Religious Love

Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1818) is a poetic retelling of a story from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. The poem relates the sad fate of two victims of youthful love. The aristocratic and nubile Isabella is intended for marriage to an eligible suitor but falls in love with the plebeian Lorenzo. Isabella's brothers murder Lorenzo and bury his body, the location of which is revealed to Isabella by a ghost. She exhumes the body and re-inters the head in a pot of basil.

A young girl and her father set out to find the king hoping he may heal her mother. As they travel, the sojourners experience hardships ranging from hunger, fatigue, and severe cold to doubt, discouragement, and despair. Yet, time after time, they are lifted up, fed, sheltered, and encouraged.

In this six-session Bible study, Karen Ehman helps you rediscover the life-changing joy that comes from putting others first. In a culture that tells us a me-first, you-second way of living is the key to happiness, Ehman explains that the key to moving forward in almost every facet of your life is to embrace backward living. Listen, Love, Repeat gives you both the encouragement and practical, daily ways you can reach out to others with both planned and random acts of kindness.

Slowly the boat pushed us forward, away from certain shipwreck, and gained the upper hand in its struggle against the surging current. The victory did not spark spontaneous celebration; rather, we spent the next moments in a trembling recovery. Kent, an American, and Josephine, an Australian, journeyed to an unfamiliar continent and set out to live on a riverboat deep in the jungle. With their four young children and ministry team, they served on the Purus River in the Amazon, bringing education, health care, and the love of God to remote communities

This audiobook is Heidi’s story of learning to live with her clinical depression which lasted almost 12 years. Feeling crushed under the deepest despair she had ever known, she found that everything that functioned so well before, including her faith, simply didn’t in depression. Feeling lost in an endless sea of shame, judgment, confusion, anger, fear and grief, how could she live this way?

From one of the most prolific young spiritual writers of our time comes a fresh look at the Gospel of Luke, in an effort to answer this single question: What did Luke actually want us to see in Jesus? The answer waiting for you in this book is sure to transform your vision, and your life, if you let it. Through the stories of 18 “Outsider” characters (like the Blind Beggar, the Rich Ruler, the Sinful Woman, and so many more), David will take you on a journey to see the living Christ in a way you never have before.

A divorced Christian woman's somewhat successful life suddenly resembles an exploding fireworks factory! The white hot explosions spontaneously begin happening inside her innermost being. What is happening in her life to transform her into a woman who doesn't want to stay asleep because she might miss something? What does God want her to do?

How does one encounter meaning amid so many kinds of noise? What is quiet when it isn’t silence? Where does quiet exist—and what liberating potential might it hold? These poems dwell on ideas of black interiority, intimacy, and selfhood, and they celebrate as fiercely as they mourn. With a metaphysical edge and a formal restlessness attuned to both the sonics and the inadequacies of language, Quiet navigates the tension between the impulse to guard one’s inner life and the knowledge that, as Audre Lorde writes, "your silence will not protect you."

Can God take an abandoned, fearful child and make her a Christ-like example and a soul-winner? Does he still do more than we can ask or think? Rena's personal story, simply told in both humility and triumph, will convince you that nothing is impossible when you surrender to Jesus. Her many, colorful adventures are a catalog of miracles which most of us dream about.

Why does the Lord bother to do the things he does in our lives? Why doesn’t he just let us keep believing what we were believing, keep doing the things we were doing, continually making mistakes and using bad judgment? I believe God puts people into our lives on purpose; to strengthen us, to encourage us, to teach us, to correct us, to stop us, and to direct us, so we can become who we are and all we were created to be. The following stories are an attempt to show the extraordinary lengths the Lord went through to point me in the right direction.

When your life falls apart - through a death, a lost relationship, a diagnosis - you want more than anything to know that your pain has a purpose. And that beyond your pain, a new day awaits. Tricia Lott Williford discovered this in a few tragic hours when her 35-year-old husband died unexpectedly. In And Life Comes Back, she writes with soaring prose about her tender, brave journey as a widow with two young boys in the agonizing days and months that followed his death.

As Judy Gruen walked down the aisle and into her Orthodox Jewish future, her bouquet quivered in her shaky hand. Having grown up in the zeitgeist that proclaimed, “If it feels good, do it”, was she really ready to live the life of “rituals, rules, and restraints” that the Torah prescribed? The Skeptic and the Rabbi is a rare memoir with historical depth, spirituality, and intelligent humor. Gruen speaks with refreshing honesty about what it means to remain authentic to yourself while charting a new yet ancient spiritual path at odds with the surrounding culture....

Explore the ancient art of numerology! This insightful guide explains the basics of this rich and powerful tradition. You’ll learn the history, origins, and types of numerology - and how modern people use them to navigate their lives. With the amazing knowledge in this insightful audiobook, you’ll find out what’s in store for you in the near and far future. With the enjoyable divination practice of numerology, you’ll discover how to create your Numerology Profile and fulfill your life goals!

Pro football Hall of Famer Jim Kelly and his wife, Jill, were catapulted from a seemingly fairy-tale life of celebrity into a world of private struggle and medical uncertainty. What the public didn’t know, however, was that behind the scenes lurked more than a family’s pain at the dire prognosis of their only son. Hunter’s illness exposed the troubled depths of a marriage that had long been shadowed by uncertainties of its own.

Vane Carson was a good-looking young man with a hard edge and a soft heart. Follow his adventures as he leaves college for the chance to train bird dogs. From apprentice to partner, he masters the business and learns what it takes to be a man, all through the excitement of field trials. Vane's quest to overcome betrayals and anger is a mythic story of inspiration as he finds true love, and God's forgiveness, through the touch of an honest young woman.

Throughout his life, Michael Harding has lived with a sense of emptiness - through faith, marriage, fatherhood and his career as a writer, a pervading sense of darkness and unease remained. When he was 58, he became physically ill and found himself in the grip of a deep melancholy.

In Letters to My Daughters: Poetic Affirmations of Love From A Father, Avery Washington affirms his adoration and appreciation for his daughters in an incredibly endearing and empowering way. His poems flow from the heart of a protective father to the soul of a young girl who is learning herself and finding her way in the world.

Love like poets, live like saints. This unique exploration of people such as Saint Thérèse, George MacDonald, and C.S. Lewis offers insight into 11 of the world's most thoughtful and authentic Christ followers. Weaving biography and spiritual formation together, Poets and Saints reminds us of the convictions that set us apart as Christians - and the truth that has set us free in every generation.

Evangelical poster child Addie Zierman wore three WWJD bracelets, led two Bible studies, and listened exclusively to Christian rock. She was "on fire for God", unaware that the flame of her faith was dwindling until it burned entirely out. With candor and transparency, Addie chronicles her journey through church culture, first love, and her entrance - unprepared and angry - into marriage. When she washes out of church and nearly her marriage on a sea of tequila and depression, she isn't sure if she'll ever go back.

Francis of Assisi is Catholicism's most popular saint. Tens of millions of spiritual seekers summon his name and example. But the real Francis - both his complicated personality and his complex theology - have been misunderstood for centuries. In 1228, Pope Gregory IX rushed to canonize St. Francis only two years after his death. Soon thereafter, the Church eliminated significant aspects of his biography from the public record.