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 center 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's 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.

It is profoundly difficult, says Frances Young, "to live with our vulnerability and mortality--how we question and rebel, as we are overwhelmed by grief and distress." Offering both a realistic view of the human condition and the wonderful gift of grace that brings hope of transformation, Young challenges the culture that believers have assimilated. Drawing upon her personal experiences and her knowledge of Scripture, ancient Christianity, and the great hymns of faith, Young offers this academic yet deeply pastoral guide for thinking and living as a Christian. Students of early Christianity, seminarians, pastors, and serious readers will appreciate this insightful look at how acceptance of disability can bring blessing in the lives of believers.

Frances M. Young (PhD, University of Cambridge) is the recently retired Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, England, and a Fellow of the British Academy. The lead editor of The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature and the author of numerous books in patristics and New Testament studies, she is also an ordained Methodist minister.

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