Musings: Notes From My Daybook

Been doing some reading lately:

Thanks to Brian I. for passing on Bono’s photoessay entitled On The Move.  This is a publication of Bono’s speech made last year at the National Prayer Breakfast.  Bono’s passion and vision is inspiring, hopeful, and sane.  He offers a place for persons of all faith to respond to the plight of Africa. 

Brian McLaren has recently released a new book, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything.  Don’t like the title—there was little about Jesus’ message that was secret—if you read the Old Testament.  McLaren seems to think that if you package Jesus up as something new and mysterious that folks will be eager to learn about him (or buy the book).

Having made those remarks, McLaren is doing good stuff—rooting Jesus in the Hebraic prophets and setting the context to listen for Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom.  You can get it better by reading John Yoder or Lee Camp or N. T Wright.

Which brings me to another book Simply Christian by N. T. Wright.  This is a keeper.  He says it well and offers a constructive, hopeful vision for Christian faith.  Wright’s work is one that you can pass on to friends and others and find a great conversation going.  You can also rest assured that it rests in serious scholarship and a vital faith.

Tony Jones has authored a new book, Divine Intervention: Encountering God through the Ancient Practice of Lectio Divina. The book offers an introduction to this ancient way of prayer.  And if you have a short attention span or think like a 16 year old teenager, then this is the book for you.  However, if you want to read about lectio divina, then you might be better served by Basil Pennington (Lectio Divina: Renewing the Ancient Practice) or

A great piece by Jane Kramer on Islam and Christianity, or more properly on Roman Catholicism and Islam in the current New Yorker.  Titled The Pope and Islam, the article is more focused on the present Pope and his attempts to created meaningful dialogue, the piece sheds light on the larger issues facing constructive engagement with Islam.

Let’s see what else. . . .oh yes.   Perhaps most obscure, but with plenty of things to mull over—a collection of essays published in 2005 and edited by Harry Stout, Kenneth Minkema and Caleb Maskell.  Jonathan Edwards at 300 serves as an assessment to Edwards ongoing legacy to Christian thought and to American culture.  George Marsden, who wrote the magisterial biography of Edwards, observes in a new essay published in this collection that Edwards offers an intellectual integrity, an appreciation for beauty, and interestingly enough, a capacity to embrace science in ways that many contemporary evangelicals have a hard time doing.

Got to go.  More books to read!