I wasn’t late posting about 2018 Advent Resources, although I did mean to blog today’s titles sooner. This year I thought I’d try to tackle some additional devotional reading, and the two titles are The Soul in Paraphrase: A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poems, edited by Leland Ryken, and With My Own Eyes, a third-person retelling of the Gospels by none other than Lutheran bishop extraordinaire Bo Giertz, translated by LCMS Rev. Bror Erickson!
I gotta be honest. I’m not expecting to get through both of these books this month.
This past year I set goals instead of making resolutions. My goal was to read through Scripture, amongst other things, but I didn’t make it super specific as to how I’d get that done. Missed days? Ok. I can try to make them up later.
Feel free to believe I’m super disciplined and pious, but I am woefully behind on reading Scripture. Not despairingly ashamed or anything, but I’m pretty confident I can’t really catch up to finish the holy books.
Now I’m caught in the Catch-22 that I don’t want to read Scripture just to “git ‘er done.” I want to read Scripture because it is God’s Word, deserving of my time. But I don’t want to let myself off the hook of my very good and reasonable goal just because it’s hard either! Gah.
Am I reasonable? Simplify? Conquer or at least tame the chaos a bit? No. Instead I keep reading multiple things because, who knows, apparently I can rationalize it. Sigh.
Anyway, regarding my other religious reading, so far I am very much enjoying With My Own Eyes. It’s unlike anything I’ve personally read before. Maybe there is an entire genre out there of Lutheran theologians retelling Biblical stories of the Gospel in a detailed and realistic narrative way, and I just don’t know about it. 😉 It’s very interesting, clever, insightful. The introduction was also eye-opening, learning about why a conservative Lutheran pastor would undertake such an approach. We’ll see when I get to posting a review, but I can already tell you now that it’s worth purchasing or at least adding to your Amazon wish list.
I recommend it. 🙂 I just won’t recommend following in all my other footsteps!
Ah, the co-mingling of penitence and celebration. Blessed Advent, folks.