From Shifting Sand To Solid Rock

Melvin John Ruohonen was raised by loving, conservative parents in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He has lived a full life. Romances, beginning with his five-year-old foray in wooing of Gail Johannson in kindergarten. Divine interventions, the first of which was a personal mission imparted to Melvin when he was just fifteen. Marriages, divorce, children. Financial success and failure in sales. Excessive drinking, gambling, and then, moderation. Redemption. Now sixty-three years old, Melvin reflects on the highs and lows, the shifting sands, over the years. His life is one of everyman, but contains elements of the divine and unique lessons learned. Readers will recognize themselves within these pages and benefit from lessons learned, loves lost, and redemption bought. Move with Melvin John Ruohonen From Shifting Sand To Solid Rock.

A Way of Seeing invites the reader to open up his or her own way of looking at life, thereby gaining new perspectives and spiritual refreshment. It is a stimulating collection of sixty short essays by a talented woman--one who shared her perceptions of Christian family life in the successful book, What Is a Family? In this book, Edith Schaeffer views the world around her--the experiences of everyday life--pondering their meaning and the lessons to be learned. A Way of Seeing is a kaleidoscope of personal responses to current events, history, God's way, nature's wonders, and humankind's shortcomings. In these miniscule glimpses of daily life, the author considers such basic human concepts as trust, faith, security, death, fear, and love. At all times, "the rich threads from God's Word" are woven into Schaeffer's observations. Here readers will find a challenge to examine their own thoughts and become a "doer" by putting Christ's teachings into daily living. These essays were first written for the magazine Christianity Today. Enthusiastic response from readers prompted Edith Schaeffer to offer her "mental and spiritual food'' in book form. Although short enough to be read during relaxing breaks in the busy daily routine, in each essay readers will gain "a feeling of refreshment and a new train of thought" from an author of broad experience and Christian insight.

"If I could, I surely would stand on the rock where Moses stood." --from the Spiritual "Elijah Rock" Taking its theme from the pastoral letter of the Black Catholic bishops of the United States, which spoke of the challenge of being "authentically Black and truly Catholic," To Stand on the Rock invites us "to linger awhile in the garden of our imagination and try to see with the eyes of faith and art how the old ones . . . took a twisted version of Christianity and re-twisted it into a culture of liberation, transcendence, creativity and wholeness."Father Brown begins by recalling the religion and identity of those Africans who were brought to these shores in bondage: the original source in the quest for what it means to be "authentically Black." He then explores the style of Christianity they forged through the sufferings of slavery, which found expression in the Spirituals. Brown then reflects on the struggle of Black Catholics to claim their own style of faith and spirituality and to assert their distinctive gifts to the church universal.

From the Publisher: Bart Ehrman, author of the bestsellers Misquoting Jesus and Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, here takes readers on another engaging tour of the early Christian church, illuminating the lives of three of Jesus' most intriguing followers: Simon Peter, Paul of Tarsus, and Mary Magdalene.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.