TREASURING CHRIST WHEN YOUR
HANDS ARE FULL
Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms
By Gloria Furman
Crossway. 160 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978 1 433 538 889
Young moms lit is becoming quite a genre in the Christian publishing world – short books for the overwhelmed and exhausted.
This one is full of the usual familiar allusions to unwashed dishes and children and the regular experience of embarrassment and shame at the misbehaviour of your children. In many ways this genre is a healthy redress to ideas of apple-pie supermomism, which sadly seem to haunt many young Christian women. At any rate, if they feel guilty or incompetent, they know that they are not alone.
Two things stand out about this book, which is written by a mother of four who is also a blogger and the wife of a pastor in Dubai. The first is that it is a great thing to have children. To have your hands full is a signal blessing from a gracious God. So motherhood even at its most chaotic is a very positive thing. second The outstanding feature of this book is the enthusiastically expressed application of the gospel to our tears and fears. This delivers a body-blow to the guilt thing in a really good way. The book’s sub-title is ‘Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms’ and its meditations refreshingly lead the reader away from the rampant me-ism of the Mumsnet generation. Instead of assuaging maternal guilt to make a young mother feel better, it says you are actually much worse than you think. Get used to it and look to Jesus and his grace. That has to be good news.
