For Little Saints - Retelling Scripture Stories for Families- Lift+Love Podcast episode #63

Lift+Love Podcast episode 63 "Josh and Sarah Sabey - Retelling Scripture Stories for Families with Beauty, Honesty, and Heart"  

"Real stories about a real God who loves real people" Episode hosts Allison Dayton and Darice Auston interview authors and filmmakers Josh and Sarah Sabey about their For Little Saints scripture storybooks and accompanying podcast, created to help families connect more deeply with God and scripture by telling Bible and Book of Mormon stories as meaningful narratives for both children and adults. They share their background -meeting at BYU, their original idea to humanize characters like Laman and Lemuel, and their process of writing a story a week, starting as blog posts that later became books despite early publisher rejections. They discuss handling difficult topics by focusing on what serves the story rather than sensational details (e.g., omitting “basket of arms”) and addressing issues like polygamy clearly but thoughtfully. They describe collaborative drafting and editing, debates over tone (e.g., Noah), staying close to the text while exploring overlooked possibilities (e.g., Lot’s wife), and their goal to preserve scripture’s beauty, grace, and “shared story” power. They are working on a New Testament storybook and note their children as a test audience.   00:00 Meet Josh and Sarah 01:41 How They Met 02:09 Storybook Origin 04:00 From Blog to Book 05:19 Stories for Families 06:06 Handling Hard Topics 08:40 Reframing Lot’s Wife 13:42 Talking Polygamy Honestly 16:47 Writing Process Together 18:01 When They Disagree 19:05 Editing for Kids 19:47 Is This Midrash 22:33 Stories Not Puzzles 24:45 Scripture as Revelation 27:01 Claiming Personal Authority 30:34 Saving the Old Testament 33:21 Whats Next Projects 34:55 Why Stories Stick 37:04 Kids as Test Audience   Find the books at http://forlittlesaints.com Find the For Little Saints podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scripture-stories-for-little-saints/id1833375451 Find them on social media @forlittlesaints   Video version of this episode available here: https://youtu.be/Ax1vnENgeAg?si=MLvRM1_WOmTWm_D6   Transcript of this episode available here: www.liftandlove.org/podcast