Amazon reader review: One of the most directly helpful books on the subject of loss ever written, the first edition of this comforting and inspiring book, published in 1976, sold nearly two million copies. This completely revised and expanded edition encompasses not only the medical and psychological advances in the treatment of loss, but also the authors' own experiences.

Amazon reader review: Like a knowing and sympathetic companion, this unique journal is designed to help you work through the painful emotions, thoughts, and memories that surface when you have lost someone dear to you. Written by a professional counselor, this book supplies you with important information about grief and the grieving process. But, more importantly, it invokes the healing power of writing to provide you with a means for collecting your thoughts, sorting out your feelings, and taking an active part in your own recovery.

 

 

The emotions associated with grief are very powerful, and although each of us has or will experience the loss of a loved one or friend, grieving can be lonely and bewildering. Through interviews and personal narratives, THE PATH THROUGH GRIEF explores all types of grief and loss: the death of a parent, spouse, child, sibling, friend, or domestic partner; the losses associated with divorce, illness, stillbirths, miscarriages, homicide, and suicide. An important chapter on AIDS details the added pain of society's reaction to the disease in addition to the pain of loss. This work explains the various stages of grief and mourning, how we can help ourselves and others, and how we can "reach the other side" of grief. In addition to a chapter on how to write a letter of condolence, lists of resources, support and informational groups, and additional readings are included.

 

Is God unfair? Is he silent? Is he hidden? In this profoundly personal book, these questions are answered with clarity, richness, and biblical certainty. Philip Yancey points to the odd disparity between our concept of God and the realities of life. Disappointment with God takes us beyond the things that make for disillusionment to a deeper faith, a certitude of God's love, and a thirst to reach not just for what God gives, but for who he is.

 

 

 

Many suffering people want to love God, but cannot see past their tears, says Philip Yancey. They feel hurt and betrayed. Sadly, the church often responds with more confusion than comfort. This current edition of what is perhaps Yancey's best-known book should speak to anyone for whom life sometimes just doesn't make sense. And it should help equip anyone who wants to reach out to someone in pain but just doesn't know what to say.

Amazon reader review: I found this book when my life partner died four years ago. This book helped me so much then and now, when certain days come along and I start feeling sad and don't understand. I am in a new relationship and still sometimes find myself missing my former life-partner and I realize through this book that it is entirely normal and to some degree expected. I recommend this book to anyone who has lost someone they love. It will help you get a handle on your emotions and is very easy to read.

 

 

Amazon reader review: I found this book when my life partner died four years ago. This book helped me so much then and now, when certain days come along and I start feeling sad and don't understand. I am in a new relationship and still sometimes find myself missing my former life-partner and I realize through this book that it is entirely normal and to some degree expected. I recommend this book to anyone who has lost someone they love. It will help you get a handle on your emotions and is very easy to read.

 

 

C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.

 

 

The Problem of Pain answers the universal question, "Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow people to experience pain and suffering?" Master Christian apologist C.S. Lewis asserts that pain is a problem because our finite, human minds selfishly believe that pain-free lives would prove that God loves us. In truth, by asking for this, we want God to love us less, not more than he does. "Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved; that the mere 'kindness' which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect at the opposite pole from Love." In addressing "Divine Omnipotence," "Human Wickedness," "Human Pain," and "Heaven," Lewis succeeds in lifting the reader from his frame of reference by artfully capitulating these topics into a conversational tone, which makes his assertions easy to swallow and even easier to digest. Lewis is straightforward in aim as well as honest about his impediments, saying, "I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine that being made perfect through suffering is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design." The mind is expanded, God is magnified, and the reader is reminded that he is not the center of the universe as Lewis carefully rolls through the dissertation that suffering is God's will in preparing the believer for heaven and for the full weight of glory that awaits him there. While many of us naively wish that God had designed a "less glorious and less arduous destiny" for his children, the fortune lies in Lewis's inclination to set us straight with his charming wit and pious mind.

 

Amazon reader review: This book written by a professor of New Testament at Lousville Presbyterian Theological Seminary should be read by all who struggle with faith and justice issues especially regarding sexuality. Dr. Edwards provides a radical and exciting as well as scholarly piece for those of us seeking to rebut the so-called Christians who would deny gays and lesbians civil and human rights based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Biblical witness. Read, enjoy, learn, and grow.

