WAITING WELL WITH JESUS:
Strength for the Journey Through
Heartbreak to Hope.
By Lynda Wake
Authentic. 384 pages. £19.99
ISBN 978 1 788 933 520
This is a 52-week devotional journey aimed at those in the grip of loss. Wake shares her own personal journal of heartbreak to hope, following the death of their teenage daughter. Theirs is an evocative story.
This attractive hardback seeks to help those in the grip of ‘heartache’ to journal their way to hope. Each week follows a similar pattern highlighting a key word for guided reflection through shared stories, comforting quotes, truthful nuggets and supporting Bible texts. It has a poetic style, loosely structured, with curly font and spaces for scribble notes encouraging the reader to pause, reflect, feel, write, weep, pray… Having read this at triple-speed, and skipped the journalling, I missed the benefits of the authors’ intention. A failure on my part.
Wake aims to help the reader to engage with the hope found in the gospel, in the darkest hours, when one’s capacity for heady truth or heavy content is diminished. Such as those will find this of comfort and help in its onward pointing to Jesus.
A commendable characteristic of the weekly structure is the key word for reflection. I personally would have preferred the Bible texts to be more embedded throughout the week. Instead, these appear at the end, with the reader left joining the dots in their journalling journey.
Although not a book I would rush out to buy, this may be a timely gift for the sorrowing friend.
