Blessed Child: Ted Dekker

“Whoever said that a straightened hand was more dramatic than a healed heart anyway?”

This book really got me thinking.

 

A young orphaned boy named Caleb is abandoned in the midst of an invasion and raised in an Ethiopian monastery. He has never seen outside its walls, and now he must flee those walls or die.

 

When relief worker Jason Marker agrees to take Caleb from the monastery, he unwittingly opens humanity's doors to an incredible journey filled with political intrigue and peril. Jason and Leiah, a French-Canadian nurse who escapes the monastery with him, quickly realize Caleb's supernatural power to heal. But so do the boy's enemies, who will stop at nothing to destroy him. Jason and Leiah fight for Caleb’s survival while the world erupts in debate over the source of his power.

 

The whole time I am reading this book I am thinking things like, "That doesn't really happen." I feel uncomfortable and find myself saying, "I hope people don't read this book and get the wrong idea."

 

And then I read the author's words at the end of the book and find myself incredibly convicted.

 

"The story you have read is spectacular in parts but in reality the vents in this story are no more spectacular than events which occur repeatedly throughout the Old and New Testaments," Dekker writes. "If they seem more dramatic, it is because we have used a contemporary story to bring them into your world. But if you think about each occurrence of the miraculous, they are no more than what we see in scripture."

 

"But in the Western world, we are more prone to rationalize and analyze until the true meaning of the gospel is dissipated and often rendered powerless. We become like the churches in Ephesus and Laodicea: we have left our first love and are neither hot nor cold. We find it difficult to believe that Jesus would do today what He did centuries ago, while many of our fellow believers across the seas do believe, and they rejoice in the fruits of their belief."

 

Touché.

 

Blessed Child follows the story of Caleb, an orphan boy from Ethiopia who has a supernatural gift to physically heal and to change hearts. With the help of two scarred people, Jason and Leiah, Caleb find refugee in America. But the world beyond is hardly ready for a boy like Caleb.

 

And maybe I'm not either?

 

If you are looking for a well-written piece of Christian fiction, this will suit appropriately.

 

If you are looking for a piece to get you thinking about whether or not you are living as Christ intended, this will definitely cause you to do just that.

 

Easy read. Good read. Some love. Some adventure. And definitely something to make you think.

 

Booksneeze.com provided me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.