“Pick Up and Read”

Summertime always holds the recurring, though often unfulfilled, promise of time to do more reading. If you do, you never know what might happen!

Augustine was anything but “saintly” when he was sitting outside in 386 CE (perhaps it was summertime!). He heard what he thought was the voice of a child singing, “Pick it up and read.” He picked up a Bible, began reading, and it began the transformation from being a notorious sinner to becoming a saint.

I offer no promise that summertime reading will make you a saint, but I offer a few suggestions and hope you will find some surprises along the way!

Shamelessly, I begin with my new book, Surprised by Mary: How the Christ Who Was Born Through Mary Can Be Born Again Through You. I thought I knew all I needed to know about Mary but my three-year journey with her was full of surprises. I am, in fact, bold enough to pray that this book will make a difference in your life!

I thought I knew all I needed to know about Genesis, but in Reading Genesis Pulitzer Prize wining novelist, Marilynne Robinson, offers a fresh interpretation. Be prepared to read slowly, think deeply, and be surprised by stories you thought you knew. Her interpretation of Noah and the Flood is worth the price of the book.

Abraham Verghese’s sprawling novel, The Covenant of Water, carried me away to a place, a time and a cast of intriguing characters that was full of surprises. It even includes an unexpected reference to the subject of my brother’s (much shorter) book, Thirty Days with E. Stanley Jones. (A shameless plug for Jack’s work!)

Without leaving home, Timothy Egan carried me along on his journey of self-discovery as he walked the 1,000 mile pilgrim pathway from Canterbury to Rome in A Pilgrimage to Eternity. I’ll never walk it, but I’m grateful he did! I can’t help but recommend my all-time favorite travel book, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. I’ve read it twice and will probably pick it up again!

In light of our current political crisis, a podcast interview with Tim Alberta made me want to read, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. I continue to be appalled by faithful people in the evangelical community who continue to support a candidate who is the embodied contradiction of everything they taught me. I hope to “take and read” in the near future.

On a more hopeful note, I’ll recommend again The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham. In spite of the dark pit of dishonesty and division into which the MAGA movement has taken us, I choose to cling to Lincoln’s hope that, “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.“

So, what’s on your reading list?

Grace and peace,

Jim

P.S. I was writing this post when the Trump verdict was announced. I’ll be giving more thought and some prayer before I comment on it.