New Gilead Church


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Housekeeping


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"The story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience."--




The Handmaid's Tale


Book Description

An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning.




Balm in Gilead


Book Description

Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is one of the most eminent public intellectuals in America today, and her writing offers probing meditations on the Christian faith. Based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, this volume brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Robinson's work—and with the author herself.




Jack


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'[Her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama 'Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers of our time' Sunday Times 'Jack is the fourth in Robinson's luminous, profound Gilead series and perhaps the best yet' Observer Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction. Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African-American high school teacher, also a preacher's child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson's greatest achievements.




A Fish Called Mercy


Book Description

The reality is that there is not an individual living that has not made some bad choices - the wrong relationship, the wrong career, the wrong city you name it. We each know what it feels like to come short of the glory of God. We each know what it feels like to hear the voice of God command of us one thing and choose to do the complete opposite. We each know what it feels like to suffer the consequences of choosing not His will but our will. If this is where you are you are not alone. The reality, however, is that we cannot park in the lot of our past poor choices. What we have to acknowledge is that even in the grasp of guilt and the environment of embarrassment; we are never in a place where God will not give us the opportunity to start over. So, though your present place may be the most undesirable and unwanted; it is an incredible place where God is going to show you mercy. God does that, you know? He provides mercy in some of the most unimaginable and incomprehensible ways: a woman caught in the act of adultery a King that is a murderer and an adulterer a trickster like Jacob on the backside of a desert to a murderer a disciple that denied him and left him to die and even in the belly of a great fish. So accept this invitation to journey through the chapters of a small book in the Old Testament Jonah. Jonah is not some lonely creature afar offs in the ages somewhere, having an experience that is unique and incommunicable. The experience of Jonah is the experience of every believer. In this book, Pastor Breonus M. Mitchell Sr. empowers and encourages those who know the peril and pain of intentional disobedience to God. Join him on an expository journey through the small prophetic book of Jonah, as he encourages us to experience the mercy of God even in the most demeaning and difficult places. This place in your life is not for your demise. It is just a place in which God provides a detour to direct you back to His will. That is Jonahs testimony. That is his story. While others would have found the belly of the fish the most undesirable place it was a place of provision and protection. It was a place of prayer and praise. God provided mercy for Jonah in the form of a fish . . . a fish he likes to call - Mercy.







A Church Observed


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What does 'being Anglican' mean as times change? A Church Observed addresses this question by scanning the Anglican horizon and zooming in on features of interest. The author does so from the vantage point of his own family history and personal experience.




The Handmaid's Tale


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Lila (Oprah's Book Club)


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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award National Book Award Finalist A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gilead and Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.