{ Loving well in a Broken World by Lauren Casper - TLC Book Tour }

Paperback: 240 Pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (February 18, 2020)

How can we love our neighbors amid so much division and hurt?

Loving your neighbor as yourself would be easy if your neighbors were all people you understood, people you agreed with, people like you. But what about playground bullies, colleagues, refugees, online adversaries? They’re all our neighbors, and Jesus said to love them. Every one. But how?
Lauren Casper believes the key is the lost art of empathy, stepping into other people’s shoes and asking what if?—what if it were my child? What if it were me? Casper helps us discover how to

• identify our blind spots and tune our hearts to the stories around us;
• seek and extend forgiveness with grace and humility; and
• engage in diverse and meaningful relationships.

Following these steps will enable us to connect in simple but life-altering ways, to respond to conflict with grace, bring about needed change, and shine God’s unconditional love into a dark world.

Purchase Links

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Thomas Nelson

About Lauren Casper

Lauren Casper, author of Loving Well in a Broken World, is a writer, speaker, and advocate. Lauren’s essays, known for their vulnerability and personal story-telling style, have appeared on The Huffington Post, the TODAY show, Yahoo! News, and several other publications. Lauren serves on the board of her local Community Anti-Racism Effort; a non-profit dedicated to working toward an inclusive and equitable community. She makes her home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, two children, and one fluffy dog.

Connect with Lauren

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

REVIEW:
If there is a book that needs to be read right now, today, while we are facing such craziness around us, it is this one. 

Loving well in a Broken World focuses on recognizing the need for empathy, something that seems to have completely disappeared from many hearts, around the world.

I have often said that the problems we are facing today are due to a lack of empathy, a problem with each individual, a spiritual problem rather than a race or cultural issue.

We have all read the Bible and one of the most well known commandments is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.  As a Christian I know I need to do that, but I will be the first to admit that it is not as easy to follow through as you may think.

Lauren Casper brings these thoughts to light, and tries to teach us to have compassion, to have empathy, to not just look at the world around us and think that it is up to others to change it.  We have to look within ourselves and start by changing our own prejudices and generalizations. 

How many times have you turned on the news and thought "Where is the compassion and empathy for others?  Why doesn't anyone care about others anymore?" .

If each of us were to extend grace to the situations around us, we could begin to heal the world around us.

Casper encourages us to find our blind spots, to tune our hearts to the stories around us, to look at the internet with different eyes keeping in mind that although it is online, it is still real life, with real people behind the keyboard.

As Christians we are to be a light in this world, to offer compassion, to extend a helping hand  and to teach others how to be compassionate and loving.  If we flood more love and light into the world, we will soon remove the darkness that seems to have seeped into every corner.

Wonderful book.  I believe it should be on everyone's shelves this year.

Thank you to TLC Tours and the Thomas Nelson publishers,  for providing me with a review copy of this book, in exchange for my honest review.