sight in the sandstorm -- a book review

Ann J. Temkin's Sight in the Sandstorm:  Jesus in His World and Mine is part-memoir, part biblical-narrative.  It's an imaginative retelling of Jesus' story from the New Testament that is mingled with a telling of Temkin's own life story.  In that way, Sight in the Sandstorm is a book about the Christian spiritual life that tells our stories in the only way we can tell our stories -- by telling Jesus' stories, too.

Temkin places Jesus in his particular first-century Jewish context, in a way that highlights Jesus' prophetic voice of truth -- the truth about God's love.  The biblical message sounds so clearly in Temkin's writing, that I can close my eyes and imagine hearing and seeing and sensing the stories that often seem so flat on the pages of the New Testament.  Sight in the Sandstorm brings into such clear vision who Jesus is and what Jesus says.

But more than simply recounting Jesus' story, Sight in the Sandstorm recounts Temkin's life.  In her own words, we hear Jesus' message from the first century in a way that transcends time and place, and becomes the truth of divine Love's liberation from captivity to the powers of sin and death (in whatever way those take forms in our lives).

So make no doubt about it, Sight in the Sandstorm is a treat.  It makes me to see my own life -- even in the storms -- in a way that is bound up with Jesus' own life.  This is a book you shouldn't miss.

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I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, as part of the Speakeasy book review program, in exchange for my honest review here.