Last week I spent a day in Grand Rapids and most of that day was taken up with meetings at the head office for Zondervan. As you probably know, Zondervan will be publishing my next couple of books, so we had a series of meetings to discuss, among other things, marketing plans (that’s right—we met to figure out how we can force you to part with a few of your dollars and hand it to us!). We also shot a bit of video and talked about plans for the next book.

As I was touring around the offices, I found quite a few interesting new products, some of which I knew of already and some of which were entirely new to me, that I thought I’d make you aware of. And make sure you read to the end—I’ll make it worth your while (or someone’s while, anyway). Here are a few of the products that caught my eye:

God So Loved, He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity by Kelly Kapic with Justin Borger - You may know the name Kelly Kapic as one of the co-editors of the modernization of John Owen’s Overcoming Sin and Temptation. If you haven’t got a copy of that book, well, you really need to. It’s a good one. Kapic is also the author of a new book called God So Loved, He Gave. He  managed to get endorsements from a long list of people including Tim Keller, Jerry Bridges (who calls it “an amazing book”), Bryan Chapell, Michael Horton and quite a few others. Here’s the publisher’s description: “God So Loved, He Gave places the practice of giving within the larger story of God's generosity. Here we discover how our participation in the overflow of divine giving is vitally connected to the Trinitarian nature of God, the unfolding drama of Scripture and ultimately the Gospel itself.” And here is Jerry Bridges’ glowing endorsement: “God So Loved, He Gave is an amazing book. In it Kelly Kapic deftly moves from our being recipients of all God's generous gifts through Christ to our being stewards of God's gifts as we share them with others. This book is both encouraging and challenging. It should be read attentively and prayerfully.” [Westminster Books | Amazon]

A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge. According to the publisher “In A God-Sized Vision, Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge recount the fascinating stories of revivals throughout history--from biblical times to the Great Awakenings to more recent revivals in China--strengthening your understanding of God's work in the past and deepening your faith in the possibility of revival today.” This book also sports quite a list of endorsers including Tim Keller and Jerry Bridges (deja vu), Nancy Leigh DeMoss, George Marsden and D.A. Carson. Here is what Keller says about it: “The importance of spiritual revival and the necessity of conversion is being questioned in many evangelical and Reformed circles. I'm so glad that this book is appearing now, as a witness both to how God has worked in the church in the past and what he can do in the future.” [Westminster Books | Amazon]

The Reason for God: Conversations on Faith and Life (DVD) - Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God has proven to be a hit and even made its way onto the New York Times list of bestsellers. “Captured live and unscripted, pastor and author Timothy Keller meets with a group of people over six sessions to address their doubts and objections to Christianity. Using literature, philosophy, real-life experiences, and the Bible, Keller and the group explore the truth of Christianity.” This is one that I haven’t yet had time to watch, but I do intend to do that soon. From the bit I have seen it looks like a great setting for conversation and quite a unique format in which to discuss big issues: Isn’t the Bible a myth? Why does God allow suffering? How can God send good people to hell? [Westminster Books | Amazon]

There are many books out there that describe Reformed theology and that invite people to become part of the Reformed tradition. However, most of these books are a product of the years before the advent of this young, restless, Reformed reality that is all the rage today. Most such books predate the New Calvinism.

New to the field, and largely distinct from the rest, is Letters to a Young Calvinist by James K.A. Smith. This is one of the few books to speak directly to this new young, restless, Reformed movement. Written in the form of letters from a mentor to a young man who is investigating Reformed theology, the book offers a winsome 125-page introduction to the tradition and to the way it works out in real life. The author says "These letters don't offer an apologetic defense of Calvinism, trying to defend it against all comers; rather, I envision the addressee of these letters as someone who has already become interested in this tradition and is looking for a guide into unfamiliar territory."

Smith leads the young recipient of these letters into the tradition in a systematic way. He begins with words of welcome, expressing the way that Reformed theology leads us to seek out and discover deep wells of the Scripture. For example, "I think it is one of the hallmarks of the Reformed tradition that it has a long history of encouraging curiosity about creation. Unlike some of the places you and I have been, which really discourage questioning in order to get people to toe the party line, the Reformed tradition has long encourages a kind of holy intellectual riskiness."

