For the Children's Sake

Sometimes, it’s not only what we plant but where we’re planted. As opposed to homesteading, Once Upon a Farm is a book on “lifesteading” as New York Times bestselling author Rory Feek learns to cultivate faith, love, and fatherhood on a small farm, while doing everything but farming.

With frequent stories of his and Joey’s years together, and how those guide his life today, Rory unpacks just what it means to be open to new experiences. Much like Jesus’ biblical parable, when we scatter our seeds, some will grow in the fertile land and warm sun. Rory contends that it’s the same way with our dreams, but we must always pay attention to what our story is teaching us.

It’s long been said that timing is everything, and it is, unless you haven’t done the work to be prepared. What does it mean to cultivate life, to be open to new directions, to invest in another person as a way of connecting with God? Through his wealth of stories and vulnerable spirit, Rory opens up on those struggles in his own life and, in the process, shows the way for us all.

“This isn’t a how-to book, it’s more of a how we or more accurately how He (God) planted us on a few acres of land and grew something bigger than Joey or I could have ever imagined.”

It’s an ongoing story of a new frontier, all woven into a new season of learning to grow a new life and love in the land that his wife loved so much.

#1 New York Times best-seller with more than 11 million copies sold and Amazon’s #17 best-selling book of all time. Heaven Is for Real was the best-selling non-fiction book of 2011 as reported by Nielsen’s Bookscan, and was developed as a major motion picture by Sony in 2014.

“Do you remember the hospital, Colton?” Sonja said. “Yes, mommy, I remember,” he said. “That’s where the angels sang to me.”

When Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy, his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren’t expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed—a story as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy’s trip to heaven and back.

Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his body during the surgery–and authenticated that claim by describing exactly what his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on. He talked of visiting heaven and relayed stories told to him by people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened even before he was born. He also astonished his parents with descriptions and obscure details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not yet learned to read.

With disarming innocence and the plainspoken boldness of a child, Colton tells of meeting long-departed family members. He describes Jesus, the angels, how “really, really big” God is, and how much God loves us. Retold by his father, but using Colton’s uniquely simple words, Heaven Is for Real offers a glimpse of the world that awaits us, where as Colton says, “Nobody is old and nobody wears glasses.”

Heaven Is for Real will forever change the way you think of eternity, offering the chance to see, and believe, like a child. 

Continue the Burpo’ s story in Heaven Changes Everything: The Rest of Our Story. Heaven Is for Real also is available in Spanish, El cielo es real.