Sins of the Father Blog Tour - Day One

Angela Benson’s numerous novels include the Christy Award-nominated Awakening Mercy, the Essence-bestselling The Amen Sisters, and Up Pops The Devil. Currently an associate professor at the University of Alabama, she lives in Northport, AL.

Angela stops by Urban Christian Fiction Today during her Sins of the Father Blog Tour to share a bit of encouragement.

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. - Jeremiah 29:11, New International Version

The verse comes from a letter the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the Jewish exiles in Babylon. In the letter, Jeremiah passes along a message from the Lord telling the exiles that they will be in Babylon for seventy years. While there though, he gives them hope in the form of the verse above. It’s as though God is saying, “Times may be tough now but now is not the end. I have other, better plans for you. Just hold on.”

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an unemployed young man about thirty years old who was a high school dropout. During our conversation, he shared with me that he had been raised in a single parent home and never knew his father. He went on to talk about his life without a dad. As he spoke, it was clear that he felt his absent father had determined the trajectory of his life.

Jeremiah 29:11 speaks to that young man and others like him, and like me, who grew up without a father. The circumstances of our birth only determine our future to the extent that we allow them. I knew the poverty that young man experienced in a single parent home because I lived it as well. But what I had that he didn’t have was hope. I had the hope that my future would be better than my current circumstances.

We all face circumstances that challenge us in life, some of our own doing and others resulting from the decisions of others. Either way, we should take comfort in knowing God has a hopeful future planned for us. It’s this hope in God that allows us to meet the challenges we face and to look expectantly for a tomorrow that is better than today, whether here or in heaven.

Prayer: Father God, thank you for hope you have placed in my heart. I know that you are bigger than my circumstances and that my future is in your hands. In times of trial and challenge, I will cling to the hope I have in you. Amen.

About the Book

Successful media mogul Abraham Martin has great wealth, an elegant wife, Saralyn, and a rebellious son, Isaac. He also has a secret: a second family that no one knows about. Now, after thirty years—driven by the urging of his long dormant conscience

—Abraham is determined to do the right thing by finally bringing his illegitimate children into

the light…and into the family fold.

But beautiful, manipulative Saralyn will never accept the

proof of her husband’s indiscretions. Isaac the heir, shaken by his father’s revelations, will fight mercilessly when his world is threatened, and may lose everything that matters as a result. And while Abraham’s forgotten daughter Deborah is open to the undreamed-of possibilities suddenly awaiting her, son Michael cannot forgive the man who cruelly abandoned

them to near poverty. And he’s driven by only one desire: revenge!

Angela Benson’s Sins of the Father is a powerful story of a house bitterly divided—a rich, multilayered family saga of betrayal and redemption, rage and compassion, faith, forgiveness, and ultimately, of love.

Follow the blog tour at http://bitly.com/SinsoftheFather.

For more information about Angela, visit her at AngelaBenson.com.