Sunday, November 30, 2008

In the Shadow of Lions by Ginger Garrett



It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book's FIRST chapter!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!





Today's Wild Card author is:


and the book:


IN THE SHADOW OF LIONS

David C. Cook; 1st edition (September 2008)


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ginger Garrett is the critically acclaimed author of Chosen: The Lost Diaries of Queen Esther, which was recognized as one of the top five novels of 2006 by the ECPA, and Dark Hour. An expert in ancient women's history, Ginger creates novels and nonfiction resources that explore the lives of historical women.

On September 11, Ginger's non-fiction book, Beauty Secrets of the Bible, based on the historical research that began in her work on Chosen was released. The book explores the connections between beauty and spirituality, offering women both historical insights and scientific proofs that reveal powerful, natural beauty secrets.

A frequent radio guest on stations across the country, including NPR and Billy Graham's The Hour of Decision, Ginger is also a popular television guest. Her appearances include Harvest Television, Friends & Neighbors, and Babbie's House. Ginger frequently serves as a co-host on the inspirational cable program Deeper Living.

In 2007, Ginger was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award for her novel Dark Hour. When she's not writing, you may spy Ginger hunting for vintage jewelry at thrift stores, running (slowly) in 5k and 10k races, or just trying to chase down one of her errant sheepdogs. A native Texan, she now resides in Georgia with her husband and three children.


Visit the author's website.

Product Details:

List Price: $ 13.99
Paperback: 311 pages
Publisher: David C. Cook; 1st edition (September 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0781448875
ISBN-13: 978-0781448871

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:


And Job said unto God:

I admit I once lived by rumors of you;

now I have it all firsthand…

I’ll never again live

on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.

Job 42, The Message




CHAPTER ONE


Tomorrow, someone else will die in my bed.

Someone died in it last month, which is how it came to be called mine.

The infernal clock moved confidently towards 1 a.m., and I turned my head to look at the window. The window of this room is a miserly gesture from the contractors, producing more fog than visage. I watched the gold orbs—the lamps on the lawn of the hospice sputtering off and on in the darkness—that dotted the fogged glass.

That was the last moment I lived as an iver, one whose eyes are veiled.

One orb did not sputter but moved, gliding between the others, moving closer to the window, growing larger and brighter until the light consumed the entire view. I winced from the searing glare and tried to shield my eyes, but the IV line pulled taut. Wrestling with the line to get some slack, I saw the next movement out of the corner of my eye. I bit down hard on my tongue, my body jerking in reflex, and felt the warm blood run back to my throat.

Outside, a hand wiped the fog away from the glass, and I watched the water beads running down the inside of my window. There was no searing light, only this mammoth hand with deep creases in the palms wiping down the window until we both could see each other. A man’s face was against the glass, but no breath fogged his vision. He was a giant, grim man, with an earring in one ear and dark glasses, and he was staring in at me. Even through the morphine, fear snaked along my arms, biting into my stomach, constricting around my throat. I tried to scream, but I could only gulp air and heave little gasps. His expression did not change as he lifted his hands, curling them into fists. I flinched at the last moment, thinking him to be Death, expecting to receive the blow and die.

Then I grew suddenly warm, like the feeling you get stepping out from an old, dark city library into the busy street and a warm spring sun.

Death didn’t even hurt, I rejoiced. I could slip into it like I slipped onto that street, eyes down, my thoughts my own, and simply turn a corner and be gone. I lifted my fingers to beckon him. Yes, I thought. I saw the beautiful Rolex on my birdlike wrist, and saw that it had stopped. It is time.

When I looked back up, he was beside me, staring down, not speaking. I wasn’t dead. His frame was monstrously large, hitting what must be seven feet tall, with a width of muscle strapped across it that was inhuman. As he watched me, his chest didn’t move, and his nostrils didn’t flare, but heat and warm breath radiated from him. When he laid his hands across my eyes, I was too scared to move my head away. His palms covered most of my face, and a sharp buzzing drilled into every pore. He began to move his hands elsewhere, touching and bringing to life every splintered inch of my body. When he got to the cancer, with one swollen lymph node visible even through my stained blue gown, he rested his hands there until the swelling sighed and he swept it away with his hand.

“Wait!” I screamed.

I didn’t want to live. I hadn’t known that was going to be an option. I deserved to be damned. To return to my life was too much to ask of me. I was finished.

“You’ll still be dead by morning,” he reassured me. His voice was deep and clean, no tell-tale dialect or inflection. Taking off his glasses, I saw he had enormous gold eyes, with a black pinhole in the center that stayed round and cold. There was no white in them at all, and they were rimmed all the way around the outside with black. I stared at them, trying to remember where I had seen eyes like this. It was years ago, this much I remembered.

I had to shake myself back to the moment. Clearly, morphine was not setting well with me tonight. I wanted to die in peace. That’s what I paid these extravagant sums for. My hand moved to the nurses’ call button. Mariskka was just down the hall, waiting for her moment to steal my watch. I knew she’d come running.

He grabbed my hand and the shock seared like a hot iron. Crying out, I shook him off and clutched my hand between my breasts, doing my best to sit up with my atrophied stomach muscles and tangled IV.

He leaned in. “I have something for you.”

“What?”

He leaned in closer. “A second chance.”

Second chances were not my forte. As the most celebrated editor in New York City, I had made a killing. I loved the words that trembling writers slid across my desk, those little black flecks that could destroy their life’s dream or launch a career. I bled red ink over every page, slashing words, cutting lines. No one understood how beautiful they were to me, why I tormented the best writers, always pushing them to bring me more. The crueler I was to the best of them, the more they loved me, like flagellants worshipping me as the master of their order. Only at the end, lying here facing my own death, did I understand why. They embraced the pain, thinking it birthed something greater than themselves. I saw how pitifully wrong they were. There was only pain. This is why I was ready to die. When you finish the last chapter and close the book, there is nothing but pain. It would have been better never to have written. Words betrayed me. And for that, I betrayed the best writer of them all.

“Burn any manuscripts that arrive for me,” I had ordered my nurse, Marisska. “Tell them I’m already dead. Tell them anything.”

“I’ll let you write the truth,” the man whispered.

“I’m not a writer,” I replied. My fear tumbled down into the dark place of my secrets.