He warns of one of the most perilous sins of the Reformed: "Now is as good a time as any to warn you about one of the foremost temptations that accompanies Reformed theology: pride. And the worst kind of pride: religious pride (one of Screwtape's letters speaks quite eloquently about this). This is an infection that often quickly contaminates those who discover the Reformed tradition, and it can be deadly: a kind of West Nile virus."

Smith suggests that the best one-word summary of Reformed theology is grace. He speaks of grace going "all the way down," by which he means that grace infuses every part of Reformed theology. And, indeed, Reformed theology is a theology of grace--grace in every part. He says (rightly!) that Reformed theology is not all about election and predestination; they are components of the theology but they are not all there is to it. "I often feel that Reformed theology is ill served by a myopic focus on these things, as legitimate as they are." And he emphasizes that Reformed theology is inherently unfinished. "It seems to me very un-Reformed to prop up Reformed theology as a timeless ideal, a consummated achievement, when one of the Reformers' mantras was semper reformanda—always reforming. You shouldn't expect a lifetime of pursuing the truth to result in constant entrenchment into what you thought when you were twenty."

Home. I love home. I love my home and I love the very idea, the concept, of home. God is good to give us home, to give us a place where we can just be, a place where we can center our lives. Think about your home, think about how good it is to have a place of your own, a place where you have your stuff and your people and where you live your life, and you’ll realize what a calling it was for Christ to have no home, to have no place to call his own.

We look at home today, we look at private life, and tend to assume that things have always been as they are now. And yet this is not the case. The home and the private life have developed over time, slowly evolving into what they are today and slowly evolving toward what they will be tomorrow. Home and private life are the twin subjects of Bill Bryson’s new book: At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

Bryson recently purchased an old Norfolk Church of England rectory as his home and it provides the starting point for his investigations. “Looking around my house, I was startled and somewhat appalled to realize how little I knew about the domestic world around me. Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, playing idly with the salt and pepper shakers, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea why, out of all the spices in the world, we have such an abiding attachment to these two. Why not pepper and cardamom, or salt and cinnamon? And why do forks have four tines and not three or five?” Those mundane observations and the questions they generated got him started in his quest to understand home. And somehow he makes home, the most mundane place in our lives, utterly fascinating.

“If you had to summarize it in a sentence, you could say that the history of private life is a history of getting comfortable slowly.” Do you enjoy your home and all its comforts? That’s because we humans have been working tirelessly for all these millennia to make home a place of comfort. Slowly, slowly we have gotten to the point we are at today.

Ministering the Master’s Way is a unique little series published by DayOne. It is a series that knows exactly the audience it is trying to reach—the pastor or elder of the local church. Each of the books looks to a different practical aspect of the Christian ministry. Many of the titles deal with very niche topics, but ones that are largely untouched by any other author—visiting the sick, accepting a call to minister at a local church, offering pastoral comfort to those who grieve, even caring for the pastor’s voice.

There are currently 9 volumes in the series and, unless I am mistaken, several more are in the works.

• Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness
• Test, Train, Affirm & Send into Ministry: Recovering the Local Church's Responsibility in the External Call
• Teach them to Pray: Cultivating God-dependency in Your Church
• Make Your Church’s Money Work: Achieving Financial Integrity in Your Congregation
• Look After Your Voice: Taking Care of the Preacher’s Greatest Asset
• Handle that New Call with Care: Accepting or Declining a Call to a New Congregation
• Discipline with Care: Applying Biblical Correction in Your Church
• Counsel Your Flock: Fulfilling Your Role as a Teaching Shepherd
• Comfort Those Who Grieve: Ministering God's Grace in Times of Loss

This is a great series to buy for your pastor or elders. Get them a few of the volumes and I suspect they’ll be eager to complete the set and to seek out the new ones as they are released.

