Description: Three women. Three impossible circumstances. One merciful God. Mia, an American Christian, has lived in Sudan so long that persecution, harassment, and danger have become commonplace for her. Her tough outer shell threatens to harden her heart while her newly Christian friends, Halimah and Rania, former Muslims, are forced to live in exile outside Sudan. All three quickly discover that escaping danger in one place only means facing even greater challenges elsewhere. As God's mercy becomes evident in their lives, they must choose whether or not to offer mercy to those who don't deserve it. Third in a trilogy, Mercy Triumphs opens the reader's eyes to modern-day persecution and the life of Muslims in Sudan. Based on real-life events, Mercy Triumphs reveals some of the struggles Christians face when living under Islamic law. The reader will be inspired to pray for new believers, those who are persecuted for their faith, and even for the salvation of the persecutors.
My Thoughts: My favorite part about this book is how well Jana is able to describe life in an Arabic nation from the eyes of an outsider looking in. The things she described held true to my personal experience and filled me with found remembrances, along with agreement that there with things that were tough to get used to, both in traveling there and in returning.
What struck me next was the mercy Jana used to describe the situations presented and the doubts and struggles Mia underwent in wondering if her attempts to minister were falling on deaf ears. Witnessing across cultures and religious barriers is not something that is easy, no matter what country someone is in, something that Mia experiences in the end when comparing her life in Sudan to that in America. And despite the number of scriptural references, there was never a moment were I felt preached at, only encouraged that the author of this story fully understood how difficult being a witness of Christ can be and that it often doesn't feel like we are doing anything at all.
Despite the wealth of compassion in these pages that made me love the story, there were scenes and chapters that seemed to drag on with the only point in them being that sometimes we feel like we are wasting our time when we think could be doing something better with it. While the scenes were important for the characters' spiritual development, as a reader, I was sorely tempted to skip over them. The story is not a fast pace read. Since I have not read the other books in this series, I cannot say what to expect from those, but readers should not step into this one expecting harrowing tales of constant, physical persecution. Instead, it is more a story of day to day struggles and the emotions that come with them.
I have provided an honest review after having received a copy of this book through Litfuse.
Hi Rebekah! Thank you so much for featuring Mercy Triumphs on your blog!
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