Flame of Resistance

Flame of Resistance by Tracy Groot is set in Normandy, France of the brink of D-Day.  Each of the characters in the book were developed well.  Each became intricately woven into each other's lives as the story unfolds.  The motives of each character was tested and judged.  Who could you trust?  Who was loyal?  Why do they do the things they do?  How could they? Etc. Etc. Etc.  Brigitte longed to be accepted; to belong.  Father Chaillet tells her, "Acts of repentance will not lead to the mercy you seek, but mercy will lead to acts of repentance.  God has mercy on you...."  How many times do we try to clean ourselves up, do good and think maybe then we will be deserving?  Each character was challenged to look beyond the surface to the person beneath.  To see the good in them.  To discover who they really were.  Toward the end of the book Michel has a revelation of God with the most unlikely group of people.  He realizes every plot of God, is always about people.  He feels "a swell of love, caught in God's plot for humanity."  Groot writes "He felt a great swell of pleasure, as he knew in this moment that he had aided and abetted the scheming God of humanity, and felt, in fact, God's pleasure with him."  What a powerful illustration of how when we accept God's mercy, we in fact realize He uses us in the most unlikely ways.  And it feels GREAT!  A great read about a pivotal point in history, through the eyes of common people.