Download or read book Ninety Nine Stories of God written by Joy Williams and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year at Esquire, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly. From “quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories” (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine. Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Joy Williams has a one-of-a-kind gift for capturing both the absurdity and the darkness of everyday life. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, she takes on one of mankind’s most confounding preoccupations: the Supreme Being. This series of short, fictional vignettes explores our day-to-day interactions with an ever-elusive and arbitrary God. It’s the Book of Common Prayer as seen through a looking glass—a powerfully vivid collection of seemingly random life moments. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. Most of Williams’s characters, however, are like the rest of us: anonymous strivers and bumblers who brush up against God in the least expected places or go searching for Him when He’s standing right there. The Lord shows up at a hot-dog-eating contest, a demolition derby, a formal gala, and a drugstore, where he’s in line to get a shingles vaccination. At turns comic and yearning, lyric and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God serves as a pure distillation of one of our great artists.
Download or read book God Stories written by C. Michael Curtis and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1998 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a fresh approach to an age-old discussion, "God: Stories" collects 25 short stories by eminent writers about spiritual experiences of all sorts. Includes work by John Updike, Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich, James Joyce, Flannery O'Connor, James Baldwin, Alice Munro, and others.
Download or read book Premonition written by Randall Scott Ingermanson and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2003 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary stone box was recently discovered in Jerusalem---the bone-box of 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.' This is his story . . . It's the year A.D. 57 and Jerusalem teeters on the brink of revolt against Rome. James, leader of the Jewish Christian community, has an enemy in high places. And two very strange friends . . . Rivka Meyers is a Messianic Jewish archaeologist from California, trapped in first-century Jerusalem by a physics experiment gone horribly wrong. Ari Kazan is her husband, an Israeli physicist slowly coming to grips with his Jewish heritage---and with a man named Jesus he was raised to hate. With no way back to their own century, Rivka and Ari seek their niche in this doomed city of God. Ari applies his knowledge of physics to become an engineer, a man of honor. Rivka feels increasingly isolated in a patriarchal culture that treats women like children. She knows what's coming---siege, famine, fire. At first, her warnings earn her grudging respect as a 'seer woman.' But when one of her predictions misses, the city scorns her as a false prophet. Rivka knows that an illegal trial and execution awaits James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. Can she prevent this disaster? Will James believe her 'premonition'? Or is Ari right that Rivka's meddling in history will only . . . make matters worse?
Download or read book All the Names They Used for God written by Anjali Sachdeva and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A haunting, diverse debut story collection that explores the isolation we experience in the face of the mysterious, often dangerous forces that shape our lives, Anjali Sachdeva's debut collection spans centuries, continents, and a diverse set of characters but is united by each character's epic struggle with fate: A workman in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills is irrevocably changed by the brutal power of the furnaces; a fisherman sets sail into overfished waters and finds a secret obsession from which he can't return; an online date ends with a frightening, inexplicable dissapearance. Her story "Pleiades" was called "a masterpiece" by Dave Eggers. Sachdeva has a talent for creating moving and poignant scenes, following her highly imaginative plots to their logical ends, and depicting how one small miracle can affect everyone in its wake"--
Download or read book God Incidents written by Rev. Dr. Glenn M. Wagner and published by EBook MyBook L.L.C.. This book was released on 2016-05-15 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God Incidents: Real Life Stories to Strengthen and Restore Your Faith by Rev. Dr. Glenn M. Wagner invites persons who are struggling with belief to reconsider God. Wagner offers honesty, empathy, and inspiration from four decades of global pastoral experience. He shares many different ways that God is made known so that persons who doubt God and those who seek to help them may find new perspectives for living. Connect with the author and learn more at: glennmwagner.com