As Christians we sit through a lot of sermons. The preaching ministry is one of God’s greatest means of grace to us, the means by which he teaches us truth, by which he calls us to pursue truth and to live out of it. And yet many of us are passive listeners, people who expect great preaching skill from the pastor but demand no listening skill from ourselves.

Lately I have come across a few resources dedicated to helping Christians be better listeners, to help them emphasize active listening. Here are three of them, each with a few words of description and an overview of the contents. If you have never read a book on how to listen to a sermon, I’d encourage you to do that. Take full advantage of the privilege you have of sitting under the ministry of the Word!

Helping Johnny Listen

Helping Johnny Listen by Thadeus Bergmeier. “The preaching of God’s Word happens tens of thousands of times each week across the world.  As these sermons are given, when the preacher is faithful to the text of the Scripture, it is as if God is speaking to the people of that given congregation. The question is, are people listening? Listening to preaching is more than showing up, sitting still or even nodding one’s head.  It is taking that which is preached and applying it to life.  Helping Johnny Listen is a book designed to help the average person who sits in the average church on the average Sunday take full advantage of the sermons they hear so that they are able to live what they hear.” 

Thad’s book is written from a pastoral perspective and is applicable to any level of listener. I was glad to see that he included a section on the difficulties of being a preacher and a listener in the Internet age—when better sermons by better preachers are available in the millions online. He focuses on the importance of being a faithful listener within the long context of a single local church.

Here is how he structures the book:

1. The Preaching Intersection
2. Receive the Preaching of God’s Word
3. Examine the Preaching of God’s Word
4. Live the Preaching of God’s Word
5. Persevere the Preaching of God’s Word

($20 at Amazon)

Expository Listening

Expository Listening: A Handbook for Hearing and Doing God’s Word by Ken Ramey. “In many people’s mind, if they don’t get anything out of the sermon, it’s the preacher’s fault. But that’s only half true. The Bible teaches that listeners must partner with the preacher so that the Word of God accomplishes its intended purpose of transforming their life. Expository Listening is your handbook on biblical listening. It is designed to equip you not only to understand what true, biblical preaching sounds like, but also how to receive it, and ultimately, what to do about it. You need to know how to look for the Word of God, to love the Word of God, and to live the Word of God. In this way, God and His Word will be honored and glorified through your life.”

Ken’s book is also written at a popular level and, with just 110 pages of text, is quite a manageable read. It comes endorsed by John MacArthur, Joel Beeke, Jay Adams, Lance Quinn, Thabiti Anyabwile and yours truly.

He follows this structure:

1. Welcoming the Word
2. A Theology of Listening
3. Hearing with Your Heart
4. Harrowing Your Heart to Hear
5. The Itching Ear Epidemic
6. The Discerning Listener
7. Practice What You Hear
8. Listening Like Your Life Depends on It

($10.19 at Amazon | $10.07 at Westminster Books)

Listen Up

Listen Up by Christopher Ash. “Why on earth does anyone need a guide on how to listen to sermons? Don’t we simply need to ‘be there’ and stay awake? Yet Jesus said: ‘Consider carefully how you listen.’ The fact is, much more is involved in truly listening to Bible teaching than just sitting and staring at the preacher. Christopher Ash outlines seven ingredients for healthy listening. He then deals with how to respond to bad sermons - ones that are dull, or inadequate, or heretical. And finally, he challenges us with ideas for helping and encouraging our Bible teachers to give sermons that will really help us to grow as Christians.”

Ash’s book is actually just a booklet, weighing in at only 31 pages. The beauty of this one is that very thing—its brevity. This is the kind of booklet you can buy in bulk and distribute widely. Many churches hand it out to all of their members as a reminder of their duty to listen. In those 31 pages, Ash packs in quite a lot of value. The book is an an attractive, fun, easy-to-read format that will make people want to read it.

Here is the way he breaks down the subject:

1. Expect God to Speak
2. Admit God Knows Better Than You
3. Check the Preacher Says What the Passage Says
4. Hear the Sermon in Church
5. Be There Week by Week
6. Do What the Bible Says
7. Do What the Bible Says Today—and Rejoice!
8. How to Listen to Bad Sermons
9. Suggestions for Encouraging Good Preaching

($2.39 at Westminster Books, discounts for bulk purchasing)

I announced last week that Cruciform Press, the publishing company I have co-founded is now officially in business. Our first two books are available right now.

