The Gem

I like your iridescent-aurora borealis diamond like jewel,
is there a special significance?

(Question from reader, Rose)

Dear Rose, thank you for your question. The Christian faith is a many-faceted gem. We can read the Bible with an eye for theology (who God is), with an eye for soteriology (how to get saved), with an eye for anthropology (who man is), even with an eye for God’s great plan for the world (also called covenant theology).

Instead of opening the Bible and taking a random verse or section to apply it to my life, as if the words of a fortune cookie, I want to be true to the text. What did that verse mean to the people who first received it, what does it mean in the entire context of salvation, and what does it mean for all Christians? This gem is the way I approach the Bible for its facets.

As a pastor’s wife, I teach the ladies of the Protestant Church of Smyrna (IPK, in Izmir, Turkey) how to read the Bible for these big themes. We use ten colors to highlight (with colored pencil) the ten overarching themes when we find them. I call them the Principles of the Prophets.

I weave these same themes into my stories. Someday, I hope get this Bible study method out to everyone who reads my books, just as I am teaching the IPK ladies. Meanwhile, the rainbow colors in the gem are the beauty and facets of Bible truth applied to our lives.


So this jewel represents my fantasy, SciFi, speculative stories which carry the 10 themes, as well as my hopes to teach my English and Turkish readers how to understand everything in the Bible with that “rainbow scaffold” palette of 10 colors.