Truly beautiful. Not many stories bring tears to my eyes, but these short tales do it again and again. Normally we think of tears being a result of sadness, but there are also the tears that come when the veil thins slightly, and through it we glimpse the beauty, truth and goodness that we long for. There is sadness involved, because it is not yet ours to enter into, but there is also a promise which allows us to dare to hope. I think this is what CS Lewis called ‘joy’. These stories are, to me, bearers of that deep joy. The Right Revd Dr Anne van Gend Bishop of Dunedin and author of Restoring the Story: The Good News of Atonement The stories in HOLIDAY are written in the hope that you have never forgotten just how powerful stories can be. We tell ourselves stories about who we are and about whose we are. Perhaps the most formative stories in your life came from your illustrated Bible, as a child. Perhaps the stories that formed you came from other books or films or TV programs. Perhaps they were the stories told to you by parents and grandparents. But be sure, stories have formed you and continue to form you. The media tells us a story. Politicians tell us a story. Culture tells us a story. The church tells us a story. And our lived faith tells us a story. Which story (or stories) we listen to and believe will shape who we are and what we do in the world. This is a book of stories. Stories about Jesus and the people he interacted with. Stories that try to bring to new life the old stories of the Bible. Stories that place Jesus in a contemporary Australian landscape. Stories that try to suggest that what happened then could have happened now. That God is not limited to one place and time. These are stories of ‘Holy Days’, of Holidays. Days of freedom.
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