The first of these books is my own: Sexual Detox: A Guide for Guys Who Are Sick of Porn. If you have been following this site over the past year you know that Detox first made its appearance as a series of blog posts and, subsequent to that, as a free e-book. And now, at long last, it’s a real book.

This new book is much improved from the free version I gave away. It has been professionally edited, it has been expanded and it has been reorganized. It is, in every way, a better book.

Here is a brief introduction to it:

Sick of porn? Time to detox. A huge percentage of men need a porn detox, a moral and psychological reset. Do you? If so, whether you know it or not, pornography has corrupted your thinking, weakened your conscience, warped your sense of right and wrong, and twisted your understanding and expectations of sexuality. You need a reset by the One who created sex.

In this book, I hope to help you reorient your understanding of sex, both in the big picture and in the act itself, according to God's plan for this great gift. I want to help you detox from all the junk you've seen, all the lies you've believed. This is not an easy process. It is rarely a quick process. It involves a letting go of old realities and an embrace of a new normal. To be willing to go through it you need to see how bad your current situation really is, and how the path you are on leads no place good. You need to see that the path of porn leads only to more isolation, guilt, alienation, and pain. Whether single or married, such a reset to normal is the only thing that can ever equip you to become a pure, loving, attentive, sacrificial husband. But you already know you need to change.

Few Christian men indulge in porn without realizing they need to quit. Every Christian guy who looks at porn wants to stop, but many of us want to stop just a little bit less than we want to keep going. The problem isn't knowledge-it's desire and ability. So sin prevails. Here's a promise. You'll never stop until you begin to see the monstrous nature of the sin you're committing. You'll never stop until the sin is more horrifying to you than the commission of the sin is enjoyable. You'll need to hate that sin before you can find freedom from it. That means you need more grace. You need to cry out to be changed and to see the monstrous nature of this sin. And then you need to behave in faith that God will meet you with grace as you act to cut off the porn and begin the reset.

This is a book specifically geared to young men, though older guys have been benefitting from it as well.

Here are a few of the endorsements:

"In an age when sex is worshiped as a god, a little book like this can go a long way to helping men overcome sexual addiction." (Mark Driscoll)

"Tim Challies strikes just the right balance in this brief but necessary work. His assessment of the sexual epidemic in our culture is sober but not without hope. His advice is practical but avoids a checklist mentality. His discussion of sexual sin is frank without being inappropriate. In a day when it can almost be assumed that every young male struggles with pornography, lust, and masturbation, this book will be a valuable resource. I'm grateful for Tim's wisdom, candor, and grace." (Kevin DeYoung)

"In an era in which every man is online, pornography is not just a problem for Christian men; it is THE problem. All men face the temptation of this mind polluting, heart-hardening, soul-deadening sin. Many men, young and old, in our churches need Sexual Detox. This is a welcomed book. In a short, compressed format Challies identifies the toxic nature of this sin and offers practical, doable and, above all, gospel-centered hope for men. I want every man I serve and all the guys on our staff to read this book." (Tedd Tripp)

I believe this is the kind of book that you can buy to keep on-hand and give away. I plan on keeping a few copies around to give out to young men because, trust me, just about all of them need some manner of detox. So why don’t you consider doing that?

The best place to buy it is directly from Cruciform Press. There you can buy it in Print or PDF with ePub available very soon. You can visit ChristianAudio to purchase the Audio book if you prefer to listen.

Some time ago I told you that I was involved in beginning a new publishing company called Cruciform Press. Well, I’m glad to say that at long last we are official—our new web site has gone live and our first books are available for purchase.

If you are at the Desiring God conference this weekend, be sure to check out the books in the bookstore. And keep an eye out for my co-founders Bob Bevington and Kevin Meath, both of whom are there.

For the rest of you, be sure to visit cruciformpress.com and check it out. Let me share just a few details about our company.

