Download or read book Light Shines in the Darkness written by Lucille F. Sider and published by Read the Spirit. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clinical psychologist and clergywoman Lucille F. Sider adds her voice to the chorus of women in the #WhyIDidntReport and #MeToo movements. This is Lucille’s story of resilience and hope as a survivor of sexual abuse. She explains the challenges of finding her way out of a fear-based spirituality into one that is full of grace, hope and forgiveness. The unique richness of her book is that she wrote it to spark healing discussion. As she describes her experiences in these pages, she also steps back and offers helpful analysis as both a psychologist and a clergywoman. At the end of the book, she includes a complete study guide with questions for reflection for individuals, small groups and classes. “The book is arranged to be a valuable tool in the hands of persons in the helping professions, such as clergy, social workers, psychologists,” writes the Rev. Jo Anne Lyon, General Superintendent Emerita and Ambassador of The Wesleyan Church. “This writing is so powerful, yet gentle, that people will be able to add their own words to combat the pain. Lucille’s credentials enhance the power of the story. Truly a book for these days!” Lucille was just 6 years old when she was abused both physically and sexually by a hired man on the family’s farm. Lucille’s inner conflict about these experiences, propelled her into a childhood of guilt and shame. While Lucille was an outstanding student, singer and athlete, she lived with an underlying fear, loneliness and mild depression. A second sexual abuse by her brother-in-law, when she was just 15 years old, added to Lucille’s fears. When she tried to tell her parents about this, their response was only to pray for her—so, she kept these painful events secret for years. Many years later, her brother in law was arrested for molesting a 15-year-old girl. Lucille and others, including his own daughter, testified against him and he was incarcerated. Raised in a conservative household and faith, Lucille went to college and seminary to search for a theology that was full of grace and forgiveness. She found this especially at Yale Divinity School, though she always lived with a mild depression. Her struggle to understand both her faith and psyche led her to earn a PhD from Northwestern University in psychology and religion. She became a clinical psychologist and pastoral counselor and later the Executive Director of The Samaritan Pastoral Counseling Center in Evanston, Illinois. At age 50, when her husband suddenly divorced her, Lucille was cast into darkness and despair which resulted in major depression. Lucille became dysfunctional and had to step down as Executive Director of her counseling center. Years of therapy led her to new ways of offering and sharing her gifts, which included writing stories and ministering to seniors, especially those suffering from dementia. In Light Shines in the Darkness, Lucille F. Sider shares her unique story of sexual abuse and severe mental illness, including depression and PTSD. She describes her legal battle in fighting for justice and her ongoing persistence in finding ways to remain stable. She calls these her mental health and spiritual practices and they include: counseling, medication, meditation, healthy diet, exercise, daily prayer and church attendance. In sharing her story, Lucille now is helping others along their journeys from sexual abuse to stability—to find their own hope and their own light that shines through the darkness. “Timely, compelling and courageous, this autobiography lays bare the trauma of both child and adolescent abuse,” writes Carol Schreck, Professor Emerita of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Palmer Theological Seminary. “This book deserves to be read by any adult who, living in a culture where 80 percent of females have experienced some form of sexual abuse by the age of 18, are no longer content to keep their proverbial head in the sand.”

Download or read book Shining Through the Darkness written by Michael D. Wuchter and published by CSS Publishing. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With their recurrent themes of "waiting" and "traveling on a journey," these 12 imaginative messages are especially appropriate for the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany seasons -- yet their ecumenically oriented expressions of Christian faith, hope, and love also make them relevant for any time of the year. Wuchter's keen eye for the telling detail and his ability to connect scripture with familiar things in our lives make Shining Through the Darkness compelling reading for anyone who wants a deeper appreciation of God's grace and the Gospel of Christ. Michael Wuchter's sermons weave together the ancient texts of the Bible with modern insights. His careful historical research and winsome stories combine for a rich tapestry of gospel proclamation. These sermons stretching from Advent through Epiphany form a sort of mosaic for the beginning of the church year -- each story, each illustration, each wonderful tangent serving as tiles for a larger, clearer view for the one who came among us as the Word Made Flesh. John D. Morris, Pastor Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Dublin, Ohio Michael Wuchter was a master of the English language and an excellent, excellent preacher. Jerry L. Schmalenberger, Former President Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary In this remarkable collection of sermons, Wuchter fully acknowledges a world rampant with violence and injustice that millions experience today. Against this backdrop of pain, he weaves with poetic creativity and sensitivity the acts of waiting, grieving, and hoping within and among personal, familial, and communal relationships. Long, cold winters are made shorter and warmer with these Christ-centered sermons in hand. Daniel F. Martensen, Ecumenical Research Fellow Washington (D.C.) Theological Consortium Former Director, Dept. of Ecumenical Affairs, ELCA Michael D. Wuchter is the author of Uplifting Christ Through Autumn (CSS). He served as the senior pastor of First Lutheran Church in Duluth, Minnesota, as university pastor at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and as the pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Hamilton Square, New Jersey.