 

 

The question, "Why, God?" has been asked by Christians from all levels of spiritual maturity throughout history. Perhaps nothing is as perplexing to Christians as the enigma of pain and suffering. This well-loved writer and pastor, ministering for over 60 years, continues the theme originally presented in his bestselling Destined for the Throne: Christians are in training for eternal ruler ship with Christ. The character needed to fulfill both present and future responsibilities can, at times, be developed only in the school of suffering. He points out that it is not the mere presence of suffering but how a Christian reacts to it which determines one's spiritual growth through sorrow and pain.

Shade of His Hand Other Books By: Oswald Chambers

Amazon reader review: Too many times Christian writers try to make us believe that if we are good little boys and girls God will pave a way for us with rose petals. Not so Oswald Chambers in this book. He lets us know that life has ups and plunging downs; horrors as well as ecstasies. The trick for the Christian is to developed a day by day realistic relationship with God and to depend on him every step of the way to not only take you through these times, but to lift you up as you go. Oswald does this by an analysis of the book of Ecclesiastes. Few are brave enough to tackle this but this author does it in a very down to earth, nuts and bolts fashion. It gave me a springboard from which to go in my mind and begin to think in a new way about the things that have happened in my life. Through the whole book the author himself shines through as a real person and not just a preacher or teacher insulated behind a pulpit or sitting somewhere writing a book.

 

 

Best-selling author Dutch Sheets will inspire and encourage readers with this clear, revelatory study of God's appointed times and seasons. Going beyond the basic definitions of kairos and chronos, Dutch brings fresh insight to the subject, examining Scripture to show how kairos (strategic) times and chronos (general) times are not two separate and unrelated seasons in our lives but, rather, are often simply different phases of the same process. Dutch looks at how God brought about His divine shift in the lives of men and women throughout the Bible, and the many ways in which God used these seasons of change to deepen His people's understanding of Him. God has an intense desire to bring about the divine shift in our lives on the earth today, and we must be prepared and willing to move with Him according to His timing.

 

 

When life hasn't turned out as we hoped it would, it's easy to let negative attitudes dominate our thoughts-discouragement, confusion, unbelief, and even bitterness and cynicism. To cope, we often run ahead of God in an effort to change circumstances-or we even run away from Him. But the cure for lost hope is to draw near to God and let Him renew and heal our hearts and restore our faith. Drawing on scriptural teaching, Dutch Sheets shows what God wants to reveal to his children during difficult times. The barren places can become the holy places, just as Moses' 40 years in the desert culminated in God revealing Himself within the burning bush. God wants to stir our faith during hard times and show Himself in ever greater ways so that we are transformed, renewed and ready to go to new levels of service for Him.

This may be a fiction book, but the spiritual insight it offers could change your life. It is the most amazing portrayal of God's love and our relationship that I have ever read outside of the Bible. Not only does she reveal glimpses of the spiritual realm and the battle raging in the heavens, she shows God's careful attention to each one of us and our destinies. Master Potter helps you understand God's character and why he allows some trials in our lives. In this book, Jill Austin covers a number of dilemmas and issues every one of us has to face to fulfill the destiny God has for us. For instance, Beloved and the other vessels face condemnation, deception, and unbelief. Through her careful storytelling, Austin reveals how demonic forces work to destroy our lives but also shows God's redemption and plans to heal us, refine us, and make us pure and beautiful vessels. I also loved this book because it is a wonderful introduction to how the Holy Spirit works in our lives, including the gifts of the Spirit and other manifestations of God. This book I believe is best used when several friends can read it and talk about it. There is so much in it that it would be beneficial to obtain others' insights and revelations.

 

 

Wow. Let me say it again: WOW! This book will change you. It does not matter who you are or what your story is...if you are a human being...this book will change you. Stop reading this review for a moment. Go buy the book. Come back and I will tell you more:

 

OK then. Now that you have purchased a copy (if you haven't I'm serious-go do it) lets talk about the book you will soon posses---or should I say will soon posses you. This book is amazing. It is the chronicle, told with heartbreaking honesty, of one man's ascent from darkness to light; from death to life...from nothingness to the arms of God.

 

This is not a story however. There is no narrative. It is a collection of spiritual imperatives that Henri Nouwen wrote to himself during the worst spiritual, emotional, and psychological crisis of his life. Each one drips with meaning.

 

Each imperative is soaked in the power and grace that can only come from passing through the fire of human suffering. This stuff is what was left at the end of each day Henri spent in the refining fires of his struggles. There is no dross here.

God has clearly spoken here in and through this man. Get this book and listen to what He has to say.