"The Joy of Advent" by Rebecca and Stephen Grabill

Start with the Jesse Tree, an old tradition centered on Advent that connects the story and characters of the Old Testament to the birth of Christ. It takes its name from Jesse, the father of King David, through whose root or “stump” the Old Testament prophets said would come the promised Messiah. Over the years, the tradition grew to include ornaments, much like what we think of as a Christmas tree, except these were ornaments connected to or illustrating the Old Testament characters – Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, and more. 

In their new devotional, The Joy of Advent, Rebecca and Stephen Grabill have used the Jesse Tree as an organizing principle for daily readings, study, and discussion. Like the Advent season itself, the readings stretch from the fourth Sunday before Christmas to the traditional date for Epiphany, or Jan. 6. It’s also designed for family use.

 

Rebecca Grabill

Each daily devotional follows the same format. First, teens and adults have a short Scripture passage to read followed by a personal reflection. A family celebration follows, with a Scripture passage, a specific Jesse Tree symbol and description, a song, a family reflection, a together time to discuss specific questions, and then an ending with prayer.

 

The book includes instructions for setting up a Jesse Tree, holiday recipes, background on key dates within the period, It’s aimed at Catholic families, but any Christian family can use it and find value.

 

Stephen Grabill

The Grabills, parents of six children, are the cofounders of The Joy of Advent, a program which has taken them from churches and schools in the United States to Sub-Saharan Africa. Rebecca Grabill is also the author of several children’s books, and she blogs at The Joyful Mess. The Joy of Advent book is beautifully illustrated by Clare Therese Gray, an author, illustrator, and pattern designer. 

 

If you’re looking for a family resource for Advent, The Joy of Advent is a great possibility. And you can learn about the Jesse Tree, and the connections between the Old and New Testaments.

Some Monday Readings

 

Democracy in America: An Introduction – Roger Kimball at The New Criterion.

 

Me and McCloskey – Glenn McCarty at Story Warren.

 

St. Michael, St. Galgano, and the Sword in the Stone – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Return of Benjamin Pollock – Spitalfields Life.

 

Unmasking Evil: The Startling Revelations of a WWII Massacre – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

Two Beautiful Lenten Devotionals

The beginning of Lent – Ash Wednesday – falls on Valentine’s Day this year. I’m not sure if there’s a subliminal message there or not, but the Lenten season is soon upon us. And two recently published resources might be, and should be, of some interest.

Women Who Followed Jesus: 40 Devotions on the Journey to Easter (Paraclete Press) by Dandi Daley Mackall may seem primarily for women, but I also found it an intriguing resource for a general audience. For each day of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, Mackall has Bible verses, a fictional story grounded in the verses, and a few questions for reflection and deeper study.

 

The Biblical women included in the entries are Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of Jesus; Susanna; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza; the Samaritan woman at the well; Mary of Bethany; Martha; and Salome, the mother of James and John. Each has multiple entries; Mary Magdalene has the most with 10, followed by Mary the mother of Jesus with eight. 

 

Little is known about several of the women; Susanna, for example has a single reference in the Gospel of Luke and Joanna has only two; both were among the women who had been healed by Jesus, traveled with him and the disciples, and supported his ministry. But there’s enough to make some educated guesses as to their personalities and how they fit into Jesus’s ministry. 

Dandi Daley Mackall

Mackall has published more than 500 books for adults and children. She’s a speaker at writer workshops, conferences, women’s meetings, and young author events. She’s also been interviewed on television, radio, podcasts, and blogs about writing and her books, which have won numerous awards. She lives with her family in Ohio.

 

Paraclete has also published Season of Beauty: A Lent and Easter Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers. It’s illustrated with classic paintings by well-known artists, which by themselves are worth considering as Lent and Easter devotionals. (a personal favorite painting in the book, “The Straight Path” by Nicholas Roerich, is depicted above.) It’s a small (143 pages) but physically beautiful book.

 

The poems and readings have been written by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Hildegard of Bingen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Merton, William Cowper, the Psalms, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Christina Rossetti, Julian of Norwich, Luci Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, Saint Patrick, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Saint Francis, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Bronte, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Wordsworth, Charles Wesley, and many others.