Distinctives

What makes Cruciform different?

Probably the best one-word description is reliability: a new book, same price, every month. We just think it makes sense to offer you something reliable. We want to be:

• reliable in our Christian theology
• reliable when it comes to how often new books are released
• reliable in the quality of our writing and editing
• reliable in the distinctiveness of our book covers
• reliable in the quality of our book layout
• reliable in our pricing

Life is busy and complex. As Christians, we can be tempted to neglect our spiritual lives, especially when it comes to reading books that will equip and encourage us in our faith. At Cruciform, we want to help make that vital process of ongoing spiritual growth easier.

We want our books to be simple, clear, and reliable, as well as inspiring and helpful. Our hope in all this is to serve you well in your efforts to honor and live for Jesus Christ in the local community to which God has called you.

Subscriptions

There is something else that makes us distinctive. We will release one book per month, always right around the first of the month. To make things easier for you, we are offering these books as a subscription—you can subscribe now and have a new book sent to you every month. Or, of course, you can buy only the books that interest you.

Also, we are offering all of our books in a variety of formats: printed, audio, PDF, and ePub.

Sexual Detox

The first book out the door is my own: Sexual Detox: A Guide for Guys Who Are Sick of Porn. You remember that I wrote Detox first as a series of blog posts and then as a free e-book. It deals with pornography and sexuality and, as indicated by the subtitle, is geared toward men. This new version of the book has been edited, expanded and just generally improved; even if you’ve read Detox before, you may want to do so again as it truly is much better now. I’ll have more to say about the book next week.

But for now, do know that it’s available right now in all of those formats. Learn More.

Wrestling with an Angel

The second book, also available right now, is Greg Lucas’ Wrestling with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace. It comes endorsed by Joni Eareckson Tada, Justin Taylor, Noel Piper and others. This is an exceptional book and one I know you’ll enjoy reading. Yes, I’m biased, I admit. But you can trust me! Here is a description of it:

“It sounded at first like something out of an old horror movie. I thought maybe someone was just playing around, but then I heard it again and again, a loud piercing cry, and less like Hollywood every time. The windows were down in my police cruiser on that warm fall day, but I still couldn’t tell where the sounds came from. I began looking around for the unlikely sight of someone being disemboweled in a mall parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. Seeing nothing, and still hearing the screams, I called in a ‘disturbance.’ Around the next corner I found the source of the commotion.” So begins Greg Lucas’ captivating account of life as a husband, a police officer, and Jake’s dad. Jake Lucas, the first of four children, lives with severe physical and mental challenges. Caring for him each day is an ordeal few of us can imagine, and this story of Jake’s first 17 years is not one you will soon forget. But the remarkable thing is how the whole narrative is saturated with wonder at the grace and goodness of God, who brings hope and promise through his Son into the darkest of circumstances. In this book, we see that Jake’s problems are our problems, only bigger, and the challenges of caring for him carry profound lessons about God’s care for us. Wrestling with an Angel is about tragedy and laughter and pain and joy. It is about faith and grace and endurance and God’s unfailing, loving wisdom daily being worked out in each of our lives, whatever the nature or extent of our difficulties. Here is a book that may explain faith to you in ways you never quite grasped, through a life few of us can relate to. When it is all done, we come away better able to live as Christ calls us to live.

It’s also available now in all of those formats. Learn More.

Visit our site and you can also learn about the books that will be releasing in December and January.

Stephen Hawkings’ The Grand Design has shot straight to the top of the New York Times list of bestsellers. The book is his atheistic answer to questions like these ones: Why is there a universe—why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why are the laws of nature what they are? Did the universe need a designer and creator? Edgar Andrews was kind enough to allow me to post his review of the book. Andrews is author of Who Made God?: Searching for a Theory of Everything, Emeritus Professor of Materials at the University of London and an international expert on the science of large molecules. Which is to say that he is well-suited to write a review of a book like this one. Here is what he says about The Grand Design:

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking sold over nine million copies of his book A Brief History of Time. Now, 22 years later, he has co-authored The Grand Design which immediately hit the No.1 spot in the New York Times best-seller list. But the sequel is so inferior to the prequel in intellectual quality that a reviewer in The Times Saturday Review (London, 11 September 2010) writes: 'It reads like a stretched magazine article … there is too much padding and too much recycling of long-stale material… I doubt whether The Grand Design would have been published if Hawking's name were not on the cover'.

