The Mrs. & the Minister

Chris Durso's The Heist: How Grace Robs Us of Our Shame is an amazing book! Sin, as Durso is right to insist, can only be understood in the light of grace.  We cannot know our sin until we know God's grace.  And that grace is known as it overcome and vanquishes our sin.  For Durso, our shame and our brokenness rob us of the life God, in Christ, makes for us.  And, like the Prodigal Sons, God's grace can only be made known because God has come to us in our own squalor and gifted us with more, so much more, than anything of which sin has robbed us. This is the great "heist" of the Gospel -- that God in Christ takes back what the Enemy has stolen. This is a book that easily change melt even the hardest heart, because it places the emphasis where the Gospel places that emphas is -- on God's love. I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

Sam Kalda's Of Cats and Men:  Profiles of History's Great Cat-Loving Artists, Writers, Thinkers and Statesmen is a fun, stylish, illustrated gift book from an award-winning artist that profiles notable cat-loving men throughout history in words and pictures.  This is a beautiful little book with lots of fresh biographies about 30 men profiled -- from writers and artists such as Haruki Murakami, T.S. Eliot, William S. Burroughs, and Ai Weiwei, to historical luminaries such as Sir Winston Churchill, Nikola Tesla, and Sir Issac Newton. In addition to all the fun art of each profile, there are some great quotes for every cat person -- male or female.   I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

Jason Stellman's Misfit Faith:  Confessions of a Drunk Ex-Pastor was not quite the book I had expected it to be.  It was so much better! Jason Stellman was a Presbyterian pastor, but he became a Roman Catholic.  I expected Misfit Faith to be, therefore, a semi-autobiographical work of Catholic apologetics.  I read of Scott Hahn's mentorship of Stellman, and expected Misfit Faith to be a new, milder version of Hahn's scholarship.  But I did not see any defense of Peter being the first pope in Misfit Faith , or any criticism of Sola Scriptura, or an explanation and defense of the Catholic understanding of justification. Instead, I read the story of Stellman's own spiritual journey.  From the opening confession that Stellman had flirted with Christian universalism, I knew this wasn't going to be a Catholic apologetic.  I wouldn't even characterize Misfit Faith as an apologetic at all.  Because if there's one thing Stellman isn't sure on, it