 DOLLY PARTON
ONLY ONCE IN MY CAREER has this happened... Until now.
This makes two.
I write a book and send it to the publisher.
Months later, someone from the publishing company calls me and says, essentially:
"Dude, this baby is so beautiful we're going to dress her up in high heels, lipstick, and a Dolly Parton wig."
In other words, they're are going to take a book that they had priced out as a comparatively simple project running in black and white and they're going to turn it into color – illustrated throughout.
#1. The first time that happened it was Barbour Publishing. The book was Who's Who & Where's Where in the Bible. That turned out to be a good deal for everyone. The book won the Christian Retailers Choice Award as the best nonfiction book of the year, voted on by the owners and employees of Christian bookstores throughout the country. The book stayed on the Christian bestseller list for 10 months.
#2. It just happened again. Harvest House Publishers this time. I had created an illustrated book with lots of 3D-style, illustrated maps...far more than in any other book I've ever written. But it was going to run in black and white. Color now. I've been calling the book my Bible atlas in disguise. But they're calling it A Quick, Guided Tour Through the Bible. It's coming with a Dolly Parton wig sometime in 2015. It takes time to get a lady looking all gussied up.
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Kathy LaMaster
Born in the Buckeye state of Ohio, Kathy is now a single mom in North Carolina. She has a son who recently graduated from North Carolina State University.
Kathy is unemployed at the moment, but she’s doing some substitute teaching at a local school while attending classes herself to get re-equipped for a new job.
She attends a United Methodist Church, enjoys her Sunday school class, and makes music with the church handbell choir. |
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KATHY WINS a $700 iPad Air 64GB for an email she sent me on Saturday afternoon, August 23.
I had invited newsletter or blog subscribers to send me stories that had anything at all to do with my books: where they found them (they show up in weird places for books about the Bible...like truck stops), how they use the books, what kind of effect the books have on people.
She made my Bible study group cry
HERE'S THE BIZARRE THING about the winning entry. I was wondering if my books were making a difference in the lives of people.
As it turns out, the winning entry itself ended up making a big difference in the lives of some people close to me.
Heavens, my friends and I worked our way through two boxes of tissues because of it.
Here's what happened.
St. Stephen. Kathy's entry was so flattering that it left me feeling like St. Stephen M. Miller. The very next morning I had to teach a Bible study session on the topic of how words can lift us up or tear us down. I had my wife read this email because it was so uplifting, and it left me feeling as though I should be encouraging other people the way Kathy had encouraged me.
Demon Terry. While my wife read the email to the Bible study group, Terry, a good friend of mine, grabbed a piece of paper and started writing frantically. He wrote down some of the nasty things people had said about him throughout his life: family, friends, school teachers. Wrenching words such as, "You'll never amount to anything." After class, Terry told me he had never gotten a letter like the email Kathy sent to me.
Love letters to Terry. I could fix that, I thought.
Behind his back, I had the entire Bible study group write letters of encouragement and appreciation to him. Most of us did little more than remind him of things he has done to help us.
We spent 45 minutes of the one-hour class session reading the letters to our dumbfounded friend.
Terry wasn't the only one to benefit. There is grace not only for the taking. There is grace in the giving. Our spirit grows when we are encouraged. But it grows, too, when we are encouraging.
Terry cried. We cried.
You can read my favorite love letter to Terry – it's from his wife, Cris: Bushwhacking a friend with kind words. |
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READ THE WINNING ENTRY
I WAS INTRODUCED TO STEVE’S BOOKS at a book fair sponsored by a former employer. I was “window shopping” as I was a single mother with a son in his senior year in high school.
Read more
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Strange and Mysterious Stuff from the Bible
Think of this as a Bible trivia book with CliffsNotes.
I started out thinking of turning this book into a Bible trivia game, with Q&A. Editors gave that idea the thumbs down.
Instead, we ended up with 250 short features, like this one, from pages 33-34:
To the jealous husband: Cheers
In ancient Israel, men got a free pass if their wives suspected them of adultery.
Women didn’t.
If a husband merely suspected his wife of having an affair, he could take her to the priest for what some scholars call the “test of the bitter water.”
