Most of our BookNotes columns celebrate new books or they highlight authors I think you should know about. Our curation is intentional, trying to find the sorts of authors and books we can champion and that our audience — that’s you! — might purchase. Sometimes I wax eloquent, sometime in full-on fan-boy mode. When I’m most long-winded, some love it. A few roll their eyes and skim. I get it.

For this edition I’d like to highlight some books to supplement our list about Lent from a few weeks ago. (Visit the archived BookNotes at our website if you want to scroll back and see those.)That post described more obviously Lenten devotionals and books about this liturgical season. As I walked around our shop this week I kept seeing titles that just seemed right to list for reading in this somber season; some are quite new, some are older. It’s a good list for the curious.

Most of you know the standard practices that accompany this season and the Lenten spiritual tone. If this is new to you or you are talking to someone who worked up the courage to ask what that ashen smear on your forehead was all about a few Wednesdays ago, I’d recommend Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal by Esau McCaulley. It is part of the “Fullness of Time” series which includes short volumes about the history and habits of each season of the church calendar.

Unlike some BookNotes I am not going to be too wordy. I’m going to name the book and say why I think it would be useful to read during this time of year. I’ll keep my comments brief (ish) so I have time to share a lot of titles. Maybe something here will speak to you.

As always, these are offered to you at our BookNotes 20% off. If you saw it here it would be good to remind us of that. We’ll reply promptly, do the discount, and send ‘em right out. Our order form page is secure for card info although, as we say there, we can also just send you an invoice and you can pay by check later. Hope that helps.

I’m saying to myself keep it brief, Borger.

Slow Theology: Eight Practices for Resilient Faith in a Turbulent World A.J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Two great, prolific authors offering lighter ways to think about faith in a slower mode, hearing God’s voice despite our fast-paced world. These everyday practices to resist our frenetic pace of living (and thinking) help us embrace our own theological journey, taking in wonder and mystery and rest, admit our pain and find an enduring spirituality, believing together with others. This is absolutely right, and perfect for slow reading these next weeks. One of my favorite recent books!

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep Tish Harrison Warren (IVP) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

I’ve often said how much I appreciate her clear but thoughtful style, her eloquence and honesty. This is a perfect Lenten read as it is about being honest with our doubts and pains and struggles — praying in the dark, in that metaphorical sense. But it is grounded in the literary evening prayer in the Book of Common Prayer and what compline is about as an evening practice. Do you ever feel all you can do is keep watch? This will accompany you and you won’t feel so alone. Highly recommended.

Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord’s Pray Shapes the Imagination of the Church In a Secular Age D. J. Marotta (Moody Press) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

DJ is a young Anglican priest in Richmond and I respect his work there immensely. You may recall him as the co-author (with artist Ben Lansing ) of Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Era and Place.) Anyway, this was his earlier book and it is on the Lords Prayer and is very nicely done in nine excellent (and succinct) chapters. I mention succinct as you might think this could be weighty, covering stuff about modernity, the wilderness of these barren times, how to use our imaginations and how what Jamie Smith calls “liturgies” might refresh our habits into life-changing new loves. Pray really does shape our believes which, of course, shapes how we live. This is subversive stuff, perfect for Lenten pondering.

With God in Every Breath: A Guide to Drawing Closer to Jesus Through Your Senses Whitney R Simpson (NavPress) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I love that more and more authors about the contemplative life write that they affirm an embodied existence and creatureliness sense of living in God’s creation, even as we nurture our souls. Whitney Simpson has been at this for a while —an earlier book on Upper Room seems like a forerunner of this one (that handsome workbook is called Holy Listening: with Breath, Body, and the Spirit; she has an Advent one, too, called Fully Human, Fully Divine which underscored Christ’s incarnation’s implications for our “whole selves.”) Anyway, after a stroke at age 31, Whitney learned to attend to her body, pay attention to her breathing and more, and has now helped us all learn the practices of finding God and experience God through our senses. She is not the first to do this, but it is still rather rare, and this book is a wonderful guide and a good blessing. She writes like a mystic at times but is always aware of the really real in our very bodies. (He essays on why she uses The Message paraphrase is fantastic, by the way.) 30 short chapters have wonderful ideas, good exercises, sensory cues, short prayers — it is practical and inspiring. There’s helpful stuff like breath prayers and further ideas I bet you haven’t thought of; here are habits that could help us all live into Lent and Easter and beyond.  As she advises, “when life gets loud, get quiet.”

