Love Demands I Tell You About Love Does (and give you a free copy)

If you only buy one book this year make it Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World. Wait a minute, if you’re only going to read one book this year you should not be using precious reading energy on my post. Go buy the book already and maybe you’ll have enough PRC (personal reading capacity) to read something else, too. Like maybe some Ann Voskamp or Michael Chabon or C.S. Lewis. Away with you. To Amazon!

But if you’re planning on reading lots of stuff this year, probably another four blog posts before lunch, well then stay. And read this review so you’ll be absolutely sold on Love Does and buy three copies at once because you’ll probably want to send them to friends. Or leave one for the mailman. Or you could give it to the guy at Mighty Fine Burgers who will, as he did me, ask about that winningly-titled book with balloons on the cover in your hand. 

Here’s what it’s about: living a good, God-led, love-spilling life. But it’s not a how-to or a devotional. It’s a story, the storyof one guy’s life—a guy who tried to live a really great life by doing stuff (really fun, really beautiful, really hard stuff) and along the way learned that love (the elixir of life) DOES. It moves. It acts. It sacrifices. It climbs. It jumps.

You should read this book because it’s like sitting around a fire at camp with this super-wise counselor who lives this awesome life and you really want to be just like him when you grow up so you ask him how he got to be so awesome and he actually tells you (without ever—not once—sounding even a smudge arrogant) and the answers aren’t so terribly intimidating and you think, “I could actually do that.”

That’s Love Does—stories around a campfire. Real, inspiring stories of love in action.

I want to do two things before I end this post. First I want to tell you how to win a FREE copy of Love Does and second I want to share a quote from the book:

1. In the comments, tell me about a time when someone loved you like the apostle John encouraged his readers to love: “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Just a sentence works. Or go on and on. I promise to read your comment-novel.

I’ll choose a comment at random and mail you the book. Please include your email address with your comment.

2. A quote! This quote follows a story about Bob’s first ex-girlfriend. She wrote a letter—the 1970s (80s?) form of dumped by text:

"I’ve received many letters since then that started ‘Dear Bob.’ Some were letters so thick they had to be folded several times to fit in the envelope. They left me feeling as folded  when I read their words with shattering disappointment. Still, whatever follows my ‘Dear Bobs’ is often another reminder that God’s grace comes in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances as God continues to unfold something magnificent in me.

And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.”

Yum. 

Alright already. Get to commenting.

Or buy your own.

Hurry…