“No, you’re not,” he answered. “But you’ve coveted those bestsellers, didn’t you? You knew you could do better. This is your second chance.”

It caught my attention. “How?”

“I will dictate my story to you,” he said. “Then you’ll die.”

Taking dictation? My mouth fell open. “I’m in hell, aren’t I?”

He tilted his head. “Not yet.”

I pushed away from the pillows and grabbed him. Blisters sprang up on my palms and in between my fingers, but I gritted my teeth and spat out my words. “Who are you?”

“The first writer, the Scribe. My books lie open before the Throne and someday will be the only witness of your people and their time in this world. The stories are forgotten here and the Day draws close. I will tell you one of my stories. You will record it.”

“Why me?”

“I like your work.”

I started laughing, the first time I had laughed since I had been brought to this wing of the hospice, where the dying are readied for death, their papers ordered, and discreet pamphlets on “end of life options” left by quiet-soled salesmen. I laughed until I was winded. He rested his hand on my chest, and I caught my breath as he spoke.

“Let’s go find Marisska.”



My review:
I love historical fiction! I love to read about real people and the things that people think they might have done.
This book was great because not only have I had an interest in Henry the 8th and his wives, but Anne Boleyn has always been a special interest of mine. This caused me to think more about how her life might have actually been, and what life in the court was really like.
Also, I had previously read a very, very little bit about Sir Thomas More, but this provided more information about him. I'm really interested in looking more into Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More now :)
Great job.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

7 Things About Me

I stole this off of Camy over at Camy's Loft

1. I'm a really, really fast reader when it comes to fiction

2. I'm not very fast when it comes to non-fiction. I find that I tend to forget what I've read in non-fiction books if I'm not taking notes and mulling over it.

3. I think that I have over 300 books (I haven't counted for a really long time)

4. I used to count my books during school. I was homeschooled, and my desk was where my books were (and still are) kept.

5. I started writing down the titles and authors of all my books during school. I didn't get very far. I'll have to continue sometime when I'm not supposed to be doing anything else.

6. While I might normally be a messy person, my books are very nicely organized. Or, they were before I ran out of room for them.

7. I am working on writing better reviews, but I love reviewing!



I can't think of 7 people to tag, but if you do this, please comment and link back to your blog :)


Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The First Escape by G.P. Taylor





It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book's FIRST chapter!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!








Today's Wild Card author is:












and the book:







The First Escape



SaltRiver (August 20, 2008)







ABOUT THE AUTHOR:




A motorcyclist and former rock band roadie turned Anglican minister, Graham Peter (G. P.) Taylor has been hailed as "hotter than Potter" and "the new C. S. Lewis" in the United Kingdom. His first novel, Shadowmancer, reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2004 and has been translated into 48 languages. His other novels include Wormwood (another New York Times bestseller which was nominated for a Quill book award), The Shadowmancer Returns: The Curse of Salamander Street, Tersias the Oracle, and Mariah Mundi. Taylor currently resides in North Yorkshire with his wife and three children.

Visit the author's website.


Product Details:

List Price: $ 19.99
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: SaltRiver (August 20, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414319479
ISBN-13: 978-1414319476

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

























My Review:
Sorry that this is a bit late. My week so far has been a bit hectic.
I enjoyed this book a lot. I read some of it while I was on the bus, and I zoned out to everything that was around me. It sucked me in and kept me reading.
I was a little bit creeped out when they were talking about spirits talking to them, but that was explained later on. Also, I thought that some of the people in there were a bit twisted.*
The layout of the book is fantastic! It combines pages of pictures/comics with pages of text. I think it would be really great for pre-teens and teens that are not really into reading books. It gives visuals while enticing you to read the text.

* I read this book last week, and unfortunately I didn't write a review of it straight away. This is my impression as I remember it :)



Sunday, November 23, 2008

Faith 'n Fiction Saturday: Movies




Welcome to Faith 'n Fiction Saturday where we get together and talk about our favorite subject!

Today's Question:

We've been blessed to finally start seeing some of our favorite Christian books come to life on film. So far, these have been largely low budget films, but they generally get the heart of the books across. But my question for you is...if you had an unlimited budget, what Christian fiction book would you like to see made into a film? Who would you cast in the main roles? Would you have a preference on director? Any songs you'd like to see on the soundtrack?

My Answer:
I would love to see Dee Henderson's O'Malley series on film! I would probably cast Angelina Jolie as Kate, but I have no ideas for the rest of the family. I love this series because it's very real. The family doesn't just wake up one morning and go "Let's get saved today!" They struggle through believing, and they all have their separate issues which hinder them. They're great books, and even if they don't ever get made into movies, I would highly recommend them to anyone!

Friday, November 21, 2008

Booking Through Thursday


I receive a lot of review books, but I have never once told lies about the book just because I got a free copy of it. However, some authors seem to feel that if they send you a copy of their book for free, you should give it a positive review.

Do you think reviewers are obligated to put up a good review of a book, even if they don’t like it? Have we come to a point where reviewers *need* to put up disclaimers to (hopefully) save themselves from being harassed by unhappy authors who get negative reviews?


My Answer:

I believe that if you are sending your book out to be reviewed, you need to understand that there are going to be people out there that aren't going to like it. Not everybody thinks like you, and not everybody is the same as everybody else.

I think that as reviewers we should give an honest review, but if we don't like it we should also temper it (if possible) with at least something positive about the book.

I have been known in the past to not review a book if I didn't like it, but I've changed that now because I want to let my friends know whether I liked a book or not.



Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Books for Blokes over at Relz Reviewz

Rel over at Relz Reviewz has blogged about Bethany Books for Blokes!
Follow this link to go straight to the page :)

Monday, November 17, 2008

Wyn's Sunday Meme

Jenny over at Ausjenny has tagged me for a meme.

I would like to know what people keep close by their computer for books. So I was thinking that I would start a Sunday feature of my own that includes tagging 4 other bloggers, not necessarily book bloggers. My meme is:

1. What book is on the left hand side of your computer or closest to the left hand side?

2. Are you reviewing it, is it your favourite, or is it there for some other reason and specify.

3. Go to page 38 and write down from the 2nd paragraph, the first 4 sentences.

4. Tag 4 friends and pass them this avatar.


My answer:

1. I don't have any books on any side of my computer, but I do have some on the left side of my bed :) The closest one is my Bible. I try to read it every day. Under that, I have some non-fiction books that I'm trying to read through. The one on top is 'Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship' by Joshua Harris.