So why is the new book a runaway best-seller? Because it claims that science makes God redundant. Let's take a closer look at the claims advanced in The Grand Design.

Last week I came to the point (and it happens at least once every year) that I just couldn’t face reading another book. At least I couldn’t face reading another non-fiction book. Usually this means that I take a break from reading for a while—I just find something else to do to bide my time. But this year, to my surprise, I kind of felt like reading a novel. I barely ever read novels—maybe one every two or three years; less, even. And yet here I was, suddenly craving some fiction.

While I keep up with the world of non-fiction, and especially Christian non-fiction, I have not kept up at all with fiction. So I wondered what I should read. I ended up looking up the list of recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and figured I’d read some of those. Though they may not be the most popular novels out there, they will at least be good, right? So I grabbed the winners for 2009, 2007 and 2005. And then I read ‘em. And now I want to offer just a short review of each, though as I write I find that I really do not even know how to review fiction. Nevertheless, let me give it a shot.

Olive Kitteredge

First up was 2009’s winner Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout. This is actually a collection of 13 short stories that read as if they exist in some nebulous space between short stories and a novel. What binds the stories together is the common setting of a small Maine town and the title character, Olive Kitteredge. Olive appears in each of the stories, sometimes as the protagonist and sometimes as a bit player. She is a complex and fascinating character—an elderly woman who is bitter, blunt and flawed. And yet she’s endearing in her own strange way. The stories follow her and her family and her town through the decades.

There is a bit of a soap opera quality to Olive Kitteredge, I suppose, something strangely voyeuristic. And yet Strout has created such complex and fascinating characters in Olive and the people around her that I could hardly look away. Even when the stories slow down, as they sometimes must, the writing is so good, the prose so wonderfully-written, that the book is a joy to read. “They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.” That’s good stuff!

I suppose the morality of it all is just a little suspect at times. Strout’s characters are very human and yet perhaps just a little bit too complex for their own good. She continually explores love and the way it extends, or does not extend, to old age. She is gut-honest in doing so, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. One thing she does not find is a character who truly loves and honors his or her spouse through all of life, from the beginning of marriage to the end. In almost every case, the characters have fallen in love and are now on the edge of falling out, or they are in love but each has a skeleton hidden from the other. So perhaps the book’s primary theme is the disappointment life brings. That sounds a little bit depressing and yet, for too many people, that is the reality—that as life passes, it becomes ever more disappointing.

Here is just a short quote that stood out to me:

During Debussy he fell asleep, his arms folded across his chest. Glancing at her husband, Jane felt her heart swell with the music, and with love for him, this man next to her, this old (!) man, who had been followed through life by his own childhood troubles--a mother always, always mad at him. In his face right now she felt she could see the little boy, furtive, forever scared; even as he slept here at this very moment there was a tautness of anxiety on his face. A gift, she thought again, placing her mittened hand lightly on his leg, a gift to be able to know someone for so many years.

The Road

The second book I read was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This is a novel set in a post-apocalyptic world (and yes, the book was recently made into a movie). As such it is very dark and dreary in its writing and in its setting. In fact, McCarthy does a remarkable job of making the prose match the setting. And I mean that as a good thing. As you read you’ll find that the language wonderfully suits the subject matter. And when something is meant to stand out from the dreariness it does so through the vibrancy of its language (which reminded me of the girl in the read coat in the otherwise black-and-white Schindler’s List). Here is the kind of prose he writes:

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

We never do find out what happened to the world—just that some great woe befell it; the majority of humans were wiped out and those that remained were reduced to life without technology, without joy; they are battling one another and even eating one another. All the horror of humanity is revealed in this world, and yet one man is traveling with his son, trying desperately to keep him alive, trying to find some kind of peace and safety.