How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way We See Everything Andrew Arndt (Herald Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

When I reviewed this before I highlighted how wonderfully it is written. The foreword by Marilyn McEntyre says as much. It is about the liturgical calendar, about seeing all our life-time in light of the light of Christ, and how that can shape our own character in Christ-likeness. Winn Collier (who wrote that great biography of Eugene Peterson, A Burning in My Bones) says the sentences “sing and simmer.” What a joy. And what good idea to focus on Jesus during Lent. This offers a full picture of the full gospel, written with imaginative and nearly prophetic prose.

Seeing the Gospel: An Interpretive Guide to Orthodox Icons Eve Tibbs (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Everyone should know something about icons even if using them — perhaps I should say beholding them — isn’t part of your actual tradition. These religious renderings are designed as windows into eternal truths and many who write them (we learn that they iconographers don’t use the language of “painting” them) are deeply driven by a spiritual hope, offering these as gifts for the spiritual formation of others. This is as winsome and interesting and helpful a book on the topic as we’ve seen (and it is lavishly illustrated with icons to ponder.) As Hans Boersma  says, “Tibbs explores iconography as a divinely given exegetical guide.” There is great beauty and truth here. A fabulous foreword is by Reformed thinker Richard Mouw, offering an ecumenical touch. So good.

Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life Karen Stiller (NavPress) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Lent is a time to ponder holiness and this is one of the best books on the subject you will find anywhere. She invites us to ponder how holiness is “sacred and mysterious. It’s breathtaking and beautiful — and we’re meant to live it daily.”  Naturally, we ask: Really? And What does that look like? Here she offers insightful reflections oral sorts of mundane stuff and “stirs the spaces in your soul that need refreshment.” Not your typical book on virtue and repentance, although there is clarity about that. This is Biblical, humane, and fruitful holiness revisited. Perfect for this season of repentence.

When Life Feels Empty: 7 Ancient Practices to Cultivate Meaning Isaac Serrano (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suppose we could list a dozen books that might guide seekers or doubters or anyone struggling with faith but I wanted to suggest at least one really good new one for those with this particular ache. Serrano is a pastor in California and is on the leadership team of the ReGeneration Project (and is an adjunct prof at Western Seminary in Portland and California.) He’s a really good writer and an obviously thoughtful guy.

I recommend this for anyone who feel as if something is missing. As it says on the back, “like the story you’re living lacks purpose or direction.” The modern secular narrative, of course, erodes or negates meaning and transcendent purpose but even for those who believe in some higher power, we are living any differently because of it. Our lives feel languid, at best, even though we believe the gospel.

In this creative, elegant read, Serrano uses philosophical reasoning and lots of stories and good theology and wise insights to help us develop practical steps that can “replace the empty promises of materialism with the profound depth of a life center on God as Father.” This is wise and good, inviting us to embody the deepest meanings of church pratices and Christian discipleship in the world. It’s very good.

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? The Meaning of the Crucifixion Adam Hamilton (Abingdon Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Some years during Lent I highlight a couple books about atonement theories, about deeper conversations about the meaning of the cross. We should read a book about the cross of Christ maybe every year or so since it is so central to our faith. I really books like the magisterial Cross of Christ by John Stott and the magnum opus by Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. The last two years I’ve given very serious kudos to Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross by Brian Zahnd.  Friends have insisted that I read Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus’s Death by Andrew Remington Roller. For a pocket-sized excerpt, beautifully made, see the wonderful (if traditionally formulated) What Did the Cross Achieve? by J. I. Packer. You know I’m a fan of The Day the Revolution Began by N.T. Wright which systematically looks at the verses about the cross in the writings of Paul, studying them afresh in light of the doctrine of new creation. Yes. All of those are 20% off.

