HOT OFF THE PRESS! Grab “Searching for Spring” to Renew Your Hope…
Friends! Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and grab Searching for Spring—How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time by Christine Hoover. It releases this week!
If you’ve been desirous of spring’s arrival so as to ditch winter, this book’s for you. Christine gifts the reader with hope, putting a kick back into your step. She also improves your eyesight so it’ll engage in looking for our Creator’s beauty at every turn.
You’ll resonate with her honesty and find yourself saying, “Wow, I didn’t know anyone else felt that way!” Personally, I read the whole book with amazement because Christine is a pastor’s wife. Their little family moved away to start a church plant in their home all the while having three little boys running around. Piece of cake, right?
Catherine Parks, who wrote A Christ-Centered Wedding, said, “This is a book that invites the reader to slow down, look around, and rejoice in the hope of the coming warmth of spring.” Ahhh, yes…
Christine opens her book with a killer question from her son (our boys used to do this while I was driving the car which was a blessing as they couldn’t see the shock on my face!): “Mom, is life hard?” How would you answer that question?
Structuring her chapters around the passage in Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, we readers get to visit all four seasons with the bulk of the chapters landing in winter. I found this comforting, always feeling like winter is our longest season, even tho’ it’s the same number of months as the other three. However, if we’re in a metaphorical “winter”, we all know it can last for years. Christine blesses us with additional help to survive “inconsolable things”. She calls these triggers for winter.
Via a game of hide and seek in the book, our eyes become trained to look for God’s beauty thanks to loads of pertinent Scripture and truths behind them. Christine says, “We all must be perpetual seekers in a cosmic game of Hide and Seek.”
She adds, “Beauty is the drumbeat that began playing on the earth’s birthday and has never stopped since, a bass drum pulsing beneath all we see and touch and taste and experience in this life, urging us to march into battle…
The mallet hits in rhythm: God has made everything to be beautiful in the past.
Again: God will make everything turn out beautiful in the future.
Again: God is currently working to make all things beautiful right at this very moment.”
Finally, I’d like to close (so as not to spill any more about the book!) with my most favorite and comforting quote:
“The truth that Christ’s kingdom will forever reign, when all things will be made beautiful and right, is the truth we need for our day.
It’s the truth that enables us to
face discomfort,
monotony,
broken relationships,
sickness,
loss, and
death with unwavering hands
and steadfast hearts.
It’s the truth that motivates us to faithfully serve in obscurity.
It’s the truth that helps us hang in and hang on.
Because of Christ’s resurrection, we know that death will be the last enemy destroyed and we will once again walk with God as Adam and Eve did. Something good is guaranteed in the end.”
Thank you, Christine Hoover, for opening my eyes to our Creator, His beauty, and the hope we can hang our hats on for each and every day. May God bless you and your family, and your church for your faithfulness.
Friends, you will be blessed by reading Searching for Spring! And don’t miss her other books!
And don’t miss snippets from Christine on Ann Voskamp’s blog this week! http://www.annvoskamp.com (If Your Faith Struggled Waiting for God to Make All Things New)
‘Til next time!