Empty


Book Description

We all find ourselves living with the harsh reality thatlife is hard and life hurts.We continually demand that life be fair,yet we're well aware that it's not. Life can leave you at a loss for words. It has a way of suddenly casting you into the darkness of doubt. In these desperate moments, you find your soul being drained dry . . . you're empty . . . and faith just doesn't seem to matter anymore. Faith loses out when you realize that God could have done something . . . and He did nothing. Your life is further emptied when you realize that even if you live the "Christian" life, things don't always turn out the way you'd like them to . . . and that's not the way you hoped faith worked. You don't want God to comfort you in your troubles . . . you want Him to take them from you. As God continually frustrates our faith with His constant inconsistency and ridiculously draining unpredictability, we resolve in the truth that He is the only one who understands our hurting hearts, empty lives, and searching souls. We find the ongoing trials of life continually draining us and . . . we're thirsty.Yet, through our endless efforts to quench our undying thirst, nothing satisfies.Our souls seem to be insatiable, and we knowwe desperately need something to fill us, completely . . . but it's not what we think. You've been waiting for God to show up,yet He's actually been waiting for you.He's ready to meet with you . . .one on one . . .at the well.




The Empty Garden


Book Description

The Empty Garden draws a portrait of Milton as a cultural and religious critic who, in his latest and greatest poems, wrote narratives that illustrate the proper relationships among the individual, the community, and God. Rushdy argues that the political theory implicit in these relationships arises from Milton's own drive for self-knowledge, a kind of knowledge that gives the individual freedom to act in accordance with his or her own understanding of God's will rather than the state's. Rushdy redefines Milton's creative spirit in a way that encompasses his poetic, political, and religious careers.




The Empty Church


Book Description

Why go to church? What happens in church and why does it matter? The Empty Church presents fresh answers to these questions by creating an interdisciplinary conversation between theater directors and Christian theologians. This original study expands church beyond the sanctuary and into life. Shannon Craigo-Snell emphasizes the importance of liturgical worship in forming Christians as characters crafted by the texts of the Bible. This formation includes shaping how Christians know, in ways that involve the intellect, emotions, body, and will. Each chapter brings a theater director into dialogue with a theologian, teasing out the ways performance enriches hermeneutics, anthropology, and epistemology. Thinkers like Karl Barth, Peter Brook, Delores Williams, and Bertolt Brecht are examined for their insights into theology, worship, and theater. The result is a compelling depiction of church as performance of relationship with Jesus Christ, mediated by Scripture, in hope of the Holy Spirit. Liturgical worship, at its best, forms Christians in patterns of affections. This includes the cultivation of emotion memories influenced by biblical narratives, as well as a repertoire of physical actions that evoke particular affections. Liturgy also encourages Christians to step into various roles, enabling them to make intellectual and volitional choices about what roles to take up in society. Through liturgical worship, the author argues, Christians can be formed as people who hope, and therefore as people who live in expectation of the presence and grace of God. This entails a discipline of emptiness that awaits and appreciates the Holy Spirit. Church performance must therefore be provisional, ongoing, and open to further inspiration.




The Empty Boulevards


Book Description

Heroin, Heartbreak, and Hard Liquor. These are just a few of the elements at play in Willis Gordons second collection The Empty Boulevards. Told in beautifully compact style, Gordon tells the stories of men and women on the fringes of society. Raising the issues of the modern servicemens struggle, Death, Addiction, Manhood, Fathers and Sons, Sex, and Lost Love, he brilliantly weaves a true journey into the dark heart of Americas overlooked and unlucky. His tough and meaningful prose cuts deep into the matters at hand, reminiscent of post-modern classics with a more ragged and worldly flair. With a unique style and a keen eye for description, The Empty Boulevards is an enthralling account of our modern society and the high cost of low living. In this radiant sophomore effort, Gordon proves that he is truly a voice for our time.




You'll Find Me


Book Description

Loss becomes remembrance in this book that offers tender ways to pay tribute to, and meaningfully incorporate, a loved one’s lost presence into present and future life experiences. Be it departed friends, family, pets, and more, memories can carry us beyond the precious moments we have together to keep the ones we loved before in mind forever. Throughout the book the omnipresent narrator encourages thoughtful reflection on the empty spaces left by the loss. The gentle scenes portrayed inspire recovery from sadness and honor those who are absent. This lyrical heartful story provides consent and gently encourage readers to move to a place of peace and acceptance despite the absence.