Why Did Jesus Have to Die? is by one of the great communicators or nuanced faith in our day, a thoughtful and balanced United Methodist pastor who is respected by many folks from across the reasonable theological spectrum. In this new one, Adam Hamilton offers a variety atonement theories and seems to offer fair critique of some and fresh takes on others, offering a classic and yet very contemporary approach. Six chapters.

Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom G.K. Beale (Crossway) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is one of many fairly dense but succinct volumes in the “Short Studies in Biblical Theology” done by the mostly Reformed and clearly evangelical, classy publisher, Crossway. These short books bring world-class conservative scholars to do relatively accesible versions of larger works of Biblical Theology. (That is, drawing themes from throughout the unfolding redemptive narrative or plot of Scripture rather than, say, using the decidedly un-narrative approach of Systematic Theology.) Beale is one of the most brilliant Scripture scholars around with a keen interest in eschatological visions and new creation hope in the Old and New Testaments. Here he does this marvelous little project of documenting ironic reversals, redemptive signals — the ironies of it all. The most obvious (besides the resurrection itself where death is undone by death) is that in the Christian life power is perfected in powerlessness. Get it? Perceptive and fascinating.

The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-Out World David Zahl (Brazos Press) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I’ve spilled some ink on this and highlighted some about it before. I’ll just remind you that it brings notions of grace in the Bible a very fresh and contemporary new coat of paint, using the language of “relief” — an emotion or gut feeling we all long for.  The gospel is obviously not about shame or burdens, and he calls us to embrace Christianity “as a refuge rather than as a project, a beacon of hope instead of a vehicle of shame.” Maybe refreshment? Give up a faith that demands performance and perfection and embrace the gospel as the gift of grace. Zahl, the head of Mockingbird Ministries, is pretty amazing.

You Can Trust a God With Scars: Faith (and Doubt) for the Searching Soul Jared Ayers (NavPress) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I raved about this when I first wrote about it, saying out tender and funny and passionate and cool it was, citing rock music and cool films and serious literature, all pointing seekers and doubters to the reliability of a God so audacious as to come to earth to die. If you know anybody who sees no point in existence, I beg you to share this book with them. If you, yourself, need a reminder of the core of the gospel, told in honest and raw ways, I commend this wonderfully-written primer to you. It is unlike any other introduction to the faith I know and it is hard-earned by a good, good guy.

Speaking of scars, I guess Lent is an ideal time to read this, trusting again this sad, sacred story of the betrayed and murdered Lamb of God.

Any of us who have found ourselves in “the borderlands between faith and doubt” or suffering from church fatigue or unsure what to make of biblical claims will find in these stories and reflections a hospitable invitation to take a long second look. Maybe even to venture through the doors of a church. Jared Ayers meets readers in the shadowy places of uncertainty not with arguments but with stories that help even the deeply disenchanted reimagine a life in which faith is sustaining and a vigorous community of thoughtful believers is possible. — Marilyn McEntyre, author Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies

Bearing God: Living a Christ-formed Life in Uncharted Waters Marlena Graves (NavPress) $10.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

What does in mean in this season of Lent to discern God’s will and call in the midst of such turbulent waters, such turbulent times? What does it mean that Jesus might still the waters (as in Mark 4)? And what if — as Marlena Graves imagines powerfully — what if we are the boat in the story, bearing Jesus and the disciples? Aren’t we all vessels carrying Jesus, being a part of his Light? What does that mean, to carry Christ, to bear God?

