Dancing On Fields Of Sorrow And Blessing

Is it possible to right the wrongs of the past? It's a question Wallace Hayes asked himself many times, and the answer is always the same. Yessuh. You see, Wallace knows about the power within all of us because he has seen it in action. Wallace grew up at Summerton Place, the plantation where his grandparents were once slaves and his father was born the illegitimate child of a wealthy landowner. Now the owner of what's left of the once grand plantation, Wallace is determined to bring good from the tragic and painful events of the past. Slavery, rape, abuse, and war happened along the long line of ancient oaks. Two children born, Moses and Hope-one into slavery and one smuggled out, never to be seen again. But God had hold of every event, as He always promised He would. Repentance, forgiveness, and redemption follow, but some things cannot be undone. In an effort to teach others the life-giving power of forgiveness and faith that his father taught him, Wallace decides to share his family's darkest secrets and the sweetest truths of his heritage with three special people. In fact, he has a wish for all of them as they come to terms with their own personal pasts, and Wallace's quest to right the wrongs come full circle. Set in Charleston, South Carolina, Dancing on Fields of Sorrow and Blessing spans three generations of the Summerton-Hayes family, beginning in 1860 on the cusp of the Civil War and ending in the greatest lesson of all-the power not only to change our personal stories but to change the world.

Anthony C. Yu’s translation of The Journey to the West,initially published in 1983, introduced English-speaking audiences to the classic Chinese novel in its entirety for the first time. Written in the sixteenth century, The Journey to the West tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang, one of China’s most famous religious heroes, and his three supernatural disciples, in search of Buddhist scriptures. Throughout his journey, Xuanzang fights demons who wish to eat him, communes with spirits, and traverses a land riddled with a multitude of obstacles, both real and fantastical. An adventure rich with danger and excitement, this seminal work of the Chinese literary canonis by turns allegory, satire, and fantasy. With over a hundred chapters written in both prose and poetry, The Journey to the West has always been a complicated and difficult text to render in English while preserving the lyricism of its language and the content of its plot. But Yu has successfully taken on the task, and in this new edition he has made his translations even more accurate and accessible. The explanatory notes are updated and augmented, and Yu has added new material to his introduction, based on his original research as well as on the newest literary criticism and scholarship on Chinese religious traditions. He has also modernized the transliterations included in each volume, using the now-standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization system. Perhaps most important, Yu has made changes to the translation itself in order to make it as precise as possible. One of the great works of Chinese literature, The Journey to the West is not only invaluable to scholars of Eastern religion and literature, but, in Yu’s elegant rendering, also a delight for any reader.

Anthony C. Yu’s translation of The Journey to the West,initially published in 1983, introduced English-speaking audiences to the classic Chinese novel in its entirety for the first time. Written in the sixteenth century, The Journey to the West tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang, one of China’s most famous religious heroes, and his three supernatural disciples, in search of Buddhist scriptures. Throughout his journey, Xuanzang fights demons who wish to eat him, communes with spirits, and traverses a land riddled with a multitude of obstacles, both real and fantastical. An adventure rich with danger and excitement, this seminal work of the Chinese literary canonis by turns allegory, satire, and fantasy. With over a hundred chapters written in both prose and poetry, The Journey to the West has always been a complicated and difficult text to render in English while preserving the lyricism of its language and the content of its plot. But Yu has successfully taken on the task, and in this new edition he has made his translations even more accurate and accessible. The explanatory notes are updated and augmented, and Yu has added new material to his introduction, based on his original research as well as on the newest literary criticism and scholarship on Chinese religious traditions. He has also modernized the transliterations included in each volume, using the now-standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization system. Perhaps most important, Yu has made changes to the translation itself in order to make it as precise as possible. One of the great works of Chinese literature, The Journey to the West is not only invaluable to scholars of Eastern religion and literature, but, in Yu’s elegant rendering, also a delight for any reader.

2016 Christian Book Award finalist (Bibles category) Stories of Scripture are often portrayed two-dimensionally, making people in the Bible seem familiar, predictable, even flat. We don’t always read their stories with much awareness of the pressures they faced, the doubts they had, the assumptions they made, or the alternatives they have chosen. The Dancing in the Desert Devotional Bible in the New Living Translation encourages readers to take an honest look at the people in the Bible. Chris Tiegreen, author of many popular devotionals for both men and women, has written 270 devotionals that explore the lives of people in the Bible and how they faced their own life’s wilderness and found meaning, significance, and purpose with God. When we keep our gaze fixed on a story bigger than our own lives, we, too, can learn to dance in even the driest of our deserts.

It would be such a waste of time if we read the book and do not move on to a next level of followship. The journey of faith should become a cycle of faith with new levels of commitment that will be required as we start higher and deeper levels of the process time and again. Moving from discipleship to apostleship on the journey of faith will require that we sit down and count the cost once again, but this time on a higher level. Let us consider the words of A. J. Nock: The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests. So let us digest, act, and do.

GOD AT WORK What do you say When for days in advance you are ordered to evacuate your home and then for hours you are bombarded with the imminent foreboding of a killer hurricane slowly fading out the sunlight? When the skies grow dim as billow after billow of ever darkening clouds unfurl menacingly blotting out the remaining shafts of sunlight? When jagged spears of lightening pierce the darkened shroud which has obscured the azure skies and the clatter of thunder race the stabs of light that accompany them in ever increasing rapidity which threaten to overtake the preceding duo? (97) What do you say when for days in advance you are ordered to evacuate home and, having failed to comply, for hours you are bombarded with the imminent foreboding of a killer hurricane slowly fading out the sunlight? When the skies grow dim as billow after billow of ever darkening clouds unfurl menacingly blotting out the remaining shafts of sunlight? When jagged spears of lightening pierce the darkened shroud which has enveloped the azure skies and the clatter of thunder race the stabs of light that accompany them in ever increasing rapidity which threaten to overtake the preceding duo?