Beyond the Flaming Sword

Are our difficulties, trials and troubles simply events to be endured and then forgotten? Or could it be that God has a conspiratorial interest in them to accomplish both our highest joy and service to others? Pick up this volume of poetry by Jay Haug and you might just discover that God is quietly up to something in life's most difficult experiences.Searingly honest reflections that confront the painful truths of human existence within the embrace of God's redemptive forgiveness and family love. A healthy antidote to spiritual perfectionism and self-righteousness.Ted Schroder, pastor and author of Real Hope.Extended meditations on themes of yearning, striving, waiting and questioning, these poems are a cry of the heart that reveal brokenness, weakness and emptiness within, while quietly birthing repentance in our unsuspecting souls. Peter C. Moore, Founder of FOCUS, Former Dean of Trinity School for Ministry and currently Associate at St. Michael's Church, Charleston.The poems of Jay Haug are religious and real at the same time, a vision that sees reality in the suffering of God and in the sufferings of everyday persons, yet setting in motion the beloved To-Be.Paul F. M. Zahl, author of Who Will Deliver US?The syntax of pain, like that of love is poetry not prose. As a person on a journey of recovery myself, I welcome Jay's gifts as blazes left by a wise, courageous and sympathetic fellow traveler.Sam Pascoe, pastorThese poems were surely written under the gaze of God's grace. Straight from the heart, they will bless anyone seeking His face at a time of suffering.William E. Simon Jr., author of Living the Call: An Introduction to the Lay Vocation.