Trust & Obey

Christmas is almost here!! I have already talked about the more commercial part of it and now I want to dive into what Christmas is about for me personally, Jesus’s birth!

Francine River’s short story collection called The Lineage of Grace has some stories on women of the Bible and let me tell you, the Bible does not have a PG rating. God has zero fear about telling us of the lives of some unsavory characters. In this book, Rivers does the same thing with women like Tamar (she ended up having a child with her father-in-law) and Rahab (prostitute) but gives you more understanding of cultural obligations and exceptions. The last short story of this collection is Unafraid. It focuses on the account of Mary and gives you an up close and personal look into the coming of Jesus. I would like to warn that this is a fictional piece where Rivers expands and adds to the original accounts, so if you don’t want there to be some flavor and speculation just read the 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

Unafraid was a great short story to give you a new perspective on the birth, and life of the Messiah. Rivers goes into how scandalous it was that Mary was pregnant out of wedlock, which goes against the Jewish teachings, and how Joseph gave up his reputation by marrying a defiled woman. I hadn’t really thought of Joseph paying a price but this makes total sense! We focus a lot on Mary because she gave birth to Jesus and showed the physical symptoms of pregnancy, so she must have felt the most ashamed. As I continued to think on this, I do think Joseph really paid dearly for marrying her. He had an exit route, divorce her, that was absolutely acceptable and considered appropriate! However, he followed what God said and got to father the Messiah through his childhood!

Unafraid doesn’t stop with the birth of Jesus but follows Mary through her lifetime and we see just because she was chosen does not mean that her life was easy. During the storyline, Rivers also reveals to us the spiritual warfare that goes down during Jesus’ earthly years. She really paints this picture of Satan trying to destroy the coming of the King before, during, and far after His birth.

Francine Rivers, as much as I love her works, tends to have a bent towards the sexual. Great writer with great thoughts! She really does the research and you see that when you read her books. However, she really likes talking about things that I would call sexual or inappropriate for younger readers. She doesn’t necessarily have sex scenes but many sexual or sexually charged scenarios. It can make me a bit squeamish. This is one of the main things that make her books high school to adult readers, if she didn’t have that I’d say her writing is practically perfect! This one didn’t have too much of that, but with birth and all that, she can be somewhat descriptive.

Francine River’s novella Unafraid dives deep into the life of Mary and all of her joys and sufferings which gives you a connection with her and breathes life into the coming of Jesus. Unafraid reminded me of the gravity of Jesus’ birth and that it wasn’t just a baby that was born, but the heir to the throne of all humanity and of all creation.