Star for Jesus (And Other Jobs I Quit)
Rediscovering the Grace that Sets Us Free
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- ¥2,200
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- ¥2,200
発行者による作品情報
A funny, thought-provoking memoir-in-essays about learning to understand—again and again—that we can’t earn God’s love no matter how many rules we follow or boxes we check, and learning to accept the grace that is freely given.
Growing up, Kimberly Stuart got really good at strapping on her spiritual tap shoes and trying to be a star for Jesus. She could sing all the songs, ace the sword drills, and know all the right theology. From earning creepy Jesus paperweights in her church’s faux Girl Scout program to trying to calm an actual storm on the Mediterranean, she was doing her best… and still found herself longing for something more. She didn’t mean to completely ignore the most beautiful tenets of her faith—the unwavering grace and tenacious love of God—but she did. Which, of course, was the problem. Her best was lackluster, and God wasn’t looking for a star performer anyway.
Star for Jesus (And Other Jobs I Quit), is an invitation for readers to spot unvarnished, amazing grace when they see it. With her trademark wit and transparency, Stuart brings readers through both big and small moments that teach us to cling to the fierce love of God instead of the flimsier versions we find elsewhere.
With unflinching honesty and relatable humor, Stuart encourages readers to take another look at unrelenting grace; why, contrary to the cultural narrative, we are not actually enough, and that’s good news; how we always, remarkably, have all the grace we need; and why this moment in history is the perfect time to extend no-strings-attached grace to an emotionally bedraggled, wary world.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers should accept God's unconditional grace and eschew performative faith, according to this warts-and-all outing from novelist Stuart (Heart Land). A lifelong striver, Stuart recalls the "shocking number of years" she spent trying to be a gold-star Christian—"reading the Bible at a certain time of day, for a certain amount of time... working and working and pausing only to check the boxes"—before realizing that God "just wanted me," flaws and all. In chatty prose, Stuart details how God's grace inspired her to begin accepting her body after years of nitpicking, and endure through a harrowing miscarriage. The resulting insights about how grace and pain coexist are moving (grace "most certainly does not ask us to hurry up our broken hearts," she writes), though the book's structure can become repetitive: chapters generally feature a personal anecdote followed by energetic meditations on God's grace that rehash the same general points in often overzealous figurative language ("There is room in the lifeboat because he IS the lifeboat. You don't have to keep swimming alongside, letting Him know that you're great!"). Still, believers will appreciate Stuart's enthusiastic efforts to frame grace as more than "just a word at church."
