My guest today is fellow Canadian author Ginny Jaques who has written a wonderful speculative novel Zinovy's Journey set in the future. See my review of this book below.
Redemption Reigns by Ginny Jaques author of
Zinovy's Journey
Genealogies in the Bible can be boring. We often skim
through them to get to "the good parts." They're more interesting
when we know the stories of the lives of some of the people who are mentioned,
but otherwise they're usually only of interest to prospective parents looking
for unique baby names, or writers of novels looking for mysterious story ideas.
But this morning the inspired writer of "The genealogy of Jesus, the
Messiah" jolted me out of my boredom in a beautiful way.
The first Gospel was written for a unique audience. Matthew wrote
his account of Christ's life for his Jewish brothers--people who were steeped
in a legalistic, male-dominated Jewish tradition that emphasized being Jewish
and living righteously as a means of pleasing God. Yet Matthew deliberately
interrupts his listing of the fathers and sons in Jesus' ancestry with four mothers,
each of whom was well known to his readers as women whose stories were
notoriously unrighteous.
TAMAR, a half-breed Jewess who tricked Judah into giving her
a child by posing as a prostitute.
RAHAB, the Canaanite prostitute who helped the Israeli spies
escape from Jericho before it fell to their invading army.
RUTH the Moabitiss, from the lineage of Lot, whose offspring
were conceived when his two daughters seduced him while he was drunk.
BATHSHEEBA, the woman who had been Uriah's wife, seduced by
King David who then had Uriah killed in order to cover up the adulterous
affair.
So why did Matthew include these notorious men and women in
the lineage of Jesus? It's no mystery in light of the Gospel Matthew was
preparing to proclaim in his account of the life of Christ. The glorious truth
of the Gospel is that God works sovereignly in and through all the sins and
mistakes people make in order to bring about His glorious triumph over evil.
God created us human beings with the freedom to make our own
moral decisions--to choose right or wrong--to write our own unique stories--to
make them a part of human history. Yet, woven through all the heartache and
misery our immoral choices have produced, God demonstrates His sovereign
jurisdiction--His pre-determined plan to take all our misery and turn it into triumphant
joy in the end.
Joy was introduced into the mess of human history at Jesus'
birth. Matthew describes that birth in the rest of this first chapter of his
Gospel. Jesus was born to a woman who had no husband. But, unlike the other
women in this account, her holy child was born of God. He became the God/Man whose death on the
cross provided redemption to the human race he was born into.
Matthew's message that God's sovereign
purposes are fulfilled in and through our broken human history continues to
resound down through the ages since Jesus came. Redemption reigns. This is the
"good news" of the Gospel written by Matthew, the tax collector whose
life was redeemed through Jesus' death on the cross.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
GINNY JAQUES is a high school teacher, a technical editor
and a writer. She lives with her husband, Dennis, in British Columbia, Canada.
Ginny and Dennis have three married children and eight grandchildren.
Ginny Jaques's futuristic speculative novel Zinovy's Journey
Zinovy's Journey is a
story about choices and redemption.
Zinovy Kozlov has spent twenty-three years climbing the ladder of
Russian military success one rung at a time.
An Air Force pilot, FSB veteran, and now a cosmonaut on the Global
Regime's International Space Station, he should be at the peak of his
career. But Zinovy has enemies whose
political power extends into space, and they are determined to kill him.
Then the earth is destroyed in a
nuclear holocaust, and everything changes.
WHERE TO CONTACT GINNY JAQUES and PURCHASE HER BOOK
Website: (purchase link to the book is on the website)
Blogs:
Devotional Blog: SomethingAbout the Joy
Writer's Blog: SomethingAbout the Writing Journey
Social Media:
Facebook and Twitter: Ginny
Jaques
Zinovy's Journey
on Facebook
e-mail address: ginny.jaques@zinovysjourney.com
Zinovy's Journey was a fast page turner for me, a great adventure. It started off as a gripping spy novel in the style of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, then it took a beautifully plausible leap into space. This novel is a futuristic speculative adventure with great Christian overtones that reminded me of an updated version of Pilgrim's Progress.
I highly recommend this book to readers of speculative fiction, readers who enjoy a fast page turner and adventure. Great for all ages, but keep in mind there is some realism to the language. One or two moments where the characters swear. All in all, I did not find this book offensive as a Christian reader, but highly recommend it.
Christine Lindsay's review of Zinovy's Journey
Zinovy's Journey was a fast page turner for me, a great adventure. It started off as a gripping spy novel in the style of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, then it took a beautifully plausible leap into space. This novel is a futuristic speculative adventure with great Christian overtones that reminded me of an updated version of Pilgrim's Progress.
I highly recommend this book to readers of speculative fiction, readers who enjoy a fast page turner and adventure. Great for all ages, but keep in mind there is some realism to the language. One or two moments where the characters swear. All in all, I did not find this book offensive as a Christian reader, but highly recommend it.