Information
for Guest Post March 11.
Bio:
The Writing Sisters, Betsy
Duffey and Laurie Myers were born into a writing family, and began critiquing
manuscripts at an early age for their mother, Newbery winner Betsy Byars.
They went on to become authors of more than thirty-five children’s
novels. Their first book for adults is
The Shepherd’s Song,
Howard Books, March 2014.
Links:
Back Copy:
Follow
the incredible journey of one piece of paper—a copy of Psalm 23—as it travels
around the world, linking lives and hearts with its simple but beautiful
message.
The
Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures…
Shortly
before a tragic car accident, Kate McConnell wrote down the powerful words of
Psalm 23 on a piece of paper for her wayward son. Just before she loses
consciousness, Kate wonders if she’s done enough with her life and prays,
“Please, let my life count.”
Unbeknownst
to Kate, her handwritten copy of Psalm 23 soon begins a remarkable journey
around the world. From a lonely dry cleaning employee to a soldier wounded in
Iraq, to a young Kurdish girl fleeing her country, to a Kenyan runner in the
Rome Invitational marathon, this humble message forever changes the lives of
twelve very different people. Eventually, Kate’s paper makes it back to its
starting place, and she discovers the unexpected ways that God changes lives,
even through the smallest gestures.
With
beautiful prose evocative of master storyteller Andy Andrews’s The Butterfly
Effect, this story will touch your heart and remind you of the ways God
works through us to reach beyond what we can imagine.
Guest Post:
The Shepherd’s Song: Why Psalm 23?
Ideas for books come in different ways to different
people. We knew we wanted to show the
power of the Word of God to change lives and Psalm 23 seemed the perfect place
to start. As we learned in our research, this passage of scripture is the
best-known passage for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is the most commonly tattooed verse, and
the one most often etched on dog tags.
Our collaborative books before The Shepherd’s Song all contained individual stories linked by an
over-aching story. We saw this book the
same way; stories about different people in different cultures reading the
Psalm and interacting with scripture.
When we started we didn’t know what the over-aching story would be, except
that it would involve the Psalm being passed from person to person.
Psalm 23 is a scripture passage that we have known all of
our lives, memorizing it as children in the King James translation. But it was also
a psalm that was so familiar to us that we had stopped listening to the words
and the promises behind the words.
As we read and studied we realized the importance of sheep
in the Bible. There are over 700
references to sheep. God often refers to
us as His sheep. The more we studied the
more we wanted to learn. Our own encounters with sheep showed us how alike
people and sheep are. We are stubborn and anxious. We are crowd pleasers and fearful.
From Philip Keller’s book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, we learned about a real life shepherd,
and the words of the psalm took on new meaning.
We learned that sheep need still waters.
Left to their own devices they can drift into rushing water, dragged
away by the weight of their wet wool. We
learned that the shepherd anoints the sheep with oil to protect them from flies
and gnats that drive them crazy. And so
much more.
We never dreamed how much God would teach us about this
psalm through our research in books, a visit to a sheep farm, and our personal
circumstances. By the end of writing of
the book, we were different, we had changed.
In the book, twelve individuals encounter Psalm 23, and like
us they are changed forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment