His Crime Was Love Audio Book

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When I began this book, I did so with great trepidation. As far as I knew, and as far as I know, writing Jesus’s story in the first person was something I’d never seen done. And it’s pretty obvious why. It feels presumptuous. When I told people what I was intending to do, everyone gasped. Some thought I was in fact presumptuous. Others thought I was bats-in-the-belfry-out-of-my-mind crazy. As folks began to read the story, though, most understood very quickly that the last thing I wanted to do was to be presumptuous. Crazy is another matter, and I’ll leave you to decide that for yourself. Hopefully writing from Jesus’s point of view offers a new and fresh perspective.

The Scriptures are fairly cut and dry, lacking emotion in most parts. My goal for this book was to show Jesus as a living, breathing, suffering man in His final hours. The fact that he suffered voluntarily makes the story all the more remarkable. I hope in writing this book, it gives each reader a close-up picture of the Love God has for each and every human being He ever created—even you, even me. If you ever doubt that love, remember Jesus had each and every one of us in mind when He refused to turn away from the suffering He endured. None of us deserve that love. All anyone can do in response is try to live life in His service.

What if you could walk alongside Him?
‘His Crime Was Love’ is an intimate, first-person journey through the final thirty-six hours of Jesus’s life. Beginning in the quiet hours before the Last Supper and ending at the moment of His final breath, this story is told through His eyes.
Witness His raw humanity. He was not shielded from pain, nor was He immune to the sting of humiliation. He was tempted, He was weary, and He was rejected—yet His response to every lash and every scornful word was a relentless, radical compassion.
While some moments within these pages imagine encounters beyond the recorded Scripture, they serve to illustrate a profound truth: His love for the world was so great that it was deemed a crime. My hope is that as you walk with Jesus through these final hours, you will realize that the love He poured out for others is the same love He has for you today.
Walk with Him. See through His eyes. Discover how He faced death—and in doing so, teaches us how to live.”

I hope this will bless your Holy week devotions this year. I will be offering the book free from Apr. 1-5, both in ebook form through

Amazon

and on this website as an audio book.

His Crime Was Love Audio Book
His Crime Was Love Audio Book
What if you could walk alongside Him? 'His Crime Was Love' is an intimate, first-person journey through the final thirty-six hours of Jesus’s life. Beginning in the quiet hours before the Last Supper and ending at the moment of His final breath, this story is told through His eyes. Witness His raw humanity. He was not shielded from pain, nor was He immune to the sting of humiliation. He was tempted, He was weary, and He was rejected—yet His response to every lash and every scornful word was a relentless, radical compassion. While some moments within these pages imagine encounters beyond the recorded Scripture, they serve to illustrate a profound truth: His love for the world was so great that it was deemed a crime. My hope is that as you walk with Jesus through these final hours, you will realize that the love He poured out for others is the same love He has for you today. Walk with Him. See through His eyes. Discover how He faced death—and in doing so, teaches us how to live."
Price: $7.00

Below is a 5min sample taken from chapter 1. The book itself was narrated using Eleven Labs AI. I personally narrated the dedication and introduction. I truly hope the book blesses all who read it.

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Welcome!

Song at Midnight Posted on by

My name is Jackie McBride, & this is my personal blog. It will contain reflections on my faith journey as well as any other items I might wish to include. Though I do not proselytize or disparage any faith traditions, & my views are often distinctly not those primarily associated with right-wing American Christianity, the reader should understand clearly that this is nonetheless an overtly Christian blog. If that’s not your cup, then I really would encourage you to find something you’d enjoy reading more & send you on your way with wishes for many blessings. If, however, for whatever reason my reflections interest you, then please accept my warmest welcome. I’d love to hear your comments, but please only leave those if they’re civil & relevant to the topic at hand. I do not accept advertisements of any sort here, and any attempt to try to sell products of any kind will result in the comment being marked as spam & the commenter banned. Racist, sexist, vulgarity, or hate language will also not be tolerated & the results will be identical to those in the previous sentence. Those things really should go without saying, but in today’s climate, unfortunately, it seems they can’t.

 

The blog’s name is derived from the account in Acts 16:25-36.

“22  The crowd joined in attacking them, (Paul and Silas) and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.

23  After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely.

24  Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

26  Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.

27  When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped.

28  But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”

29  The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.

30  Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

31  They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

32  They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.

33  At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay.

34  He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
35 ¶  When morning came, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.”

36  And the jailer reported the message to Paul, saying, “The magistrates sent word to let you go; therefore come out now and go in peace.”

 

The theme of being able to praise God despite adversity is clear. Midnight is also a reference to my blindness. I’ve been contemplating doing this for years now, as husband Karl will attest, and I’ve finally gotten off square 1.

 

I’ll also be recommending other bloggers whom I particularly like, so if you have a blog you think might interest me, please let me know that.

