Sunday, October 20, 2019

Bread of Angels: the story of Lydia, the seller of purple


Bread of Angels by Tessa Afshar is the story of Lydia, the seller of purple who is briefly mentioned in Acts 16:14. The story begins with Lydia as a young girl learning her father’s secret formula for the richest purple dye. After tragedy strikes, Lydia is forced to leave her ancestral home and head to Philippi. In Philippi, she establishes herself as a seller of purple and gained a reputation as an honest and generous businesswoman despite the attempts of sabotage by those who wish to see her fail. One such act of sabotage seems to be her ruin. Until one day, a chance meeting with Paul and his companions, she turns her life over to God. As she learns more about God and opening her heart to him, individuals from her past come to Philippi and threaten to destroy everything she has worked so hard to build. Her newly found faith will be tested and she must decide to stand up and fight for herself or turn and hide.


One of the things I love about Tessa Afshar’s writing is that she can take a simple and relatively minor person from the Bible and make her come alive. She did it here in Bread of Angels. Lydia is mentioned briefly during Paul’s mission trips in Acts, but her story is very significant. From the opening page to the closing chapter, I was captivated by Lydia’s story and how seemingly insignificant encounters brought her to a place of prestige and influence. I also love how Tessa Afshar works the meaning of the title very subtly in the story and seems to come from nowhere. While some details about these characters and the times in which they lived are fictionalized and altered for a modern reader, Ms. Afshar keeps the integrity of the main character, Lydia, and opened my eyes to her story in a new way. I highly recommend Bread of Angels.

Bread of Angels
is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook

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