Some books should never be judged by their covers. Never. Ever.
I know this firsthand. Every book I’ve written has experienced less-than-desirable early iterations of the cover. Some of them it’s hard not to break out in Mystery Science 3000 Commentary on.
Consider some early covers for Wonderstruck: Awaken to the Nearness of God:
That poor guy was hit by a hot air balloon.
He’s just a ghost of a person now.
Or consider this one:
Does she need to see an ophthalmologist?
I bet when this model signed up for the shoot she didn’t think it would end like this.
To see the final cover of Wonderstruck: Awaken to the Nearness of God, click here.
I recently stumbled on a book cover that gave me pause.
Perhaps it was the callback to my eye-cover.
Yet my friend, Chris Ferebee, kept encouraging me to read Steve Wiens’ writing. Once again, I was reminded to never judge a book by its cover.
Beginnings is a story about Genesis—not just the lush seven of creation—but the revitalization that takes place in our lives as we pursue God through thick and thin, darkness and light, tragedy and triumph.
Steve writes:
“On that night, on that deck, in those suburbs, the continual forward movement seemed to have stopped. The tracks had run out. I used to be in motion, rattling forward toward a destination that kept morphing. But on that stationary deck, I had become solid and stable, and stuck.
There would be no new beginnings.
My life should have felt full and rich, but instead it felt empty and dark. There was only the slow work of playing out the reality of the decisions that had already come and gone.
I was a pastor. I was a father. I was a husband. I didn’t regret any of those things. I loved my kids and my wife and my job. But the finality of it all was a relentless crashing—wave after wave, under those stars, in those suburbs, on that night. It felt vacant, like staring into nothingness.
It was empty and full at the same time. Empty of beginnings, full of endings.
As I sat there motionless with the emptiness closing in around me, there was something else hovering above me in the darkness, but I couldn’t see it.
If I could have seen it, it would have looked like a beginning.”
Perhaps that’s what you’re facing today. An ending of…
A job
A relationship
A marriage
A clean bill of health
A lifestyle
A title
A position
But what if your ending is the portal through which God is nudging you toward a new beginning?
What if the conclusion is the launching pad to a fresh start?
