By: Jessie Yount

I recently read a couple of books by Rosaria Butterfield, “The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert” and “The Gospel Comes With a House Key”.  Read…I guess I should say devoured.  Rosaria oozes the kind of practical, loving Christianity I desire to show to others.  Here’s my brief two cents about these two books.

Rosaria’s personal story is beautiful.  Not only in how God works to change us before we really seek Him, but also how drastically God changes the desires of our heart once we understand the Gospel.

I relate well to her academic background and her skepticism of conservatives (especially evangelical Christians) and appreciate how openly she shares how she used to feel.  I also appreciated that she doesn’t sugar-coat her experience of becoming a follower of Jesus.  “Although grateful, I did not perceive conversion to be ‘a blessing.’ It was a train wreck.”  She also admits to missing various aspects of her life before Jesus, “grieving” the loss.  I love her honesty.

What I loved most about her story of coming to genuine faith in Christ is the people God placed in her life to move her towards Him.  She calls what they showed her “radically ordinary hospitality.”  It’s creating space in our homes and our lives (physically and in our management of time) to welcome the world into a Christian home and a Christian life.  She says “ordinary”, and it is.  But I wouldn’t say it is easy.  Not in the pace of life we tend to set for ourselves.

She brings a refreshingly honest and biblical perspective to what sin is.  She calls out the church for the ways it pushes lost sinners away instead of persistently drawing them in.  She demands that the family of God be a family Monday through Saturday, in addition to Sunday mornings.  And she points to Jesus as offering real solutions to the brokenness of our world.

In a world of so many hypocritical Christians, I pray for more Rosarias.

*Topics in her books include (but are definitely not limited to): hospitality, fostering and adoption, the LGBTQ community, homeschooling, church planting, prison ministry, Sabbath keeping, and psalm singing.

**The opinions expressed in this review are that of the author and do not imply an endorsement of or support of these books or their author by Cape Bible Chapel.