An uplifting and scripturally literate reading of the subject of barrenness in Christianity.
A pastor’s study of the unexpected dimensions of barrenness in Christian Scripture.
In her nonfiction debut, Hudson explores how Christian Scripture and its later exegesis view barrenness. She looks at five barren Hebrew “matriarchs” of the Old Testament: Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel; Rachel, Jacob’s wife; Sarah, Abraham’s wife; Rebekah, Isaac’s wife; and the unnamed wife of Manoah, who was also the mother of Samson. More specifically, Hudson considers “each of the five matriarchs’ miraculous conception and birth of a son” or her “journey from barrenness to fruitfulness through God’s divine intervention.” By examining the women’s lives and including fictionalized segments in which they tell their own stories, Hudson seeks to underscore the layers of interpretation possible in understanding barrenness in the biblical world. “God is ever-new in His ways of answering our prayers,” she writes, noting what modern-day Christians can learn from these stories, including lessons about patience and humility. “Just like a farmer who plants a seed, there is a time of waiting,” she writes. “There is seed time and harvest and each season is different.” Dealing with her subjects both as individuals and as emblematic of larger themes, Hudson ends each chapter with discussion questions and space for taking notes, and she includes devotional guides for contemporary Christians dealing with infertility or another aspect of barrenness. Her interpretative tone throughout is optimistic and faith-oriented, linking her biblical stories to living parallels: “When you look on Jesus, you too will know unspeakable joy and laugh with Sarah who was barren....” Some of her readings are oddly specific; she describes Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, for instance, with the anachronistic term “post-menopausal.” But the book’s joyful tone overrides such concerns, reminding her readers that “when God is about to birth something new in you,” it will be a cause for joy.
An uplifting and scripturally literate reading of the subject of barrenness in Christianity.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4908-8954-2
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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