This week I’m hosting Renee Ryan with Mistaken Bride, Lacy Williams with The Homesteader’s Sweetheart and Cynthia Ruchti with His Grace Is Sufficient…Decaf Is Not. If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (May 20th) evening.
HIS GRACE IS SUFFICIENT…DECAF IS NOT devotional interview with one of its four authors, Cynthia Ruchti:
Thank you, Margaret, for suggesting I tell the story of why I as a novelist would want to be part of this devotional collection project.—His Grace is Sufficient…Decaf is Not (Summerside/Guideposts, November 2011).
The other authors in the project—Sandra D. Bricker, Loree Lough, and Trish Perry— were all friends from ACFW, prolific and attention-getting novelists. But it was their heart and passion for communicating life-affirming and life-altering truths by every means possible that drew me to say yes when invited to join them for a devotional book about grace.
The title pulled me in right away. NOTHING, much less decaf, is adequate for the joys and jolts of life like God’s grace. As each of us authors began writing the right-from-daily-life devotionals, we were plunged deeper into the wonder of a grace that is sufficient for everything we face. My faith grew, as it does through any writing project, as I considered what grace looks like, how God’s grace has intervened, where we discover grace in unexpected places, and how the Lord’s sense of humor often shows up in those grace-moments.
For me, taking time to work on a devotional book in the middle of deadlines for novels was not an interruption but a faith booster-shot. It reminded me why I do what I do, why I write stories of Hope-that-glows-in-the-dark—because of our Hope-giver, the Grace-provider, the Mystery-solver, Need-meeter, History-maker, Romancing God we serve.
Anything but preachy, these heart-tugging, thought-provoking, and sometimes chuckle-producing devotionals helped me put a face on grace, seeing how it’s expressed in a wide variety of circumstances, and how it plays out in our interactions with others.
We’re so pleased with the cover and layout of the book. It’s a beautiful book to hold, to read, to give away. But our greatest joy comes when we hear back from readers who found something in the pages to deepen their faith or redirect their focus and encourage their hearts.
One of my granddaughters took the devotional to show her teacher at school. The teacher invited her to read one of the devotionals aloud to the class! A more grown-up version of show-and-tell turned into a composition lesson, but it still makes me smile to think of those students who happened to hear about a God of grace that day.
Our prayer is that the storytelling style of these four contributing fiction authors will continue to resonate with readers—those who read our novels and novellas as well as those who first picked up His Grace is Sufficient…Decaf is Not and then want to see what else we’ve written.
Margaret, thank you for the opportunity to rehearse why I was so excited when I was invited to participate in this devotional, and what I feel today as we watch it reach out into a readership of the people who were on God’s hearts and ours as we wrote.
If anyone wants to learn more about the book or others I’ve written, including the soon-to-be-released Cedar Creek Seasons romantic comedy novella collection (Barbour Publishing, September 2012), they can connect with me on my website: www.cynthiaruchti.com or on my Facebook Reader Page, www.facebook/cynthiaruchtireaderpage.
May grace and peace be yours in abundance!
Cynthia
