Book Spotlight: Searching For Sunday

I've never wanted to meet an author as much as I have daydreamed about getting coffee with Rachel Held Evans.

Or rather, chai. She loved chai.

But I cannot.

Not because she's famous and unreachable, not because she's preoccupied and overbooked.

But because she passed away in 2019.

Rachel has become a sort of household name and from what I have observed, she's either beloved or loathed.

A saint, to some. A heretic, to others.

Her book captivated me.

It kept me up late at night, by the dim amber glow of my bedside lamp, and also long after I'd turned out the light as I pondered her words over and over in my mind.

Rachel's rhetoric surrounding the things of faith and church were equally captivating and appalling. Tresonated with so many of her experiences growing up in the church, yet was oftentimes so shattered to hear of the types of experiences I never did witness or walk through.

It has taken a great deal of faith in me to believe the magnitude of suffering the church has caused those around me.

It feels as though everyone is deconstructing their faith, with little or no desire to reconstruct.

I don't think the church set me up for success in all areas of life, but I was not mortally wounded by it, and oftentimes find myself alone in my desire to remain faithful to her.

Or rather, to God, whom I believe makes himself known through her.

I think deconstruction is a necessary thing for all of us, and can be a really healthy process, but I am dismayed by the ways in which I see many of my peers going about it.

I am devastated to see the pain people have endured that's caused them to leave God & church behind, for good.

I think Rachel's voice is so necessary.

And while I was mostly captivated by her deep love for Christ, and the depth of her faithfulness to the study and application of His word, I also can't fathom how she arrived at some of her conclusions.

Nonetheless, I marvel at her, and all of the crimson flags she bravely raised and boldly waved before the church.

It has given me much to ponder and pray through.

She's an author I'd email, if I could.

She's the type I know would respond because she was enlivened by Christian's with questions.

Christians who challenge the status quo, but who could find goodness and safety in tradition.

If you are safe and secure in church wrecked and ravaged disinterested and distant angry and resentful

longing and searching in church

this book will meet you where you're at in a uniquely unifying way that Rachel had a way of doing well.

I believe she's transcended now into the Kingdom realm and entered into every answer to every question she ever posed. envy her, for that.

But for now I am content to live here below.

Listening, looking, learning, loving.