book announcement - Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled

We interrupt this regularly scheduled programming ...

My cousin Carolyn and I have written a book together, chronicling some of our experiences of the eldest children in large, homeschooling families. It is officially available for pre-order today! The announcement is below :).

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Dear friends,

Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled is now available for pre-order! You can purchase your copy of Tales at www.littledozen.com/thh.html. Pre-orders close June 30. As a special thank-you to those who order before June 30, we are offering a free Ebook Edition of Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe, the novel Rachel wrote when she was 13!

Pre-orders help us cover the costs of publishing--and they get the book into your hands early! Your books will be ordered and sent to you in the first week of July, when the book is just becoming available to the world at large.

When we started writing Tales as a series of emails to each other, we didn't really imagine how much you'd share with us! We thank you for your friendship, encouragement, and support as we've worked to bring Tales to print. It's been a marvelous journey!

Blessings,
Rachel and Carolyn

authors, Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled
www.littledozen.com/thh.html

gifted

"The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them."

Proverbs 20:9

I wrote the fantasy novel Worlds Unseen six years ago. At the time, I had some loose ideas about what it could say--besides telling a good story, which was my first priority! It touched on some of my beliefs about life: the spiritual realities behind the physical world, nature's allegiance to its Creator, and the way most of us live our lives ignorant of the world's true history and what it means to us today.

Worlds is primarily about Maggie Sheffield, a very normal young woman who stumbles into the spiritual realities of her world by accident and must learn to deal with them. However, equally important to the story are the two Gifted: a wanderer named Nicolas Fisher, who hears things no one else can, and Virginia Ramsey, a blind girl who sees visions.

Proverbs 20:9 made me think of these two immediately: "The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them." In Worlds Unseen, Virginia and Nicolas are not only Gifted, they are gifts--gifts to the world. Those who believe what the Gifted tell them will arrive at the truth about life, and with it, real freedom.

In the story, though, Nicolas and Virginia are both outcasts. One wrestles to accept his own gift and thus refuses to live among people; the other is feared and ultimately betrayed because of the truth she sees. It's not easy to be the only people in all the world who understand what life really is--especially when the truth shatters everything we have believed.

Nicolas and Virginia aren't without parallel in our own world. They are my fantasy version of the Old Testament prophets, of the New Testament apostles and saints, of everyone to whom God has given clarity of vision and ears that understand. Often, these real-world Gifted were despised and rejected, driven out and even crucified. Isaiah was one such Gifted man. David, king and psalmist, was another. Mary; Anna; the Apostle Paul. John the Beloved, witnessing the Revelation while in exile on the Isle of Patmos, was one. And ever since their days, God has not ceased to send to us people who see and hear, and who will open our own understanding if we let them.

Perhaps you can think of someone who has filled this role in your life. A parent; a sister; a friend; a teacher. A singer or poet. Such people do not create or renew truth. They simply show us, through scripture and by the Spirit of God, what has always been there.

Perhaps, in the darkness of the world around, the one who sees and hears is you.

Like my fictional Seventh World, the people around us live in darkness and deception. We who have the Word of God at our fingertips and the Spirit of God in our hearts are in this world, not just as passers-by, but as gifts. In prayer, Jesus said of His disciples, "As thou [Father] hath sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world" (John 17:18).

You, believer in Jesus, are in this world not as an accident and not as a judge. You are here as a gift, bearing the gifts of sight, hearing, and true reality.

May we use these gifts well: to bring into the darkness a burning, holy light.

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Worlds Unseen is available for purchase or as a free ebook from www.LittleDozen.com. It's sequel, Burning Light, is due out December 2008.

transformed by what we love

My cousin recently lent me The Liberty of Obedience by Elisabeth Elliot. I finally got a chance to read it yesterday. Recently I've been trying to find God's will on a difficult subject, and this quote from Elisabeth reminds me of why such struggles are necessary--not only to discover the truth, but also to grow us as Christians.

Why did He not summarize all the rules in one book, and all the basic doctrines in another? He could have eliminated the loopholes, prevented all the schisms over morality and false teaching that have plagued His Church for two thousand years. Think of the squabbling and perplexity we would have been spared. And think of the crop of dwarfs He would have reared!

He did not spare us. He wants us to reach maturity. He has so arranged things that if we are to go beyond the "milk diet" we shall be forced to think. We must train our faculties by practice to distinguish between good and evil. We are fond of quoting Romans 8:28. But this verse is nearly meaningless without its following verse, in which lies another definition of maturity, "to be shaped to the likeness of his son" (NEB). Unless we see this as the true "good" referred to in verse 28, we shall wonder how Paul could possibly have been so naive. We shall be forced to regard him--perhaps with affection and certainly with pity--as a misguided Pollyanna, trying to prove to himself that there is always something to be glad about, and shutting his eyes to the sad and the bad. But, given the definition of verse 29, we see that all our spiritual education is directed toward God's idea of good, this "conformity to Christ."

... This was Paul's personal goal, though he stated it even more comprehensively, "to know him." For to know Christ is to be made like Him. It is in beholding the image that we are changed into it, transformed by what we love.

Elisabeth wrote this book when her life among the Auca tribe in Ecuador forced her to reexamine some of her cultural presuppositions about what it means to be righteous. It's challenging; a brief but worthy read. Her thoughts on the true meaning of worldliness were particularly interesting.