I’ve been engaged in a series regarding praying for the nation(s). Some will undoubtedly notice that many of the scriptures I put forward to meditate & pray on have to do with conduct. That’s because I believe a nation is only as good as the people that live there. I feel if we can find things to unite for and agree on, even if we don’t necessarily agree how to implement them, it becomes a common ground for consensus building.

If you’d like to sign up to the blog, please do so using the ‘Registration’ menu item. Screen reader users, please use your arrow keys to navigate the form. To log in, please go to the site, then use the appropriate menu item. I’ve been forced to make these changes because of a large amount of spam traffic absolutely hammering the site.

I wish you abundant blessings, and I hope that perhaps something I write here might prove helpful or inspiring.

The Blessing of Having Loved

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Hello, and welcome to another blessing Sunday. Traveling with me on this path are
Lynda Lambert who shared the idea with me, and
Abbie Johnson Taylor

Today is our eldest daughter Karley’s earthday birthday. She was the victim of a homicide in 2007. The killer was never apprehended. He wanders the face of the earth, and Karley’s life was snuffed out.

The loss of a child goes beyond words. It rips at the fabric of all we believe to be good and right. It violates the natural order that the parents should be the ones to die first. I once met a hospital chaplain who’d also lost a child and formed a support group called Sisters of Eve and Mary. Indeed all mothers who’ve mourned a child are members of this sad, but somehow binding, sisterhood. There’s a connection there that is strong beyond words.

Despite the many years, the pain of the loss is still very real. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, it never goes away. Birthdays are reminders. Mother’s days, though happy occasions, are always tinged with great sadness, because there will be no call or card from her like she used to do when she was among us. And there’s always the strange aura Of what might or would have been that lingers every time I think about her. All moms I know who’ve gone through this say likewise.

And yet, God gave us the gift of her presence among us, and I will be forever grateful for that. I would be so much less of a person if she hadn’t been a part of my life. I hope in some small way the same might be true for her as well. And sometimes, there are those precious fleeting moments when I almost feel she’s here, dropping in to say hi. A puff of cigarette smoke, a familiar-sounding voice or laugh, the lady who looks so much like her it makes you catch your breath–a fleeting but awe-inspiring moment in time where the veil thins, worlds touch, and love is expressed.

It is true what Alfred Tennyson said. “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

1 Cor 13:
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.

11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.;

Happy earthday birthday, Karley. Say hi to Jesus for me. And know that though it brings me joy to know you’re with him, I still miss you mightily. But 2 weeks ago we celebrated His resurrection here, and that gives us hope that renews every morning.

The Blessings of Jellybeans and a small Steel Cross

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seal of Wickenburg, AZ

Hello, and welcome to another blessing Sunday. Traveling with me on this path are
Lynda Lambert who shared the idea with me, and

Abbie Johnson Taylor

I had family come to visit this week. My brother and sister-in-law from Boise and my sister from Mundelein descended upon AZ. My brother likes the wide open spaces & decided to stay in Wickenburg, a small town a little less than an hour’s drive from where I live. Friday morning, Apr. 10, my sister, Hubby, and I took our jeep and made the trip up. We all piled into Phil and Nancy’s Expedition and headed off to Vulture Mine Ghost Town. I personally did not encounter any disembodied visitors, and, so far as I know, neither did anyone else in our group.

At the ghost town, there was a blacksmith, working in period constume with the same tools that would’ve been used in the 1800’s, and likely are still used, albeit perhaps in slightly altered form, to this day.

He was making crosses. He wanted $40 for the larger 1, but the smaller versions were $25. That was rather expensive, especially given mounting medical bills, but they were hand-crafted, and the guy was working hard. I bought 1 for myself and 1 for the hubby, who did not accompany us on the tour of the shops because of physical impairment.

He loved it. He said it was the nicest thing I ever gave him. We’ve been married almost 40 years, and I’ve given him plenty of gifts during that time. This cross was definitively not the most expensive thing I’d ever gifted him. Nonetheless, I was glad he liked it.

The easter bunny, AKA my daughter, forgot to give him his jelly beans for Easter, so I ordered some. They came today, Apr. 11. He was equally glad to get those.

As I get older, I increasingly come to realize it’s not the expensive gifts that matter. It’s making memories. That person you love won’t be around forever, and there may come a time when all you’ll have is memories to sustain you. Of course there’ll be momentous occasions. But there will be smaller things to remember as well, like a small steel cross on a hot Arizona day, or a belated Easter gift of favorite old-fashioned jellybeans. Big occasions are just that–occasional. But small memories can be fashioned every single day. I’m making it my mission to do exactly that.

Christ Is Risen!

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Hello, and welcome to another blessing Sunday. Traveling with me on this path are
Abbie Johnson Taylor and

Lynda Lambert who shared the idea with me,

An empty burial cave. The shroud and linen wrappings are folded, 2 men in white stand just outside.

