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Resource - Meditations
November 1999
Looking for a good daily
devotional book for 2000?
Rev. Don Baird
THIS SPLENDID JOURNEY
Joel Nederhood, CRC Publications/P&R Publishing, 1998, 207pp.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
D.A.Carson, Crossway Books, 1998, 390pp.
When I find a devotional book that I keep using to the end I am more
than happy to recommend it to others. That may sound somewhat
subjective, but there are many ordinary ones around which only last a
week or two. These two are splendid.
If you were putting together such a book would you accept life is busy
these days and fit the devotions within a seven-minute time frame, or
would you put forward something that challenged us to re-order our
devotional life? Don Carson does the later: in a moment I’ll explain his
challenge. But firstly, This Splendid Journey.
A few people in our congregation have recently started using This
Splendid Journey.
The feedback is consistently positive. As is the comment of J.I.Packer:
“The sober sparkle of these meditations on life under God and God over
life is vintage Nederhood.” Now retired from his many years with the
Back to God Hour, the author writes with realistic hope that never fails
to encourage. Each of the 100 meditations is based on a quoted Scripture
verse and after two pages of comment ends with a suggested prayer. Thus
the mediations have more substance than those in the “Today” booklets,
would do more for growing Christians, and need ten minutes rather than
five to use – or more if discussed together.
Carson’s For the Love of God is something else again. It is “A Daily
Companion for Discovering the riches of God’s Word.” It can be used in a
seven-minute time frame by just reading the one-page devotion for each
day of the year, and that is tempting because a page of Carson is a good
read. However that is definitely not what the book is designed for, and
we will lose much of the benefit if that is all we do. Indeed, we will
fail to accept the challenge to author is throwing to us.
“This book is for Christians who want to read the Bible, who want to
read all the Bible”, he says. “At their best, Christians have saturated
themselves in the Bible”, however various pressures these days are
inhibiting that. Not only the sheer pace of life, but “the constant
sensory input from all sides is gently addictive – we become used to
being entertained and diverted, and it is difficult to carve out the
space and silence necessary for serious and thoughtful reading of
Scripture.” (p.ix) So it has become all the more urgent to read and
re-read the Bible. This book encourages us to do that.
As the basis for Bible reading Carson has taken Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s
scheme from early last century. At the top of each page in this book are
listed four chapters of the Bible. By taking the first two of these you
read through the Bible in two years, with the NT and Psalms twice. The
devotional comment is on one of these first two readings. A second book
is planned in which the devotional comment will be on one of the second
two readings for each day.
Even if the detail is not clear, you can see this involves serious Bible
reading. Many will balk at it. However, this is a tangible way to
reverse a decline in Bible reading. And you can’t ask for better
devotional comment than that written by Don Carson.
For the Love of God is available from Koorong Books for $24.95
(Hardback) This Splendid Journey is $12.00 and is available from the
Reformed Churches Resources Centre in Dandenong – give them a call on
(03) 9795 9621.
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