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John Claypool had been a pastor for almost two decades, ministering to others who suffered through the loss of loved ones, when the loss came home with the death of his eight-year-old daughter. This book is the story of Claypool’s own journey through the darkness, written through four sermons. The first was delivered just eleven days after his daughter's diagnosis of leukemia, the second after her first major relapse nine months later, and the third weeks after her death. The final sermon—a reflection on the process of grieving—was preached three years later. "Job, who also struggled with God and found him, emerged twice the person he had been. And so can we. Though our journey will be uniquely our own when the time comes, and come it will if we love at all, Claypool has left tracks. Furthermore he has not erased those places where he faltered. They are honest tracks." —The Texas Churchman With more than a million copies sold, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler is once again available in a hardcover edition, perfect for gift-giving, or for anyone seeking God’s comfort in difficult times to read and cherish.
A journey through grief that has brought comfort to others for almost half a century. John R. Claypool had been a pastor for almost two decades, ministering to others who suffered through the loss of loved ones, when the loss came home in the death of his eight-year-old daughter, Laura Lue. This is the story of Claypool's own journey through the darkness, written through four sermons. The first was delivered just eleven days after his daughter's diagnosis of leukemia, the second after her first major relapse nine months later, and the third weeks after her death. The final sermon—a reflection on the process of grieving—was preached three years later.
In three meditations John Claypool speaks eloquently of the wounds all of us carry through life—the wounds of grievance, guilt, and grief—and how they can be healed. The wound of grievance comes from our suffering at the hands of others, we are pierced by guilt when we inflict pain in return, and we suffer grief when we are hurt by loss. By anecdote and personal example, Claypool helps us see that all these wounds can eventually be healed through the gifts of insight, forgiveness, and gratitude. With the help of scripture and Claypool's own pastoral wisdom, Mending the Heart is a powerful tool for reflection. Each meditation begins with verses from the psalms and ends with a prayer. This book is a wise resource for pastors and caregivers, especially in times of crisis and bereavement, but its simplicity and insight also make it a good guide to prayer and discernment as well as a fine gift book. Mending the Heart is the fourth in our series of Cloister Books: smaller format, gift edition books designed for meditative and devotional reading.
"God's goodness is bigger than all human badness," writes best-selling author John Claypool. "God's power and willingness to forgive are greater than our human capacity to sin." The Bible is often held up as a source of family values, but it is also full of families who falter and do so generation after generation. Few families have visited as much evil on each other as Abraham's descendants in Genesis. Using these stories, Claypool explores how God turns the "lead" of evil–like Jacob's theft of Esau's birthright, and Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery in Egypt–into the "gold" of abundant blessing, as alchemists were said to do in the past. God is always more interested in our future, according to Claypool, than in our pasts. In this book, as in his other books, Claypool explores the biblical texts carefully, and with a pastoral eye for the characters from Genesis and his contemporary readers. This book offers challenge and comfort to people who feel that their sins may be beyond God's concern and their lives beyond redemption.
Hope is to the human spirit what breath is to the physical body—the very fuel that animates our being. So says best-selling author John Claypool. But with hopefulness comes the possibility of disappointment. How can we hope and yet be realistic about what we hope for? What is a hope that doesn’t disappoint? In his inimitable pastoral and gentle way, Claypool explores biblically based avenues to hopefulness. Beginning with what we can and cannot know of God's promises, he discusses the value of humility in the face of the Great Mystery that is God. Claypool then examines what we can expect by letting God be God, and he looks at the place of forgiveness and second chances in seeking hope. His conclusion addresses the greatest hope, that of the life to come beyond the grave. This very personal book, written without theological jargon, will be a welcome companion to anyone who is struggling with disappointment, fear, or loss.
In this revised second edition of Stories Jesus Still Tells, John Claypool brings fresh insight to a selection of parables, allowing us to hear Jesus' calm, persuasive voice still speaking to us through stories like the great banquet, the rich fool, and the final judgment. By providing us with a clearer understanding of the context of these stories in Jesus' immediate culture, Claypool demonstrates how accessible the parables were to his listeners, told in familiar terms that everyone who heard them could grasp. He writes: "This is how Jesus worked the miracle of reconciliation again and again. People would come to him in all degrees of panic, fear, and anger. Yet, instead of confronting them head-on and driving them deeper into their defensiveness, he would, like Nathan, defuse their anxiety by saying, 'Let me tell you a story. . . .' Then, drawn in by the narrative and with their defenses down, the listeners would see the story as a mirror, and its light would make their personal darkness visible. In this way, parables became events of revelation." And so it is with us, Claypool believes. When we open the deep places in our being to the parables--these stories Jesus still tells--then in a moment of surprise and insight, we who listen recognize ourselves in the characters and the decisions they face. The stories are no longer about them, but about us, and the opportunity for illumination and transformation in our own lives.
An examination of Jesus’s relationships with each of his first disciples other reveals ways to deepen our relationship with Him. One of the first things Jesus did in his ministry was to reach out to twelve individuals and draw them into his circle of close companionship with him. This series is about those twelve apostles, their relationships with Jesus and with each other, and what dynamics of that community can teach us. Jesus did not wait for people to be perfect in order to call them into the circle of God’s love. As we look at those who Jesus called, and consider ourselves as part of that ever enlarging circle, we gain not only a deeper sense of our reality, but also a deeper sense of how Christ wants to work with us. Based on talks given at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Birmingham, and more recently The Chautauqua Institute, these lectures have been edited by Ann W. Claypool in her husband’s memory.