2. I'm reading it because I like Josh Harris' books, and I borrowed it from my sister. I'm really enjoying it.

3. A couple committed to God's glory places their ultimate hope in God, not in each other. Before two people can please God as a couple, they must first be individuals who want God more than anything else and who know that only He can satisfy their deepest longings of their souls.
One of my favourite authors, John Piper, has made his life message this simple but profound truth: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." What does this mean?

4. I tag:

Lindsey at A Kindred Spirit's Thoughts

Kalea_kane at Enroute to Life

Southeast Country Wife at I Need to Read

Smiling Sal at Book Critiques

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Faith 'n Fiction Saturday: Reviewing

My Friend Amy, who brought us Book Blogger Appreciation Week has a new carnival in the works, the Faith 'n Fiction Saturday.

Each week she will post a blogging prompt, which participating bloggers will answer on their own blogs. Then they head back to the original post and sign Mister Linky! This way we can all come to know each other more closely.

The past couple of days there has been a big flare-up in the broader book blogging community regarding review policies and a blogger's obligation to an author once they've received a review copy. For those of you who belong to the blogging alliance FIRST, we've also discussed this issue a little bit.

I decided to make today's question about this, because I think this is an even tougher situation for Christian reviewers who review Christian books. So here goes...do you receive review copies of Christian books? If so, do you review them honestly? How do you handle it when you don't like a book but are obligated to provide a review? Who do you see your first commitment being to in book reviewing (besides God)? Yourself? The author? Your readers? Does your review change based on the spiritual content of the book or is it solely based on technical or artistic merit? Have you ever had a negative experience with an author after giving them a negative review? (please don't name names)

My answer:

I receive only Christian books to review. I try my hardest to review them honestly, and if I don't like a book I'll say so. I try to explain why I didn't like that book, and I always try to consider why I didn't like it. If there's a book that I don't like, I try to still say something good about it. I tend to like quite a lot of the books that I read which is good :)
I'm still learning how to write good reviews, but my general rule of thumb is to always try and pick something out of the book that I thought was good.
A lot of my friends read my book blog, and I want them to get an honest opinion of what I thought of the books that I review.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Why buy instead of borrow?

Amy over at My Friend Amy has asked an interesting question, and I thought I'd answer it from an Aussie perspective.

Amy asks: I’ve asked, in the past, about whether you more often buy your books, or get them from libraries. What I want to know today, is, WHY BUY?

Even if you are a die-hard fan of the public library system, I’m betting you have at least ONE permanent resident of your bookshelves in your house. I’m betting that no real book-lover can go through life without owning at least one book. So … why that one? What made you buy the books that you actually own, even though your usual preference is to borrow and return them?

If you usually buy your books, tell me why. Why buy instead of borrow? Why shell out your hard-earned dollars for something you could get for free?


Well, in Australia, we can't actually get Christian books in our libraries. We might have a Christian library somewhere in the state if we're lucky, but generally it's not anywhere really close like the public libraries are.
But even aside from that, I love to buy my books or get them to review because I love being able to pull out a book whenever I want instead of having to go somewhere to borrow it. I also love to lend books to my friends and recommend ones that I think they would enjoy.
I love owning my books, and I'm a HUGE bookworm :)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Plain Perfect by Beth Wiseman



It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book's FIRST chapter!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!






Today's Wild Card author is:




and the book:



Plain Perfect

Thomas Nelson (September 9, 2008)



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Writing has always been a part of Beth Wiseman’s life. When she was introduced to the Amish, she gained an appreciation for their simpler way of life and began writing novels featuring this endearing group. Her first novel was Plain Perfect. She and her family live in Texas.

As a newspaper reporter, Beth has been honored by her peers with eleven journalism awards in the past four years - most recently, first place news writing for The Texas Press Association. She has been a humor columnist for The 1960 Sun in Houston and published articles in various publications. However, writing novels is where her heart is. Following completion of five manuscripts, Wiseman's inspirational fiction series set in Pennsylvania Dutch Country is where she found her voice.

"It took me a while," she says. "But I knew right away that Plain Perfect was the one. Writing about the Amish lifestyle within a fictional love story has been a wonderful experience. The Amish and Mennonite contacts I have established in Lancaster County help me to keep the books authentic. These very private people might dress differently, avoid the use of electricity and modern conveniences, but they are just like everyone else. They love, hurt, have daily challenges and struggles, and strive to be the best they can be. An often misunderstood sect of people, it has been a privilege to learn about their ways."

Visit the author's website.

Product Details:

List Price: $ 14.99
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (September 9, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1595546308
ISBN-13: 978-1595546302

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:



LILLIAN PEELED BACK THE DRAPES AT THE FRONT WINDOW and squinted against the sun’s glare. She’d called the taxi almost an hour ago. If her ride didn’t show up soon, she would have to forego her plan and spend another night with Rickie. Biting her lip, she worried if she would have enough cash to change her flight if she didn’t make it to the airport on time.

She lowered the drape and paced the living room in Rickie’s house, silently blasting herself for ever moving in with him in the first place. Her stomach writhed at the thought of one more day under the same roof with him. And yet her window of time for her departure was closing, she realized, glancing at her watch.

She tugged at the drapes again. Relief fell over her when she saw the yellow cab pull into the driveway. Snatching her red suitcase and purse, she bolted for the door, shuffling toward the driver as he opened the trunk.

“Please hurry,” she said to the driver, handing him her suitcase.

The driver stowed her luggage without comment and was climbing into the driver’s seat when she saw Rickie’s black Lexus rounding the corner and heading up the street. Her heart sank.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Intercontinental Airport,” she answered. “Hurry, please.”

As the driver made his way down Harper Avenue, Lillian watched out the rearview window. Rickie’s car slowly neared the house.

The cab driver turned at the corner. She’d made it. A clean getaway.

Irma Rose Miller couldn’t help but notice the bounce in her husband’s steps. The cancer kept him down and out on most days, but not today. Today Lilly was coming, and his anticipation and joy were evident.

