Spacious Living in an Expansive God - Part III

Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

~ II Corithians 6:11-13(The Message Version)

Welcome to part three of my series. (Click for Part I and II) Today I’d like to focus on the expansive nature of God. True confessions time. I’m a bit of a science geek. I actually have a favorite physicist. How many blonde, ballerina, romance authors do you know who have a favorite physicist? He’s a Jewish man named Dr. Gerald Schroeder, and his theories on the creation of the world blow my mind.

Here are just a few amazing statistics about our universe. It is thought to be approximately 93 billion light years (light years, not miles) in diameter. And a light year is roughly 6 trillion miles. Written out that looks like 6,000,000,000,000. That’s an awful lot of zeroes. Now multiply that times the 93 billion. Whew!

Our universe is believed to contain about 100 billion galaxies. And to put that into perspective, our own Milky Way galaxy is thought to contain 200 – 400 billion stars. Should I write that out with zeroes as well? Now consider that it would take over four light years (again, that’s light years, not earth years) to travel to the nearest star beyond our solar system. Are you beginning to get a picture of how staggering our universe is? And beyond all of that, our universe is in a constant state of expansion.

Yes, that blows my mind. And God blows my mind. That God would build countless galaxies to create the perfect world just for us. For me. For you. It reminds me of the expansive nature of God. That he is just sooooo big! That while he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, our awareness and understanding of him can grow everyday.

This mind-boggling God, how can he be both alpha and omega? Both beginning and end? How can he embody both justice and mercy, righteousness and grace, order and freedom. Yet in his paradoxical expansiveness, he does.

Sometimes we can’t quite handle the bigness of our God. The seeming contradictions contained within him. So what do we do? We make him smaller. We put him into little boxes of denominations, traditions, and doctrines that we can wrap our finite minds around. And in doing so, we create our own graven images. Our own little “g” gods made after our own preferences and limitations.

But God cannot be contained in a little box. In him the entire universe, galaxy after galaxy, all the laws of nature, down to the smallest particle of an atom, exist and function.  No wonder he desires for us to live spacious, wide-open lives in the expansive world he designed for us. Rather than try to put God in a box, how about we gaze at him in awe and wonder, hoping each new day we’ll grasp him just a tiny bit more. How about we just say, “Wow!”

Amazing, unfathomable, God. Father. Daddy. Help us not to put you in a little box. Help us not to create our own graven images. Rather help us to grow in relationship and intimacy with you so that we might become more accurate reflections of your splendor to those around us here on the earth. 

Dina is on Pinterest!

Today's post is short and sweet, I'm now on pinterest. http://pinterest.com/dinasleiman/

So why don't you take the next five or ten minutes to hop over there and check out my new boards. Of course I've pinned pictures for each of my novels, and those boards serve as fun visual tours of the books, complete with commentary. I've also collected some inspirational dance photos. Oh, if only my body moved like some of those dancers. Sigh. One can always dream. And finally I have boards for our WhiteFire books as well as the books by the ladies at my group blog, Inkwell Inspirations. And every last one is great!

Captured by Moonlight

Today I am pleased to recommend an amazing book, Captured by Moonlight by Christine Lindsay. If you haven’t read book one of the Twilight of the British Raj series, Shadowed in Silk, you need to check out this award-winning novel as well. If you have already experienced this breathtaking adventure, let me just say, I think Captured by Moonlight (unbelievably enough) might be even better.

Here’s the official blurb.

Prisoners to their own broken dreams…

After a daring rescue goes awry, Laine Harkness and her friend Eshana flee to the tropical south of India…and headlong into their respective pasts.

Laine takes a nursing position at a plantation in the jungle, only to discover that her former fiancé is the owner…but fun-loving Laine refuses to let Adam crush her heart like he had years ago.

Eshana, captured by her traditional uncle and forced once more into the harsh Hindu customs of mourning, doubts freedom will ever be hers again, much less the forbidden love that had begun to flower.

Amid cyclones, epidemics, and clashing faiths, will the love of the True Master give hope to these searching hearts?

