HARVEST FROM HEARTACHE
By Gail Chamberlain
Kingsway. 174 pages
ISBN 1 84291 258 5
This is a mother’s story of her son’s battle with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and his death just short of his fifth birthday.
The story is told in considerable detail, movingly and with honesty, and it is clear that Gail and her family’s relationship with Christ shaped their response and enabled them to cope. As she records the years of her son’s illness and death and her perspective on it, she often tells of feelings and impressions which helped her cope with what she was facing; it would be more helpful to readers to have greater explanation of and emphasis on the truth on which her confidence is based. Although the story is told compellingly and honestly, it is the story itself which is central rather than their faith and the reason for it. The subtitle of the book is ‘A little boy dies and a dream is born’ and the foreword speaks of ‘a short life which continues to have a profound and lasting effect on many lives’.
The author refers to the planting and growth of a church during the time of their son’s illness, but it is not clear what that ‘dream’ is nor what the ‘lasting effect’ has been. Although the account is an insight into the demands and agony of caring for a sick and dying child, and it is clear that their faith sustained them, I question how useful it will be to others without clearer direction to the demonstration of God’s love shown in Jesus’s death and resurrection for us as the ground for our confidence in the face of sickness and death.