“Danki,” Jonas said as Irma Rose poured him another cup of coffee.

“You’re welcome.”

Her tall husband, once muscular and strong as an ox, sat hunched over the wooden table between them. His healthy load of gray locks and full beard were now thinning and brittle. Dark circles under his eyes and sunken features revealed the many sleepless nights of pain he had endured over the past few months. God had given her husband of forty-eight years a challenging road to travel, and he was making the trip with dignity and grace.

“Our Lilly will be here this afternoon.” Jonas smiled and raised the cup to his mouth. His hands trembled, but his eyes twinkled with a merriment Irma Rose hadn’t seen since the first mention of their granddaughter coming to stay with them. She hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed. They hadn’t seen the girl in seventeen years, since she was ten years old.

Irma Rose stood to retrieve some donuts from a pan atop the wooden stove.

“It will be wunderbaar gut to have her here.”

Irma Rose placed two donuts on her husband’s plate. “Ya, that it will. But, Jonas, you must keep in mind how different our ways are. We will seem like foreigners to our Englisch granddaughter.”

“These donuts are appeditlich,” Jonas said.

“Danki. But, Jonas, you need to prepare yourself. Sarah Jane raised Lilly in the outside world. We don’t know her. As a matter of fact, we don’t know exactly how Sarah Jane raised her.”

The thought twisted Irma Rose’s stomach in familiar knots. It had been hard enough when her daughter chose to leave the Old Order Amish community at the age of eighteen, but even more difficult when she wrote to tell them she was in a family way soon thereafter . . . with no husband.

“She was a glorious child,” Jonas said. “Remember how quickly she learned to ice skate? What a joy she was. What a gut Christmas holiday we all had.”

Irma Rose shook her head at her husband’s ignorance of the obvious. Lilly wasn’t a child any more. She was a grown woman. Jonas had talked about that last Christmas together until the next season came and went. When Sarah Jane and Lilly didn’t show up the following year, he merely shrugged and said, “Maybe they will visit next year.” And each Christmas thereafter Jonas anticipated a visit that never happened.

Jonas never uttered a negative word about Sarah Jane’s choices. But she’d seen the sadness in his eyes when their daughter left home, and she knew the pain dwelled in his heart over the years. But he only said it was impossible to always understand God’s direction for His children—their child. Their only child. The good Lord had only seen fit to bless them with one. A beautiful daughter who had chosen a life rife with hardship.

Irma Rose had prayed hard over the years to cleanse herself of any discontentment with her daughter. Sarah Jane’s choice to leave the Amish faith was prior to her baptism and church membership. Therefore her daughter was never shunned by the community. She had chosen to avoid visits with her parents. From the little Irma Rose gathered over the years, Sarah Jane and Lilly had lived with friends and moved around a lot.

An occasional letter arrived from her daughter, to which Irma Rose always responded right away. More times than not, the letters were returned unopened. It was less painful to assume Sarah Jane had moved on and the letters were returned by the postal service. Although sometimes it cut Irma Rose to the bone when she recognized her daughter’s penmanship: Return to sender.

She was thankful her last letter to Sarah Jane had not been returned. She couldn’t help but wonder if the news about Jonas’s cancer had prompted her granddaughter’s visit. When Lillian’s letter arrived over a month ago, Irma Rose had followed her instructions not to return a letter but to call her on the telephone if at all possible. She wasted no time going to the nearby shanty to phone her granddaughter. The conversation was strained and the child seemed frantic to come for a visit.

“I’m a teacher and when school is out in May, I’d like to come for a visit,” her granddaughter had said on the phone. “Maybe stay for the summer. Or maybe even longer?” There was a sense of urgency in the girl’s tone.

Irma Rose feared her faith had not been as strong as her husband’s and that a tinge of resentment and hurt still loitered in her heart where Sarah Jane was concerned. She didn’t want any of those feelings to spill over with her granddaughter. She would need to pray harder.

As if reading her mind, Jonas said, “Irma Rose, everything will be fine. You just wait and see.”

It wasn’t until the plane was high above the Houston skyline that the realization of what she’d done hit Lillian. After landing in Philadelphia, she caught a train to Lancaster City and hopped a bus to Paradise, which landed her only a few miles from her grandparents’ farm. She was glad there was a bit of a walk to their property; she wanted to wind down and freshen up before she reacquainted herself with her relatives. Plus, she’d had enough time on the plane to wonder if this whole thing was a huge mistake. Her mom hadn’t wanted to be here, so why think it would be any better for her?

Not that she had much choice at this point. She had no money, no home, no job, and she was more than a little irritated with her mother. When her mom had begged Lillian to loan her the money she’d painstakingly saved to get away from Rickie and start fresh, Lillian reluctantly agreed, with the stipulation she got her money back as soon as possible. But her mom had never repaid a loan before. Lillian didn’t know why she thought it would be any different this time. When the promised repayment never came, Lillian quit her job and made a decision to distance herself from her mother and Rickie by coming to a place where she knew neither of them would follow: Lancaster County.

Lillian shook her head, wondering if she was making a bigger mistake by coming here. She didn’t know if she’d ever understand what ultimately drove her mother from the Plain lifestyle. From what she read, it rarely happened—Amish children fleeing from all they’d ever known. The circumstances must have been severe to drive her mother away.

Although . . . it didn’t look so bad from Lillian’s point of view, now that she was there. Aside from having a dreadful wardrobe, she thought the Amish men and women strolling by looked quite content. They seemed oblivious to the touristy stares. The women wore simple, dark-colored dresses with little white coverings on their heads. The men were in cotton shirts, dark pants with suspenders, and straw hats with a wide brim. Box-shaped, horse-drawn buggies were abundant.

Ironically, it all seemed quite normal.

She took a seat on a bench outside the Quik Mart at the corner of Lincoln Highway and Black Horse Road and watched the passersby. Clearly, Paradise was a tourist town, like most of Lancaster County, with everyone wanting to have a look at the Amish people.

Watching them now, she wondered if the Amish were all as peaceful as they appeared. Despite her initial thoughts, she decided they couldn’t be. Everyone had stress. Everyone had problems. Surely the Plain People of Lancaster County were not an exception.

But they could have fooled Lillian.

