Glimpses of Grace is a compelling book, it can be read from cover to cover or just as easily dipped into ad hoc without losing the thread. Ever practical and honest, Gloria Furman uses a mixture of personal anecdotes, biblical truths, sound quotations and faithful hymnology to gently persuade you of the vital necessity of treasuring the Gospel in your home.
A few extracts will show this better than my attempts to describe it (from Chapter 9 God's Abiding Presence in Our Pain):
...I live in the midst of pain. We're all carrying some sort of burden - maybe it's a lost love, or a lost child, a broken friendship or a broken home. We all limp as we go about our daily lives, and sometimes the pain is so deep that we can hardly bear to stand up. Your daily life is complicated by situations and extraordinary pain.
...There's a saying I learned in Kenya when visiting the church there. When somebody says, "God is good," everybody answers, "All the time." We extol the character of God and affirm, "God doesn't change." But how does God's immutable character affect our everyday perspective on life? If God doesn't change, how are we to respond when our circumstances do change? Rejoicing in the unchanging character of God is much harder to do when you feel like your life is a sandstorm swirling all around you, and you can't see which way to go, much less where the road went.
...Martin Luther said "Although it hurts us when he takes his own from us, his good will should be a greater comfort to us than all his gifts, for God is immeasurably better than all his gifts."
...Every time God acts, he acts in righteousness and grace.
...We need faith to trust that God doesn't merely "know what's best for us," but that he is what's best for us no matter what our circumstances are.
Lorna
Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in your Home by Gloria Furman, published by Crossway, £9.99