Download or read book A Light Shining in the Darkness written by Karen A. Cooper and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "You're stupid and no one will ever love you." These were the words Karen Cooper grew up with. While classmates took college prep courses, Karen carefully chose a skill that would allow her to escape her abusive father and her hometown in upstate New York. But despite surviving a childhood of fear, pain, and shame, Karen's low self-esteem brought a multitude of problems, mirroring the terrors of her past, and at 19 she found herself pregnant and on her own. Rejected by the father, Karen entered a home for unwed mothers and then placed the infant up for adoption; two years later she was pregnant again by the same man and looking for an illegal abortion. Failing and feeling worthless, she married the child's father, but the baby died of SIDS at nine weeks. This double trauma led to years of upheaval and secrets...until she finally married the man God had chosen for her. Through hard work and counseling, Karen fought her demons and overcame her past. She enjoyed professional success, found the peace of God's unconditional love, and even earned a college degree. A Light Shining in the Darkness is a painfully honest yet eloquent account of a life that seemed predestined for failure. But with God's love in her life, Karen was able to find beauty in ashes and light where there was only darkness before. Her memoir will inspire others who are struggling to hold on to hope and find the healing and restoration God has in store for us all.

Download or read book Dreaming Through Darkness written by Charlie Morley and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shadow is made up of all that we hide from others: our shame, our fears and our wounds, but also our divine light, our blinding beauty and our hidden talents. The shadow is a huge source of benevolent power and creativity, but until we bring it into the light this power will remain untapped and our full potential unreached.In this transformative book, lucid dreaming teacher Charlie Morley guides you into the dazzling darkness of the shadow and shows you how to unlock the inner gold within. Using ancient methods from Tibetan Buddhism alongside contemporary techniques and Western psychology, he reveals how to use lucid dreaming, meditation, shamanic mask work, creative writing and spiritual practice to help you to befriend your shadow with loving kindness, heal your mind and open your heart to your highest potential. This book reveals: •What the shadow is, and how we create and project it •The different types of shadow, including the golden shadow, the ancestral shadow and the sexual shadow •Exercises, visualizations and meditations to connect deeply with and transform your shadows •The life-changing benefits of shadow integration, including increased energy, authenticity and spiritual growth •How to lucid dream and lucidly call forth your golden shadow and embrace it with love.Through over 30 practical exercises, this book will take you on a life-changing journey into the heart of spiritual transformation. The light you’ll find there is brighter than you could ever imagine.

