This colorful, story-driven introduction to sacramental living offers a way to see the presence of God amid the chaos and monotony of everyday life.

Why does God hide – day-in and day-out – from those of us who yearn to hear His voice? When we do good, there’s no heavenly applause. When we do evil, no divine rebuke. And when great horrors visit us, He rarely intervenes. In good times and bad, there’s just silence . . . the awful silence of God. Now comes Why God Hides, this magnum opus of Fr. John Portavella, written after many decades of listening to God’s silence – in his own life and in that of thousands of his parishioners. Those years of listening, reading, thinking, and praying have made ever more clear to him – and with the help of this book, will make clear to you– that, in fact . . . God is not silent nor is He hidden, if only you know how to listen and learn where to look. Time and again in the events of salvation history and in the trials and joys of our daily lives, Fr. Portavella here unveils the Face of God and lets us hear His voice, speaking in every instance words of sweet love. Why God Hides is a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime book that scatters the darkness of our minds, giving us myriad glimpses of our supposedly hidden God, bringing with each of those glimpses the consolation and joys we have yearned for so long.

GOD HIDES is a critique of contemporary christian faith. It argues that faith should not be understood as the result of spiritual seeking, but rather as rooted in moral living. Starting with the challenge of Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity," it argues for a common morality, and then shows how that morality leads to Christian faith. The thesis is that in order for us to serve our neighbor whom we see, and not seek God whom we cannot see, God hides. Drawing upon the rich tradition of religious thought from Luther, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer, this book offers a way past the religious battles in the current culture war. Wisnefske points to the emptiness of the Christian promise of salvation in a time when virtually no one believes there is a hell to be saved from. Instead, he shows that it makes sense today--in view of our nuclear arsenals and environmental crisis--to claim that life is threatened by death. Our present circumstances provide new understanding into the biblical view that primeval chaos threatens creation. A distinctive feature of the book is that it develops the traditional understanding that sin and death are powers threatening creation. Christian faith, accordingly, is best understood as the living hope that creation will be saved from the violence and destruction that threaten to return it to chaos.

This new book shares the joy, humor, surprises, grief, and messiness when god invites us to strip away the personas of "perfect priest" or "perfect Christian" and rediscover what is sacred and genuine about ourselves and our faith. Priests and writers Brock and Koppel relate common and unique experiences here, as we join them on a sometimes startling journey of faith. With a genuine no-holds-barred approach and unique style, the authors address common life experiences with wit, revelation, and self-discovery as they unpack the dirtiness of failure, the messiness of death, the frailty behind our personas, and the joy of resurrection as new life - with lessons learned. The new book also features questions for reflection written by New York Times best-selling author, Lauren Winner, who wrote "Girl Meets God" and "Still." Visit their blog at http: //dirtysexyministry.blogspot.com/.

Friedman examines how God gradually becomes hidden as the Bible progresses, and this phenomenon's place in the formation of Judaism and Christianity.

- 29 enchanting tales for four- to eight-year-olds. - For today's children, a religious vision that is multicultural and non-sexist. - Includes suggestions for talking about God with children without using dogma. - God comes to life as many things--transcendent mystery, spiritual force, the mother and father of life, peace, and silence, and lightness and darkness.

The presence of evil in a world said by God to be good is perhaps humanity's most vexing challenge. "Where is God in all this?" is a universal cry. The answers are as numerous and varied as those offering them, but little is accomplished, it seems, to ease the pain of a God who doesn't behave according to law, logic, or rationale. Into this melee, Martin Luther waded with his distinction between God preached and God not preached and hiding. Though not always appreciated, Luther's thought speaks to the various dimensions of the problem and proclaims a definitive answer. Martin Luther's Hidden God traces the origins of Luther's thought on the matter, explores how his teaching compliments and conflicts with the teaching offered by certain post-Reformation Lutheran theologians and philosophers of religion, before distilling his thought into a preliminary apologetic for the problem of evil and divine hiddenness that spans the breadth of the issue from a uniquely Lutheran perspective.