★★★★★ 5
Deftly weaving stories of her life into solid biblical teaching on love, grace
Format: Hardcover
The Gospel Comes With a House Key may be one of the most thought provoking books I have read in the last year (and I read a lot). It is part memoir, part biblical theology, part polemic about the use God wants to put our homes to. Deftly weaving stories of her life into solid biblical teaching on love, grace, mercy, personal sin, and, yes, hospitality Rosaria Butterfield kept me compulsively turning the pages. It’s not just that she is a deep thinker with a thorough grasp of how to convey ideas clearly and compellingly. She is an excellent story-teller who also is an excellent writer; and those two do not always go together. She drew me in to one story in particular that she did not finish until toward the end of the book, but rather than finding that frustrating it led me deeper into her broader story, and subtly, her broader argument that I need to radically rethink how I view my home and my time. After all it is all God’s and I am meant to find my ultimate joy in service to Him and in His love.
Apparently my home can be a powerful tool for me to feel His love and to convey His love to others. Want to know exactly why? Want to see how that works out in the context on one family in one particular instance with broad application for all Christians? Then by all means I invite you to Butterfield home to eat with them, play with them, pray and read the Bible with them, to weep and struggle with them, just as they invite everyone they know to do the same.
Thank you Rosaria. You’ve given me and my wife a lot to think about and a needed challenge; that actually looks like a lot of fun!
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Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2018