by Roseanna White | Apr 6, 2017 | Announcements, Book News, Sales, Uncategorized
First of all, I wanted to let everyone know that The Lost Heiress
e-book is on sale from all major retailers! The sale will only run from
April 6th through 8th, so if you haven’t picked this up yet and want
to, now’s your chance!
You can find links to all the major retailers on my website: http://bit.ly/RMWLostHeiress
ALSO…
FACEBOOK LIVE
I’m excited to be launching a new way of talking to you
guys! This week I’m going to be going Live on my Facebook author page
with details, but here’s the gist. On Monday evenings (when I’m not out
of town or life has the audacity to interrupt), I’m going to be going
Live to chat about one of my books (book will change each time), read
you a selection, talk about the inspiration behind it, and answer any of
your questions (about that title or anything else).
Which book would you like me to start with on Monday April 10? Comment here or fill out this one-question survey!
by Roseanna White | Apr 6, 2017 | Bible Study
There were some hard-hitting chapters this week! And, can I just say, some that are rather, er, difficult to read to your kids during homeschool? There were a few sections I just skimmed right over with them, I admit it. Because while I’m all for training a child up right from the get-go, I’m also not for introducing subjects to my little ones when they really don’t need to know about them quite yet. Another couple years…
Anyway. Chapter 7 in particular is one of those that is difficult to tackle in this day and age, isn’t it? Granted, most of it Paul particularly says is his wisdom, not a direct command from God. Except this part:
10 Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. 11 But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife. (NKJV)
This is hard to even talk about in the church today, where the divorce rate is just as high as it is in the world. Why? That, I think, should be our first question. What has gone wrong in the modern understanding of what marriage is, that it’s so easily broken by believers?
Not easily for all, I know. I’m not saying that. But is it the case most of the time that one of the spouses isn’t true in their faith? Maybe. But where does that leave the other, who has been left? Well, according to this scripture it’s pretty clear.
But in practice? Does it remain so clear? I know very, very few people who have gone through a divorce and opted to remain single thereafter, focusing solely on God. I’ve heard, from people I love and trust, that God has told them it’s okay to remarry–that he doesn’t want us to be alone.
What do you think of that? Is this a case of a best and better way? A case where God would love it if He were enough for us, but that He’s willing to grant us human companionship if we require it to stay above sin? Where do you come down on the whole issue? And more to the point, how do you translate ideology into practice? I know what I would do–but how should I treat those who believe differently? Do we shake our heads at people who choose to remain unmarried, telling them they’re not moving on? If we believe remarriage is wrong, do we use it as a means of bludgeoning and scorning those who disagree with us?
I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: if we seek God first, do all we do for Him and not ourselves, His Spirit will make the way clear. But not if we’re trying to twist God and Christ into our own image.
The verse that jumped out at me quite strongly in chapter 10 is verse 9. The Message version states it this way:
We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes.
NKJV translates it as “never tempt Christ,” which is no doubt a more literal word-for-word translation, but I think The Message sheds light on what that might mean. Paul is likening it to the Israelites in the wilderness, who were trying to force God to act as they wanted Him to do. I love how he uses this example, since it’s the very one Christ used to explain his purpose–that he’s the salvation that comes in the aftermath of that epidemic of poison.
It’s still true today. We live in a world that’s writhing with poisoning snakes–sin. Too many people today in the church are twisting their ideas of God around until He looks like they want Him to–a nice, loving, forgiving god who doesn’t hold them to too high a standard.
But God’s pretty clear on what happens when we do that. We’ve turned Him into an idol when we do–we’ve made a golden calf. When the truth is that He demands far more of us. He calls us to difficult life. A high standard. It is, and is supposed to be, hard. Because the best things in life are worth the effort.
So what standard are we living by?
by Roseanna White | Apr 5, 2017 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
Confession: when we went to England in September and spent a night in London, I wasn’t happy about it. I’m not a city girl. I don’t enjoy the hustle. Or the bustle. Or the traffic. Or the tall buildings. Or the pace. Or . . . pretty much anything about city life. So my goal was rather to avoid London during the trip, and we did a rather good job of it, but for when an early train to Paris required an overnight stay beforehand.
Which was fine, because I intended to avoid London in my books as much as possible too.
You can imagine my surprise when I realized that my third Shadows Over London book, An Hour Unspent, would not be set anywhere else.
Me: What do you mean, book? I’m your creator! I call the shots!
Book: Mwa ha ha ha.
First I thought, “Oh, I’ll just start it in London like the other two books, then go somewhere else. Somewhere I’ve been. Somewhere beautiful and rural and slower paced.”
My plot disagreed.
So I thought, “Well, I’ll at least take my crew out of London for a while. A nice trip to, say, Devonshire. We passed a lovely day in Devonshire on our way to Cornwall.”
My plot rolled its eyes at me. And just waited for me to realize that this determination to leave London was totally unnecessary and wouldn’t work at all. It would feel tacked-on.
Sigh.
So here I am, a mere 10,000 words into my book, and ready to admit defeat on that score. London is my hero’s world, and my heroine’s too. It’s where they belong. Where all the action needs to take place (well, aside from the end, which will travel to the western front of the war, into France).
Which left me with the problem of learning London. A rather large city to just become familiar with through books, etc. I’m sure I’m nowhere near fluent in its intricacies and details, especially for 1915. But when I realized I had to actually pin down details now about, say, what section of town my characters live in, I quickly thanked the Lord that I’d had the foresight (let’s call it that, shall we, rather than “whim,” which might be more accurate, LOL) to order a couple books on London in general and Edwardian London through photographs.
