Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop #3
Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all the stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!
• The hunt BEGINS on 3/12 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
• Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
• There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt—you have all weekend (until Sunday, 3/15 at midnight MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books and learn new things about them.
• Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at the final stop, back on Lisa’s site. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!
Against Every Warning,
She’s Drawn Ever Closer
to the Man Known as “Black Heart”
All of England thinks Major Phillip Camden a monster–a man who
deliberately caused the deaths of his squadron. But he would have
preferred to die that day with his men rather than be recruited to the
Admiralty’s codebreaking division. The threats he receives daily are no
great surprise and, in his opinion, well deserved.
As nurse Arabelle Denler observes the so-dubbed “Black Heart,” she
sees something far different: a hurting man desperate for mercy. And
when their families and paths twist together unexpectedly, she realizes
she has a role to play in his healing–and some of her own to do as well.
With Camden’s court-martial looming, an old acquaintance shows up,
intent on using him in a plot that sends the codebreakers of Room 40
into a frenzy. With their fragile hopes for the future in the cross
hairs, Arabelle and Camden must hold on to hope–and to each other–if
they want to survive.
Here’s the Stop #3 Basics:
Word of the Week – Mesmerize
When one looks up the etymology of mesmerize, one will find that it dates from 1819, when it was coined with the meaning of “to put into a hypnotic state.” What Etymonline doesn’t mention is that this comes directly from the name of the physician who developed the practice, Franz Mesmer.
When Mesmer developed hypnosis, he originally called it “animal magnetism.” But one of his pupils decided it would be more fun to name it after the inventor (discoverer?) so, called it mesmerize. By the 1860s, however, hypnotize had become the preferred word (from the Greek hypnotikos, “inclined to sleep”) for the procedure. At that point, mesmerize shifted slightly to mean “to enthrall or fascinate.”
Coming this weekend is the Spring 2020 Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! Mark your calendars!
Thoughtful About . . . Spiritual Fullness
We’ve recently decided to read some of the writings of the early church fathers–things that aren’t included in our Bible because they weren’t written by an apostle, but which are still very early. We began with I Clement, written somewhere around 90 AD, from the church of Rome to the church of Corinth, which had gone through a huge upheaval.
Every
kind of honour and happiness was bestowed upon you, and then was fulfilled that
which is written, “My beloved ate and drink, and was enlarged and became
fat, and kicked.” Hence flowed emulation and envy, strife and sedition,
persecution and disorder, war and captivity.
Word of the Week – Just Kidding!
so thank you not to use that word. And one of my critique partners recently caught me using it in the joking sense well before it would have been.
meaning of “a young goat” round about 1200. It began being applied to
children in 1590, though it was still slang at that point. It was
accepted usage, however, by 1840 . . . and had in fact been a word used
to describe skillful young thieves for 30 years before that. (One I
didn’t know!)
is from 1839 (which proves that it was a well-accepted slang by then)
and comes from the idea of “making a kid of, treating as a child.”
Though those thieving youngsters used it to mean “coax, wheedle, hoax.”
Thoughtful About . . . Fruit
We love fruit in our family. Fresh fruit, canned fruit, dried fruit, jammed fruit, fruit from our own garden, or fruit from the other side of the world. We love citrus fruit, stone fruit, berries… Fruit can be a taste of the familiar or the tang of the exotic. We love to eat it raw, to bake it into recipes, to puree it into smoothies. Last week, I even learned to make homemade fruit roll-ups. With a kiddo who despises vegetables, fruit is often the way I get much-needed nutrients into all of us. And a much-appreciated taste of yumminess too.
3 We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints; 5 because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth… (NKJV, emphasis mine)
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| Photo by Heather Barnes on Unsplash |
To take out some of the phrases there for focusing purposes, that says “because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, which you heard in the gospel, which is bringing forth fruit.”
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| Photo by Brian Jimenez on Unsplash |
So what is the purpose of us learning to produce those fruits of the Spirit? Not for our own sake–for His. So that others come, smell the fragrance of His peace, see the beauty of His love, taste the perfection of His Joy. Our job as Christ followers is to share those things with anyone who walks by hungry. So that they eat of it, and the seed nestles deep inside. So that He can water it and it can grow. And so that then that person too can experience the transformative power of God and turn from fallow ground with a dried up seed inside to a life-giving, thriving tree spreading out their limbs and offering His love to others.
About Me
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.