First let me mention the facets of both books in this series that I love. The settings and history are amazing!!! I love these peeks at Gandhi’s India rich with spices and colorful silks. They are full of adventure and a realistic depiction of the difficult lives the characters faced. The spiritual elements are beautifully and organically woven into the stories, and truly inspire me. Christine is a topnotch writer in every sense of the word.

Now for a few of the things that I liked even better in book 2. Laine Harkness is a spunky heroine full of courage and conviction. I love that about her. She’s not afraid to take risks and fight for what is right. I also love the even richer setting of the jungle full of exotic plants, animals, and characters. Finally, my favorite character in book one is Eshana, and she moves into a more pivotal role in book two, launching on her own adventure and exploring her own first hints at romance. Eshana faces many trials in this book which push her to the very edge, yet her deep, personal, and even supernatural faith see her through.

Did I help edit this book? Guilty as charged. But I was given a true gem to start with. The story completely engulfed and delighted me, even in the early draft. I have no doubt you will love it as well.

Historical Romance in the American South

 (As first seen on Southern Writers Suite T)

When my agent asked me to write a historical romance, my next task was to decide on a specific setting. Prairie stories dominate the inspirational romance world, but I’m not really a prairie kind of girl. I long for settings with elegance and mystique. My favorite place on earth has long been a stretch of country situated on route 17 near Paris, Virginia, featuring rolling hills, vineyards, horses, and gorgeous old plantation houses. You see, I’m a transplanted Southerner. I’ve now lived in Virginia for twenty years, and for a decade, I would pass that spot on route 17 while driving to visit my parents in Pittsburgh. I fell utterly in love with it.

But alas, once I pinned down my 1817 date and the plot for my novel, I realized the best setting would actually be Charlottesville, Virginia. A location slightly to the south and east of my personal paradise, but every bit as picturesque and even more full of history and gorgeous plantations. There I found the legendary Three Notch’d Road and the lovely Birdwood Pavilion, which almost perfectly matched the plantation in my head.

Maybe you’re wondering why more inspirational romances aren’t set in the ideally romantic American south. I mean mint juleps on the verandah? Gone with the Wind? I think the answer lies in slavery. An issue far from romantic or ideal. That idyllic Southern existence was an illusion based on oppression, often even abuse. And inspirational romance fans aren’t the best audience for ugly stories about oppression and social injustice. So my challenge in choosing this Southern setting was to find a way to deal with this issue and still create an enjoyable, romantic read.

The solution I found was to face it head on. Several of my main characters are involved in the abolitionist movement. So the ugliness of slavery is not overlooked. Meanwhile, my primary plantation owners are kind to their slaves, treating them like family. And my main character, Constance Cavendish, often finds herself drawn to befriend the slaves around her.

Meanwhile, my reader is able to focus on Constance’s primary challenge, to teach the “scandalous” waltz to the twin sisters of her former fiancé, the man who jilted her when she needed him most. That gives the reader the perfect opportunity to visit those amazing plantation homes, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and take a fun peek at the planter elite class of Virginia complete with its balls, fancy parties, and Regency fashions. They get to glimpse the culture of that day including music, dance, literature, and even science. They also get to experience the nearby mountains, frontiersman, and American Indians.

I call this my Scarlett O’Hara meets Jane Austen novel, and I’m glad I took the risk of setting my book in the beautiful South. Historical Virginia might have included a degree of villainy and oppression, but it was also a fascinating place full of beauty, excitement, and legendary figures, which I’m thrilled to explore in .

And I’m not the only author branching out to the American South. Mary Lu Tyndall has been using Southern settings for years. In her newest book, Veil of Pearls, she takes a direct look at the world of slavery. Tamera Alexander has set her most recent books, ALasting Impressions and To Whisper Her Name, on the plantations of Tennessee. And look for Magistrate’s Folly, a great short historical romance by Lisa Richardson set in Williamsburg that should be releasing early 2013. I’m excited about this shift in romance settings, and I know many other authors and readers are thrilled to visit the American South through fiction as well. I hope to continue exploring the rich history of Virginia for many years to come.