My first Christian book
It’s been a busy summer. The final book in the Spark Chronicles went to the typesetter/formatter on Monday. I should see a draft in a week or so. It will likely be available in early September. I’ll keep you posted.
Okay, so here’s a change of pace for me. I wrote a Christian book. That’s part of what’s been keeping me so busy. It’s now on sale.
Several years back, we were at a friend’s for dinner. Our minister was also there. It was a Sunday evening. When I was offered a glass of wine, I turned it down and piously replied that I had given up alcohol for Lent.
From a few feet away, our minister, holding his glass of wine, said, “Pat, you know that Sundays aren’t part of Lent, right?”
Well, no. I didn’t know that. Why not? What else had I missed along the way? (To be fair, I did notice that the math never really worked for me. Ash Wednesday always seemed much more than 40 days before Easter. I just shrugged it off and went with it.)
That information lay dormant in my brain for years. Then, in 2024, we did a Lenten Study in our small group at church. It was vapid. Just a lot of “don’t forget to repent and pray, and maybe think about fasting.” The $15 book had perhaps 20 pages of text, none of which was new or enlightening.
I decided to look for a better book on Lent and ended up buying five different ones. None of them were much better. None answered my questions. Questions such as:
Why is it called Lent?
Why 40 days?
Why weren’t Sundays included?
How did it start? I mean, the Bible never mentions Lent.
I figured I could do a better book and find the answers to my questions at the same time.
Why the name? At the same dinner party, a friend of ours shared the story of her father. He was a heavy drinker but would stop drinking every Lent. He knew that Sundays weren’t part of Lent, so when Sunday came around, he made up for six days of sobriety and was drunk every Sunday. That story stuck with me.