This wasn’t written as a Lenten resource, but, man-oh-man, if you put a Lenten title on this, it would certainly be a wonderful book to ponder in this season of getting right with God and submitting to His ways in our stormy world. Marlena is a woman we like very very much and a writer and scholar we respect. Her book The Way Up Is Down is one I used in a Lenten reading group two years ago and it still haunts me. I adored her first one about a relatively poor, Pentecostal person discovering the desert fathers and mothers. She has done good work in public witness and has written and edited volumes speaking peace into our culture of injustice. In this little six chapter meditation, you’ll be invited to venture out to sea and to become a person of Christ-like refuge. We can be “Christ-formed” in these disorienting times!

Jesus and the Disinherited Howard Thurman (Beacon Press) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

I hope you have heard of this twenty century classic, one of the books Martin Luther King carried with him to jail; Thurman was a very impressive educator and black leader and a writer of deeper spirituality. We stock most of his several Quaker reflections and a devotional of his work (and more than one important biography.) But this is his classic, one of the seminal books of public theology and liberative spirituality of our time. Rev. Otis Moss III says that “no other publication in the twentieth century has upended antiquated theological notions, truncated political ideas, and socially constructed racial fallacies like Jesus and the Disinherited.” First published by Abingdon Press in 1949, this more recent edition has a new foreword by Kelly Brown Douglas alongside a classic foreword by the great Vincent Harding.

I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People Terence Lester (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

One of the classic spiritual practices of the Lenten season is almsgiving — serving the poor. This book goes beyond mere giving (which is hard enough for some of us, I know) but to a richer, fuller sort of thing: seeing. What does it mean to actually recognize and “see” and befriend and come to know (and be known by) those who might be marginalized, stigmatized, such as those experiencing homelessness? There are a lot of myths about poverty and race and the poor in our culture and this lively book not only breaks down many assumptions about those who are sometimes called “the underclass” but it invites us to a Christ-like care, to enter real relationships with real people (who we often overlook.) There are lots of stories here, mature spirituality stuff, helpful sidebars and suggestions. Look: we don’t care much about what we don’t really see. This humbling (but also inspiring) book is ideal for this season. Love can open our eyes, perhaps even “the eyes of our hearts.”

As another bonus, if you like it you can then buy for a young one Terence Lester’s fabulous children’s picture book talking about these issues (with his own daughter, Zion) called Zion Learns to See (IVP; $18.00 // 14.40.) It’s very nice. Lester and his family live and work in Atlanta. He is the founder of Love Beyond Walls. His new book is an autobiography, From Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice.

A Hope Observed: Finding Solace Through Share Stores of Grief David Bannon (Paraclete Press) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I could write about this at length but I promised to be succinct this time. I’ll say this: years ago Bannon wrote a wonderful, wonderful book about artists who felt great pain and whose pain suffused their work. He wrote it as an Advent book and it worked well — you’ve heard of blue Christmas, of course. Bannon had suffered greatly and his honest struggle to find art and words to cope honest during the holidays was a great gift. It is sadly now out of print.

But his work continued and here he put together a marvelous collection of origins and stories of those who have suffered and those who have experienced loss. These stories are arranged nicely, with great art of lovely design touches.  The excellent writing and remarkable art are arranged in themes under the titles grieve, cope, hope, and love. Whether your grief is new and overwhelming or lingering, it is comforting to know you are not alone and it is good to read some of the wisest words. A very impressive endorsement on the back is from Gerald Sittser (author of the unforgettable A Grief Observed.)  That means a lot.

This is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith Darcey Steinke (HarperOne) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

This is brand new and I have not read it. I read a few pages here and there and the prose is stunning. Her bibliography is very extensive and mostly unknown to me — except, maybe The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry, a Dorothy Soelle book, and Merton’s Raids on the Unspeakable. And she has a section on Simon Weil. Steinke is an award-winning novelist and memoirist and has taught at many of the most prestigious universities in the world.  She here shares of her own physical pain after back surgery, journeys to Lourdes, meets sufferers of all kinds, including the mastectomy of her mother and the brain cancer of her preacher father. Despite the fluid, graceful prose and high-minded theory, she tells of a conversation she had, over hot-dogs, with Curt Cobain. I am not sure I am saying that this is a Lenten book, but if you are in pain this season, this could bring insight and solace of some kind.

