Winner of the 2017 Christianity Today Book of the Year for Christian Living.Get ready for the wettest, stormiest, wildest trip through the Gospel you've ever taken!
The gospels are dramatic, wild, and wet―set in a rich maritime culture on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus' first disciples were ragtag fishermen, and Jesus' messages and miracles teem with water, fish, fishermen, net-breaking catches, sea crossings, boat-sinking storms, and even a walk on water. Because this world is foreign and distant to us, we've missed much about the disciples' experiences and about following Jesus―until now. Leslie Leyland Fields―a well-known writer, respected biblical exegete, and longtime Alaskan fisherwoman―crosses the waters of time and culture to take us out on the Sea of Galilee, through a rugged season of commercial fishing with her family in Alaska, and through the waters of the New Testament.
You'll be swept up in a fresh experience of the gospels, traveling with the fishermen disciples from Jesus' baptism to the final miraculous catch of fish―and also experiencing Leslie's own efforts to follow Christ out on her own Alaskan sea. In a time when so many are "unfollowing" Jesus and leaving the Church, Crossing the Waters delivers a fresh encounter with Jesus and explores what it means to "come, follow me."
Leslie Leyland Fields is an internationally recognized speaker, teacher, and multi-award winning author of fourteen books including Your Story Matters, Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers, Surviving the Island of Grace, and Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt and the Seas, which won CT's "Christian Living Book of the Year." Her books have been translated into nine languages. Her essays have appeared in Christianity Today, Books and Culture, Belief.net, The Atlantic, Best Essays and many others, earning her a number of Evangelical Press Awards. With three graduate degrees, Leslie has taught extensively at the undergraduate and graduate level. Currently she leads faith and writing retreats around the world and directs the Memoir Masterclass, a large online community for spiritual memoir. Since 2013 she's been leading The Harvester Island Writers' Workshop on her family's island in Alaska (with guests Philip Yancey, Ann Voskamp and many others) as well as Your Story Matters Retreats in Kodiak. She lives on Kodiak Island during the winters, and summers, lives on a wilderness island, Harvester Island, where she works with her family in commercial salmon fishing.
