Willingness To Die And The Gift Of Life

One particularly challenging aspect of the Hebrew Bible is its treatment of various forms of voluntary death: suicide, suicide attack, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. How can people of faith make sense of the ways biblical literature at times valorizes these sensitive and painful topics? Willingness to Die and the Gift of Life surveys a diverse selection of Hebrew Bible narratives that feature characters who express a willingness to die, including Moses, Judah, Samson, Esther, Job, Daniel, and the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53. The challenging truth uncovered is that the Hebrew Bible, while taking seriously the darker aspects of voluntary death, nevertheless time and again valorizes the willingness to die—particularly when it is for the sake of the group or in faithful commitment to God. Many biblical authors go so far as to suggest that death willingly embraced can unlock immense power: endowing the willing with the charism necessary to lead, opening the possibility of salvation, and even paving the way for resurrection into a new, more glorious life. Paul K.-K. Cho’s unflinching analysis raises and wrestles with provocative questions about religious extremism, violent terrorism, and suicidal ideation —all of which carry significant implications for the biblically grounded life of faith today. Cho carefully situates the surveyed texts in their original cultural context, discussing relevant topics such the shame and honor culture of ancient Israel and the importance attached to the group over the individual. Closing with an epilogue that reflects on the surprising issue of whether biblical authors considered God to be capable of dying or being willing to die, Cho’s fascinating study showcases the multifaceted relationship between death and life in the Hebrew Bible.

What if it is death that teaches us how to truly live? Keeping the end in mind shapes how we live our lives in the here and now. Living life backward means taking the one thing in our future that is certain—death—and letting that inform our journey before we get there. Looking to the book of Ecclesiastes for wisdom, Living Life Backward was written to shake up our expectations and priorities for what it means to live "the good life." Considering the reality of death helps us pay attention to our limitations as human beings and receive life as a wondrous gift from God—freeing us to live wisely, generously, and faithfully for God's glory and the good of his world.

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

In Death, the Gift of Life is a book meant to open an important conversation starting on the local level. Inspired by one son's experience with his father's end-of-life passage, this anthology contains the stories of ten individuals from the town of Westport, Connecticut. It asks readers to examine what end-of-life choices and options are available, as well as the challenges faced by those who have transformative and terminal illnesses. Each moving narrative explores men and women who have faced the modern medical establishment head-on, and then deliberately embraced courage and grace in the aftermath. These individuals have influenced an entire community with their unique views about living and dying well, and will continue to inspire through the power of their stories.

Imagine being told that your child is going to die, more than 2 years before it happens. You don’t know how much time you will have with the child, which child it will be, or even how the child will die... In a book called A Gift For Life, author Paula L. Taylor shares the heartbreaking pain of losing her son. But through a gift of love from her beloved aunt and godmother, and her never-ending faith, Paula was able to take these gifts and turn them into hope for herself and her family. With these gifts of love, faith, and hope, Paula finds a way to put them all together, uses them to move forward, and in the end, discovers a gift for life.

Precious Memories: God's Gift of Life By: James J. Hackett Monsignor Oscar Aquino commented that upon reading this book, he sensed the presence of God in each memory. Father Joseph Franco, a VA Chaplin, was moved to use excerpts in his ministry. Father Wilfred Dodo uses passages in his homilies. Another reader described the book as “inspirational” and it has encouraged an additional reader to begin to author his own.

While a serving of fruits and vegetables picked by the hands of migrant farm workers adds sustenance to the American diet, infants and children are exposed to harmful pesticides. Misery, suffering, violence illness, and death may be the worker's only harvest. This memoir details the lives of a subculture in our society, a population large enough to constitute a small nation. Peacocks of the Fields: Working Life of Migrant Farm Workers Depicts the lives of two migrant work crews composed of 50 workers, pulling sweet corn and picking red ripe tomatoes in the East Coast Migrant Stream over a migrant work season during the late 1970's. The name Kwan in this memoir is the alias for Emiel Owens, a 46-year old African American, and the Principal Investigator. Kwan shares his experience during the year as a member of the two migrant crews, highlighting how they travel, where they work, what income they earn, how they survive in deplorable work camps, and how competition for scare economic and human resources under constrained camp living conditions lead to human discards, violence and in some cases, death. As I start picking tomatoes to day, I wasn't aware that there were two separate work crews in the field. The female tomato checker with the black-and-white straw hat is with Humberto's crew; Rosa, her sister, and two brothers make up Sam's crew. Today, there is a territorial dominance intrusion between these two crews. As the two crews move toward each other, they find themselves competing for scarce fruit in a limited row space, tempers flare and a physical altercation almost takes place in the field between members of two crews. Suddenly, things become quiet and both crews leave the field. About 6:00 P.M., the two conflicting crews meet again at the Lee Brother Commissary in the labor camp. The conflict escalates to violence. Sam and his brother, Amulso, meet Humberto, his brother Francisco, and two other workers, Alexon and Jorge in a gun duel inside the bar at the commissary. When the smoke clears a few moments later, Rosa's brothers, Sam and Amulso, have mortally wounded Humberto and Francisco by shooting them almost at point-blank range in the neck with a sawed-off shotgun. Alexon is shot in the right side and paralyzed and Jorge is wounded, although less severely. In spite of their mortal wounds, Humberto and Francisco walk slowly through the front door of the bar into the night and disappear. They hold back the blood pouring from their neck wounds with their hands as blood runs down their arms onto their chests. Sam and Amulso walk out behind them and they too disappear in the night unharmed.