Walking with God Through the Valley: Recovering the Purpose of Biblical Lament May Young (IVP) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

If the above gift-book style collection of excellent writing on grief and loss and renewed hope isn’t quite your need, now, this rigorous study of lament in the Bible might be stimulating and important. The church needs the practice of lament. This book explores the topic and offers some insight about what it all looks like.  Can this practice of lament — protest and crying out — lead to healing and liberation? Young teaches at Taylor University and has written widely about the Psalms and about global Christianity. Very, very impressive in under 200 pages.

Crying Out to God: Experiencing Grace Through Psalms of Lament Wendy Alsop (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a brand new 8-week Bible study experience in a line of IVP produced workbooks that are interactive, thoughtful, and more than simple inductive observations and questions. This study offers a deep encounter with God through Scriptures and it is the best (one of the very only) studies on the Psalms of lament I have seen. Wendy Alsup wrote a powerful, theological solid book called Companions in Suffering: Comfort for Times of Loss and Loneliness (and has often written in thoughtful, evangelical publications. Melissa Kruger of The Gospel Coalition says it is for “the weary, discouraged, the sick, and the suffering.” Although not directly a Lenten resource, what better time to explore how the Psalms cry out against all that is not right in our tragic world? As it says on the back, “Whether our response is rage or tears or numbness, the Bible offers an avenue for our paint: Lament.”

Crying Out to God offers a daily set of individual studies and reflections and then group sessions for once a week. It’s an excellent format with some pen and ink drawings as well.

Being Christian After the Desolation of Gaza edited by Bruce Fisk and J. Ross Wagner (Cascade) $39.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

With the US and the right wing administration of Israel joining in yet another brutal war, it is vital to ask — among lots of other questions worth debating about the ethics of war-fighting — what it looks like on the ground, among the victims. This book, obviously, is not about Iran, but it is a very recent release from many people of Christian faith who know the Palestinian battlefields well. These are essays by many who have worked in social service, Christian ministry, and peacemaking project in the Middle East for decades and some are exceptionally astute, almost rare. Lent is always a time to come before God asking for the Spirit to make our hearts more compassionate and for our vision to be ore Christ-like. Part of this must be to ask what faith means in these days of war. After the Desolation of Gaza is a groundbreaking book and although it is thick — almost 20 mostly hefty chapters in just under 375 pages — it is important.

Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World Andrew DeCort (IVP Academic) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I’ve been intending to write a major review of this but just can’t finish it. I want to say that this is one of the most important books in the field of social ethics and public theology I have read in a decade. Agree or not fully with his profound and Biblically-attentive study and conclusions, it is clear that he is right in insisting that we must love our neighbors. His Facebook posts are amazing (and often long, essays in their own rite) and he reminds us that we must not view others as the enemy, not any “other.” He is wanting to show God’s love to each and every person and in this he is nearly revolutionary. In Reviving the Golden Rule he traces the history of the idea from the ancient world to today.

If you’ve read any Martin Luther King or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, say, you will appreciate this. There is a great study guide, a short annotated bibliography on neighbor-love, and then a much more extensive bibliography.  Other ethicists have called it rare and impressive and masterful.

The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (Orbis Press) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Again, this is one we’ve highlighted several times before and even named it as one of my personal favorites of last year. Granberg-Michaelson is a great guide to this vital topic — the spirituality of justice work — since he has first-hand experience in everything from public policy work with a US Senator to street protests and community organizing to years of working with ordinary church folks and global church leaders, not to mention a deep and abiding, grounded sort of spirituality. A previous book, Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage (another favorite) documents his own journey as a pilgrim, learning an embodied sort of spirituality as he moves from what you might think of as church dogma (however good and proper) to a lived encounter with the Spirit. Anyway, Lent is a time to deepen ones spiritual habits and also a time of caring for the poor and working for justice. The Soulwork of Justice is ideal for these next weeks. I’d highly recommend it.

Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing Andy Crouch (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have decieded to read this during Lent this year as one of my own hopes to learn more about a Christ-like way to think about power and influence, suffering and humility. The apostle Paul famously said his strength is in weakness and this is truly one of the great (and needed!) upside-down ways of the Kingdom of God. It preaches well, but we need this marvelously written, very insightful book to show us (using a four way or 2 x 2 grid rather than a continuum) how to embrace both strength and weakness. Near the end of this invitation Andy wisely reminds us of Christ’s own suffering, his journey towards weakness, the brilliance of the gospel in all it’s counter-cultural relevance. This is what love looks like, how human calling takes its best shape, how following Jesus can allow us to be people who have the confidence to take risks, for love’s sake. This is one of the best little books I’ve ever read and Lent seems the perfect time to spend more time in it’s life-changing pages.

Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace Mark DeYmaz (NavPress) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Yet another new one about which I should write much more, but which I will just tell you pretty quickly what it is about. The title and subtitle says it all — it is about a Protestant (evangelical) who has written much about multi-ethnic ministry and forming racially diverse congregations who discovers the powerful simplicity of the famous Prayer of Saint Francis. We all know it, but how seriously do we take it, line by line? And can praying this prayer with intentionality perhaps be a way (as the sub-title puts) to “become more like Jesus.” Isn’t that what Lent is about? Praying for spiritual formation, becoming Christ-like in a way that allows us to better serve others.

Can’t we all become a little more Christ-like this season? Doesn’t “Make me an instrument of Your peace” sound like a prayer we all need, now?  Leonard Sweet (whose recent book Jesus Imagination: Maker, Mender, Minder, Master I wrote about not long ago) says, “Mark DeYmaz doesn’t just write about peace — he hands you the tools to make it.”

Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week Jason Porterfield (Herald Press) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I’ve written about this extensively in years past so won’t belabor it, although I am glad to remind youth it is brilliant, easy to read, ad a great way to follow carefully the story as the gospel-writers have it unfolded for us. It is well known how much emphasis the gospels place on the final passion week of Jesus and this book shows how the drama starts on what is often misunderstood and misapplied, the event often known as Psalm Sunday. Jesus comes into the City of Peace (which he soon enough wears over) not on a war-horse or chariot but on a donkey, a dramatic, prophetic gesture for those who have eyes to see. Porterfield unpacks the peace-making themes of Holy Week and there is no better book to help us live into and perhaps embody the story of Jesus’s final days.  There is a good group study guide included as well.

Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I know I’ve pitched this to you before. I said in was one of my favorite books read in 2025 (although it came out just in January of 2026.) I reviewed it again, and told you much about it as I invited you to our online webinar where I interviewed the author for an hour or so. We hardly scratched the surface so I suggested it, yet again, in an early Lenten list, thinking this beautifully rendered book telling of Steve’s own carrying the weight of the world seemed right for this sober season. It is a sober book, but yet — believe me — there are glimmers of glory, the grand (Hobbit-like) adventure we are all on, bringing us thrills and pains, joys and sorrows. Until Christ comes in glory to do what the Bible and the creeds say He will do, we work with hints of hope. This conversation about the “proximate” — not expecting everything, not being utopian, not triumphalistic, but not complicit or cynical, either — is perfect for Lent. In Christ we hope. In Him we wait. In Him — the suffering King — we hold on the best we can, still not finding fully what we’re looking for. That can be devasting or it can be liberating. With Steve’s wise help, it can be a key to flourishing and health.  Read it now tapping into the virtues proper to the season. Or maybe right after Easter, in resurrectionary hope. Sooner or later, you’ll need this. We are delighted to suggest it to you now.

