The Rev. Eugenia Anne Gamble, author of Words of Love: A Healing Journey with the Ten Commandments
By the Rev. Lina Robinson Hart
Words of Love: A Healing Journey with the Ten Commandments is the latest book by our synod’s own Rev. Eugenia Anne Gamble. Instead of seeing the Ten Commandments as a condemning list of do’s and don’ts, Eugenia Gamble urges her readers to view this collection of God’s words as a love letter, inviting us to envision what a life in God looks like.
When on sabbatical some years back, nestled in a warm, little cabin in Nova Scotia, sitting on her sofa while watching some TV, her ears perked up when a news report covered a riot in Montgomery, Alabama. The riot centered around the removal of a monument containing the Ten Commandments out of a federal building. On screen, a middle-aged man’s face was contorted in rage. He threw himself on the monument screaming, “You will not take away my God.” The irony of the moment was not lost on Eugenia.
As people of the Word, we and countless others who revere the words of the Ten Commandments wrestle with issues of idolatry, keeping Sabbath, honoring life-givers and refusing to be life-takers, as Eugenia so graciously puts it. In Words of Love, Eugenia makes available to us her scholarly insights of God’s divine Words for us. She reminds us that God created all that is by uttering words. Through speech God’s creative word brought into being a new community. These Ten Words, as Eugenia captures for us, could so easily be trivialized or domesticated. Instead, she presents them as a compassionate love letter from the Beloved to the beloved. The author of these 10 Words embraces hearers with “I am yours” in the beginning and ends with “now you be you” as we no longer covet what others have or are.
Those who have read this book not only view it as insightful and refreshing, but also recommend it as an excellent Bible Study for groups in your church. In the Amazon reviews, a reader offers, “This book was a wonderful read, thoughtfully written and a true blessing to my heart. For anyone who has lived with a constant sense of guilt and oppressive expectations around the Ten Commandments, this book is for you!”
And as another reader puts it, “Gamble offers a deeper understanding of the Ten Commandments, by gently guiding us towards a new and modern enlightenment. With a fresh approach, her writing is not only educational and informative, but also seeks to invigorate a spiritual growth for the reader. I look forward to reaching for this book again as both guidepost, and inspiration.”
Others mentioned her excellent storytelling, and one other reviewer said, “I felt as if we were together in a room talking.”
Eugenia has served in several presbyteries and congregations. She helped open a center for homeless women and children in Birmingham, is a much sought-after lecturer and speaker and even provided her expertise to the development of our A Brief Statement of Faith. She now resides in South Alabama Presbytery, preaches on-line regularly for a new church development church in California, serves on our Synod’s Communication & Technology Committee and yet still finds time to brainstorm new book ideas. Despite all these recognitions, Eugenia is grounded in her faith and would want to be remembered as “a woman who loved Jesus and who stood with the oppressed.” Our synod is blessed to have Eugenia Gamble in our midst. May those of us who grab her new book, Words of Love: A Healing Journey with the Ten Commandments, be equally blessed, as well as transformed.
Words of Love: A Healing Journey with the Ten Commandments is available on Amazon.com
and through The Thoughtful Christian.