That first day of the week, a few women walked the streets of Jerusalem. There was a hint of gray in the sky. A rooster crowed. A dove cooed. A dog barked. The women bore a heavy burden. The spices and ointment they carried, although weighty, seemed light compared to the spiritual burden. The man they loved, the one whom they believed was the Messiah, the foretold one of the Torah who would liberate their kingdom from the Romans, had instead died on a criminal’s cross. Their job now was to perform one last service they couldn’t finish before the arrival of the Sabbath–the anointing of His body.

“How will we roll the stone away?” they asked each other as they trudged along. “It’ll be far too heavy for us to do it ourselves.”

Like so many of our worst fears, they found it had been taken care of. When they arrived, the tomb was empty. The burial clothes were folded neatly. Two men stood outside, dressed in dazzling white.

Matt 28:

5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.

6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.

7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

The news still echos down the centuries. “Christ has risen! He has risen indeed!” And many gave their lives, sometimes in horrifying ways, because they would not deny the truth of that seemingly improbable sentence.

The resurrection is the central pillar of our Christian faith. Without it, Paul tells us exactly where we stand.

1 Cor 15:

14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.
16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.
17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.
24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

If there was no resurrection, we have believed a lie, we have told a lie, we are still in our sins, and death has the final word. May as well eat and drink for tomorrow we die. There is no hope.

If, however, the story is true, then every year we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, we rejoice in the living hope we have in Him. May you be blessed with the unspeakable joy His resurrection brings to the heart and soul of every believer, and may we tell it to others w/love and rejoicing. Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Praise be to God!

When Hope Dies

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Heart on cross surrounded by darkness

It was 4 in the afternoon. It looked more like midnight, not just because of the physical darkness, which was so thick it felt like you could touch and taste it, but because of the spiritual darkness, the hopelessness, that engulfed many of the onlookers still standing near the cross. The man they had hoped would wrest the kingdom of Israel from the Romans and restore it to its rightful owners, now hung limp and bloody, nails fastening His hands and feet to the rough hewn wood. Their hopes were forever shattered. The next day would be darker still, for those nearby would wake up to realize that the rest of their lives would be exactly like this.

For them, there was no concept of a resurrection. There was just the shattered pieces of their hopes and dreams. Evil had triumphed.

2 devils talking to each other near a nail-pierced, empty cross. 1 says: "That was easy." The other says, "Then why do I feel like we've just been had?

Those who’d hoped in Jesus that day witnessed the two darkest days in history. But death didn’t triumph. The stone rolled away. The tomb opened. Jesus rose.

Meanwhile, the world held its collective breath. Would God the Father find His Son’s sacrifice acceptable, raise Him from death, and call the debt of sin paid?

On that good Friday, Sunday seemed an eternity away.

But on Sunday morning, the women returned from the tomb breathlessly. The stone had been rolled back. The tomb was desserted. All that remained were the burial wrappings. And while Jesus’s followers still didn’t understand fully what had taken place, something minuscule stirred in each of their spirits, the hope that somehow, against all odds, He was alive!

It’s hard living in the constant in-between of a world where, although evil has been defeated, it has not yet been entirely subdued. We wrestle daily w/the evil all around us, from minor annoyances to shattered hopes and dreams and lives. But we know there will come a shining day when all things will be brought under God’s authority, and all evil will be banished. Till then, we cling to the hope of the resurrection. And we agree w/those 2 devils. They had indeed been had.

What’s a Book Launch Without a Glitch?

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Book titled "His Crime Was Love" being launched into space.

Impossible, probably. In any event, here’s where things stand.

I tried to create redemption codes on Spotify, but it kept saying it couldn’t create them. I’ll try to get that set up, but it’s no great loss, since it’s available here and on Google Play.

If you enjoy the book, please share w/your friends before the promo expires. Please also consider leaving a review on Amazon or Google Play. May your Holy Week be blessed!

The Blessing of Letting Go

Song at Midnight Posted on by

UPDATE: The Sewer Answered Back!
I am overjoyed to share that the “shouting” worked. Google Play Books has officially reinstated my account! It turns out that letting go and trusting the process (and a bit of divine intervention) was exactly what was needed.
To celebrate Holy Week, I’m offering “His Crime Was Love” for FREE from April 1st through April 5th.

It’s available from Amazon as a Kindle Ebook

and as an audiobook from

Spotify
Thank you to everyone who prayed for my husband and me while we battled that elephant-sized cold and this technical headache. We are on the mend, the books will soon be live, and the “balloon” has landed safely back in our hands!

An older lady watching a balloon float away just out of reach.

Last Saturday, Mar 21, I ended my evening by submitting my audiobook, “His Crime Was Love”, to the Google Play Store for publication. I had already successfully submitted it to Amazon and Bookshare, a reading service for the print-disable community, in ebook format, and to Spotify, in audiobook format. All had approved my submission, and I had no reason to expect Google Play would be any different.

