Tag Archives: Counted Worthy

God Shed His Grace On Thee. . .

I have been brushing up “America the Beautiful” on the piano lately, and of course it has been on my mind today.

Not on my mind enough to convince me to practice piano today 😉 , but I’ve still thought about it.  I first decided i wanted to play it when I read through all the verses; they are so beautiful.

I love all of them, but the last two lines of verse 3 have become a prayer to me.  For my country.

America!  America!  May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.

Because you don’t have to look too far to see America is losing her roots in God.  Not all that we call “success” today is noble, and not all our gains are Christ-like.  I have been praying for our country for a long time.

But after I read Counted Worthy by Leah E. Good I started praying for more.

I started praying that no matter what happened in America, the church would rise to meet it.  That they would respond in a way that honored the Lord.  No matter what.

Our pastor was speaking recently about common core, and he said that the church often responds in fear or anger, and we must respond in love.

We are the bride of Christ.

We have victory.

We have the last word.

So let us stop responding in fear.  Let us stop venting our anger on those deceived by Satan.  Let us respond in love.

We are more than conquerors in Christ, my friends–if God is for us, who can be against us?

O beautiful for patriot dream that sees, beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!
America!  America!  God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

*** ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ***

Have a happy Fourth of July, and go get yourself a copy of Counted Worthy, sweet readers.

 

** Excerpts from “America the Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates

The Birthstone Book Tag

Good morning, readers!  Today is my first official day of Summer break!  I celebrated by staying up way too late last night watching Star Wars and sleeping in this morning. 😉  I’m so totally crazy.

Anyway, I snagged this free-for-all tag off of my friend Savannah’s blog (which, unfortunately, is not public, so I can’t link to it), and decided to do it today.  I was tagged by two other tags recently, which I need to get to posting, but I decided to do the unofficial one first, because. . . me.  I think it will come together faster than the other ones though.  I’ll give myself more time to get those together.

Continue reading The Birthstone Book Tag

Favorite Characters

So, when I decided to do book reviews the second month, I thought I would go through the ones I had already done and give you a list of all my favorite characters from them.  I’m a little late, but here we are:

(I went ahead and added the first two reviews I did, even though they were not for my monthly review thing.)

Counted Worthy by Leah E. Good – Hmm… this is hard.  All of her characters are very human, and very relatable… and I like all almost all  of them!  I think Miss Lucy is my all-time favorite.

Beowulf translated by J.R.R. Tolkien – King Hrothgar

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald – Curdie or his mother

The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare – Maybe Matt’s little sister or Attean’s, but I don’t remember either of their names.  I think Matt’s was Sarah…

Waltz into the Waves by Sarah Holman – I can’t tell you, because it would give away the ending 🙂

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Joe Gargery

I think I’m going to do this at the end of every month, so I’m going to wait and do all the April ones together.

Unless this stuff bores you… do you want more?  Maybe it’s just me.  I’m “into” favorite characters.  I mean, I can’t say what my favorite part of each book is, because… I like happy endings. 🙂

See ya, guys! 🙂

SJR

My Easter escapade is going to be slightly interrupted because I have something very important to post about:

Spencer.

My big brother is turning 16 today.

(Do you feel like the ^above sentence^ needed an exclamation mark?  Me too, but S told me they’re over-used.)

Spencer has always been really fun to play with.  He has always been aware of my feelings and preferences, and has always tried to do things I like.  He has always had a great sense of humor (I think that came from Dad #Randomness), and he always makes me laugh.

I kind-of modeled one of the characters in The Sacrifice after him… which I think was inspired by me realizing that Bryce from Counted Worthy reminded me of him.  Except Spencer isn’t over-protective–he always protects me while we’re on them, but he’s always taking me on adventures! 🙂

Happy birthday, Spencer!

“Counted Worthy”

I recently read “Counted Worthy” by Leah E. Good.  It was a really good book!  It takes place in the future, in America… an America we’re probably heading towards if nothing changes.

Heather Stone’s mother was shot by a policeman when found delivering re-printed Bibles to other members of the underground church, and though no one blames her, Heather knows it’s her fault.

After Mom died, my books kept me grounded.  I had distanced myself from the people and activities that had once filled every free moment.  I cut as many ties to the underground network as I could.  I attended church because conscience compelled me.  I continued to smuggle Bibles because I couldn’t help myself.  Everything else, I   shoved into the past (6).

The trouble starts again when the Agency tracks a smuggled Bible to the Stones’ house–a Bible Heather brought there.  Her father tells her to run and stays to be arrested… so Heather can escape.

Having already lost her mom, she can’t handle the pain of losing her dad too.  Forced to leave the house she grew up in, Heather struggles to live without them; helped by her devoted, very protective, “brother-friend” (58) Bryce; an old friend of her parents, Miss Lucy; and other members of the underground church.

Bryce promised Heather’s father he would take care of her if anything happened, and encourages her to just stay safe and not try too hard to help her dad.

Laying low isn’t getting us anywhere (124).

Heather decides to act.  She starts with a simple attempt to bribe policemen into freeing her dad, and finally ends with deciding whether or not to execute a desperate plan that could save her father and make the people press the government to give them back their rights, or only hasten his sentence and send herself and everyone helping her to the same death.

Spencer and I had read Miss Good’s blog for a while when she self-published “Counted Worthy”, and I was afraid that having “talked” back and forth in the comments with her would keep me from getting “into” the story, especially being an author myself–it did not!  At least once while I was reading I stopped and reminded myself of that to calm myself down!  It’s very good, but very intense.

I usually read books that take place in an earlier time period, but I liked that this was more modern because I could relate to Heather so well.

This book took all the fear out of death for me.  I mean, I wasn’t just cowering around fretting about the day I die–but it really made me think about it and realize that death truly is only the beginning (228).

Another way this book inspired me is that it made me want to memorize more scripture.  I guess I’ve memorized a lot of long passages, but it made me want to learn shorter sections and keep them memorized.  Near the end of the book the main character gets in a conversation with a police office who starts asking her questions about her faith, and Heather just starts rattling off Bible-verses.  It makes a better argument somehow when you can actually quote God’s word and not just summarize.

“Let no man deceive himself,” I quoted.  “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”  The man squinted at me.  I smiled, glad for the many hours spent memorizing verses (209).

“Counted Worthy” is the first novel that Miss Good has published, but she is obviously ready: the plot is very mature (but not complicated), and the writing-style is enjoyable.  I especially loved the dialogue!

You can purchase your own copy from Miss Good’s blog, which I linked to above.

Miracles could still happen, right?  We served the same God as Daniel, David, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  We also served the same God Paul and Stephen did (188).