Download or read book Out of Darkness Shining Light written by Petina Gappah and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful, moving, and revelatory novel set in nineteenth-century Africa--the captivating story of the loyal men and women who carried the body of explorer and missionary David Livingstone from Zambia to Zanzibar so that his remains could be returned home to England. Dawn, 1 May 1873, on the outskirts of Chitambo's village, near Lake Bangweulu in modern-day Zambia. The Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone has died. He had been heading south in the African interior on an increasingly maniacal mission to penetrate the greatest secret of Victorian exploration. He wanted to find the source of the world's longest river, the Nile. Instead, on an isolated and swampy floodplain, Dr. Livingstone found his death. How Livingstone is to be buried will be decided by his African companions, a group of sixty-nine men, women, and children. They decide that come what may, Livingstone, his papers and maps, must all be carried to England. They bury his heart and other organs under a tree and dry his flesh like jerky in the sun. Over nine months, battling severe illness and hunger, hostile chiefs and unknown terrain, all while taking a tortuous route of more than 1,000 miles to the coast to avoid marauding slave traders, they march with Livingstone's body and the evidence of his explorations. Their journey has been called "the most extraordinary story in African exploration." In this novel, their story is retold anew in the distinct, indelible voices of Livingstone's sharp-tongued female cook, Halima; a repressed, formerly enslaved African missionary named Jacob Wainwright; and the collective voice of the retainers. The result is a profound and tragic journey--an epic like no other--that encompasses all of the hypocrisy of slavery and colonization while celebrating resilience, loyalty, and love. In Out of Darkness, Shining Light, Petina Gappah has created an ambitious and artful masterpiece.

Download or read book Holman New Testament Commentary Acts written by Kenneth Gangel and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 1998 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One in a series of twelve New Testament verse-by-verse commentary books edited by Max Anders. Includes discussion starters, teaching plan, and more. Great for lay teachers and pastors alike.

Download or read book Light Shining in Darkness written by William Huntington and published by . This book was released on 1803 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wolfie the Bunny written by Ame Dyckman and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Families of all kinds will delight in this sweet tale of new babies, sibling rivalry, bravery, unconditional love...and veggies! The Bunny family has adopted a wolf son, and daughter Dot is the only one who realizes Wolfie can--and might--eat them all up! Dot tries to get through to her parents, but they are too smitten to listen. A new brother takes getting used to, and when (in a twist of fate) it's Wolfie who's threatened, can Dot save the day?

Download or read book Heroes for Young Readers Corrie Ten Boom written by Renee Meloche and published by YWAM Publishing. This book was released on 2001-10 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Hitler's madness invaded Holland, Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) and her family risked everything to extend God's hand of love and protection to their Jewish neighbors. Corrie's life is a testimony of forgiveness, compassion, and courage to do what is right. "No pit is so deep," she believed, "that God's great love is greater still."Children, parents, and teachers love the adventurous Christian Heroes Then & Now biographies and unit study curriculum guides. Now Heroes for Young Readers introduces younger children to the lives of Christian heroes!

Download or read book Finding Light in the Darkness written by Shaul Rosenblatt and published by Feldheim Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Light shining in Darkness or heavenly rays from dark sayings being a few private thoughts on some obscure passages of Scripture written by William HUNTINGTON (S.S.) and published by . This book was released on 1817 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Through Darkness to Light written by Jeanine Michna-Bales and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They left in the middle of the night—often carrying little more than the knowledge to follow the North Star. Between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, an estimated one hundred thousand slaves became passengers on the Underground Railroad, a journey of untold hardship, in search of freedom. In Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, Jeanine Michna-Bales presents a remarkable series of images following a route from the cotton plantations of central Louisiana, through the cypress swamps of Mississippi and the plains of Indiana, north to the Canadian border— a path of nearly fourteen hundred miles. The culmination of a ten-year research quest, Through Darkness to Light imagines a journey along the Underground Railroad as it might have appeared to any freedom seeker. Framing the powerful visual narrative is an introduction by Michna-Bales; a foreword by noted politician, pastor, and civil rights activist Andrew J. Young; and essays by Fergus M. Bordewich, Robert F. Darden, and Eric R. Jackson.

Download or read book The Spirit Led Leader written by Timothy C. Geoffrion and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005-11-14 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our postmodern, experience-oriented culture, people are longing for greater authenticity, integrity, and depth in their pastors and leaders. Board directors, church members, and staff alike are all eagerly seeking leaders who effectively integrate their spirituality and leadership. Pastors and executives, however, often struggle with knowing how to integrate their spiritual values and practices into their leadership and management roles. Designed for pastors, executives, administrators, managers, coordinators, and all who see themselves as leaders and who want to fulfill their God-given purpose, The Spirit-Led Leader addresses the critical fusion of spiritual life and leadership for those who not only want to see results, but who also desire to care just as deeply about who they are and how they lead as they do about what they produce and accomplish. Geoffrion creates a new vision for spiritual leadership as partly an art, partly a result of careful planning, and always a working of the grace of God

