One of the most exciting parts of founding Cruciform Press is the ability it has given me to bring great books to print. And after co-founding the company the first person I got in touch with was Greg Lucas. I knew Greg as the author of an excellent blog–one that had drawn me in with its “lessons in the life of a father learned through the struggles of his disabled son.”
The result of getting in touch with Greg is Cruciform’s new book for November: Wrestling with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace. It’s quite a book, if I do say so myself. And I’m not the only one. I’ve been reading it aloud to my kids and they are enjoying it a lot (“Just one more chapter! Please!”). I am receiving emails from people who bought a copy at the Desiring God conference last month and they are raving about it. The early reviews are uniformly positive.
Here are just three of the book’s endorsements:
“Witty…stunning…striking…humorous and heartfelt. In our culture which is so quick to devalue life, Wrestling with an Angel provides a fresh, honest look at one father’s struggle to embrace God in the midst of his son’s disability. Can sheer laughter and weeping gracefully coexist in a world of so much affliction? Greg knows all about it. And inside these pages he passes on his lessons of grace to us. I highly recommend this wonderfully personal book!”
— Joni Eareckson Tada, Joni and Friends International Disability Center
“I didn’t want to read this book. I knew these tear-stained but hope-filled pages would jostle me out of my comfort zone and shake me up. C.S. Lewis wrote that he paradoxically loved The Lord of the Rings because it ‘broke his heart’—and Greg Lucas’ writing does the same for me. And it’s for that reason that I heartily commend this book—especially for dads. This is just the book many of us need to taste afresh the goodness of God and the grace of the gospel even as we long for the day when this broken world will be made right.”
— Justin Taylor, Managing Editor, ESV Study Bible
“This is not primarily a book for parents of special needs children. There is only one disability that keeps a person from heaven. It is not physical or mental like Jake Lucas’ condition. It is the sin that lives in our hearts. Jake’s father, Greg, is a captivating storyteller. When he writes about life with Jake, I recognize God’s grace and loving persistence in my life. I want more!”
— Noel Piper, author, and wife of pastor and author John Piper
Here is an editorial description:
“It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn’t tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a ‘disturbance.’ Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion.” So begins Greg Lucas’ captivating account of life as a husband, a police officer, and Jake’s dad. Jake Lucas, the first of four children, lives with severe physical and mental challenges. Caring for him each day is an ordeal few of us can imagine, and this story of Jake’s first 17 years is not one you will soon forget. But the remarkable thing is how the whole narrative is saturated with wonder at the grace and goodness of God, who brings hope and promise through his Son into the darkest of circumstances. In this book, we see that Jake’s problems are our problems, only bigger, and the challenges of caring for him carry profound lessons about God’s care for us. Wrestling with an Angel is about tragedy and laughter and pain and joy. It is about faith and grace and endurance and God’s unfailing, loving wisdom daily being worked out in each of our lives, whatever the nature or extent of our difficulties. Here is a book that may explain faith to you in ways you never quite grasped, through a life few of us can relate to. When it is all done, we come away better able to live as Christ calls us to live.
Interested? The book is currently available in print and PDF formats, with audio book and e-book coming very soon. Buy it here. And why don’t you consider a subscription which will get you each of the books we release over the coming 12 months?
Still need to be convinced? Then why don’t you download a sample chapter and see what you think. I think you’ll be hooked.
