Library Journal - Best Books of 2018 "To bring anything new into the world is to open one's self and therefore to take on risk, to contaminate oneself with the other, to be made vulnerable. This requires not just courage but many things, among them faith, hope, help, companionship, grace-in a word, love." While living in one of the world's most impoverished countries, Rachel Marie Stone unexpectedly caught a baby without wearing gloves, drenching her bare hands with HIV-positive blood. Already worried about her health and family, Stone grappled anew with realities of human suffering, global justice, and maternal health. In these reflections on the mysteries of life and death, Stone unpacks how childbirth reveals our anxieties, our physicality, our mortality. Yet birth is a profoundly hopeful act of faith, as new life is brought into a hurting world that groans for redemption. God becomes present to us as a mother who consents to the risk of love and lets us make our own way in the world, as every good mother must do.

Listen to the stories of Jesus' first followers. Learn about the way of life he gave to us. And see what it looks like to live in the new community he is creating. These weekly lessons guide elementary and middle grade students through the Book of Acts and the New Testament Letters, while also deepening the understanding of parents and teachers. Each lesson provides pithy, content-filled background information for the teacher and a scripted explanation of the biblical passage designed especially for children to grasp with ease. The accompanying Activity Book, feature the work of talented artists, designers, parents, and educators and provides craft projects, coloring pages, Bible memory work, classroom games, and group activities to accompany every lesson. This fourth volume of the Telling God's Story series completes the student's introduction to the New Testament. This bundle also includes the graphic novel James: A Letter to the Scattered: For two thousand years, a single ancient letter has inspired deeds of world-changing bravery and has kindled compassion of millions of lives. In James: A Letter to the Scattered, Earnest Graham's dramatic illustrations follow women and men around the globe and through time. Follow hunted Christians into Roman catacombs, accompany missions of mercy in modern hospital corridors, see courage and kindness amidst the carnage of the Thirty Years' War, witness the fight for justice in 19th-century Mexico, and march beside protestors in 1960s Alabama. This graphic novel brings the ancient wisdom of the Epistle of James to a new audience.

The third in a series designed to take students from elementary through high school, Telling God's Story, Year Three shows children the surprising way of life that Jesus brought, as seen in his parables, miracles, and teaching. The Instructor Text and Teaching Guide provides content-filled background information for the teacher, and a scripted explanation of the passage designed especially for children to grasp with ease. The accompanying Activity Book provides historically accurate coloring pages, learning projects, and group activities to fill out an entire week of home, school, or Sunday School study. The graphic novel, The Parables of Jesus, brings Jesus' parables to life for students. A hurricane howls towards a house built on sand. A nighttime intruder creeps onto enemy land. A boy leaves home to seek adventure. Robbers menace a lonely traveler. And the unexpected happens. This new and innovative graphic-novel translation of the parables of Jesus puts a modern twist on an ancient art form: stories that begin with mundane events and end with a glimpse of a deeper reality. Earnest Graham's illustrations, ranging in style from West African kente and Japanese prints to vivid modern realism, interpret these well-loved stories for the next generation of readers. All three texts are combined in this bundle to provide a full year of religious instruction.

The 2014 Christianity Today Book Award Winner (Christian Living) Food is the source of endless angst and anxiety. We struggle with obesity and eating disorders. Reports of agricultural horror stories give us worries about whether our food is healthy, nutritious or justly produced. It's hard to know if our food is really good for us or for society. Our relationship with food is complicated to say the least. But God intended for us to delight in our food. Rachel Stone calls us to rediscover joyful eating by receiving food as God's good gift of provision and care for us. She shows us how God intends for us to relate to him and each other through food, and how our meals can become expressions of generosity, community and love of neighbor. Eating together can bring healing to those with eating disorders, and we can make wise choices for sustainable agriculture. Ultimately, redemptive eating is a sacramental act of culture making through which we gratefully herald the feast of the kingdom of God. Filled with practical insights and some tasty recipes, this book provides a Christian journey into the delight of eating. Come to the table, partake of the Bread of Life--and eat with joy.