Right now is the second best time of the year, if you are a true baseball fan (unless your team is actually playing in the World Series, in which case it's the best time of the year, GO GIANTS). For most, the best time of the year is Spring Training when all have hope for a future that involves your team winning a World Series pennant.
My friend, Ethan Bryan, has written a book that captures the hope of Spring Training but deepens this hope for all. A hope in life and faith that goes way beyond the joy of your team winning the World Series.
From the Back Cover, "What can baseball teach us about living in the way of Jesus? Can going to a baseball game be an exercise in spiritual formation? Run Home & Take a Bow shares twenty insightful stories of the intersection of baseball and faith. Grab a Dr Pepper and your glove and enjoy the journey."
Here's what people, including me, are saying about Run Home and Take a Bow:
Every baseball fan knows the ballpark invites solitude, contrition, human solidarity, joy, and enlightenment. Sit with baseball contemplative Ethan Bryan as he opens up the simple truth of human living through one season with the Kansas City Royals. Bryan’s heartfelt stories will call you back to the touchstones that give life meaning—faith, family, gratitude, persistence, and play.
Mark
Yaconelli
Director of the Center for Engaged Compassion
Author of Wonder, Fear, and Longing: A Book of Prayers.
Ethan’s book is as life giving as Opening Day and it’s as sensory as pounding your glove and smelling the leather. If you are passionate about baseball you will love this book. If you are not a baseball fan, just a lover of great stories then read this book and you will be inspired, but beware, you might just become a baseball fan.
Mike
King
President of Youthfront
Author and Editor of Immerse Journal
I'm not a big sports fan, and care little about the K.C. Royals, and I loved this book! You will too, I'm sure. Just a few pages in, you just know that Ethan Bryan is a truly good man, a caring dad, a fine writer, and a great storyteller. His childlike joy in his beloved game is a delight to behold and along the way you will meet some true athletic heros, from Hall of Fame stars to historic sports writers and some memorably diehard fans. And there is a caste of characters unrelated to the game, from Mike the Theologian and Chick-fil-A Jake to Bryan's sweet baseball-loving daughters, not to mention bunches of Bible guys, drawn vividly from the pages of Holy Scripture as they are set alongside the boys of summer. This is light reading that pitches some serious life lessons, is as entertaining as peanuts during the 7th inning stretch and, like a last-ditch homer in the bottom of the 9th, has you on your feet, leaving truly inspired. Take a bow, Ethan, author and writer.
Byron
Borger
Owner, Hearts & Minds Books
Dallastown, PA
We've been taught not to talk about politics and religion in polite company, two of the three most interesting things in life worth talking about. So thank God for baseball. And thank God for Ethan Bryan's reflections on life, faith, friendship, and the greatest game ever invented.
Phil SniderSenior Pastor of Brentwood Christian Church in Springfield, MO
Author of Preaching After God
I am so excited to read this. I wish listed it immediately and will be reading it sometime right after Christmas. Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Billy | October 26, 2012 at 11:13 AM