How often do we struggle to make sense of situations in life, wondering if, by some chance, we are just not following the right directions? Is there some secret life code that we were never taught? Suppose we all, inclusively, hold the tools but are merely unaware that we do? In Sacred Seeds of Redemption the author reveals her own journey toward understanding and, ultimately, acceptance of the ambiguities and challenges of ordinary life. As you read, you will catch glimpses of both the best and the worst of human behaviors and responses. Using your spiritual eyes and mind, you will also see the “under” story, the redemptive work of a vigilant and loving God---a God who wants His children to accept their intrinsic value and realize their infinite potential. You may laugh a little or shed a few tears. You may see yourself or someone you love in the various characters. Look closely for God’s fingerprints. They are all over these imperfect lives.

Struggle—of both the small and staggering sort—is woven throughout all our lives. It can erode our faith, strip us of hope, rob us of joy, extinguish our vitality, and diminish our capacity to love. But because God is always present and at work, seeds of redemption lie as hidden treasure buried in the ground of struggle. By taking a deeply human look at various figures in the lineage of Jesus in Matthew 1, Andy White shows us that the people we once may have considered unlike us because of thousands of years of separation suddenly come close in their pain, loss, and failures. He, too, comes close as a man who has faced hardships, to offer others a hand when their feet are unsteady. By digging into the lives of these biblical sojourners, White unearths hidden treasures, guides readers on a journey of self-discovery, and points the way forward, showing us ways to cultivate tenacious hope, stronger faith, and greater capacity to live and love as participants in God’s ongoing redemption story.

The editors and contributors to this pioneering volume have focused the lense of geography on new territory as they inquire critically into the spatial dimensions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, making this interdisciplinary project truly a new idea in the study of comparative religion and human geography. Editors Jamie Scott and Paul Simpson-Housley have organized the study into three broad areas of inquiry and have coined the term Geographics to encompass the three distinct yet interrelated spatial dimensions implicated in the study of religion. The first area concerns the literal role played by specific sites, regions, or geographical phenomena in the development of the three religions. The focus here is on city, wilderness, river valley, and mountain as well as flood, earthquake, whirlwind, and famine with attention devoted to methodological, epistemological, and ontological issues. The symbolic or interpreted role played by these same specific entities in the three religions is the second notion to be explored. The third focus is an inquiry into the geography of prophetic and apocalyptic visions and the role of geographical imagination in the development of religious self-understanding. This interface of natural and historical geography with the geography of the prophetic and apocalyptic imagination produces a graphic, sometimes terrifying landscape. The volume's nine essayists have approached their chapters with this threefold schematization in mind so that the book consists of one study devoted to each of these dimensions in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as an introduction and afterword by the editors. Each essay discusses the relationship of the spatial and the sacred in scripture and in subsequent literary and theological reflection upon scriptural themes. The range of topics and variety of approaches used reflect the interpretive ambiguities that stem from the unique social, political, and economic functions conferred on places and spaces of particular significance in the life and thought of a religious tradition or community. The section on Judaism explores Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine; the Temple Mount al-haram al-sharif; and the Garden of Eden. Indepth looks at Finland, women's geography, and the apocalyptic world comprise the section on Christianity. Iranian feasting and pilgrimage circuits, modern Egypt, and sacred geography are assessed in the final section on Islam. This carefully edited, innovative study offers a unique approach to the study of religion and will be read profitably by scholars and students of religion and geography.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1867.

Comparing the politics of Judaism and Islam, this book demonstrates that common religious political party characteristics in Israel and Turkey can be as striking as their differences.