Samuel Stoltzfus gave hasty good-byes to Levina Esh and Sadie Fisher and flicked his horse into action, hiding a smile as his buggy inched forward. The competitiveness of those two widow women! First Levina had presented him with her prize-winning shoofly pie. Not to be outdone, Sadie quickly offered up her own prize-winning version. Stalemate. The two of them had stood there glaring at each other while he tried to think of ways to escape unhurt . . . and unattached.

He might have to rethink his shopping day. Both women knew he went to the farmer’s market on Thursdays . . . Once he cleared town, he picked up the pace. The road to his farm near the town of Paradise was less traveled, and he was particularly glad of that on this day. It was a glorious sunny afternoon, perfect for a buggy ride through the countryside.

Pleased he had chosen his spring buggy instead of his covered one, he relished the warmth of the late afternoon sun. Rachel had loved this time of year, when spring gave way to summertime and all the world felt full of promise.

God’s soil was tilled, and corn, alfalfa, and grain had been planted. Life would be busy as he awaited the bountiful rewards of spring’s labor. There was the garden, with peas to pick. The strawberries would be ready. Lots of canning and freezing. Much time went into preparing a garden for harvest.

And Rachel’s garden had always been lush and plentiful. Gardening was work for the womenfolk, but Samuel had done the best he could the past two years. He was thankful his sisters took care of most of the canning and freezing.

He closed his eyes, his shoulders lifting with his sigh. He missed Rachel the most this time of year.

Lillian felt like a fool. Didn’t “down yonder a spell” mean right down the road? The friendly Amish boy had pointed down Black Horse Road and uttered those exact words when she’d asked for directions to her grandparents’ farm. She’d thought the walk would do her good—help her shed some of the calories she ingested while sitting at the Quik Mart with a large cinnamon roll and cola.

Evidently, she’d mistranslated “down yonder a spell.” There wasn’t a farmhouse in sight.

She really should have considered the strappy sandals she was wearing before opting to venture down the road to nowhere. Her capri blue jeans and short-sleeved pink-cotton shirt were good choices, however. The clement sun mixing with a soft breeze made for a perfect day. An excellent day for a walk . . . if only she’d had better shoes.

Setting her red suitcase on the grassy shoulder of the paved road, she plopped down on top of it and scanned the farmland surrounding her. It was so quiet. Peaceful. She could only hope that some of the peacefulness the Amish were known for would rub off on her during her stay. She needed it. Life had not been easy to her the past few years.

Her mom’s idea of parenting had left much to be desired— jumping from one man to the next looking for something she never seemed to find. All the while she’d toted Lillian along. Lillian had grown up changing schools, saying good-bye to friends, and continually hoping Mom’s next boyfriend would be better than the last. At the first chance, Lillian had bailed on the situation, telling herself she could do better.

Despite her good intentions, she’d ended up close to following in her mother’s footsteps. After putting herself through college while living with three other girls in a small apartment, she’d landed a teaching job. There had been boyfriends, and she’d definitely made her own share of mistakes.

But always, something had whispered to her that there was another way to live. Sometimes she’d listened, sometimes not. But she never felt comfortable enough to ask herself just where that voice was coming from—she just didn’t know enough to form an opinion. She didn’t listen to the voice when it cautioned her not to move in with Rickie. But when the voice became too strong to ignore, she knew it was time to get out of that situation.

Despite the complete lack of religious upbringing, she always suspected there might be a God looking down on her. But in light of her mom’s thoughts on church, she couldn’t ask her about it. Her mother seemed angry at religion. While she heartily encouraged Lillian to attend various churches with her friends when she was a child, she herself would have no part of it. It was a huge contradiction in parenting, and Lillian didn’t understand it to this day.

Now, knowing the Amish to be solid in their faith, Lillian decided it might be best to keep her suspicions about a possible God to herself around her grandparents.

“Guess I better get moving and find out how far ‘down yonder a spell’ really is.” She jumped off the suitcase, gave it a heave-hoe, and started back down the paved road, gazing to either side where the acreage stretched as far she could see. The sun pressing down on the horizon left her a tad worried about how much further the farm was.

“Whoa, boy!” Samuel yelled to his horse. The animal slowed his pace to a gentle trot, bringing the buggy alongside an Englisch woman cumbersomely toting a bright-red suitcase. She was minus a shoe . . . if you called a flat-bottom sole with two small straps a shoe. Certainly not a good walking instrument.

“Can I offer you a ride?” He pulled back on the reins and came to a complete halt, as did the small-framed woman. When she turned, he was met by radiant green eyes in a delicate face.

Delicate, that is, until she grimaced and blew a tendril of hair out of her face.

Then she smiled, and her face transformed, lighting up like the morning sun. He was momentarily struck dumb.

It didn’t matter. The woman was focused on his horse. Deserting her suitcase on the side of the road, she stumbled over to Pete and reached out to stroke his nose without so much as a “May I?”

Thankfully, Pete was a gentle giant.

“He’s beautiful,” she said, glancing briefly in Samuel’s direction, eyes sparkling.

He cleared his throat. “Ya. And a fine work horse too.”

What an interesting woman this was. Unafraid. And beautiful, he had to admit. He watched as her long brown hair danced in the wind, framing her face in layers. She wore no makeup and seemed lacking in the traditional Englisch look, although her brightly colored blouse and calf-length breeches certainly gave her away. A tourist, most likely. But a tourist walking alone down Blackhorse Road?

The woman’s mouth curved upward in delight as she cooed over Pete. The horse gently snorted, nudged her, and she laughed heartily, her head thrown back. It was a thoroughly enchanting scene.

Suddenly uncomfortable at his thoughts, he straightened and coughed. It was enough to bring the woman’s attention back to him.

“I would love a ride!” With a final kiss on the old horse’s muzzle, she went back for her suitcase. “Where should I put this?”

“Ach, my manners.” Samuel jumped out of the buggy and made his way to the woman. “Let me.” He took the suitcase from her, quite surprised at how heavy the small bundle was. After stowing it behind the double seat, he offered his hand to assist her into the buggy.

“Thank you.” Now she was studying him . . . seemingly from head to toe. At her open glance, he felt a flush tint his cheeks.

