Deb Elkink

Deb Elkink, author | The Mosaic Collection

Look for God in the Bible.

Everything (art, literature, fashion design, engineering, philosophy, travel, cooking, health, romance, community, fitness . . .) can be a way to express or illustrate God’s action on our world, but only the living and breathed-out Word of God can give us knowledge of the Father our hearts are longing for.

The thumbprint of God is all over creation; we glimpse Him in nature: soaring mountain ranges, intricate blossoms, the expanse of the night sky, the cry of a newborn. We glimpse Him in any area of earthly existence: history and the humanities, law and language, science and sociology, culture and creativity. But we need more than fleeting glimpses. Only the mind of God revealed to the minds of mortals by the Holy Spirit  through Scripture can bring us into alignment with the Person of Jesus Christ. 

Look for God in the Bible; all else merely points to Him.

In today’s increasingly pagan culture, “spirituality” has become a buzzword for any belief but the truth—the more mystical the better. But the Holy Book of God, able to change us, is the only source containing all we need for salvation and spiritual life. It’s been said that, though we read every other book in the world, the Bible is the only book that reads us!

Long ago, by His verbalized Word, God spoke creation into being; we broke up with Him but He promised renewed relationship someday. Then through the Living Word He came to us in the flesh for a time—mankind visited. Now He speaks to us heart to heart though the Written Word; the Bible is the swaddling clothes and manger in which Jesus comes to us today (as Luther said five centuries ago).

I grew up with the scraped knees of summertime and the frost-bitten cheeks of frigid winter in Canada, about five hundred miles north-west of Minneapolis. When I was very young, not yet school aged, I learned that sin sullies even the child’s heart. I cried in shame and guilt to my mom, who told me that Jesus’s blood washes me clean as new-fallen snow--the moment of my spiritual rebirth.

Later on, in junior high, my curiosity was piqued by the peculiar and the quaint; I watched scary movies at pyjama parties and told creepy fireside tales at camp, and then I discovered the ouija board--a so-called game to get in touch with spirits. A passage of Scripture warned me against the occult, but I insisted on personally experiencing the “fun” and scared myself silly with a devilish fear that took years to rout. Both childhood experiences signify to me that what I see on the surface (the red and white of blood and snow, thrilling story and dark imagination) has a reality beneath the illustration. 

One sad day many years after my youth, I experienced another living illustration--that is, an outward expression of an inward reality--when I lost a deep and meaningful relationship. Had I focused on the immediate (my pain and grief) rather than what I knew to be the undergirding reality (that is, the truths in the Word of God), I’d have crumbled completely. But I read that God is love, and that my bubbly personality still hides a bruised and darkened heart, and that forgiveness has been given to me to pass along. I read that faith is the substance of things unseen, that this substance will carry me through that surface level of blood and snow and fear of the Enemy.

Trusting in the truth lets me affirm but look beyond the things merely seen.

I love the way Elkink writes -- very graceful, with a steady sense of forward momentum . . . always eager to turn the page and find out where she's going next!

~ P. Nelson

Spotlight on Deb

Favorite Things

  • Exotic perfume
  • Chinese brush art (ink on sepia paper)
  • Mennonite food (especially vrenekje with schmontfat--look it up)
  • Deep red silk velvet
  • Prairie thunderstorms
  • A huge church choir singing old hymns of praise beneath the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral
  • My sewing machine
  • A crisp sheet of blank superwhite paper and a new roller pen
  • My hot tub in a snowstorm
  • A warm hug

TBR List

  • Fragments of Fear by Carrie Stuart Parks 
  • We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels
  • The Noble Guardian by Michelle Griep
  • Synapse by Steven James
  • Living Lies by Natalie Walters

Favorite place to read
 In bed beneath my down duvet, propped up on goose-feather pillows, and ensconced in crisp, white, Egyptian cotton sheets of high thread count--with a chocolate snack to nibble.

Favorite quote or Bible verse
2 Timothy 2:15 . . . rightly dividing the Word of truth.

Favorite character you’ve created
Mary Grace (renamed Aglaia after a Greek goddess), who ran from her rural background searching for herself (and love) in the arts. Or maybe Ebenezer MacAdam, the old Scottish sage full of truth. No, I take that back--better Libby Walker, who’s been walking away for all her life and finally finds her way home. That said, my current antagonist, Sybil Tansey, travels from one exotic international “sacred place” to the next for yet another thrill--gotta love the misplaced verve.

Deb's
Mosaic titles

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