Killing a Messiah: A Novel Adam Winn (IVP) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

I don’t have to say much about this other than to say it is a fictionalized account of the death of Christ as passover approaches in the city of Jerusalem. It is, as he puts it, a “political tinderbox.” Adam Winn is a professor and author of several scholarly works on the gospel of Mark, especially understood in light of the influence of first century imperial pressures. How was the early church’s Christology developed under Cesar and what is the relationship between the writing of the New Testament and the realities of Empire. Anyway, he knows his stuff and this is a fresh imagination of the events leading up to Jesus’s execution. What a better time to read a novel like this. Wow.

Shades of Light: A Novel Sharon Garlough Brown (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Some of you who have followed us for a while will recall my rave review of this novel about a young Christian social worker who faces burnout from job stress, a broken heart from a relationship break-up, and, frankly a serious bout of depression. Wren takes refuge in a retreat center run by her aunt and in a story that Publishers Weekly called “heartbreaking and enthralling” she slowly finds some solace and healing with her aunts gentle spiritual direction and the retreat center’s calming influence. Shades of Light is a great story and there is a really good (six week) study guide for personal use or book clubs ($13.99 // $11.99.) I won’t give away a key plot event, although the next review gives it away.

Remember Me: A Novella About Finding Our Way to the Cross with the devotional and artworks “Journey to the Cross” Sharon Garlough Brown (IVP) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

A novella, of course, is a very short novel. Longer than a short story, but not quite a full novel, this is just 100 pages. It is a story formed by letters sent by Katherine Rhodes, the director of the New Hope Retreat Center to her niece Wren who — as told in the fuller novel Shades of Light — finds a partial way to cope with her depression when her aunt invites her to paint contemporary artworks for an upcoming Stations of the Cross service. Remember Me picks up that story as Katherine share her own grief (coupled somehow with the pain of our savior) making this a perfect Lenten read.

But get this: the final chapters of Remember Me has the (fictional) program and artwork from the (fictional) Stations of the Cross as done by the fictional Wren. Ends up, this program of reflection and the full color art pieces (reproduced in full color on glossy paper inserts) makes a great Lenten devotional. The real life artist Elizabeth Ivy Hawkins stood in as the character Wren and painted these paintings of the Stations as she thought Wren might have and described them in this real devotional. The paintings are created in Shades of Light which causes Katherine to write what becomes Remember Me, where the art and devotional are included. What a great idea, eh?

Liberated at the Cross: Peace and Reconciliation in God’s Kingdom Kristel Acevedo (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I am telling you, I have never seen such a rich and thoughtful small group Bible study on the topic of the cross and the social implications of a theology of atonement for peace and public justice. Okay, I’ve never seen any kind of Bible study on this (although there is a huge body of often academic literature showing how the cross brings both personal justification and cosmic reconciliation, how Christ’s death defeats the principalities and powers, how the victory of Christ in resurrection leads to a Kingdom of healing and restoration, etc. etc. etc.) If you know that vast literature — whether its the teaching about the cross from John Stott or Ron Sider or James Cone or Jorgen Moltmann or Brian Zahnd or Sylvia Keesmaat or NT Wright or others with their unique contributions — you may have longed for their full-orbed visions of the transformative power of the cross to be offered in accessible Bible study formats. This is it and I am excited and grateful to Kristel Acevedo and to IVP for daring to do such a helpful, radical, faithful resource. Get a bunch and spread the word.

Each section is enhanced with bold super-graphics and bright headlines and cool, colorful design and each week has QR codes that have amazing videos to watch; this is not your father or mother’s fill-in-the-blank Bible study booklet. Nope, this is chock-full of ideas and activities and good, good conversation starters to help you be rooted in the cross and dream for a better world. The best part, of course, is the solid Biblical study you’ll do for six or more sessions. There are review pieces, “self-check” notes, closing prayers and more. Kristel, by the way, is discipleship director at Transformation Church a multiethnic community (pastored by Derwin Gray, author most recently of Lit by Love) near Charlotte NC.

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