Download or read book Shining Through written by Susan Isaacs and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From bestselling author Susan Isaacs, Shining Through is a novel of honor, sacrifice, passion, and humor—made into a movie of the same name starring Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, and Liam Neeson It's 1940 and Linda Voss, legal secretary extraordinaire, has a secret. She's head over heels in love with her boss, John Berringer, the pride of the Ivy League. Not that she even has a chance—he'd never take a second look at a German-Jewish girl from Queens who spends her time taking care of her faded beauty of a mother and following bulletins on the war in Europe. For Linda, though, the war will soon become all too real. Engulfing her nation and her life, it will offer opportunities she's never dreamed of. A chance to win the man she wants...a chance to find the love she deserves. This is vintage Susan Isaacs, a tale of a spirited woman who wisecracks her way into heroism and history—-and into your heart.

Download or read book Light Shining into Darkness written by Engage Today and published by Word Alive Press. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories in this book illustrate the dynamic indigenous partners of Engage Today who have established missions to reach their own people with the Gospel. These leaders are committed to church planting and evangelism among the unreached, and are examples of humbly serving with Biblical childlike faith. The vision of Engage Today is to build mutually beneficial relationships between Canadian churches and faithful indigenous missions so the missions are mobilized to bring the Gospel to the remaining unreached peoples and the Canadian Church finds a renewed passion and vision for mission. Over two billion people have not yet heard the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Engage Today was established in order that Christ be proclaimed to the remaining unreached. Engage Today currently links Canadians with twenty indigenous mission leaders who oversee over 850 local staff in five countries—India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Indonesia. Their ministries are steadily bearing fruit through disciple-making, and these missions have planted thousands of churches.

Download or read book The Light Shines On in the Darkness written by Robert Spitzer and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would an all-loving God allow suffering? Are not suffering and love opposed to one another? Does suffering have any meaning or benefit? Is there any objective evidence for God, for a soul that will survive bodily death, for the resurrection of Jesus? Who is God anyway – benevolent and loving, or angry and retributive? Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., gives a comprehensive response to these questions and many others, explaining the contemporary evidence for God, the soul, and the resurrection. He discusses how God uses suffering to lead us to compassion for others and eternal life. He also shows how the Holy Spirit guides us through times of suffering toward our salvation, explaining the signs and the interior movements that reveal the Spirit's actions. Fr. Spitzer not only addresses the perplexing questions associated with suffering but teaches us how to suffer well. He points out some of the most common mistakes people make when trying to interpret God's motives for allowing or alleviating suffering. He demonstrates why suffering – in combination with love – is one of the most powerful motivating agents for personal, cultural, and societal development.

Download or read book Shining Through Dark Clouds written by Ginny Dye and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-17 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #15 in The Bregdan Chronicles by BestSelling Author, Ginny Dye. Review: Best Historical Fiction series I have ever read! Keep them coming! Dotti Is Reconstruction healing America, or are Dark Clouds sending a warning? America continues the struggle to become a country for everyone... Carrie struggles to start a new practice in Richmond as tragedy changes her life dramatically. Janie welcomes new life into the world. Rose and Moses almost lose what they hold most precious, and then face new violence on the plantation as anger and frustration boil over. Salvation comes from an unexpected source. Florence Robinson, on the verge of joining the Richmond medical practice, finds herself trapped an ocean away. Felicia, on the brink of womanhood, discovers a new talent that gives her great joy, even while struggling to deal with the source of a burning anger. When everyone really just wants a simple, clear future, each person finds they have to search for the light shining through growing dark clouds. *************** Volume # 15 of the Bregdan Chronicles continues the sweeping historical saga that now encompasses the last months of 1870 through March 1871. How many books will be in the Bregdan Chronicles? No one knows yet... Ginny intends to write these character's stories, one year at a time, for as long as she is able to write. She is passionate about bringing history to life through historical fiction. Since she is amazingly healthy, that could be for a very long time! She doesn't like stories to end any more than you do. This one won't end for a very long time!