 

One of the entries is this first-millennium Celtic prayer:

 

You are the peace of all things calm

You are the place to hide from harm

You are the light that shines in the dark

You are the heart’s eternal spark

You are the door that’s open wide

You are the guest who waits inside

You are the stranger at the door

You are the calling of the poor

You are my Lord and with me still

You are my love, keep me from ill

You are the light, the truth, the way

You are my Savior this very day

 

Both books make wonderful resources for the Lenten and Easter season.

 

Top illustration: The Straight Path, watercolor (1912) by Nicholas Roerich; Nizhny Novgorod State Museum of Fine Arts, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

White Noise – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Out of Egypt: 50 Holy Wells #17 – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

“Praying with Jane” (Austen) by Rachel Dodge

With all of the movies, remakes, novelizations, satires, and articles, the one thing you rarely if ever read about Jane Austen is her devout religious faith. 

Her father was an Anglican clergyman. The practice of the family’s faith was daily, including family morning and evening prayers, prayers before and after meals, private prayers, prayer before bedtime, and two lengthy worship services on Sunday. The family read devotional books together. 

In a short work, author Rachel Dodge helps to broaden the understanding of Austen’s faith. Praying with Jane is a devotional work with 31 daily entries that use three beautiful prayers written by Austen herself. Dodge structures each entry with a portion of the prayer, a brief discussion from Austen’s biography, letters, or works, and an invitation to pray, including a short prayer.

Rachel Dodge

“Reading Jane’s prayers,” she writes in the introduction, “is a bit like looking into her heart. In them, we get to know another side of Jane’s personality—a more serious and reverent side. They reveal a genuine, practical faith in Jesus Christ.”

Dodge is an author, speaker, workshop leader, college lecturer, and a writer for the Jane Austen World blog. In addition to Praying with Jane, featured during the month of October at Literary Life, she’s currently working on a devotional based on Anne of Green Gables.

You can likely read Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility and enjoy the works without knowing the details of the author’s life, including her religious faith. But to read a short, simple work like Praying with Jane is to have one’s eyes opened about underpinned the works and life of one of English literature’s most beloved authors.

Related:

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James.

Second Impressions by Pepper Basham.

“Fingerprints of Love and War” by Edward Holmes

The Old Testament of the Bible is saturated with poetry. Five books – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song Solomon – are virtually all poetry. Poetry can be found in other books as well. And while the New Testament doesn’t have any overtly poetical books (with the possible exception of the Book of Revelation), poetry plays a significant role here as well. We don’t talk much about the place of poetry within the church today, but the poetic reality of the Bible should perhaps cause us to reconsider.

Edward Holmes, an ordained minister and speaker, has reconsidered. He’s created a work called Fingerprints of Love and War that combines devotional discussion, Bible verses, and poetry. What results is a rather beautiful form of worship with poetry at its heart. I’ve read a lot of Christian poetry, and I’ve read a lot of Christian devotionals, but I’ve never read a work that combined the two, at least until now.

He begins with fingerprints. Each of us has unique fingerprints. Similarly, Holmes says, each of us is created with a unique, specific plan, and he follows with poems about image and what it’s like to deny our true identity. He moves to love, noting that each of us was created from Love to love. He follows with poems like “Musings of the Master” and “Harmony.” And then there is war, the opposition we face in our day-to-day lives to live as we are designed to live. Here we have a long poem entitled “Edge,” which explains how we are to live our lives.

The words here are deep ones, thoughtful ones, and thoughtfully considered ones. The poems and devotional discussions fit together like a map to provide direction (one poem is, in fact, entitled “Compass”). 

In both poetry and prose, Fingerprints of Love and War bursts through the traditional boundaries that separate genres, much like the bearer of the message did 2,000 years ago.

Top photograph by Jon Tyson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Increase Your Faith” by Raj Ashok

Sometimes you have to look at the piles of theology books, Christian self-help books, Christian memoirs, Christian history books – and go back to where it all started.

Raj Ashok was 45 when he came to faith. He was born and raised in the Hindu religion, and he considered himself a Hindu. At 45, he became reborn in the Christian faith, and he now considers himself a Christian servant-leader fulfilling God’s mission.

