Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop #9


Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all 33 stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 3 grand prizes!

•    The hunt BEGINS with Stop #1 at Lisa Bergren’s site.
•    The hunt is BEST VIEWED using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer)
•    It is open to INTERNATIONAL entrants.
•    PRIZES include 3 sets of all 32 books, $500 in Amazon gift cards and many authors are offering additional prizes!
•    There is NO RUSH to complete this hunt—you have ALL WEEKEND. So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books you might want to learn more about!
•    Submit your ENTRY for the GRAND PRIZE at Stop #33 (back on Lisa’s site) by Monday night (4/25) at midnight mountain time.

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Now that you know how it works, let’s get down to business!

I’m thrilled to be hosting the amazing Angela Hunt — I’m sure you’ve seen some of her many books around. I have several on my shelf, and I always know to listen up when she chimes in on one of the email groups we both belong to. 😉 So now without further ado . . .

Angela Hunt

 Everyone wants to be beautiful . . . or do they?

You may remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is dating a super-model. This girl gets away with everything! When Jerry gets pulled over by a traffic cop, he lets his girlfriend do all the talking . . . and doesn’t get a ticket. Apparently, beautiful people get away with crimes, never have to pay for their meals, and never have to stand in line. They get all kinds of positive attention because other people like to look at perfection . . .

But history has demonstrated that beauty can sometimes be downright dangerous. It was to explore this aspect of beauty that I wrote what I jokingly call the “Bible Babes” series—books on Esther, Bathsheba, and Delilah. Esther was so beautiful that she was taken from her devout Jewish family and placed in a pagan king’s harem—trust me, that wasn’t like winning a beauty pageant. Bathsheba was so beautiful that she was raped by a king, then had to remain quiet while the king murdered her husband and her firstborn baby died. And Delilah, for reasons only she knows, used her beauty as a weapon, destroying a man of God and setting into motion a war between the Hebrews and the Philistines.

Even mythology points out the dangerous side of beauty. Helen, wife to a Greek king, is kidnapped by Paris, a prince of Troy, and a war is waged to recover the beautiful queen. “The face that launched a thousand ships” resulted in the loss of thousands of lives, or so the story goes.

If beauty is so dangerous, why do women spend so much time, money, and energy on trying to be beautiful? I ask myself that every time I sit down to tame the wild mane that lives on my head.

I believe something within us yearns for beauty—not only on our bodies, but in our homes—because we crave it. God is beautiful, his creation is beautiful, and something in us naturally hungers after beauty. We fix ourselves up because we want to please our husbands, our children, and our God. We are, after all, daughters of the King.

But God is not silent on the subject of beauty: “Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.” (1 Peter 3:3-4).

The Lord, the Mighty One, is God,
    and he has spoken;
he has summoned all humanity
    from where the sun rises to where it sets.
From Mount Zion, the perfection of beauty,
    God shines in glorious radiance. –Psalm 50:1-2.

Ah—there’s the crux of the matter. While there’s nothing wrong with being beautiful, the most precious beauty is cultivated within. Because beauty is from God, and of God.

Dr. Angela Hunt has written over 130 books for adults and children. She
has recently completed her second doctorate in theology and taken up
photography as a second career.

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Here’s the Stop #9 Skinny:

You can order Angela’s book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CBD or at your local bookstore!

Clue to Write Down: of fiction

Stop #10: Angela Hunt’s site

Lost? Here’s the list of all the links in the hunt.

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Extra Giveaway

In addition to the big prize you’re going for, I’m also offering a giveaway of a set of my books. If the winner is a US address, she’ll receive the Ladies of the Manor Series books 1 and 2, The Lost Heiress and The Reluctant Duchess. If the winner is international, I’m offering a complete digital set of my biblical fiction, A Stray Drop of Blood, A Soft Breath of Wind, and Jewel of Persia (winner’s choice of mobi for Kindle, epub, or PDF).

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