, pointing to flocks of birds which swooped down hungrily to eat whatever they could. ‘And not on the rocks; there’s not enough soil there for them to grow in.’

“Jesus scattered his seeds very slowly and carefully, shouting at the birds when they got too close. ‘It’s not your seed, birds. This is to make people’s food.’ Then he tripped over some thorns, and Joseph pulled him out.

‘Don’t let too much seed land in the thorns either,’ said Joseph.

‘Don’t let me land in the thorns!’ Jesus replied, rubbing mud over his scratches and cuts, while Joseph smiled at him.

“When all the seed had been scattered, Joseph pulled one of Mary’s old long brushes out of the sack on the donkey’s back.

‘What do we do with that?’ Jesus asked.

‘We spread the earth on top of the seeds so birds can’t eat them all.’ Then Jesus swept the brush gently back and forth until all the seeds were hidden. The brush was ruined afterward, of course, but Joseph said he’d make a new one soon.

“In spring, Jesus started going to school, but he checked on Joseph’s field every day before walking up the hill. Tiny seedlings appeared from the seeds in the ground. Some plants grew tall really fast, but then they withered in the sun. Others poked their heads above thorns, then shrank away and died. But the seeds sown on well-tilled soil grew thick and strong until harvest. Joseph’s two bags of grain turned into more than a hundred bags. Then Jesus smiled, pleased at what his work, and God’s sunshine had done.

“One day, Jesus told his friends to make their lives like a farmer’s well-tilled field, so the seed of God’s word wouldn’t land on dry stones or be choked by weeds, but would grow a hundred-fold in their lives too.” (pp. 52-54)

Nazareth Neighbors is 57 chapters long. Each chapter is two to four pages long and covers one parable. Each chapter ends with a simple prayer. Reading one chapter to a child at bedtime could be a lovely bedtime story. Nazareth Neighbors is now available in an e-version at amazon.com. A hard copy version will be available from Cape Arago Press in April, 2014.

 

Other books by Sheila Deeth include:

The book review of Nazareth Neighbors originally appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on April 2, 2014.

Book Review of CHRISTMAS! By Sheila Deeth

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Christmas! by Sheila Deeth is a 31 page book, written for families. Christmas!_Genesis_t_Cover_for_Kindle

Have you ever owned an Advent calendar and not been quite sure how to best enjoy it?  Ms. Deeth’s book may be the answer you are looking for.  Each page has about 100 words, which walk the reader through the books of the bible chronologically.  Page 1 tells the story of creation from Genesis.  The story of baby Jesus birth is on page 25.  A family could read one page from Christmas! each night before opening a door on their Advent calendar.  Deeth’s writing style is family-friendly.  She uses humor and dialog to illumine aspects of biblical stories which interest children.

Christmas! is available on-line at http://sheiladeeth.weebly.com/, as well as at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Kobo and Goodreads.

http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Genesis-Revelation-100-words/dp/1478149132/  Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Genesis-Revelation-words-Bible-ebook/dp/B00AKSL35S/ Amazon kindle
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day-sheila-deeth/1112663681?ean=9781478149132 Barnes and Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day-sheila-deeth/1112219753?ean=2940044703674 Barnes and Noble nook
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/179427 smashwords ebook
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day kobo
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6277300-christmas-genesis-to-revelation-in-100-words-a-day Goodreads

The book review of Christmas! by Sheila Deeth originally appeared on jaynechaseloseke.com on November 20, 2013.