Essentials for Life: Your Back-to-Basics Guide to What Matters Most by Marcia Ford
BLURB:
True enjoyment in life is found by focusing on the essentials.
A growing number of people recognize their need for a reliable guide for their life's journey. Essentials for Life fills that need by helping readers get back to the basics of what matters most with a fresh perspective on four core essentials of the Christian life:
- What do I believe?
- How do I grow closer to God?
- What should my character and life reflect?
- How do I live my life every day?
Essentials for Life offers fifty daily or weekly readings that each include a key life-guide principle, scripture and quotes, meditation, an interesting fact, and a unique application suggestion. Each discussion offers hope and a sense of peace and well-being by focusing on life with an eternal perspective.
The content offers spiritual truth while the interior graphic design, which includes sidebars and visuals, enhances the readability and the impact of each core essential.
My Review:
This book just was not what I had hoped it would be. But it has some great basic information for someone just starting to try to use their faith to better their life.
Blurb:
Lost is NOT just a television show. It has become larger than that-a massive story filled with mystery that has garnered over twenty million participants. Some might call them viewers, but one does not just watch Lost, one participates in it. It demands that you dialogue with the story, seeking theories and comparing yourself to characters. Lost breaks all the formulas for television, and in doing so has drawn together millions of people on a shared journey that explores life, faith, history, science, philosophy, hope, and the basic questions of what it means to be human. It is the seemingly infinite ideas, philosophies, and biblical metaphors that make this story so engaging.
The focus on faith and truth is never more clearly explained than in the words of John Locke as he questions Jack Shepherd asking "Why do you find it so hard to believe?" Jack responds quickly "Why do you find it so easy?" But Locke declares "It's never been easy." This tension between Faith and Reason drives every episode and story line. Locke summed this up as he explained to Jack "That's why you and I don't see eye‐to‐eye sometimes, because you're a man of science…Me, well, I'm a man of faith."
Chapter Topics
- Faith and Reason - The war within?
- Guilt -The single common denominator that binds everyone on the island
- Fate - Do we choose our path, or does fate happen to us?
- Quantum Spirituality - What if everything and everyone is connected?
- Dharma - Is there any truth to be found in Institutional Religion?
- Island Life - If we are made for the garden is it the consumer world that is killing us?
- Salvation - Will it ever come, and will we recognize it when it does?
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Review:
I know this is probably an odd thing to write in a review, but I loved the dedication! Not only did it tell a nice story, but gave a poignant message as well. But, onto the book… As an avid fan of the television show LOST, I went into reading this book thinking this review cannot be about if I agree with the author’s theories, but if they are well thought out and articulated. I was not disappointed.
In the prologue, Seay said, “Lost, in all its illustrative, complex glory, demands that we dialogue, research, meet ourselves in the characters, and share our latest discoveries with one another.” I think he did just this! He also stated his hope that we emerge from the pages stronger, and I for one, can say that I did. Apart from all of his insights, he provided a wealth of inspiring words from Albert Einstein to Gilda Radner and beyond!
A lot of the book is divided up into chapters about each of the main characters. Seay speculated on the meanings of the characters names, gave information from interviews with the actors that played them, and everything in between. My favorite was his ideas about the scriptural references on Eko’s stick. More importantly, the author leads us on a journey to speculate and to learn about ourselves through each of the characters.
I do believe that this book will enhance my discernment and thus my enjoyment of the show as was my hope in wanting to read it in the first place.
Reviewed By:
Kiki Howell
http://www.kikihowell.com
Yes, I agree with you. They are well thought out and articulated.
ReplyDeleteChris Seay does increase the excitement. I'm enjoying it.