Greg Belliveau. Seeds. Colorado Springs: Crosslink, 2017. Print.

Seeds is subtitled Meditations on Grace in World with Teeth. Sooner or later we all discover that the world has teeth. Usually this begins in junior high, at least on a small scale. College teacher Belliveau gives an example that he uses in one of his classes. Here is an arc of life: college, work, marriage, children, promotions, comfortable retirement, grandchildren, and eventually death after a long, happy life.

He admits that most of the students recognize that such goals do not usually work out in such a simple manner. Life is hard. The oldest book in the Bible is Job which points this out and deals with the reality of God’s grace in an evil world.

Belliveau tells stories. One is about a childhood friend who had a poor memory. As a kid, he tied strings around his fingers to help him remember things, but then he forgot what he was supposed to remember. As an adult, he used stones for the same purpose with a similar result. Eventually, he had four reminders tattooed so that he would not forget.

Another story is about another friend who was a successful and prosperous surgeon until he nicked a blood vessel while operating on a twelve-year-old boy who died as a result. He lost nearly everything in the subsequent lawsuit. Life has teeth.

A recurring theme derives from the literary term in medias res—in the middle of the thing. Stories are often told this way: begin in the middle of the action. So in life we are always in the middle of the action. We cannot know for sure what will happen tomorrow. Belliveau vividly tells us we can look ahead with fear or with grace.

Along with those things, he meditates on truth. What if we had the ability to know what people were thinking, or if they knew what we were thinking. Would we be willing to acknowledge the truth? Belliveau considers Nicodemus and the woman at the well (see John 3 and 4). Jesus started out speaking in symbols (“born again,” “ living water”), but then becomes direct. Would they be willing to acknowledge the truth?

Seeds is direct with the reader: short (only 75 pages) but worth taking a look. Each separate meditation stands on its own, but like those potato chips, I bet you cannot eat just one.

Disclosure of Material: We received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through the BookCrash book review program, which requires an honest, though not necessarily positive, review.