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
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