How can someone be perfectly imperfect? Isn't that a contradiction?

The Bible is filled with stories of people with all kinds of flaws and imperfections. The astounding thing is what happens when God changes their lives.

Perfectly Imperfect is about people whose true-to-life stories are found in the Old Testament. They are like us in many ways--confused, tempted, and often afraid. They are flawed, real people, but then God enters their lives and everything changes.

Through the examples of Abraham, Moses, Rahab, and many others, we learn how God works with us. We discover something about the way God transforms us from what we are into what we can be. In these sometimes tragic and broken lives, we get a glimpse of how God renews us and remakes us into people who are perfectly imperfect.

Imagine raising six spirited kids on a grass farm-today. Newspaper columnist Dorcas Smucker and her brood live out their days in full view in this collection of musings-picking blueberries while watching for bears, hoping for angels while driving off the freeway, moving into the "thousand-story house," and enduring lectures from teenage children about the virtue of respect. Three books in one, this collection includes Smucker's Ordinary Days: Family Life in a Farmhouse, Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting: More Family Life in a Farmhouse, and Downstairs the Queen Is Knitting. Often slightly off-stride and with disarming humility, Dorcas finds endless materials for stories and life lessons in everyday happenings. As she says, "I, like my mother, feed my children mashed potatoes and stories. I repeat the ones I heard from Mom and turn our family escapades into tales to be repeated while washing dishes or snapping buckets of green beans on the front porch. A story is much more than just a story, of course. It is entertainment, identity, interpretation, and lessons. This is who we are, this is why we do what we do, this is important, that is not, and don't ever whack your brother's finger with a hatchet like your dad did to Uncle Philip." This delightful trilogy includes some of Smucker's best writing. She covers topics and dilemmas everyone can relate to while also inviting readers to explore her Mennonite family's more personal experiences. Her voice is humorous, encouraging, and at times, doubting, but she never takes herself too seriously. As you read, her stories will entertain you and ultimately soothe your soul.

Joining her husband in the fight to create a home out of

a rugged stretch of sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and sand

in Eastern Oregon, Jane Kirkpatrick uneasily relinquishes

the security of a professional career; the convenience of

electricity, running water, and a phone line; and, perhaps

most daunting, the pleasures of sporting a professional

manicure. But the pull of the land is irresistible, and the

couple dreams of gathering their first harvest from a yetto-

be-planted vineyard.

Rather than the simple life they had envisioned, Jane

and Jerry find themselves confronting flood and fire,

government bureaucracies, and runaway calves, among

other disheartening setbacks. Jane frequently questions

the sanity of pioneering in this remote area, known as

Starvation Point, and she fights against panic with each

trip they make down the seven-mile, boulder-strewn,

rut-carved "driveway" she calls "the reptile road," which

threatens to spill them into the ravine with every lurch of

the truck.

But as

For over fifty years, Anthony Bloom (1914-2003 was head of the russian Orthodox Church ihn Great Britain (Patriarchate of Moscow). Arriving in Britain in 1949 he played a major part of ecumenical work and exerted a wide influence through his broadcasts, writings (he is the author of several spiritual classics), and reputation as a spiritual leader. His writings reflect both the essence of Orthodoxy and his own experience of the struggle to live Christianity on a daily basis.

The murder in 2005 of an American nun, Sister Dorothy Stang, focused the world's attention on the plight of poor farmers in the Brazilian Amazon and their struggles against rapacious developers. Sister Dorothy had worked in Brazil for forty years. From a conventional nun in the pre-Vatican II era, she had developed a keen social conscience and, increasingly, a deep, mystical commitment to the integrity of Creation. These ideals combined in her advocacy for the rights of the poor and her defense of the imperiled rain forest. They also earned her the enmity of land-grabbing ranchers who repeatedly threatened her. "All I ask," she wrote, "is God's grace to help me keep on this journey, fighting for the people to have a more egalitarian life and that we learn to respect God's creation."

Dr. Mel Cheatham, a successful neurosurgeon with a thriving private practice, found himself at the age of fifty feeling empty. He had it all. And yet he knew something was missing-the peace and joy that comes from showing God's love to others. Then one day he heard Franklin Graham speak about the desperate need for doctors in developing countries, and in that message, Mel heard God speaking directly to his heart. He gave up a private neurosurgery practice and devoted himself to full-time medical relief work and evangelism projects in developing and war-torn countries. Mel Cheatham found out what it means to "Make a Difference."

In "Make a Difference," Mel shares the stories of dozens of people who have risked it all to gain what they cannot lose-people who learned to listen to God and respond to His call to love the world. You'll read about: Karen Daniels, a 31-year-old nurse from British Columbia who heard God calling her to minister through her medical skills in wartorn Sudan, where temperatures often reach 115 degrees and the only "bathrooms" are pit latrines dug in the ground. Marianne Morton, who donated a kidney to a neighbor she barely knew, a Jewish man who was being kept alive only through daily dialysis.

Through these and many other stories, and through the use of Scripture, Melvin will help you listen to God's still, small voice, calling you to make a difference, to show His love to a world in need.