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"Face To Face: Meditations on the Life Everlasting" by G. Thompson Brown This is an inspirational book that guides the reader in thinking about heaven and the life to come. "Tommy" Brown, who has been a personal friend for many years, offers readers thirty-one inspiring mediations on the hope of life everlasting. With a wise and comforting voice, Brown speaks realistically of pain, aging, loss and death, but also speaks encouragingly and confidently from the sure hope of the Gospel. Each of the devotions consists of brief scripture readings, quotations from classic devotional sources, and a brief meditation by the author. G. Thompson Brown is a retired Presbyterian minister and Professor Emeritus in World Christianity at Columbia Theological Seminary. Before his teaching career he was a missionary in Asia and served as an official on the Board of World Missions (PCUS). This book published by the Geneva Press of the PCUSA, in Louisville, KY, in 2001 is available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble in paperback for $14.95. |
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"The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?" by Peter J. Gomes Peter Gomes, an American Baptist who has served as the minister at Harvard University's Memorial Chapel since 1970, is widely known as a speaker and has written a number of books on the Christian life experience. The New York Review of Books has said that "[Gomes] has emerged as the foremost modern American interpreter of the Bible for a wide and sometimes unchristian audience," and identifies this book as his most important book yet. He writes out of a broad knowledge of both Christian and secular literature, and as he writes he also includes many revealing anecdotes from his life and ministry at Harvard. This easy to read book is divided into three parts: The Trouble with Scripture; The Gospel and Conventional Wisdom; and Where Do We Go From Here? In the "Introduction" Gomes says: "I write another Bible book, with the radical suggestion that we use the Bible to go beyond the Bible and embrace that to which it points: the gospel, or the good news. . . .I suggest that Jesus came into the world not as a Bible teacher directing us back to the text, but as one who proclaimed a realm beyond the Bible." Those who have read other books by Gomes will find this one most interesting, and I believe that those who read Gomes for the first time will find the book both engaging and helpful. This book too is available at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble for in paperback for $14.95. |
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"The Shack" by William P. Young Some of us at First Presbyterian got acquainted with this book a year ago. We read and then talked about it in some small group gatherings here at the church. This little book, an intriguing novel, hit the Christian book market in an unpretentious yet most surprising way two years ago. The Shack is the story of one man's journey into the heart of God as he struggles to deal with guilt, shame, anger, and rage that enter into his life after his six year old daughter is abducted and brutally murdered. It has been described as "a guy-meets-God story". Though fiction, it does wrestle with the timeless question: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? The answers that this man gets will surprise you and maybe change the way you think about God. Wynonna Judd, the recording artist, has said: "Reading The Shack during a very difficult transition in my life, this story has blown the door wide open to my soul." The Shack by William P. Young is available in paperback for about $15.00 in most bookstores, or can be purchased through Amazon on the internet at discount prices. |
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"Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds" by Donald W. Shriver, Jr. With all the talk about what is means to be patriotic in times of peace and war, Donald Shriver's book is a helpful and thought provoking read. The book is a thoughtful and authentically patriotic exploration of the subject that our society and others really need. David E. Blight, a Yale University professor says, "Shriver reminds us, in this age of facile, flag-brandishing Americanism that there is a deeper kind of national devotion, rooted in our conflicted history, and mindful that our greatest critics are often our best patriots." The book recalls the difficulty of "remembering misdeeds" in Germany, South Africa, and in the USA. However,"[the] book focuses on the positive steps which the citizens in the three countries have taken to acknowledge and remedy a collective past. . . ." The book is not a light read, but one worthy of your time and effort. Honest Patriots was the winner of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion, granted by the University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, in 2009. Donald Shriver, a Presbyterian (USA) minister, was once a campus minister here in North Carolina, and later the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York. He continues at Union Seminary as Professor of Ethics and President Emeritus. The book is published by the Oxford University Press, 2005, and like most books is available through Amazon or Barnes and Noble. |