Two Books for the New Year

My desire for cultivating an "everyday liturgy" has been to be in constant prayer with the story of God.  Cultivating God’s story within your own life, your family, and your church is a long, arduous adventure in unlearning the ways of the world.  We tell time not by Black Fridays but by Good Fridays, not Columbus Day but Transfiguration Day, not Election Day but the Feast of Christ the King. We, like Israel in the Exodus, are called out of the world’s story and  into God’s story. As Bobby Gross writes, by some mysterious grace, the light of Christ who lived in history comes into our present experience with spiritual power, and the hope of the Christ who will return in glory to renew all things also brings power into our lives.  Eternity intersects Time.  Keeping the Christian year helps us to live at that intersection.

With this in mind, it is only a few days until the Christian New Year, which is Nov. 29th this year.  There are two resources I will be using extensively over the next year and I wanted to share them with you.

First, I will be using Living The Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, a book of weekly devotionals based on the church calendar.  The devotional has been designed to bring the reader into God’s story through lectionary readings and prayer.  Each week has commentary on the lectionary reading and a collect to focus on throughout the week.

Second, I will be reading through the Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings (Year C). This book is one way I am working toward my plan to decrease the amount of new books I read and go to the ancient sources of our faith.  Through the combining of the lectionary readings for each week with the commentary of the early church fathers and mothers, this devotional brings us into the rich poetics of the early church.

Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God
Bobby Gross
IVP Press
$11.56 (Amazon)

Ancient Christian Devotional: A Year of Weekly Readings (Year C)
Ed. Cindy Crosby and Thomas Oden
IVP Press
$12.24 (Amazon)