Except it was. I was notified that my account had been deactivated and told to fill out a form if I wanted to appeal the decision. I did that. As of today, Mar. 28, I have heard absolutely nothing from Google as to why they deactivated my account. All correspondence to their support forum has gone unanswered, and someone calling themselves a google expert in their community forum told me to read the content guidelines before publishing. I have read those guidelines, and I don’t understand why my book, which is a reverent retelling of the crucifixion from Jesus’s viewpoint, should trigger such a reaction. But it has.

I don’t know what else to do. I feel like I’m shouting down a sewer.

Lady shouting down a sewer

So I guess the only thing I can do is let go & hope God helps me take care of it. Google Play has definitively been the worst customer lack-of-service I’ve experienced in a very long while. I don’t feel I’ve been treated anywhere remotely fairly, and I’ve been thoroughly and effectively stonewalled with no recourse. It feels like I’m being executed without knowing what the charges are against me. It’s extraordinarily disheartening. But I can’t waste any more time on it. I’ve got stuff to do, and I have a cold that feels like it was reserved for an elephant. So onward and upward like that balloon. Perhaps it’ll get resolved, perhaps not. I wish it would, because it’s yet another avenue to share my book. But I think only God (and Google, who seems to think they’re an acceptable surrogate), can move it along now.

If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears. And maybe please pray for Hubby and me to help us get rid of this behemoth cold.

Deuteronomy 31:8 It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”

God is bigger than Google.

Naa! naa!

naa!!

naa! naa!

Stuck out tongue

So there!

The Blessing of Finishing My Audiobook

Song at Midnight Posted on by

Hello, and welcome to another blessing Sunday. Traveling with me on this path are

Lynda Lambert who shared the idea with me,
and
Abbie Johnson Taylor

I’m going to keep this very short. I have a cold that’s causing just about every opening in my face, save my ears, to ooze. Both my mouth and head hurt. How that happened when the temperature outside is a scorching 105dg F is totally beyond me, but it did. Despite that, I was able to finish my audiobook this week w/help from Eleven Labs AI, and it is now available on this website (on a post stuck to the front page), as well as pending review on Spotify and Google Play. Hopefully the bureaucratic red tape won’t entangle me too much longer. There is also a sample available on this site for your listening pleasure. You can purchase it now or wait till Apr 1-5, at which time I’ll be offering it for free, both on this site (and, if the Lord and powers that be prove willing, the other platforms mentioned above as well.

Here’s the book cover I uploaded to Spotify.

Heart-shaped thorns on a cross surrounded by desert. Blood drops are visible on the ground, and a vulture is circling the cross.

The Blessing of Lent

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Hello, and welcome to another blessing Sunday. Traveling with me on this path are
Lynda Lambert who shared the idea with me, and
Abbie Johnson Taylor

Glassy Sea in Revellations

Lent, for those who may be unaware, is an approximately 7-week long season in the Christian faith where we commemorate Jesus’s journey to the cross. It’s often associated with giving up things, especially enjoyable things, like candy and alcoholic beverages. Those of the Roman Catholic faith are also instructed to abstain from eating meat each Friday of Lent.

The death of Jesus on the cross is one of the saddest, if not the saddest, event in human history. So why do I view the commemoration of His journey to the cross as a blessing?

I view Lent as a blessing because it serves as a reminder of how much God loves each and every one of us. as human beings, we all make mistakes and fall short of what we know we should be. And a lot of us are pretty hard on ourselves when we don’t measure up, either to the standards of others or our own. Unfortunately, we often tend to project our negative feelings about ourselves onto God, and believe he has those same negative feelings toward us as we have about ourselves. Jesus’s journey to the cross is a stark reminder of just how inaccurate those beliefs are.

Jesus is God’s Son. He is equal to God. He created all things, in partnership with the Father and the Holy spirit.

John 1-4 says: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 He was with God in the beginning.

3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Even though Jesus was God, and He could do anything He pleased, including staying in Heaven forever, He chose to become a man, with all the limitations that living in a body impose. And above all that, He chose to die a criminal’s death, a death by crucifixion, which is one of the most painful ordeals a person can endure. And He did that to pay our debt of sin. God the Father didn’t force Him. He did it of His own accord. He did it so we could live eternally with Him in Heaven if we but accepted His gift of forgiveness and eternal life. He did it because He loved us that much.

So here’s a suggestion. Instead of giving up sweets or booze or other pleasures for Lent, when you start thinking of yourself negatively, bring to mind instead how much God loves you, and think about that instead. Who knows, you might just decide it’s an endeavor worth pursuing all year round. And just as a reminder of what Christ gave up to come here, check out Job 38 or Revelation 4-6.