“I’m Samuel Stoltzfus,” he said, extending his hand but avoiding her questioning eyes.

“I’m Lillian Miller.”

Her hands were certainly that of an Englisch woman, soft and void of a hard day’s work. The Plain women in Lancaster County tilled gardens, shelled peas, kneaded bread, and a host of other necessary chores uncommon to Englisch women from the city. City women’s hands were not only smooth and manicured, but pleasing to the touch.

Returning to his seat, he started up the buggy again. The woman was obviously tired and happy to be resting; with a slight groan she stretched her legs out. He found his eyes wandering her way and silently remonstrated himself.

“Where are you from, Lillian? Or, more important, where are you going?”

“I’m from Houston.”

“Ya, Texas,” he said, slightly surprised. They didn’t usually get Texans walking the roads out here. “Lots of farms in Texas. What brings you to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania?”

“I’m coming to stay with my grandparents for a while.” She smiled. “They’re Amish.”

Amish? He was once more at a loss for words. Not to worry— the Englisch woman wasn’t.

“Actually, I guess I’m Amish too,” she added.

Discreetly glancing at her Englisch clothes, he wondered how that could be so.

“My grandparents are Irma Rose and Jonas Miller. I’ll be staying with them for a while.” She looked his way as if waiting for a response that never came. “I’d like to adapt myself to the Amish ways. I need a peaceful, calm lifestyle away from the city. Anyway, I’ve decided to be Amish for a while.”

Samuel had been trying to connect this vivacious outsider with the staunch Irma Rose and Jonas he knew, but these words jostled him out of his musings. “You’d like to be Amish for a while?”

“Yes. Although I don’t plan to wear one of those dark-colored dresses or white caps like the women I saw strolling by earlier.”

In spite of himself, Samuel chuckled. “Do you even know what being Amish means?” He didn’t mean the remark as harshly as it sounded.

Lillian slanted her eyes in his direction, as if slightly offended.

Unexpectedly, the buggy wheel hit a rut. With an oomph, his new friend bounced in her seat. She was a tiny little thing. Luckily, she didn’t catapult right off the seat and onto the pavement.

“Yikes!” she said when her behind returned to the seat. And then she giggled. As Pete’s ears swiveled back to catch the commotion, Samuel couldn’t help but grin. The woman’s enthusiasm was contagious.

He decided to drop the subject. He knew Irma Rose and Jonas well enough to figure they’d set her right about being Amish and what it really meant. Samuel reckoned they’d have their hands full with their granddaughter.

As Samuel righted the buggy, he asked, “When is the last time you saw your grandparents?” He hadn’t even known Irma Rose and Jonas had a granddaughter.

“When I was ten. Seventeen years ago. It was the first time I saw snow. Real snow.” Her eyes twinkled from the memory.

“Anyway, I know things will be different from what I’m used to. But I can live without television. There’s too much bad news on TV anyway. And I know Amish women cook a lot. I’m a great cook.” She shrugged. “I’m a hard worker in general. I know Amish get up early and go to bed early. I know they work hard during the day. And if that’s what it takes to feel peaceful and calm . . . I’m in!”

Samuel found her enthusiasm charming, no matter how misdirected it was. “Lillian, I’m sure Irma Rose and Jonas will appreciate you helping with household duties, but it will take more than chores and giving up worldly things to provide you with the peacefulness you’re lookin’ for.”

“Well, it’s a start,” she said, sounding optimistic.

As for that . . . who was he to argue?

Lillian remembered the Christmas visit with her grandparents at their farm, especially the snow. Unlike the icy mix of sludge found rarely in her hometown state, snow in Lancaster County glistened with a tranquil purity. Almost two decades later, she could still recall the towering cedar trees blanketed in white and ice skating on the crystalline pond in her mother’s old ice skates.

The presents had been few. She remembered that. And while she recollected her grandparents as warm and loving, she also remembered the tension between them and her mother. Her grandfather had kept the mood festive, suggested the ice-skating, and seemed to make it his mission for Lillian to have a good time—even carting her to town and back in his gray, horsedrawn buggy. It had been the highlight of her trip.

“I remember liking the way my grandparents talked,” she recalled to Samuel. “I didn’t understand a lot of things they said. Things like ‘Outen the lights until sunrise when we’ll redd-up the house.’ And ‘It wonders me if it will make wet tomorrow.’ Mom translated those to mean ‘Turn out the lights until in the morning when we’ll clean up the house’ and ‘I wonder if it will rain tomorrow.’”

“That would be right,” Samuel said.

Grandma and Grandpa both spoke another language she’d later found out was Pennsylvania Deitsch. Lots of times they would commingle their language with English. “Danki, Sarah Jane, for bringing our little kinskind for a visit,” her grandfather told her mother that Christmas. To which Sarah Jane Miller forced a smile and nodded.

“Grandma, why are you and Grandpa wearing those costumes?”

Lillian recalled asking her grandparents.

Grandpa had just laughed and said, “It is our faith, my kinskind. We wear these plain clothes to encourage humility and separation from the world.”

At ten, Lillian had little understanding of what that signified. Except somewhere in the translation she knew it meant they couldn’t have a television or a phone. Several times after their one and only trip, Lillian had asked her mother if she could call her grandparents. Mom reminded her no phones were allowed at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

“Evidently, my grandparents came to Houston a couple of times before our visit at Christmas, but I don’t remember,” she told Samuel. “That Christmas was my last trip to Lancaster County and the last time I saw my grandparents. Until now.”

“I reckon Irma Rose and Jonas are really looking forward to seeing you.”

“I hope so.”

Lillian tried to keep her gaze focused on the road in front of her. But her eyes kept involuntarily trailing to her left. Samuel Stoltzfus was as handsome a man as she had ever seen in the city. His plain clothes did little to mask his solid build and appealing smile each time she glanced in his direction. But it was his piercing blue eyes Lillian couldn’t seem to draw away from.

“So, how long have you been married?” Nosey, nosey. The astonished look on his face confirmed her worry. She was crossing the line. “I’m sorry. I just noticed that you have the customary beard following marriage.” She’d done her research before arriving here. “And . . . I was just . . . curious.” And curious why? He’s Amish, for heaven’s sake.

“I’m not married. I’m widowed.”