He begins with the basics. Increase Your Faith: 75 Powerful Teachings of Jesus Christ for Your Spiritual Growth is a series of short, concise messages straight from the teachings of Jesus in the Bible. You can read them all at one sitting, but Ashok advises against it. Instead, he suggests, read them slowly, because that’s how faith and understanding develop – slowly.

He includes the seven “I am” statements from the Gospel of John; 43 statements from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 5 to 7); and 25 other powerful statements from all four of the Gospels. 

Raj Ashok

The example of the “do not judge” statement from the Sermon on the Mount shows how Ashok discusses each statement. In Matthew 7:1-2, Jesus says not to judge, “that you be not judged,” because the standard you use to judge will be the standard applied to you. Ashok first discusses how the verse is misunderstood and misapplied, especially how we misapply it when we’re confronted with questionable behavior – we use that verse as a shield. What Jesus was actually aiming at here, he writes, was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who were so quick to point out the sins of others while not holding themselves accountable under the same standard.

So, do we ignore questionable or sinful behavior? For that answer, Ashok turns to Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (6:1-2), which addresses how to reach out and restore in a spirit of gentleness and bearing one another’s burdens. Motive and attitude matter.

The 75 selections of Increase Your Faith can easily be used as a daily devotional series. The first two groupings of the “I am” statements from John and the statements in the Sermon on the Mount are particularly helpful for thematic study as well. 

Top photograph by Ben White via Unsplash. Used with permission.

For Lent: The Word in the Wilderness

This year, for the Lenten season, I decided to read The Word in the Wilderness by Malcolm Guite. Subtitled “A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter,” the book is simultaneously a devotional and a poetry reader.

Some might argue that “devotional” and “poetry reader” are possibly redundant. I might be one of those making that argument. Guite certainly is: “…the poetic imagination does indeed redress an imbalance and is a necessary complement to more rationalistic and analytical ways of knowing. What I would like to do in this book is top put that insight into practice, and turn to poetry for a clarification of who we are, how we pray, how we journey through our lives with God and how he comes to journey with us.”

The book is divided into seven sections, each with an introduction followed by daily poetry readings. Many of the poems are by Guite himself, but you will also find Seamus Heaney, Dante, John Donne, Alfred Tennyson, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Czelaw Milosz and others.

This Guite sonnet is the reading for Ash Wednesday:

Ash Wednesday

Receive this cross of ask upon your brow

Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday’s cross;

The forests of the world are burning now

And you make late repentance for the loss.

But all the trees of God would clap their hands,

The very stones themselves would shout and sing,

If you could covenant to love these lands

And recognize in Christ their lord and king.

He sees the slow destruction of those trees,

He weeps to see the ancient places burn,

And still you make what purchases you please

And still to dust and ashes you return.

But Hope could rise from ashes even now

Beginning with this sign upon your brow.

He then wonders at the use of ashes – a sign of destruction – as “a sign of repentance and renewal.” And yet there is something profound in that sign being both one of renewal and a signal of our ultimate return to ashes and dust.

Malcom Guite

Guite is a poet, but he is also an Anglican priest and chaplain of Girton College at the University of Cambridge. He’s published several books, including several poetry collections, such as Sounding the Seasons and The Singing Bowl. He’s a lecturer and speaker. And he’s a rock band musician part of the Cambridge-based group Mystery Train. He received his undergraduate and masters degrees from Cambridge, and a Ph.D from Durham University, where his dissertation, according to his entry in Wikipedia, focused on the poets Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne and their influence on T.S. Eliot.

I’ve now read the first three of the poems and readings in The Word in the Wilderness. Already I know that this is a Lenten journey well worth taking.

Top photograph by Jane Illnerova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

James Bryan Smith’s “Rich Mullins”

If one had to name the most influential musician in Christian contemporary music of the last 40 years, the answer might be Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Stephen Curtis Chapman, and several other well-known names. But the musician who influenced them, and had an impact that is still reverberating 18 years after his death, is Rich Mullins.

Song after song, hit after hit, Mullins was as known for his music as he was for his rather iconoclastic reaction to fame. He shrugged it off. He saw himself as a broken vessel, redeemed by his Creator, and his music reflected that belief.