The book is deep and deeply stirring. There are a few swear words along the way and a few kind of gross but largely non-graphic scenes (mostly dealing with cannibalism). Though The Road is not for everyone, those who enjoy fiction that offers more than a light read will be drawn into it. I do not know much about McCarthy, about what he believes and why he believes it, but in this book he proves that he can look deep within humanity and see the ugliness that lurks there.

Gilead

The 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner was Marilynne Robinson for her novel Gilead. This one may be familiar to you since it deals with deeply spiritual themes. The central character in this book is John Ames, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. Married late in life and now facing an imminent death, he writes letters to his seven-year-old son. He tells of his life, trying to tell his son all those things that he will not be able to explain before death comes and takes him away.

I'm trying to tell you things I might never have thought to tell you if I had brought you up myself, father and son, in the usual companionable way. When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.

Once again, the writing is beautifully crafted. It is a book to be savored. I began reading expecting that there would be a plot, a climax, narrative tension—all of those things that tend to advance a story from the first page to the last. But once I realized that Gilead is not that kind of book, I was able to stop looking for it. I was able to slow down and just savor the writing.

To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can't help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it's fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love-I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.

Of the three books here, this is probably the least exciting, but the one with the most to offer. It is a book that you may need to work at a little bit, but one that will reward a close reading.

*****

One quick thought before I close. An interesting benefit of reading books like these—the books that gain recognition—is that they provide a window into our culture, into what people believe, what they enjoy, what they want. But I have a question: I wonder, do we know more about culture from these books, largely written by intellectuals, or from the popular novels of Tom Clancy and Stephen King and the others who sell millions and millions of copies? Which one is the more accurate representation?

Living in a Fallen World is a new series of booklets published by Day One Publications. I have been looking forward to seeing this series and was glad to have the first 8 show up in the mail today. The publisher says they are “small booklets that provide biblical help and practical guidance to people who find themselves in difficulties because of living in a fallen world.” And that about sums it up. Each one is printed in a small format and weighs in at just about 64 pages. They are priced to be bought and sold in bulk—$3.50 each at retail pricing. They are exactly the kind of books you’d want to have available to you at church—short, biblical and inexpensive enough to give away.

You can visit this page to check out the series and to purchase any volumes that interest you.

Here are the 8 booklets available immediately:

Help! I Have Breast Cancer by Brenda Frields - The sense of shock at receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer is very real. Once the shock wears off, your mind seems to explode with questions. Am I going to need chemotherapy and radiation? Am I going to be disfigured by a surgical procedure? Who will take care of my family while I'm ill? Am I going to die? Is God punishing me? This honest account of a personal battle with breast cancer gently helps you to confront your fears, doubts, and worries, and points you toward the solid hope that is in Jesus Christ, who alone can provide peace and strength to face the future.

Help! My Baby Has Died by Reggie Weems - The greatest grief any parent can endure is the death of a child. No other human experience compares to it. Words are insufficient to describe the emotion. This booklet is offered as encouragement from one fellow sufferer to another. It is brief and will not answer every question about your experience or your baby. But it does answer one very important question. There is indeed a God, and he is faithful and worthy of your trust, even now--especially now. He is the eternal, inextinguishable hope for grieving families.

Help! He’s Struggling With Pornography by Brian Croft - This is an unprecedented time. Sexually explicit material is more readily available now than ever before, and a struggle with pornography is often the greatest snare for a Christian man today. Though Christians have been transformed by faith in our Savior Jesus, we are harmed by our sex-saturated culture. So how can a Christian man find victory over pornography? This booklet presents the only true solution: God's power working through the gospel within the context of the local church.

Help! My Marriage Has Grown Cold by Rick Thomas - When two people choose to live in marriage for the rest of their lives, there will be challenges to work through. The transformation from two independent people to a one-flesh, other-centered union is not easy. Perhaps you are finding that your relationship that began so warmly has started to turn cold. Where can you turn for help? This booklet offers practical counsel from the Bible, helping you to work through marriage challenges in a God-honoring way.