The Empty World Saga Complete Collection


Book Description

Plunge into the pond and land in an alien world. When her grandmother dies, 13-year-old Christy inherits an old family secret: the pond behind her house is in fact a portal to another world. What's more, she learns that her grandfather went through the portal when he mysteriously disappeared nine years ago. As Christy undertakes an adventure into a wondrous and dangerous new world full of strange aliens and advanced technology, she’ll need to trust her instincts and rely on the unique abilities of her friends if she wants to lead everyone safely home. Book 1: Portal Through the Pond When Christy first learns of the portal in her backyard pond, she tries to honor her grandmother’s wishes to stay away. But when the local bully pushes her classmate in, she knows only she can rescue him. And maybe she can finally bring her grandfather home, since she’s there anyway… Book 2: Beyond the Portal Despite her parents forbidding Christy from returning to the Empty World, she knows it’s her fault her grandfather got captured by the hostile aliens called Ancients. So when 2 of her friends sneak off to see the world, Christy finds the excuse she needs to go back. Book 3: At the Portal’s End It seems like each time Christy goes to the Empty World, more goes wrong. But she still can’t stay away. This time, with the excuse of finding her dad and the detective, she ventures on a more dangerous journey and learns that there’s something more sinister about the Ancients’ plans for the other Empty World inhabitants than any of them suspected. Book 4: The Lost Portal As both Christy and the grown-ups scramble to help the other inhabitants of the Empty World stay clear of the Ancients’ genocide, they encounter an overgrown pyramid hidden in the jungle. As the last of his race, the pyramid’s guardian enlists their help to protect it. Because if the Ancients gain access to its secrets, no one on the Empty World will be able to hide from them… BONUS SHORT STORY: Christy’s Risky Recipe Back at home, Christy finds a piece of Empty World technology that just might be the key to saving her family’s struggling business—and their Christmas. Book 5: Portals in Peril The pyramid guardian never told Christy and her friends that the Empty World safeguards a piece of critical technology protecting the entire universe. Now they’re racing against a ticking clock of impending catastrophe. But the lead Ancient believes he’s found the key to conquering the Empty World once and for all. Since he won’t listen to reason, their only option is to steal the power source back…before it’s too late for the whole universe. The complete Empty World Saga collection is a science fiction adventure series for kids aged 8-12. If your kids have blown through the Land of Stories, devoured the Keeper of the Lost Cities, or can't wait for the next Wings of Fire, make the complete Empty World Saga their next read. Grab the complete Empty World Saga Collection and help save the Empty World now!




The Empty Schoolhouse


Book Description

Annotation One- and two-room schools represent a paradoxical time in Texas history when school played second fiddle to family duties but still served as the focus of community life. Luther Bryan Clegg's The Empty Schoolhouse provides a direct link to the past through interviews with students who attended these schools and teachers who taught in this area between Fort Worth and Odessa and the Hill Country and Amarillo. Former students share stories describing Friday afternoon "literary societies, " dead snakes in desk drawers, pranks, fires, travel to and from school, and discipline. Drawing on historical and sociological data as well as interviews, Clegg presents intriguing accounts of rural life, preserving the uniqueness of the "olden days."




Ring the Hill


Book Description

'Always engaging, charming, funny and often moving . . . It made me want to pull on my stoutest boots and follow in his footsteps' Stephen Fry 'Beautiful, funny, fascinating, impossible-to-categorise . . . Like going on a great ramble with a knowledgeable, witty, engaging friend. Tom Cox brings magic to the most mundane of subjects' Marian Keyes 'Sheer bloody genius . . . I loved it. Then I loved it more' John Lewis-Stempel, author of Meadowland A hill is not a mountain. You climb it for you, then you put it quietly inside you, in a cupboard marked ‘Quite A Lot Of Hills’ where it makes its infinitesimal mark on who you are. Ring the Hill is a book written around, and about, hills: it includes a northern hill, a hill that never ends and the smallest hill in England. Each chapter takes a type of hill – whether it’s a knoll, cap, cliff, tor or even a mere bump – as a starting point for one of Tom’s characteristically unpredictable and wide-ranging explorations. Tom’s lyrical, candid prose roams from an intimate relationship with a particular cove on the south coast, to meditations on his great-grandmother and a lesson on what goes into the mapping of hills themselves. Because a good walk in the hills is never just about the hills: you never know where it might lead.




The Empty Place


Book Description

In The Empty Place: Democracy and Public Space Teresa Hoskyns explores the relationship of public space to democracy by relating different theories of democracy in political philosophy to spatial theory and spatial and political practice. Establishing the theoretical basis for the study of public space, Hoskyns examines the rise of representative democracy and investigates contemporary theories for the future of democracy, focusing on the Chantal Mouffe's agonistic model and the civil society model of Jürgen Habermas. She argues that these models of participatory democracy can co-exist and are necessarily spatial. The book then provides diverse perspectives on how the role of physical public space is articulated through three modes of participatory spatial practice. The first focuses on issues of participation in architectural practice through a set of projects exploring the ‘open spaces’ of a postwar housing estate in Euston. The second examines the role of space in the construction of democratic identity through a feminist architecture/art collective, producing space through writing, performance and events. The third explores participatory political democratic practice through social forums at global, European and city levels. Hoskyns concludes that participatory democracy requires a conception of public space as the empty place, allowing different models and practices of democracy to co-exist.




Higher than the Hills


Book Description

The story of one Nepalese Christian whose life illustrates how the Nepali Church has grown so fast since 1945. Persecutions, natural disaster and miracles are set against the backdrop of a wonderful country and people.




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