Uncover the Beauty of Life with Sarah Clarkson's 'This Beautiful Truth'

MBMB: This book captivated me from start to finish. Sarah has a way of writing that is heartfelt, beautiful and speaks to your soul. Being in a season of suffering, every word was like a balm to my soul. Thank you Sarah, for This Beautiful Truth. I closed the book in tears running down because of how God answered and met the deepest thoughts, questions and sorrows of my heart through Sarah’s writing. So grateful for this masterpiece, and to the One, our Creator, God who is Beauty himself.

United States on Oct 09, 2023

Máiréad - County Cork: An insightful and honest account of Sarah Clarkson's experience of God's revelation in her life, as Beauty, bringing hope and healing. "This beautiful truth" is truly beautiful.

United Kingdom on Sep 11, 2022

Bill Clark: This is one of the best books I have read on the challenges of living with mental illness, especially in the form of OCD. I want to commend Sarah Clarkson for her honesty and openness in sharing about the path she has had to take, and especially in raising awareness in the Christian community about those who struggle in silence. Thank-you Sarah for your book “This Beautiful Truth.” It has truly been wonderful to read.

Canada on Dec 31, 2021

Virginia hanslien: This book is destined to become a classic like The Return of the King (Tolkien), Placemaker (Purifoy), and A Gift from The Sea (Lindbergh). It's a well-written, grand treatise on the problem of pain from a sweet, kindred soul.

Sarah Clarkson considers beauty as a means of grace, a gift from the God who loves and pursues broken souls. For her, she is thinking about it in terms of her own unusual form of the mental illness, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Her vulnerability shines through along with her beautiful prose, and she draws the reader into her journey through brokenness. She works through doubt and moves into restored faith.

I love what she wrote about theodicy, a theological term for how to defend God's goodness in a world filled with evil and suffering.

"The first books of theodicy I read offered arguments that felt like lawyers' briefs. I felt that God was their client, in need of legal protection against the anguished accusations of those in pain" (p. 35).

"... I struggled through works on sovereignty and determinism, trying to understand theories in which God never loses control of any aspect of the world and yet cannot be blamed for...

United States on Jun 23, 2021

Kellie: This book has been highlighted, marked up and will be reread again and again. It is filled with so much beauty in the words that Sarah has written and so many quotes that I have written down to remember. The title says it all. God's goodnees is all around us and desires to break into our darkness. " Christ didn't come just to settle some cosmis score with death; he also came to show us, in his own flech, what humanity was inteded to be and what it will again become by his grace. " I can not recommend it enough!!!!

Germany on Jun 19, 2021

Amazon CustomerAmazon Customer: Into each of our lives comes a moment – the breaking point – when the goodness of God seems to evaporate in the face of deep suffering. It may happen as we look at the devastation in the lives of other people in our daily news stories, or as a result of our own pain and suffering.

In her recent book This Beautiful Truth, author Sarah Clarkson tackles this question. This book is a memoir recounting the author’s dark and relentless struggle with mental health. She does not provide us with tidy answers to life’s difficult questions, but instead weaves a beautiful tapestry of presence which accompanies the one who suffers. Ms. Clarkson recounts in stunning detail how beauty from the hand of God came to accompany her, to win and heal her.

The book takes on the age-old battle between good and evil. Scenes from the author’s life tell a story of a darkness which seems poised to smother all goodness, interspersed with stories of astounding beauty and redemption. In summing up the book, she says, “Beauty and brokenness told me two different stories about the world. I believe that Beauty told true.”

Although memoir in subject matter and structure, it is...

Canada on Jun 18, 2021

Katie M.: Sarah Clarkson’s approach to a very difficult topic-- if there is so much suffering/darkness/pain, how can God be good and how can we experience His goodness— is so authentic, meaningful, practical, and gracious. Mixed with stories of life experiences, Sarah weaves her theological studies throughout this book to produce a solid banner to hang for anyone else coming along the path: in our darkness, we can still see and know God Himself and His goodness. I have been so strengthened and encouraged by this book. It was challenging AND a delight to read.

Canada on Jun 17, 2021

tinuviel moore: In Sarah Clarkson's latest book, This Beautiful Truth, she considers beauty as a means of grace, a gift from the God who loves and pursues broken souls. Specifically, she contemplates this theme as it applies to her own battle with an unusual form of the mental illness Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). With brave vulnerability and beautiful prose, she draws the reader into her journey through brokenness into a measure of healing, through doubt into restored faith. Story, art, music, liturgical worship, and unwavering acceptance from a few people in her life became in her pit of despair like the rags cushioning the ropes Ebed-melech used to draw Jeremiah out of the cistern in Jeremiah 38.

My favorite chapters were the final two.

I was intrigued and challenged by the idea in the penultimate chapter that poetic insight is a gift that carries with it an obligation to help others also see (like prophetic vision). “Every work of art reaches out across the centuries, and each is a vision that casts a flame into the darkness. The wonder is that one great light wakes another. The song of one wakens the story of another. The story she told becomes the poem he made that...

United States on Jun 08, 2021