The Return

Review: You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living Henri J.M. Nouwen Convergent 2017 If you aren’t familiar with the work of Henri Nouwen this compilation from his writings, talks, and letters, as the introduction tells us, will introduce you to him.   If you have read Nouwen before this will remind you over and again how sensitive and loving he was.   And how he demonstrated his ability to speak the truth in love.  I have browsed randomly through many of the entries and each one touched me in some way.   The readings are brief, but not without deep content.   A simple line or two from one of the readings says, “The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death…. But it does reveal to us that, in deed, love is stronger than death.”   (104).    I am glad to have discovered this book and intend to use regularly.   I recommend it to you as well.   It does contain a list...

Review: The Satisfied Soul: Showing the Supremacy of God in All of Life John Piper Multnomah 2017 Seems like there’s been several of the more mature leaders of the Christian faith who have assembled some of their work into volumes like this one.   Not a bad thing.   For those who don’t know them already it’s a great introduction to what the author has spent his life teaching.   For those that are acquainted, these works are like paging through a scrapbook. Either way, they continue to speak.  This book draws together a wide range of meditations or teaching points.   I have sampled several throughout the book and find them to be more instruction than meditation.   The meditation happens after the reader finishes the reading.   A quick look at the table of contents gives the reader a sense of the variety of areas Piper has included.   There’s also a subject, a scripture, and a person index included for the reader’s...

Review: Awakening Faith: Daily Devotions from the Early Church James Stuart Bell with Patrick J. Kelly Zondervan 2013 Who knew?   I certainly didn’t.   What a rich legacy those of the early church have left for us!   And it’s been all but lost to the majority of the believers in modern times.   Lots of reasons for that loss, but this isn’t the place for listing them. What it is the place for is to appreciate what Bell and Kelly, along with all those that make this sort of work happen, have done for us.   The introduction explains a little about the Church Fathers and what some of their concerns were, how they understood their life and times, and some of the encouragement they offered.   A short biographical sketch of each of them is included at the end of the book.   I found that very helpful in placing them in their respective time frame.   Polycarp was very early and Maximus the Confessor about 500 years later. One of them eve...