“Oh,” she said softly, thinking how young his wife must have been when she died. “ I’m so sorry. When did your wife die?”

“Mei fraa, Rachel, passed almost two years ago,” he answered without looking her way.

“Again, I’m so sorry.”

Samuel continued to stare at the road ahead. “It was God’s will.”

There was no sadness or regret in his tone. Just fact. Lillian knew she should leave it alone, but . . . “I’m sure you miss her very much.”

He didn’t glance her way. “There’s Irma Rose and Jonas’s farm,” he said, pointing to their right. “I better take you right up to the house.” He coaxed Pete down a long dirt drive leading from the road to the white farmhouse.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I can walk.” She wondered if Samuel Stoltzfus was ready to be rid of her. His eyebrows edged upward beneath his dark bangs and he glanced at her shoeless foot.

Point taken. “A ride to the house would be great.”

As Pete trotted down the dirt driveway toward the farmhouse, reality sank in. This would be her new home for the summer—or however long it took to accomplish her goal. At first glance, everything seemed lovely. The prodigious fields on either side of the lane were neatly mowed, and the white fencing in good repair. But unlike the farms she passed on the way, there were no signs of new life planted. It wasn’t until they drew closer to the farmhouse that she spotted a small garden off to her left enclosed by a wire-mesh fence. Parallel rows of greenery indicated vegetables would be forthcoming.


Also off to her left was a large barn, the paint weathered and chipping. Another smaller barn to her right also was in need of a fresh paint job. She recalled the barns they had passed on her journey down Black Horse Road. Most were a bright crimson color.

The white farmhouse appeared freshly painted, but with flowerbeds absent of flowers or shrubs. They must have been beautiful at one time. But now they—and the rest of the yard—lent an air of neglect to the farm.

A wraparound porch with two rockers looked inviting. But while the idea of curling up with a good book in one of the rockers was appealing, Lillian knew it was the inside of the house and its inhabitants she feared most. Her grandma had seemed pleasant enough on the phone, but what if she and her grandfather were too set in their ways to make room for her? And what if she couldn’t adjust to their ways? No electricity meant no hairdryer, curling iron, or other modern convenience she considered a necessity. How would she charge her cell phone? And she couldn’t imagine a summer without air conditioning.

Grimacing as the thoughts rattled around her head, she reminded herself why she’d come. She’d had a month to consider all of these factors. She thought she had. But as her fantasy of leaving everything behind for this became absolute, her tummy twirled with uncertainty.

She was still attempting to envision her new way of life when Samuel brought Pete up next to a gray buggy parked on one side of the house. Samuel moved quickly to get her suitcase from behind the seat and extended his hand to help her out of the buggy. Towering over her, he promptly released her fingers.

“Thank you for the ride. Maybe I will see you again.” She could only hope. But his lack of response as he quickly jumped back in the carriage left her wondering.

Lillian waved good-bye and watched until horse, buggy, and man were back on the paved road. She knew she was stalling. Her grandparents would be strangers to her, and she would be a stranger to them. Yet they had encouraged her to come and stay with them. “For as long as you like,” her grandmother had said.

Striving to cast her worries aside, she turned around, picked up her suitcase, and headed up the walk toward what would be her new home . . . for a while.


My review:
I haven't received this yet, but I'm looking forward to getting it :)
I read the first chapter, and it looks really good.
I love reading books about the Amish, and learning more about them.


Monday, November 10, 2008

Amish

With the blog tour of 'Plain Perfect' by Beth Wiseman coming up tomorrow, I thought I would post links to a few different web articles about the Amish.

Here is an overview of Amish and Mennonite beliefs

Here it talks about Amish weddings

Here they have an online store for Amish quilts

Hope you have a look around, and find out more about the Amish!



Tuesday, November 4, 2008

God's Prayer Book by Ben Patterson



It is time to play a Wild Card! Every now and then, a book that I have chosen to read is going to pop up as a FIRST Wild Card Tour. Get dealt into the game! (Just click the button!) Wild Card Tours feature an author and his/her book's FIRST chapter!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!






Today's Wild Card author is:




and the book:



God’s Prayer Book

Salt River imprint from Tyndale House (September 22, 2008)



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Ben Patterson is the campus pastor of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. A contributing editor to Christianity Today and the Leadership Journal, he has written several books: He Has Made Me Glad, Serving God, Waiting, Deepening Your Conversation with God, and the Prayer Devotional Bible. Ben and his wife have three sons and a daughter.


Product Details:

List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Salt River imprint from Tyndale House (September 22, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1414316658
ISBN-13: 978-1414316659

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:



Introduction

James Boice said learning to pray is a little like learning to play the violin with the virtuosos. No instrument sounds worse in the beginning stages of learning; it’s all screech and scratch. But if the student is determined to play well, he checks the program guide for the classical music station and notes when the violin concertos will be aired. He buys the music score for each concerto and does his best to play along with the orchestra. At first he sounds terrible. As time passes, however, he begins little by little to sound more and more like the orchestra. But all along, as he groans on his instrument, the orchestra plays the music beautifully—his poor performance is caught up and completed in the music of the masters. So it is with us and prayer: By praying the Psalms back to God, we learn to pray in tune with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.1

It is no accident that the great prayers of the book of Psalms are also songs. They are the sheet music, the score and libretto of prayer. They are the building blocks for the music of eternity. Better than the things we ask God for in prayer is the God we pray to—and with—and the sweet music we make as we do.

I am learning to pray in harmony with the Psalms, but I must admit I got off to a slow start. I became a Christian at age ten, but it wasn’t until decades later that the Psalms began to teach me to pray. So although I’m now well into adulthood, you are reading the words of a new convert. I’m still wide eyed and breathless and maybe a little over the top with enthusiasm when I talk about their value. If I succeed with this book, you will be too.

There is no better place in all of Scripture than the Psalms to learn to be with God and to see with the eyes of faith the face of the One who longs to form us fully in his image. But the Psalms can be hard; they often stretch and perplex as they teach. How could it be otherwise? The Psalms are God’s prayer book, and they teach us to talk to God in his own language.

