Embraced

by Sherwood, Steve; Sweet, Leonard

• ISBN13: 9781608991075
• ISBN10: 1608991075
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-01
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Pub

Summary

In a post-modern world leery of abstracted theology, might the answers to the deep question of why Jesus died on the cross be found, not in theology textbooks, but in the stories of the Bible? What if the playing out of one Hebrew word, hesed, tells us who we are, who God is, and what Jesus' life and death were all about? Embraced: Prodigals at the Cross tells the story of hesed, God's steadfast love, as it weaves its way from our creation for relationship, through our rejection of that relationship, to God's centuries-long pursuit of reconciliation. The story ends in embrace, the embrace of a good father who runs to his prodigal son, and a loving God who takes on human flesh to reach out to us on the cross. This book is God's story. This book is our story.

Author Biography

Steve Sherwood is Assistant Professor of Christian Ministries at George Fox University and a twenty-five year veteran of ministry to young people in Young Life. He lives, with his wife and two daughters, in Newberg, Oregon.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. x
Foreword	p. xi
Preface	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction: Where Are We Going?	p. 1
Who We Are and What We Were Made For	p. 9
The Great Banquet Comes to Texas	p. 11
Time Out for Historical Context	p. 14
Back to the Story	p. 16
Sea World and Frederick Buechner	p. 18
Lars and the Real Girl	p. 20
Let Us Make Them Like Us	p. 23
Relational Selves	p. 27
Naked and Not Ashamed, for a While	p. 30
Where Did Things Go So Horribly Wrong?	p. 33
Life and Death on the Playground	p. 35
Evanescence	p. 39
Thoughts from Others on Human Isolation	p. 42
The Year the Pain Wouldn't Stop	p. 43
Two Moments Observed	p. 47
Love, with a Price Tag	p. 49
The Nought	p. 52
Does God Leave Us There?	p. 55
Grace in the Midst of Barrenness: Muscle Memory and a Different Kind of Story	p. 57
A Strange Scene That Is the Key to the Whole Story	p. 61
A God Who Hears and Acts	p. 65
Tabernacle	p. 68
God Present at the Concord, Massachusetts, Hospital	p. 70
Al's Story, Part Two	p. 72
What Do You See?	p. 73
A Couple of Interesting Hebrew Words	p. 74
Our Story and God's Counter-Story: Judges and Ruth	p. 75
Jonah: Not the Story You Think You Know	p. 78
On Judgment, Wrath, and God	p. 81
Does Revenge Have the Power to Heal? Or Would God Punish a Handful of Grain?	p. 86
Two Words: Hesed and Emmanuel	p. 91
What Does It Look Like When God-with-Us Shows Up?	p. 94
What Parents Do	p. 97
Are You Hungry?	p. 99
God Putting All Things Right	p. 101
An Exercise in Perspective	p. 103
The Center Point of Human History	p. 105
Life as Parable: Hosea and Gomer	p. 109
Let Me Tell You Three Times, Just in Case You Missed the Point	p. 113
Come Home	p. 119
Embrace	p. 120
This Father Had Another Son	p. 123
Hope for the Hollow Man	p. 127
Buechner Tells the Story of the Prodigal	p. 128
Thielicke in Hamburg, Post-World War II	p. 129
Jesus and Peter, Before and After the Cross and Resurrection	p. 131
Hilasterion	p. 134
A Game with Words	p. 136
Already, but Not Yet	p. 137
Pools or Rivers	p. 139
Parties for Prostitutes	p. 142
Corrie Ten Boom	p. 144
The Power of Downward Mobility	p. 147
Gettysburg, Fifty Years Later	p. 149
Finding Faith in Unexpected Places	p. 150
A Stunned Crowd at the Sundance Film, Festival	p. 152
Disappointing Season	p. 155
Not Either/Or but Both And	p. 156
Bono Talks About the Difference Between Grace and Karma	p. 159
How Wide Is God's Embrace?	p. 161
Heart Parties	p. 166
Bibliography	p. 171
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