And millions of people identified with that music. “My God is an Awesome God,” “Step by Step,” “Creed,” “Elijah”  – songs written and recorded by Mullins and recorded by scores of other musicians. Some have already made their way into contemporary hymn books.

Mullins was also known for his friendship with Brennan Manning (1937-2013), and was counseled by Manning the last few years of his life. Mullins adopted Brenann’s “Ragamuffin gospel” for the name of his band, and how he described himself – a ragamuffin.

Mullins’ influence extended into my own family. I can remember how the news of his death in an automobile accident in 1997 affected both my wife and my oldest son, who was then in high school. For them and millions of others, Mullins’ death was more than the death of a favored musician or even a friend; it was like losing someone whose music touched their hearts and souls.

In 2000, James Bryant Smith wrote a biography of Mullins, Rich Mullins: A Devotional Biography: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven, and he did it in an unusual way. Rather than the more common chronological account, Smith wrote the biography as a devotional. Perhaps for that reason, the work has remained current.

With an introduction by Brennan Manning, the biography is structured around 10 devotional themes: family, creed, the love of God, trusting in Jesus, creation, struggle and pain, simplicity, sin and temptation, loving one another, and death and the life to come. The discussion for each theme combines, biographical information, interviews with people who knew Mullins, some of Mullins’ own writings, quotations, and the words of Mullins’ songs. With such disparate elements, the biography could have come across disjointed and cobbled together, but it doesn’t; it stays centered on Mullins and his faith.

James Bryant Smith

This was a widely popular Christian musician whose typical concert clothes were a t-shirt, jeans, and bare feet. Early on, he fronted at concerts for big name Christian bands; by the end of his life, the singer and songwriter who typically performed in church settings had eclipsed them all.

The most telling line in the book, among many telling lines, is this, and it speaks volumes about Mullins and his work: “Rich Mullins was not encumbered by the need to succeed; he was captive to the need to create.”

Smith received his M.Div. degree from Yale University Divinity School and his D. Min. degree from Fuller Seminary. He is a professor of theology at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and leads the Christian Spiritual Formation Institute there.

He is the author of several books, including Room of Marvels (2004); The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows (2009); The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ (2010); The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love (2010); A Spiritual Formation Workbook: Small Group Resources for Nurturing Christian Growth (2010); Embracing the Love of God: The Path and Promise of Christian Life (2010); The Kingdom and the Cross (2010); and Hidden in Christ: Living as God's Beloved (2013).

Rich Mullins: A Devotional Biography is a profound way to do two things simultaneously: learn about the life and music of a man who became a legend, and examine one’s own life in the process.

Brandon Heath and Third Day sing "Creed" by Rich Mullins

Rich Mullins in concert, singing "Step by Step"

“Identity Crisis” by Michael Perkins

When it comes to devotionals, my preference is for simple and straightforward with a sharp point. With Identity Crisis: 21 Days of Discovering Who God Says You Are by Michael Perkins, I got all three.

Perkins, who’s pastor of Trinity Church of the Nazarene in Corpus Christi, Texas, has written a simple devotional guide with a thematic point. Based on what he experienced in his own life, he learned that his understanding of himself was not the same as God’s understanding of him. He echoes what may be almost universal thinking for all of us: “I’ve never felt like I was good enough. I never felt like I was smart enough. I never felt like I fit in.”

I’ve followed Michael’s blog for more than four years, and those words in his introduction took me aback? This is Michael Perkins, the guy who has pastored churches, is married to a wonderful wife and has a great kid?

Yes, this is Michael Perkins.

His devotional guide is simple. Identity Crisis includes 21 short devotionals to cover a three-week period. Each devotional deals with a specific characteristic of who God says you are. And then there are two prompts – a prayer and a challenge.

The entries include friend, child, forgiven, valuable, purchased, masterpiece, accepted, chosen, and more. One of my favorites was “letter” – did you know that you were a living letter, an epistle to be read by everyone?

Identity Crisis is a wonderful devotional guide, simple, written in easily understandable language, and speaking directly to hearts. Ours and God’s.

Photograph: Michael Perkins speaking at a church retreat.