Seasoned By Fire

by Randy Loubier

Maria boarded the airplane to leave her monochromatic life behind, begging for meaning, fire and adventure. Soon, she found herself enmeshed in Japanese prophecies that started 400 years ago with the great samurai, Oda Nobunaga, but now certain to become a revolution in modern day Japan.

Leiya owned a tea plantation in an era and culture when women shouldn’t. Having given up on men, she found a love so powerful it changed the course of history.

Two strong women. Two principled men. One story you can’t put down.

Seasoned By Fire will change how you see yourself and your relationships. Two love stories woven together. Separated by 400 years. United by hope, love and truth.

235 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 29, 2023

About the author

Randy Loubier is the pastor of a small country church in a small town in the small state of New Hampshire, USA. Slow Brewing Tea is his third book and first novel. Some of the geography and settings were sketched from memories of growing up in New England and his time in Misawa, Japan (1978-1980). For Randy, his years in Japan were an adventurous pursuit of the culture with an attitude and shy personality, not unlike Isaiah. As a slow brewing tea himself, he spent much of the first fifty years of life denying God the Father and pursuing numerous eastern and new-age faiths. He wrote Slow Brewing Tea and the accompanying series The Tea Room Scrolls as "I found something I'd like to share with the world."

I spent 50 years of my life as an anti-Christian, so I know all the arguments and excuses for disbelieving, doubting, being frustrated with church and Christians in general. During this time, I studied and practiced many Asian spiritual pursuits. At 50 I finally read the Bible for myself and was born again by the Word of God. Now, as an author and pastor, I want to reach two groups of people—curious non-believers and fringe Christians—to ignite or re-ignite their love for Jesus.

Slow Brewing Tea is a gateway into both groups. It is a biblically accurate novel that chronicles a shy, abused, anti-Christian airman as he seeks love and the Tao (the way) in the mountains of Japan. He falls in love and finds an old man who teaches him Taoist principles that lead him eventually to the way, the truth, and the life. Yet, it will take another thirty years of living in hard, shallow, and thorny soils before he is finally ready to let God transform him into good soil. As a slow brewing tea he is finally ready for the truth to be manifested in magnificent love and abundant joy—as a Christian and a husband.

Within the novel, unearthed in 400-year-old scrolls is a unique way of learning and studying scripture, using an ancient Eastern context. Following Slow Brewing Tea is a series of eight-week self-study courses, The Tea Room Scrolls, which use this Asian orientation to teach biblical answers to life's most important questions. Billions of people have an Asian perspective on spirituality, as I did for fifty years. Therefore, in the tradition of Paul visiting Athens and talking to them in their context (the Unknown God), what could happen if Asian oriented spiritualists saw Jesus through their own lens?

And doesn’t it make us more in love with Jesus to re-discover His answers to life’s mysteries as revealed in other contexts, transforming people beyond the church walls?