The priest would tell the woman: “If you have been faithful to your husband, this water won’t harm you. But if you have been unfaithful, it will bring down the Lord’s curse—you will never be able to give birth to a child, and everyone will curse your name” (Numbers 5:19-20 CEV).
The woman would reply: “If I am guilty, let it happen just as you say.”
The priest then got a container of holy water, perhaps from one of the basins that held water for sacrificial rituals. He wrote the curse he has spoken onto a scroll and then scraped the ink into the water. He added some dirt from the floor of the worship center, which was a tent during the Exodus, when this law was drafted.
The woman drank the muddy cocktail.
If she was able to have children afterward, that was to serve as an indication that her husband’s suspicions were unfounded.
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Two most-read blog articles
FORGET BIBLE STORIES. The two most popular blog articles I wrote since August are about life today, not life 2,000 years ago.
I post articles every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To subscribe to the free feature: Sign me up.
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"My sister came out as gay"
PARTNERS HAPPY AND GAY.Jennifer Rulon, left, and her partner, gay minister V. Jill Sizemore, senior pastor of Metropolitan Community Church in Knoxville, pause for a pose at a gay pride parade in the city. It’s 2011, Pastor Sizemore’s first year at the church – and her first year out of the closet. It’s also her first gay pride parade. A year earlier she retired from the Army Reserve after serving for almost 32 years, which included a stretch when the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law (1993-2011) forced her to keep quiet about her sexual orientation or lose her job. “Everything for me was new that year,” she says. “It felt great to be finally all the way out of the closet and fully free to just be myself.”Photo by V. Jill Sizemore.
LATE LAST WEEK I got the email.
I can’t say much more about it than what you read in the title of this article. The news is too fresh and too sensitive.
But this question comes from a young person who’s sis came out as gay: “What does the Christian religion have to say about that?”
I’ve written about this many times in several of my books and in blog articles. But I don’t think I’ve covered that topic any better than I did in 100 Tough Questions about God and the Bible.
I’m not sure that anyone connected to the email I got would ever read the book. But if I put that short chapter in this blog article, perhaps some of them might see it – and get an answer to the question.
And who knows, maybe someone else would find help in the article, too.
What they’ll discover is that some Christians say it’s wrong to live the gay lifestyle.
But other Christians say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the gay lifestyle.
Read more.
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Bushwhacking a friend with kind words
BUSHWHACKERS. Last Sunday this Bible study group ambushed Terry, one of their own. He had a tough summer. And, at times, a difficult life, with family, friends, and teachers telling him nasty things like: “You’ll never amount to anything.” His Bible study group armed itself with a notebook full of letters to lift him up. You get to read the letter his wife, Cris, wrote to him. Photo by Stephen M. Miller.
IMAGINE YOUR POLICE MUG SHOT. That’s the look my buddy, Terry, held on his face for about 45 minutes during last Sunday’s Bible study session.
It’s the expression of Barney Fife without a bullet.
Here’s what happened.
Our pastor has been preaching a four-week series of sermons on the power of words. Preacher that he is, he’s trying to get us to memorize another Bible verse:
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen,” (Ephesians 4:29).
In the Bible study lesson I taught a couple of weeks ago, I tried to illustrate that by having my wife read a letter I got from a reader. It was a lavishly kind letter that praised my books and me as a human being. It praised me a lot. By the time I finished reading it, I felt as though it would take only two miracles before I would qualify as St. Stephen.
While my wife read the letter to the class, I noticed Terry grabbing a sheet of paper and writing frantically. We all found out what he was writing a short time later, during the discussion. He was writing down some of the rotten words people had used to make him feel lower than toe jam. It was really hurtful stuff, from family, friends, and teachers. Stuff like, “You’ll never amount to anything.”
Read more.
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DAVE LINDSEY
Winner of this week's random drawing
All subscribers to my free quarterly newsletter or my 3-articles-a-week blog are automatically entered in a weekly drawing for a free book.
Dave picked the Illustrated Bible Dictionary, which has lots of pictures.
I'm going to keep giving the books away until I run out of books. It should take a while. I've got boxes of them.
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Free review books
Want one?
All I ask:
- You have never gotten a free book from me before.
- You post a short, honest review on a site that sells books, such as Amazon.
First come, first served.
Email me. |
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