Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace, by Cathleen Falsani

wow.

let me shoot straight: this is one of the best books i have read this year.

falsani has writtten an absolutely stunning book about grace. i could not recommend this book more highly.

sin boldly is a gorgeous, wandering, adventure in looking for (and finding) grace. it’s not a theological treatise (though it has real-world theological implications dripping off every page). instead, falsani uses questions, searching, stories, and reflections to dig around and unearth a three-dimensional grace. there’s an almost “amazing race” vibe to the book, as she takes readers on a ’round-the-world grace-seeking adventure. but it’s not a heart-pounding amazing race — it’s an amazing grace race with space and slow and quiet and small noticing. it’s a spiritual quest, delivered with humility, frailty, imperfection, stumbling, insight, a-ha moments, and a cast of characters all-the-better in that they’re real.

i’ll be honest about this: i was regularly surprised, as i read, that my parent company, zondervan, published this book. and, as much as i love my parent company, i don’t really mean that as a compliment (except in the fact that i’m both astounded and pleasantly shocked that this brilliant and rough manuscript made it through the editorial process in a major christian publishing house). falsani is not your everyday christian bookstore writer. put it this way: the book is more anne lammot than it is beth moore.

i’ll be adding “sin boldly” to my list of most-often recommended books, along with my other “friends”, like:
messy spirituality and dangerous wonder, by mike yaconelli
traveling mercies and grace (eventually), by anne lammot
take this bread, by sara miles
the life you’ve always wanted, by john ortberg
and a few books by parker palmer and frederich buechner

this book moved me deeply, and gave me hope. i didn’t want it to end.