While millions of Americans were mourning about the chaos in the streets and political insults thrown back and forth in 2020, author of The Invitation to the Shining City, GM Jarrard, had turned to “binge-watching” the new TV series, The Chosen.
“While I was engrossed in the series by Dallas Jenkins, I felt real kinship with the people at the time of Christ who were under Roman rule. It occurred to me that we take our freedoms for granted, and that despite the promise of America being the ‘Shining City on the Hill,’ our way of life, even our freedoms are in peril. We need to remember what we learned in elementary school when we memorized the Pledge of Allegiance about being ‘one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’”
“The Chosen was the catalyst that started my writing The Invitation.And, unlike our forebears, like the Pilgrims, the Puritans or the Pioneers, there is no New World to flee to. My book, The Invitation to the Shining City, proposes such an ‘exit strategy.’ Using the theme of John Winthrop’s speech to his fellow Puritans while en route to New England on the ship Arabella, I cite his vision to establish a place where [we] ‘follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man.’”
The book poses the question, “If there were a place, as the Puritan founder of Boston first described it, where the people were of one heart, one mind, live in righteousness and lift one another’s burdens, what would you be willing to pay to go there?”
Chapter One begins in Israel two years after its establishment in 1948 on the beach in Caesarea, right below Herod’s aqueduct. Jonathan Blum, a military attaché with the U.S. Embassy and a veteran of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, accepts a strange meeting with a mysterious man named John who has approached him about an intriguing job offer. He is given his invitation.
In a surprising turn of events, Jonathan accepts the position, one where he will eventually become the mentor to a young couple, Joey and Dana Kunz. When they finally give in to a request from the husband’s 90-year-old grandmother to take her to a place “to rehabilitate in the hot springs at a Grand Hotel and Spa,” their world is turned upside down. They discover that “grandma” does more than rehabilitate, and so does everyone around her.
When the couple inquires about the “entrance fee,” they learn that to live there, you have to be invited. To quality for an invitation, they commit to gather others to join them. But, along the way, they encounter opposition in the form of media attacks, charges of embezzlement and even a kidnapping. The real challenge comes from within–to qualify, Joey has to make the same decision that the young prince in the New Testament couldn’t make: to sell all that he had and give it to the poor and follow the Savior. The Kunz’s story of opportunity and opposition gives renewed hope to readers in a time of chaos where there is no ‘new world’ to flee to.
In the words of the Prophet Elisha to his apprentice as the young man’s eyes were opened and he could see legions of angels round about, “they that be with us are more tha they that be with them.” (2 Kings 6:16)
Yes, the book is fiction. But, it reminds people of faith what God has been telling people for generations.
As Paul said, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
The 364-page paperback edition is available upon request from bookstores or at Amazon and at www.bn.com. Its suggested retail price is $16.95. The online version is $7.99. Resellers may obtain wholesale copies at Ingram Books. An audio book is in production. For more information, e-mail the author, G.M. Jarrard at gregorio1945@icloud.com
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