Download or read book God Stories written by Jennifer Skiff and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of inspiring stories describing the moment when people received personal proof God exists Have you ever experienced a miracle? A prayer was answered or an accident was averted? For many, these mysterious and inspiring events are proof positive that God exists. This collection of life-changing stories celebrates the breakthrough moments when the hand of a divine power is felt: A doctor opens the chest of a dying heart patient to discover her heart is healed; Marines watch as a fellow soldier in Iraq is hit by a powerful explosion but remains uninjured; a young woman loses her boyfriend on 9/11 and receives a message that brings her peace. Reassuring, hopeful, and unforgettable, these amazing confirmations of divine intervention will lift your spirits and leave you wondering–and even remembering–when your life was touched by a miracle. “A wide range of heavenly touches, everything from quiet hugs to stunning out-of-body experiences.” —Joan Wester Anderson, author of Where Angels Walk and Angels and Wonders “Reading this book is a touching and soul-penetrating experience.” —Mark Victor Hansen, cocreater of the #1 New York Times bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series and coauthor of The One Minute Millionaire “A bouquet of inspiring stories...for the believer and nonbeliever alike.” —Julia Cameron, bestselling author of The Artist’s Way
Download or read book Luther and the Stories of God written by Robert Kolb and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martin Luther read and preached the biblical text as the record of God addressing real, flesh-and-blood people and their daily lives. He used stories to drive home his vision of the Christian life, a life that includes struggling against temptation, enduring suffering, praising God in worship and prayer, and serving one's neighbor in response to God's callings and commands. Leading Lutheran scholar Robert Kolb highlights Luther's use of storytelling in his preaching and teaching to show how Scripture undergirded Luther's approach to spiritual formation. With both depth and clarity, Kolb explores how Luther retold and expanded on biblical narratives in order to cultivate the daily life of faith in Christ.
Download or read book Beware of God written by Shalom Auslander and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violent rabbis, lovelorn wives, a busy Grim Reaper, shame-filled simians, and one seriously angry deity populate this humorous and disquieting collection. Shalom Auslander's stories in Beware of God have the mysterious punch of a dream. They are wide ranging and inventive: A young Jewish man's inexplicable transformation into a very large, blond, tattooed goy ends with a Talmudic argument over whether or not his father can beat his unclean son with a copy of the Talmud. A pious man having a near-death experience discovers that God is actually a chicken, and he's forced to reconsider his life -- and his diet. At God's insistence, Leo Schwartzman searches Home Depot for supplies for an ark. And a young boy mistakes Holocaust Remembrance Day as emergency preparedness training for the future. Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.
Download or read book God written by Dan Barker and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What words come to mind when we think of God? Merciful? Just? Compassionate? Delving deep into the Bible, former evangelical preacher Dan Barker uncovers God's negative qualities: jealous, petty, unforgiving, bloodthirsty, vindictive--and worse! Witty and well researched, this unique atheist book explains exactly why the Scripture shouldn't govern our everyday lives. It makes a powerful argument for the separation of church and state.
Download or read book The Story of God with Us written by Philip Gregorie and published by . This book was released on 2021-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Story of God with Us is a fully illustrated book that tracks through the Bible following the primary storyline of God's relentless pursuit to be with his people. The story moves from Genesis all the way to Revelation by featuring various mountains that appear throughout the Bible.
Download or read book Transgression written by Randall Scott Ingermanson and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While playing a virtual reality game, Rivka Meyers, an American Messianic Jew visiting Israel for an archaeological dig, becomes trapped in ancient Jerusalem, involved in a plot to destroy the spread of Christianity.
Download or read book The Book of God written by Walter Wangerin Jr. and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience the Bible as a singular, powerful story and prepare to be swept away by Scripture as never before! Wangerin's "Bible storybook for adults" features brilliant settings, dramatized scenes, and added dialogue—all gleaned from extensive research. The Book of God reads like a novel, dramatizing the sweep of biblical events, bringing to life the men and women of this ancient book in vivid detail and dialogue. From Abraham wandering in the desert to Jesus teaching the multitudes on a Judean hillside, this award-winning bestseller follows the biblical story from start to finish. Priests and kings, apostles and prophets, common folk and charismatic leaders—individual stories offer glimpses into an unfolding revelation that reaches across the centuries to touch us today. The Book of God: Follows the biblical story in chronological order Filled with carefully researched cultural and historical background Includes biblical events viewed through the eyes of minor characters Master storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. shares the story of the Bible from beginning to end as you've never read it before, retold with exciting detail and passionate energy. Experience the Bible in a beautiful new way!
