By Iola Goulton @iolagoulton
Omega Writers is a Christian writing group serving Australian, New Zealand, and South Pacific Christian Writers. They held their annual writing conference the last weekend on October, in Adelaide, South Australia.
One much-anticipated part of conference is the Saturday night award ceremony for the CALEB Award. CALEB stands for:
Christian Authors Lifting Each others' Books
Today I'm checking out the winner of the non-fiction award, SHE by Jen Gibbs (with a little help from Kara Isaac and Christine Dillon).
I bought SHE at the conference, and I have started reading it. The writing is excellent, and it's a great topic. However, it's not the light Christian romance I ususally read, and it's going to take a while to read.
The cover gives the impression of a memoir or self-help book based on personal experience. SHE is that, but it's so much more. It's also an in-depth Bible study, looking at women of the Bible, at how Jesus treated women, and examining the underlying Hebrew and Greek.
For example, Gibbs points out that they word for "noble" in that famous passage in Proverbs 31 is also used to describe Gideon (where it's translated as "mighty warrior") and King David (brave warrior). That places quite a different emphasis on our famous "woman of noble character", and I'm looking foward to digging deeper into SHE and finding similar nuggets.
Kara Isaac says:
Part biblical exploration, part personal narrative, Jen Gibbs has crafted a compelling look at women of the Bible, their context and what we can learn from them as we wrestle with living lives of faith, hop, and love in the 21st century. An exciting addition to an important conversation.Christine Dillon says:
An easy, encouraging read for any women who might doubt that God really seems them as valuable and precious. A book full of delving into women of the Bible who showed faith, hope and love. Plenty of discussion questions for groups or individuals. Sprinkled throughout are stories from Jen’s experience and doubts she’s wrestled with. I loved it that she didn’t have to give answers but was willing to raise questions.About SHE: A Journey of Faith, Hope & Love with Women of the Bible:
Faith, Hope and Love. We get it, right? They are important. But sometimes they feel so intangible. How are we supposed to relate? What do we do with our faith through suffering? Why is hope even included in the "top three"? What does extravagant love really look like?
In this book Jen dives deep into Faith, Hope and Love as revealed through the lives of some incredible women of the Bible. Their lives point us to the heart of God for women. Through them we see a God who cherishes, strengthens, commissions, commends, esteems and cannot help but love us!
It’s a really good book. Even though written for women, I took a lot away from it. Jen does a great job weaving Biblical truth throughout her discussion of faith, hope and love.
ReplyDeleteGo grab a copy.