Exclusive Book Excerpts!

Exciting news, everyone- my book is officially HERE! (Yes- it came in earlier than expected!) It’s in stock at Amazon now (you can click the link to the right to order) and over the weekend it has been spotted at a number of Barnes and Noble stores. To celebrate, I’ll be posting exclusive excerpts from the book this week. I’d love for you to pass them around and let people know about The Boundary Breaking God. Here’s the first one, from chapter two, which is about the story of the exodus:

“One of my friends often uses the phrase ‘It is what it is.’ He says this mostly when something doesn’t make any sense or feels overwhelming, and it is almost always accompanied with a shrug. Personally, I accidentally killed a bird a few years ago when it flew headlong into the front of my car, and I cannot even say ‘It is what it is’ about that, so I’m perhaps a little biased in believing this is not always a helpful response. However, it seems rather obvious that the exodus story would have been very different if God heard all those cries of the Israelites and replied, ‘It is what it is.’ God doesn’t shrug at suffering. God is not resigned to the brokenness of the world but is intent on bringing healing and wholeness back to all of creation. As a person who follows God, I cannot look upon the violence of this world and say, ‘It is what it is.’ I must say, ‘This should not be.’ I am not called to accept violence with a helpless shrug but to feel the deep despair of it, to be pulled toward action because of it, to imagine a future without it. The call of God’s future evokes our desire to pursue justice, to live like what we do and how we choose to live truly matters. We do not follow a God who says, ‘It is what it is,’ but the God who says, ‘I am who I am.’ And who God is in the exodus story is a God who hears the cries of those who suffer and responds. If we are to follow God, we are called to do the same.”