Snark & Sensibility

PLEASE WELCOME ADA BROWNELL

DEVOTIONAL WEDNESDAY

In December parents put aside Christmas shopping for a while and concentrate on making costumes, and teaching little children their lines for the church’s Christmas program.

With five children we should have become experts in teaching little ones to proudly take their places on the platform and say their parts or poems.

Yet, humble parent that I am…not… our children were so talented, even when really young, they could go up on the stage and do a perfect performance. Carolyn, our oldest daughter, had a white dress with matching jacket, all trimmed in sparkling metallic silver fabric, and she played a Christmas song on the piano without a mistake. After all, she had perfect pitch and could memorize a piece with a couple of go-throughs.

Our oldest son, Gary, could do any part that was needed, singing or playing his trumpet, but wasn’t interested in stardom, although he liked dressing up in the costumes.

Gwen, the next daughter, also liked the costumes, being in a play, or singing, and did it well.

Jaron the youngest boy, starred in a children’s choir performance and sang a long solo in an operetta-type story, hitting every note right on pitch.

Jeanette, our baby, could sing right on pitch even at an early age and later as a high soprano, but she had a speaking part at her first stage experience. Only two or three years old, she had wings attached to her pretty little dress. I imagine when it was her turn, there were little fuzzy white sheep walking on the stage “fields” on hands and knees.

She timidly, took her place under the spotlight and said to shepherds nearby, “Fear nob!”

The scripture in Luke 2:10 says an angel appeared, and told shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Why did we need a Savior?

When Jesus grew up and started his ministry, John the Baptist was in prison and Jesus knew John would be beheaded. Jesus went to Capernaum, to the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalem, where he fulfilled a prophecy from Isaiah 9:3: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”

It goes to say, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given … and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

The Messiah!

I experienced that joy, and when our Carolyn at age 31 became a cancer victim, at first I asked, “Where are you God?”

More than 25 years later, I still miss her, and shed tears, but yet joy abides! Defeating death, the penalty for sin, is the reason Jesus slipped into a human body and became our Savior! That is the reason why I sing Joy to the World the Lord is come! That’s why the angels told the shepherds they had tidings of great joy! Because Jesus came, was born of virgin, went to the cross, shed his blood for our sins, and rose from the tomb, light shines in the darkness of death.

 Fear not. If we believe in Jesus as our Savior, we will never die (John 11:26). Joy to the world! The Lord is come!

FINALLY! NEW RELEASE

Love’s Delicate Blossom, an historical suspense

By Ada Brownell

Sequel to The Lady Fugitive and Peach Blossom Rancher

Edmund Pritchett III wants to marry Ritah Irene O’Casey, but she says wait. The beautiful redhead is trying to rescue Tulip, a 14-year-old orphan kidnapped by Henry Hunter to work in his brothel, and Ritah doesn’t have much time. She has a train ticket to go to college and hopes to fulfill her dreams.

Ritah wants to become a teacher who can help widows keep their children when tragedy strikes. She also wants to teach mothers how to prevent dangerous diseases and treat health problems, in an era when few have access to a doctor and too many children die. Instead, Ritah ends up fighting for the lives of injured soldiers in a World War I Army health clinic, and finds her own life threatened by illness as well as sorrow.

But Ritah finds a teaching job in Penokee, Kansas, and there Joe Nichols, a handsome farmer, edges his way into her heart. But Edmund Pritchett III isn’t giving up, and neither is Henry Hunter, who is still after Tulip and about to open his brothel.

Will Rita be able to continue to fight for women and families, understand enduring love, decide on the man she loves, and defend herself and her students when Henry Hunter bursts into the school shooting a pistol?

COMMENT FROM A READER: Your book set a tone and world from your grandmother’s time, the historical elements are what readers read the genre for.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1731156065

ABOUT ADA BROWNELL

Ada Brownell is the author of seven books. She has written for Christian publications since age 15 and spent much of her life as a reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain in Colo.

A freckled redhead, in high school she won best actress in a one-act play contest and judges told her she should go to Hollywood as a comedienne. Instead, she became a wife, mother, writer and a veteran youth Christian education teacher. Most of her life Ada sang in Christian gospel groups, including the Damascus Singers and Praise Trio. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Ozarks Chapter of American Christian Writers.

She and her husband have five children, one in heaven, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.