Welcome to the Blog Blitz for The Mosaic Collection, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
About the Collection
For His glory…
The Mosaic Collection is an international community of women authors who use faith-based fiction to touch hearts with the good news that Christ’s finished work on the cross has made us one family, and to nurture affection for the people God has placed within our circles of influence, so that the grace and glory of God may become visible and personal to everyone we meet.
…and our good
We are sisters, a beautiful mosaic united by the love of God through the blood of Christ. We have experienced the redemptive, restorative power of God’s grace in our marriages and families, and we believe our God is able to heal, restore and redeem our brokenness. His love fills us with the courage to persevere, and to offer others a Christ-like compassion that is full of His wisdom and grace.
Visit the Mosaic Collection Website to stay posted on each new release & follow the collection blog for meaningful posts from the authors!
About the Author
In a fit of optimism at age eleven, Eleanor Bertin began her first novel by numbering a stack of 100 pages. Two of them got filled with words. Lifelines, her first completed novel, was published in 2016, followed by Pall of Silence in 2017, a memoir about her late son Paul.
She holds a college diploma in Communications and worked in agriculture journalism until the birth of her first child. The family eventually grew to include one daughter and six sons (the youngest with Down syndrome) whom she home-educated for 25 years.
Eleanor lives with her husband and youngest son, Timothy, amidst the ongoing renovation of a century home in central Alberta where she reads, writes, sweeps up construction rubble and blogs about a sometimes elusive contentment at jewelofcontentment.wordpress.com.
Cornerstone message from the collection
Launch out into the far reaches of the universe. Delve deep into the intricate wonders of creation’s minutest particles. The farther humanity goes, the more awe I feel at the God whose power and genius spoke it all into existence. As a very young girl, I relished the delicious thrill of feeling tiny in the face of vast power, whether under a giant prairie sky, or failing in my count of the sparkling night stars. Like holding hands with a grizzly bear, God’s thundering bigness against my feeble smallness terrifies and quiets me.
That shivery awe fills the pages of the Bible, where God’s mighty power and fearsome holiness are vividly on display. There I read of a majestic King, both perfectly holy and utterly sovereign. That’s the terror part! He governs every detail of history, and every detail of my life.
But layered within that message is the constant harmony line of God’s pure goodness and the astonishing message of His never-ending love in the sacrificial death of His Son Jesus in my place.
“And from my smitten heart with tears
Two wonders I confess —
The wonders of His glorious love
And my unworthiness.”
(Elizabeth C. Clephane, Beneath the Cross of Jesus)
I’m flooded with joy knowing I belong to a trustworthy, loving God who forgives me and never leaves me!
Guest Post by Eleanor Bertin
Ministering Through Fiction
I was engrossed in a book. It was 1989 and I was a young mom of four littles whose husband travelled a great deal. As I’d done since age six, I read for entertainment, for mind-stimulation, and for companionship. It was, I now reasoned, far cheaper than getting a sitter to go out for a break.
The novel was set in historic China, a bestseller whose title I’ve long forgotten. It was a gripping story full of longing and conflict with compelling characterization and plenty of well-researched historical-cultural detail to satisfy my love of learning. I tried to limit my reading to nap times and after the children’s bedtime, but the book beckoned and I often succumbed to its charms while my toddler’s diaper sagged with unmentionables.
Halfway through that tale, and without a child emergency to stop me, I snapped the book shut.
You’re rooting for incest! You’re hoping the girl will get together with her uncle!
How that inner scold pricked my conscience! I had been so baited, lured and snagged by a skillful writer, that my Christian convictions were badly eroded. I so wanted to find out how the story would end, but the sudden disgust at the sin I was party to in reading it would not be denied.
At the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I threw the book in the garbage, a thing I could never have done on my own. Then for the next ten years I fasted from fiction, other than children’s books. It was a spiritual discipline that broke fiction’s responsibility-avoiding, relationship-ignoring, addictive grip on me. During those years, God replaced my addiction and corresponding boredom with scripture, with a growing fascination and love for His Word.
Isn’t it strange that I now write fiction? Yes, but like food that is necessary and life-giving, God has created in us a hunger for stories and story-telling. Both food and stories can be twisted from His original good purpose as happened in my own life, but I believe under the Spirit’s control, both can nourish us and draw us to Himself.
That’s my prayer. By writing fiction that points to the greater Story, my readers will be encouraged to know the Lord Jesus, the true Hero of every tale.
Tour Giveaway
One (1) winner will receive a $50 Amazon eGift Card & an ebook prize pack*!
Winner will receive an ebook of:
* Where She Belongs
* Pieces of Granite
* Lifelines
* Christmas on a Mission
* Vigilant
* Other Side of the River
* The Third Grace
* Carolina Grace
* The Benefit Package (a devotional)
* Dance of Grace
* When Love Calls
* may be substituted for a Book Depository gift card if winner cannot accept from US Amazon
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!
Thanks, FA, for featuring me today! What a vital service you provide in reviewing, discerning and bringing to readers’ attention God-honouring books! May the Lord continue to bless your work!
What a fascinating story by Eleanor! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Deb. It’s a little strange to be sharing as a fiction author, when I have that kind of testimony, but God WILL be first in our lives!
That was a long fast, Eleanor, wow! Great blog post!
It was incredibly hard at first, Pam. I can feel for substance addicts! But I still read a lot, and biographies became particularly special to me. I recommend fasting from anything that has too tight a hold on us!