Redeeming Love
Reviewed by Laura
Author: Francine Rivers
Title: Redeeming Love
Overall rating: 8 ½ out of 10
Rating: PG: 13
Genre: Christian/Romance/Novel
"You reach out to me with open arms
For all the world to see
But I turned, a victim of Satan's charms
And built a wall between you and me…"
Enter Michael Hosea.
Michael has been waiting for God to send him a bride. He's in his late twenties and would like more then anything to be married. He waits patiently for God to send him someone. One day while walking the dirty street in the gold-mining town where Angel works, he sees her walking along the street with a man who he later learns is her body guard.
Her strange aloofness, beauty, and loneliness attracts him. At the same moment, God tells him this is the one. Michael is obviously excited. Angel is a very attractive woman. But when he asks around and finds out she's the woman that every man is spending his savings to sleep with, he's not so certain.
Finally he uses his entire savings to go to Angel's room to try and talk to her.
Angel is confused. She wants to remain aloof and bitter. She's not used to men who want to talk. She tells him again and again that she's not interested in his idea of taking her out of there. She simply puts him down as another love struck man. Michael comes back night after night. Nothing seems to make any difference to Angel, who is more disturbed each time this strange man comes in to see her. She wants to do business and have him leave.
After three or four nights of this, Michael's money is running low, and he's getting discouraged. He's sure God didn't really mean for him to marry this prostitute, who obviously couldn't care a smidge for him.
He packs up and moves on to another town, but all the while he feels guilty, and while he tries to shrug it off, he knows he was wrong to leave.
While he is gone, Angel is beaten up and left to die by her "bodyguard", when her owner finds out she hasn't been behaving as she should.
I won't give everything away by telling you entire story, but I will tell you just a little bit more.
Michael comes back just in time to find Angel being treated by a doctor, after she was bruised and broken. There is no doubt in his mind now that God meant for him to marry this woman. A preacher leads a short ceremony in Angel's room, and although she isn't entirely sure of what she is agreeing too, she's sure she's dying anyway so it doesn't matter.
When she finds out she married Michael Hosea, she's furious. She doesn't want to love someone, and she doesn't know how. Patiently, Michael tries to show her God's love, and his own, but when she realizes she just might be feeling something more for this man, she runs away.
Michael runs after her, and brings her home.
This story is actually a re-telling of the book Hosea. And there is even a hint of Ruth and Boaz's story re-told in the lives of some other characters.
In the end of the story, Angel discovers God's love, and realizes her past mistakes.
I would really recommend this book to all you girls, it's a wonderful story, and not a sappy romance like some Christian romance books can be.
Here is the entire poem by Kenneth Rickards:
You reach out to me with open arms
For all the world to see
But I turned, a victim of Satan's charms
And built a wall between you and me
Many times I tried to scale this wall
But I can't do it alone .
Jesus,I need your love in my heart
Then Satan will leave me alone.
So I'm asking you with your love so true
To raise me each time I fall
With the grace and strength from you
I can tear down this man made wall
For I believe by dying upon the cross
You rescue me from my sins
You saved me a sinner lost
And will welcome me back home again.
Kenneth Rickard