This one seriously saved my bacon.
This lovely book goes through the city section by section, following the Thames–which means that not only do I learn the quirks and interesting tidbits about each part, I also get a nice idea of which are close to which. It includes fun details like which writers and artists of centuries past made their homes in which part of the city; which neighborhoods Conan Doyle visited as research for Sherlock Holmes’s network of homeless spies; which areas evolved over the decades and became trendy but used to be far different.
Hopefully, with the aid of my, er, well-planned purchases, I’ll pull this off. Even if I am thinking with longing about all those other lovely stories I’ve written, set in Yorkshire and Scotland and Sussex and Cornwall and Wales. And narrowing my eyes at the stubborn Barclay Pearce, who refused to leave the city for more than a few days at the end.
Tyrant.
Speaking of which, I need to go write the scene in which his little sister accuses him of being the same. 😉 I hope everyone’s having a lovely week!
by Roseanna White | Mar 30, 2017 | Bible Study
This week’s readings contain what is one of my favorite illustrations from the epistles, in chapter 3. Paul is talking about the foundation of our faith–and what we build upon it. I’m fascinated by the fact that even though this was the early early church and we’re nearly 2,000 years later, we all deal with the same problems.
One of them is division. And once you have division, you have false claims and foolish work and people who no doubt think they’re getting along just fine, but they’re really building their faith-house with rubble rather than the materials that last. But when the fires come–trials, God’s judgment, whatever that might be–anything inferior’s going to be found out. Burned up. We‘ll be saved, but as if through the fire. And all that labor–gone.
What does this look like in life? I think in part it’s when we deliberately cheap out in our faith-walk. Who hasn’t been a spot at one point or another where we know what we should do, but we’re just too busy or tired or [fill in the blank]? And so we do less. We only give a little. We don’t get involved in a project or cause even though we feel that tug on our spirits. Or we do spearhead a project or cause, even though God didn’t tell us to and had something else He wanted us doing instead.
I think it’s also when we cling to a sin. How can that help but put the whole building in danger? The foundation is still steady, but if we use a warped girder, it puts in danger everything around it. This goes along, I think, with chapter 5 as well, where Paul is calling out sexual sin in the church.
How many Christians today ought to be saying ouch to that one? Not with the particular example he gives, but with the heart of the matter: that there’s sexual impurity in the church, being practiced by the believers who claim to be of Him, and no one cares.
How many ought to be saying it . . . and how many really are?
We are a society these days that not only tolerates sex out of marriage, we embrace it. We rejoice in it. We expect it–and that all too often is true within the church, not just in the world. I was recently talking to a friend about this, and about how it’s caused a cynicism in the millennial generation–too many of us aren’t willing to buy the concept of “true love” anymore. Our fairy tales have begun to be more funny and sarcastic and less sweet and romantic. We call it “realistic,” but it’s largely a reflection of what a generation’s view of sex has done to their concept of marriage and love. It’s cheapened it. It’s substituted sub-standard materials for what ought to be strong ones. And we’re left with a shaky faith that doesn’t quite know what to do. On the one hand, it does still have that foundation of Christ, and some solid boards have been used in other places. But then there’s that rotten part. The millennial Christian might have a hard time reconciling what they know deep in their spirit–what His Spirit has breathed into them–with the actions they see all around them, and so which they mirror.
The people will be saved. But barely.
Is that what we want to see happen to our brothers and sisters? Of course not. But do we call them out? That’s Paul’s admonition in chapter 5. Don’t just accept it! Save them from the judgment–that’s our job. Call them out, hold them accountable, and don’t let it spread within the church. That’s what love does. It doesn’t turn a blind eye–love heals.
What parts of I Corinthians 1-5 jump out at you?
by Roseanna White | Mar 27, 2017 | Word of the Week
As a mom of primary/middle schoolers, cursive writing is a part of our day. But as my kiddos were being their usual snarky selves last week (I’ve raised them well, what can I say), the question arose of why certain letters look the way they do in cursive. Because yes, my kids question everything. Even things as innocuous as a Z. I choose to view that as a good thing, LOL. 😉
But Xoe then insisted that I look it up today for my word of the week. So here we go!
The word itself, cursive, comes from the Italian corsivo, which means “running.” The entire purpose of it is to allow speed in writing, especially in the days of quill pens, which are fragile and finicky compared to the pens we use today. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that cursive writing has been around for thousands of years. The word, however, has only been in English since 1784. Previously it had been called “joining-hand.”
Though most languages and alphabets have a form of cursive, I’ll focus on the English version. Apparently there was no standardization in the early days, with two predominant styles: what we’d call italic, with no loops for ascenders and descenders, and looped, where things like p and d have a loop to allow for easy flow into the next letter. By the 16th century cursive had come to look more or less like what we recognize today. Styles still varied here and there, and everyone didn’t always connect every letter, but standardization was probably helped along by businesses employing trained clerks to write in “fair hand” (easily readable script) for all their correspondence.
In more recent years, a few different techniques have arisen, which vary the method of learning to write the letters, but the letters themselves still end up looking largely the same. And of course, then we all leave school and write however we please anyway. 😉
Do you have opinions on cursive handwriting? Do you use it in your own handwriting?
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, 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. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.