Customer Reviews

Stars in God's Sky

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3 star:		(1)
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This book is billed as containing short biographies of "extraordinary ordinary Christians." With the exception of John Foxe (of Foxe's Martyrs), the names were all unfamiliar to me, though some of them were associated with inviduals whose names were better known (such as Hudson Taylor). I'm guessing part of the point of this was to show that "ordinary" people can do extraordinary things for God, by looking at some who haven't become "famous" within the Christian Church.

Unfortunately, these are very short biographies. There are about 17 pages per biography, with one of those being a "title page" with the person's name, a 1 paragraph summary, and then the back side is blank. So, 15 pages of real text per person. And what can do really do with that? Historical and cultural background needs provided. The person needs completely introduced since we know nothing of them. There's really only time left to hit the highlights in a very brief way. I didn't really feel like I "knew" the people I was reading about. They were shallow enough that I wasn't really engaged in each story. This sort of shallow overview might be helpful with "famous" people to have some familiarity with their name, but it doesn't really accomplish as much with an unknown.

This isn't a bad book. I could see someone getting some encouragement from one of the life stories, and the writing itself is capable enough. But, this is just too shallow for me to rate more than 3 stars, or as just "okay."