Brokenness and Blessing

In *Brokenness and Blessing*, Frances Young challenges the spirituality fostered by our culture's desire to assert a basic right of freedom from pain and suffering. Rather than viewing our human frailty and mortality as things to be denied or overcome, Young encourages us to place them at the very centre of a truly biblical spirituality.  
  
Young has discovered, through study of the Scriptures, the church fathers, and her own experience with a profoundly disabled son, that true biblical spirituality involves suffering and an acceptance of our own and others' brokenness and flaws. In this volume, which is at once academic, pastoral, and personal, Young explores five motifs that are recurrent in Scripture, in the writings of the church fathers, and in traditional church hymnography: the desert experience, spiritual wrestling, Jesus’ way of kenosis, exile, and frustrated desire. She seeks to present a way of thinking and living as a Christian that will sustain a person through the hardships of life to a deeper relationship with the one who heals.  
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Frances Young explores the ways in which the earliest theologians and preachers read the Bible, and seeks to recover a sense of the importance of the spiritual meaning of the text, as much as the literal or historic meaning. She attempts to bridge a gap between the work of biblical scholars and what is practised and believed by faithful church-goers, by drawing on the wisdom of the church Fathers and exploring their relationship with scripture. Brokenness and Blessing brings together Frances Young's years of work as a scholar in the field of Biblical Studies, and as a preacher, as well as her personal experiences of caring for a son with profound learning disabilities and her journey with him. What emerges is a spirituality which offers both a realistic view of the human condition as well as 'the wonderful gift of grace which brings hope of transformation'.Read less