Book review: Every Bitter Thing is SweetA foreword by Katie Davis, an amazing young American who moved to Uganda to become mother to fourteen orphaned children and caregiver for hundreds more, was enough of a recommendation for me. And, of course, since my free copy came via BooklookBloggers, who invariably choose good reads for its reviewers.
Katie's introduction says, among other things: "This is a book for those hearts who long to see Him in the mess. It is Sara's personal story, written with eloquence and grace, about a God who rescued her from barrenness and carried her to a land of abundance, dripping with ...all things His goodness. She teaches me again what I have already known; she teaches me to hope anew."
The book takes its title from Proverbs 27:7 "A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet."
I want to be a hungry soul. I want to know and experience God in my every day not just on my Sundays (and even then, often, it doesn't happen).
This book seemed, as I read through carefully, to focus on a woman's longing for a child. It is not a longing that I identify with: even though I have two wonderful, now-grown-up children, I never experienced this sense of desperation that many women have. So I found Sara's frequent references to her inability to conceive difficult, irrelevant. Yet, already in the first chapter, I was able to look beyond this particular source of frustration, because we all have those circumstances which make us question God. Circumstances which make us ask, as Sara does: "My question was not, Is God good? But instead, is He good to ME? I was overlooked, forgotten. Not important enough to bless, and easy enough to dismiss. Cursed."
And this is the core. To know, really know, who I am in God.
And to do this by knowing Jesus, how he lived and how he died, and WHY he died.
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