Faith and Fiction Saturday: Scripture in Your Books

Welcome to Faith and Fiction Saturday a weekly discussion about faith and fiction. To participate, just join in the comments or if you are so inspired write a post on your own blog!

I was thinking the other day about many readers of Christian fiction skip over long passages of Scripture if they find them in their books. And actually, it's not just Scripture readers tend to skip over but also poetry. (which can be found in any sort of book) I have to admit, I'm not a fan of passages of Scripture being used throughout the book in very direct ways. If it's somehow woven into the prose and makes sense in a natural way I'm fine with it, but if a book has one of those three-four page sections where the character "gets the moral of the lesson" in a very didactic way, I'm out of there.

As such, I think authors would feel especially hesitant to include long passages of Scripture or poetry in their stories. Can you think of a time when one of these things felt essential to the text and overall story? Do you like a lot of Scripture in your books or are you like me, and more comfortable with that being implicit knowledge demonstrated through story rather than explcicitly stated?