The first piece, Sweet Chariot by Carolyn Zane, falls into the genre of Christian romance. It has the merit of being funny (I found it in an anthology Three Weddings and a Giggle) and the set-up does have its positive points: two grandmothers buy a falling-to-pieces motor home and try to go on a road trip with their respective adult grandchildren, who fall in love.
Unfortunately, like too much religious fiction, the continual references to prayer and faith and God gain a pro forma or performance aspect--an excuse for people to make terrible decisions, place themselves in seriously dangerous situations, leave scrap metal all over a highway, and otherwise behave like people who think God is supposed to save them from themselves.
The fighting-then-dating couple have fairly good banter. But the relationship is entirely shallow. Arguments about food are left in but the part of the relationship where they get to know each other takes place in the following line: "Lexie and Jake teased and flirted and discussed a vast array of subject matter from politics to religion, from their memories of the past to their dreams for the future."
Yup. That's it. Now they should get married!
They should also supposedly get married because they both learn to focus more on family than their jobs. Unfortunately, these epiphanies are less than believable. Lexie, for instance, blames her phone for distracting her from real values. As someone who ignores her phone and despises social media, I can relate: Phones are bad!
However, within the story, Lexie uses her phone to do her job. It's hard to see what else she could do. Once the motor home reaches civilization is she supposed to stop being a realtor? Communicate with clients by carrier pigeon? Ignore phone calls about incipient deals? Or will her job problems resolve themselves once she throws "prayer" and "faith" and "God" at them?
The short story is "Lilies" by Ru Zhijuan, translated by R.A. Roberts. It is not directly either romantic (in a couple marrying sense) or religious. In fact, interestingly enough, it seems to be an example of how good storytelling overrides politics since Ru Zhiguan was a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.
The two young women in the story see the nineteen-year-old male courier as young and bashful and rather adorable. They both mourn his death. Multiple characters, despite throwing out statements about doing things for "the good of the people," demonstrate appreciation for the individual. The gloss of politics is continually undermined by the narrator's deliberate choices: the young man's awareness of the two women, the married woman's insistence on stitching his shirt and giving up the quilt that, she states emphatically, she made. The story hints at deeper connections, whether the connections are human or social or spiritual.
In the Christian romance novella, on the other hand, the gloss of religion is coated onto the plot yet the end result doesn't feel particularly religious or insightful. Designating characters as prayerful and God-fearing isn't enough to reach either the transcendence of mutual affection or the transcendence of the supernal.