Best Books
Well, this is awkward… Last year I finished a work of fiction featuring Mary Magdalene and Simon of Cyrene. I wrote it with the Lenten/Easter season in mind and decided to publish it. Now comes the awkward part. I also write book reviews. So, how does one write a review of their own book without sounding either shamelessly hubristic or artfully self-deprecating? It can’t be done. My solution is to simply give you a quote from the book, a taste of what the reader will encounter in Remembering the Messiah – A Story of Simon of Cyrene and Mary Magdalene. Here is a quote from Mary Magdalene. I hope you enjoy it. Have a blessed Easter.
Wondrous.
That’s the word I most often use when I describe my days with the Rabbi. Every day was a gift, an adventure, a time of sacred subversiveness in which harlots uttered holy words and scribes were rendered speechless, when lame men leapt with joy and blind men beheld the face of God. It was as though the weight of all humanity was bestowed upon one man – all our love and hatred, all our sins and virtues, all our dreams and dread. The fullness of God and humanity dwelt within him, reconciling the world unto God and God unto the world. In Jesus, God ripped the heavens asunder. And then the impossible happened.
It was after midnight when a servant reached Bethany with the news of his arrest. By the time I arrived in Jerusalem with his mother, the sun was already rising in the east. It was the worst day of my life. I learned later that Jesus, upon his betrayal by Judas, called it the hour of darkness. By nightfall the light of the world would be extinguished. The Rabbi who turned water into wine would cry out in thirst, and the Messiah who promised to save the world would be tortured to death. What do we do when Goliath slays David, when Pharaoh captures Moses on the banks of the Red Sea, when Abraham dies desolate of a son? How does one comprehend such an abomination? Until the moment when he breathed his last breath, I expected him to be rescued by a miracle. When the earth shook and he screamed out to God for the last time, I knew it was over. The Rabbi was dead, and with him the dream of God’s kingdom had died as well. As I sat in the darkness throughout that sinister Sabbath night, I was unsure the world would survive another day. God had come to us, but we had killed him.
-Darrel Holcombe, Owner
Sanctuary Christian Books and Gifts
Colonial Promenade, Alabaster
www.sanctuarychristianbooksandgifts.com
205-663-2370
