The Illumined Heart by Frederica Mathews-Green

The Illumined Heart by Frederica Mathews-Green

Why are modern Christians so indistinguishable from everyone else?
How come Christians who lived in times of bloody persecution were so heroic, while we who live in safety are not?
How could the first Christians fast valiantly, but we feel deprived without dessert?
How did New Testament believers pray without ceasing?
How could the early Christian martyrs actually forgive their torturers?
What did the Christians of the first centuries know that we don't?
That's what this book is about.
From the author:
When I look back at the process of writing The Illumined Heart, I'm amazed all over again at how God directed it. I wrote the whole thing in a week, the week before Christmas, in fact, which is so typically congested with last-minute errands, unpredicatable weather, aches and sniffles. For Orthodox Christians, it's also a week that we fast from meat and dairy, adding another ball to the juggling act. Yet somehow I started writing the book on Monday morning and completed it Sunday night, just fourteen minutes after the Christmas Eve service began. (I kept wondering where in the week I'd dawdled and lost that fourteen minutes.)
It's no wonder that I look at The Illumined Heart as the one out of all of my books that felt the most God-directed. Mostly, he told me when to shut up. For a cup-runneth-over writer like me, starting a book is like moving into mid-pregnancy and putting on those stretch-front trousers for the first time; they're like a license to eat. And knowing that I have room to write on and on, whatever comes to mind, makes for abundant, wandering prose. Yet The Illumined Heart is quiet, proportional, just-enough; it's like a jewel. It's no wonder that this is a personal favorite among my own books, and the one I must urge people to read. I'm pleased by the amount of good work it's done so far, and hope that it will continue to do much more.

Mathewes-Green, Frederica: - Frederica Mathewes-Green is a wide-ranging author whose work has appeared in such diverse publications as the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Smithsonian, the Los Angeles Times, First Things, Books & Culture, Sojourners, Touchstone, and the Wall Street Journal. She has been a radio and TV commentator, a columnist, book and movie reviewer, records a podcast for Ancient Faith Radio, and was a consultant for Veggie Tales. Frederica is a popular speaker and has been interviewed almost 700 times. She lives with her husband, the Rev. Gregory Mathewes-Green, in Baltimore, MD, where he is pastor and she is the Khouria of the parish they founded, Holy Cross Orthodox Church. Their three children are grown and married, and they have 13 grandchildren.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781557252869
ISBN 10	1557252866
Title	The Illumined Heart
Author	Frederica Mathews-Green
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Paraclete Press
Year published	2005-01-01
Number of pages	112
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.