This Beautiful Truth

How God's Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness

De: Sarah Clarkson

Narrado por: Carla Mercer-Meyer

We live in a broken world. Amid the daily realities of sickness and isolation, disappointment and pain, it can be profoundly difficult to grasp the real goodness of God. But this is where God breaks into our darkness with beauty. In the wonder of creation, in art or film, story or song, in the kindness of his people and the good they create, God breaks into our pain in a tangible way, teaching us to trust his kindness and hope for his healing. Beauty is a voice singing into our suffering, beckoning us toward restoration.

In This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson shares her own encounters with beauty in the midst of her decade-long struggle with mental illness, depression, and doubt. In a voice both vulnerable and reflective, she paints a compelling picture of the God who reaches out to us in a real and powerful way through the "taste and see" goodness of what he has made and what he continues to create amid our darkness. "To recognize and trust God's gift in pain," she writes, "empowers us to create and love as powerful witnesses to God's healing love in a hopeless world."

If you want to renew your capacity to recognize and encounter God's beauty in your life, this hope-filled book will show you the way.

©2021 Sarah Clarkson (P)2021 eChristian

Lovely perspective & journey

Appreciate her vulnerability and perspective. It’s well written & encouraging. I hope more read this for perspective and approach to others struggling with insecurities and pause in moments before action to extend Grace & mercy to others :)

Beautiful!

Highly recommend. I was moved by so much of this book. I can’t say enough about it.

Such a great book!!!

I am so thankful for your full vulnerability! This book has been so encouraging for me! Thank you!!!

Speaks to my soul

Heartbreakingly beautiful. Sarah's gentle words are deeply refreshing and restorative to my soul. Excellent book. A delight and joy to read.

God’s Goodness does break into our Darkness

This book by Sarah Clarkson was deep and yet rich, haunting but yet beautiful, vulnerable but yet full of confidence about brokenness and how it can beautifully shape the soul. It spoke to my heart as the author carried it along in her story. Her vulnerability to share so openly about great suffering is what readers need to hear, and then to hear the hope and the healing that also can be experienced is hugely comforting. Too often, the raw words are not spoken. Or if they are, readers are uncomfortable with them, thinking the author has said to much. But to acknowledge and then receive the words, find healing in someone else’s story and believing it can happen in your own life is the power of sharing.

I would recommend this book to anyone who cannot seem to find the hope or light in the midst of their darkness. The author Sarah points to the only One who can offer true hope and the beautiful truth that God’s Goodness can and does indeed break into our darkness if we choose to seek Him and what He offers us. She testified to that in her story and gave many practical examples of how to go about finding the beauty of this truth. Chapter 9 was my favourite out of the 10 chapters. Just like in life, one must get through the messiness in order to get to the good. Highly recommended.

A Good Message

I adore Sally Clarkson and aside from one of the books she wrote with her daughter, this is the first book I’ve read by Sarah. I love the overall message, finding beauty in God’s truth to fulfill us in our suffering. Going through the chapters, however, I found myself not engaged. Sarah is incredibly well-read, but maybe to a fault when it comes to her writing because there are so many references and excerpts of outside literature pulled into this book. This is not to say it isn’t well-written, but rather I am just not her ideal reader for this book. It was not done in a style I wholly enjoy. I related to many of the pages though in her sharing about anxiety, not to her degree of suffering, but still I appreciated her courage. I do think it would be helpful to anyone struggling with OCD and other consuming disorders.

I enjoyed it.

The narrator had a whiny quality to her voice that was distracting. But I appreciated the thoughts in the book. The book is not especially linear. The author moves all over and just has lots and lots she wants to convey. But it is a beautiful image of what life can be if we are willing to observe what God is doing and create beauty where we are.

A Classic!

Sarah’s writing touches a deep place in my soul. Not because I’ve struggled with the same struggles but because from the crucible of her pain comes a surrendered life revealing a forged and fantastic faith! The real stuff.
I’m now navigating a life I never envisioned after losing our son to a neuromuscular disease and my wife to stage 4 breast cancer after 45 years of marriage. Both are gone in the space of 13 months. I bought the audio book after hearing Sarah on the Renovare podcast and after finishing the audio this morning, promptly ordered the hardback edition knowing I wanted to mark it up for future reference.

This book will find its place in my life alongside “A Gift from the Sea” and other works that I read and reread as years go by; profiting greatly from their wisdom each time, astounded anew each time at such gifted writing.
Sarah, your work and ministry is a balm to the wounded hearts among us! Thank you!

Truthfulness

Sarah is truthful about how she faced her mental health challenges and life’s challenges while continually pursuing God and his teachings

The Title Says It All

I could never do this book justice. With a beautiful command of the English language, Sarah Clarkson captures both her heart wrenching struggle and the all-encompassing beauty of the presence of God for His children. As a Christian trying to live out the great commission, in part, through my work as a psychologist, and as a human being who has struggled with my own brokenness, I found inspiration & a sense of not being alone throughout this book. I started recommending it when I was only halfway along, and I will continue to recommend it to clients, fellow members of the family of Christ, and anyone else who may find a sense of hope and peace through the story of this gifted author.