Book Review: Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising The Dead

Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising The Dead is Sara Miles' second book about the extraordinary food pantry and mission she founded at St. Gregory's Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

Miles told the story of her conversion to Christianity and the founding of the food pantry in Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion. I found that book inspiring despite my initial reluctance to read it (see my review). Miles has the gift for taking her own everyday struggles and those of the people around her and illuminating them through the gospel story.

Jesus Freak continues the narrative in much the same way as the first book did, but with some different people and their lives. I didn't find it quite as compelling as Take This Bread, probably because a conversion story is always going to be more memorable and dramatic than the struggle with faith that follows conversion. Nonetheless, Sara Miles fans will enjoy Jesus Freak. I don't recommend reading it unless you read her first book because it is like a sequel.

I nearly stumbled on the book, however, when I came to a passage where her friend Paul brings a Texas Sheet Cake to a meeting and Miles described it as " a sort of huge low-class chocolate brownie with thick icing."

HERESY! I know my RevGalPals will agree with me on this point. We regard the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake as the Grace Cake of the RevGalBlogPals webring. Hmph. Low class chocolate brownie, indeed!

I'll have to forgive Sara Miles, though, because she admitted that when her friend shared the cake with a woman at the bus stop, "I went into the meeting feeling undeservedly, irrationally, full of joy." Yes, that's how the Grace Cake works.