Download or read book Bumping into God written by Dominic Grassi and published by Loyola Press. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People look for God's presence in many places. They gather in the basilicas of Rome or at the red rocks in Sedona. I find God's presence quite nearby-in the magnificent complexity of the human person. -Dominic Grassi We bump into God's grace every day in all kinds of humorous, serious, mysterious, random, and sometimes completely unlikely ways. This charming collection of thirty-five stories reveals one person's myriad encounters with God in both the mundane and extraordinary moments that make up our days. This is not a book about ideologies, but about people. . . . There are miracles and ordinary moments to celebrate, grace and joy to share, silly folk and saints to relish. -Dominic Grassi A natrual storyteller, Dominic Grassi invites readers to share his warm memories of life in Chicago over the past five decades. He shows how God is reflected in the people we meet every day: a butcher, a bookstore owner, a short-order cook. With rich and often funny descriptions of human triumphs and struggles, laughter and tears, youthful pranks and quiet maturity, Grassi uncovers grace in the most unexpected places. Stories such as Wisdom Teeth and Window Washers and Thumping Watermelons help us see not only moments of grace in Grassi's life but also times when we too have unexpectedly bumped into God.
Download or read book Longing for an Absent God written by Nick Ripatrazone and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longing for an Absent God unveils the powerful role of faith and doubt in the American literary tradition. Nick Ripatrazone explores how two major strands of Catholic writers--practicing and cultural--intertwine and sustain each other. Ripatrazone explores the writings of devout American Catholic writers in the years before the Second Vatican Council through the work of Flannery O'Connor, J. F. Powers, and Walker Percy; those who were raised Catholic but drifted from the church, such as the Catholic-educated Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy, the convert Toni Morrison, the Mass-going Thomas Pynchon, and the ritual-driven Louise Erdrich; and a new crop of faithful American Catholic writers, including Ron Hansen, Phil Klay, and Alice McDermott, who write Catholic stories for our contemporary world. These critically acclaimed and award-winning voices illustrate that Catholic storytelling is innately powerful and appealing to both secular and religious audiences. Longing for an Absent God demonstrates the profound differences in the storytelling styles and results of these two groups of major writers--but ultimately shows how, taken together, they offer a rich and unique American literary tradition that spans the full spectrum of doubt and faith.
Download or read book Romancing God written by Lynn S. Neal and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-12-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the world of the evangelical romance novel, sex and desire are mitigated by an omnipresent third party--the divine. Thus romance is not just an encounter between lovers, but a triangle of affection: man, woman, and God. Although this literature is often disparaged by scholars and pastors alike, inspirational fiction plays a unique and important role in the religious lives of many evangelical women. In an engaging study of why women read evangelical romance novels, Lynn S. Neal interviews writers and readers of the genre and finds a complex religious piety among ordinary people. In evangelical love stories, the success of the hero and heroine's romance rests upon their religious choices. These fictional religious choices, readers report, often inspire real spiritual change in their own lives. Amidst the demands of daily life or during a challenge to one's faith, these books offer a respite from problems and a time for fun, but they also provide a means to cultivate piety and to appreciate the unconditional power of God's love. The reading of inspirational fiction emerges from and reinforces an evangelical lifestyle, Neal argues, but women's interpretations of the stories demonstrate the constant negotiations that characterize evangelical living. Neal's study of religion in practice highlights evangelicalism's aesthetic sensibility and helps to alter conventional understandings--both secular and religious--of this prominent subculture.
Download or read book If God Meant to Interfere written by Christopher Douglas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields. Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right’s strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism —leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it.
Download or read book The Book of Longings written by Sue Monk Kidd and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extraordinary novel . . . a triumph of insight and storytelling.” —Associated Press “A true masterpiece.” —Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious, with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus changes everything. Their marriage evolves with love and conflict, humor and pathos in Nazareth, where Ana makes a home with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana's pent-up longings intensify amid the turbulent resistance to Rome's occupation of Israel, partially led by her brother, Judas. She is sustained by her fearless aunt Yaltha, who harbors a compelling secret. When Ana commits a brazen act that puts her in peril, she flees to Alexandria, where startling revelations and greater dangers unfold, and she finds refuge in unexpected surroundings. Ana determines her fate during a stunning convergence of events considered among the most impactful in human history. Grounded in meticulous research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus's life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring, unforgettable account of one woman's bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place and culture devised to silence her. It is a triumph of storytelling both timely and timeless, from a masterful writer at the height of her powers.
