The Reason for God

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller uses several disciplines, including philosophy and anthropology, to examine the Christian faith on an intellectual level. It is divided into two parts addressing the doubts about Christianity in the first part and looking at faith in the second part.

In part one, The Leap of Doubt, the seven chapters address the following topics.

• There Can't Be Just One True Religion
• How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?
• Christianity Is a Straitjacket
• The Church is Responsible for So Much Injustice
• How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
• Science Has Disproved Christianity
• You Can't Take the Bible Literally

In part two, The Reasons for Faith, the seven chapters address the following topics.

• The Clues of God
• The Knowledge of God
• The Problem of Sin
• Religion and the Gospel
• The (True) Story of the Cross
• The Reality of the Resurrection
• The Dance of God

The epilogue concludes by addressing the motives, the cost and the commitment, and ends with the matter of grace. The book addresses many of the issues while being respectful to the readers no matter what their beliefs.

The Immortal

The Immortal by Angela Hunt was one of those bargain books on sale. Although it was published in 2000, it used the legend of the Wandering Jew to present the return of Christ and the subject of forgiveness and grace in a new way. The only distraction was the switch from first person, Claudia, to third person, Asher, and back. Thankfully, the story moved along at a quick enough pace to overcome it.

The story begins with Claudia, a jury consultant in New York, who moves to Italy to work for a new global company focused on world peace. She uses her interviewing skills to screen potential employees for the company and hires Asher. After they become friends, Asher tells her that he has been wandering the Earth since Jesus time and believes his purpose is to find the potential Antichrist in each generation and witness to him until Christ's return.

Small Town Christmas

Small Town Christmas was one of Debbie Macomber's 2008 Christmas books and contains two novellas - Return to Promise and Mail-Order Bride - reissued from previous titles.

Return to Promise begins in Promise, Texas with Cal Patterson, a rancher, and his wife Jane, a doctor. When a family emergency calls Jane to California, Nicole, a manipulative character from Cal's past puts her sites on Cal. In Mail-Order Bride, Caroline is tricked into an arranged marriage and ends up in Gold River, Alaska with her new husband, Paul.

Both stories were light, easy reads and fairly predictable with feel-good endings. However, I'm not sure why they were packaged as Christmas stories since neither had a Christmas theme such as her Mrs. Miracle books that have become classic Hallmark Channel movies.