Learning to pray is, in fact, like learning language. Most babies come into the world full of some very strong desires and feelings. They are quite capable of expressing them in grunts, gurgles, squeals, and sobs. But it’s a stretch to call their utterances language. It would be tragic if, at age eighteen, these noises were still all they knew about communication. And it would be worse than tragic if at age eighteen they were still asking for the things they wanted at three months, if their desires had not expanded and matured as they learned to speak.

The process of learning language is complex and wonderful; it begins with a child listening to his or her parents, then mimicking and copying what he or she hears. But a child is not a parrot, and very quickly mimicry turns to meaning. Words and ideas and desires match up with each other and are woven together in syntax and grammar. With language comes a culture and a way of understanding the world and other people. It’s marvelous what happens when we learn language: We are taken out of ourselves to what is beyond ourselves. It’s not just our informing the world who we are; it’s the world informing us who it is. It’s not just our telling others what we want; it’s others telling us what they want. Language changes us, making us more than we were when we were merely trying to express ourselves.

Prayer, like language, begins with being able to hear. Prayer starts not when we speak to God but when God speaks to us. In the beginning was the Word; God’s word, not ours. Before all time, before you and I were, was the Word; the Light that gives light and life to everyone.2 There would be no speech if God had not first spoken. We would have nothing to say if God had not first said something to us. Ultimately then, all our prayers are answers to God’s prayer—his gracious Word of love to us! We love, and we pray, because he first loved us.3 That’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was referring to when he wrote, “The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”4 The Bible, the written Word of God, tells us what God wants, and more important, what God is like. It expresses his will and reveals his character. The relationship between the Bible and prayer is profound. This is especially true when it comes to the Psalms.

Picture it this way: Children and other novices to the Scriptures have long been told that the best way to find the book of Psalms, the longest book in the Bible, is to put their fingers in the middle of the Bible—in its heart, so to speak. What is the book of Psalms? It is a book of prayers. And the longest prayer in this longest book is Psalm 119, a prayer about God’s Word, the Scriptures. Prayer is at the heart of the Bible, and the Bible is in the heart of prayer.

But that’s just a picture, an illustration of the relationship between the Psalms and prayer. Better is a demonstration—the prayer life of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of his life, as he hung dying on the cross, he went to the Scriptures for his prayers—more specifically, to the Psalms. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46) is a quotation from Psalm 22:1. “Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!” (Luke 23:46) comes from Psalm 31:5. At the point of his greatest anguish and extremity, Jesus turned to the Bible for his prayers. Charles Spurgeon reminds us that, when he most needed to pray, Jesus, the grand original thinker, saw no need to be original or extemporaneous. “How instructive is this great truth that the Incarnate Word lived on the Inspired Word! It was food to him, as it is to us; and . . . if Christ thus lived upon the Word of God, should not you and I do the same? . . . I think it well worthy of your constant remembrance that, even in death, our blessed Master showed the ruling passion of his spirit, so that his last words were a quotation from Scripture.”5

As a devout Jew, Jesus considered the Psalms to be his prayer book. A close look at the Psalms shows the Lord’s Prayer—the prayer Jesus taught us to pray—to be a summary and distillation of all the prayers that are to be found in the heart of the Bible. It’s all there in the Psalms: prayer that God’s name be hallowed, that his rule be supreme and his will be done, that our needs be met and our sins forgiven, that we be kept safe from all danger to soul and body.

Martin Luther loved the Psalms. He called them “a little Bible,” because they contain, “set out in the briefest and most beautiful form, all that is to be found in the Bible.”

Sizing Up the Psalms
The psalms that first got my attention were the psalms that always seems to be the right thing to pray, no matter the mood or situation. I call them the “one size fits all” psalms, like the band on my adjustable baseball hat. These psalms can be expanded or contracted to fit any situation. For example, Psalm 103 is always the right thing to pray—always true, always fitting, in every time and place:

Let all that I am praise the Lord;

with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.

Let all that I am praise the Lord;

may I never forget the good things he does for me.

He forgives all my sins

and heals all my diseases.

He redeems me from death

and crowns me with love and tender mercies.

He fills my life with good things.

My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!

Next came the psalms that seemed to fit my mood, that helped me say what I felt in the moment. I call them the “this size fits some” psalms. For instance, when I was feeling guilty, speechless with remorse, Psalm 51 was a perfect fit. No matter how mute guilt had made me, I could open my Bible and my mouth and say, “Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.” Same with Psalm 130: “Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive? But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.” I literally couldn’t have said it better myself. If God held my sins against me, I’d be toast, dead meat, on the ash heap. But he forgives them all! Therefore I bow in abject, broken, and joyful reverence. Psalms like these gave me confidence to speak to God when I least felt that I could. They still do.

Adding up the psalms in the two categories I could relate to-—the “this size fits some” psalms, or the mood psalms; and the “one size fits all” psalms—I didn’t know what to do with all the rest, which was most of them. The most obvious example is Psalm 137, with its chilling last line: “Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!” But that’s an extreme example. There were plenty of psalms that seemed too remote from my experience to have much to do with my prayer life. Psalm 87 has a good line or two if I was preaching a sermon that needed to reference ancient Jewish attitudes toward Jerusalem, but otherwise I didn’t know how I could meaningfully pray personally,

On the holy mountain

stands the city founded by the Lord.

He loves the city of Jerusalem

more than any other city in Israel.

O city of God,

what glorious things are said of you!

I was really at a loss with psalms like Psalm 88. It doesn’t have one happy thing to say about God or life and ends with, “You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend.” Those lines do not describe anything I have ever felt. Maybe they will someday, but so far, so good. But most problematic was Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted on the cross. I could preach this psalm as a meditation on the sufferings of Christ, but I couldn’t get myself to pray, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far away when I groan for help?” Would it not be blasphemous for me, Ben Patterson, to pray what only Jesus could pray?

My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;

an evil gang closes in on me.

They have pierced my hands and feet.

I can count all my bones.

My enemies stare at me and gloat.

They divide my garments among themselves

and throw dice for my clothing.

So there were a lot of psalms that seemed either alien or off limits. Most of them, actually. My slim psalm repertoire was a picture of the thinness of my prayer life—and my heart.

It was also a picture of my shallow sense of Christian identity. I was what someone called a “yearbook Christian.” I came to the Psalms like I came to my twenty-year high school reunion—thumbing through the index of my old yearbook, looking only for the page numbers of the pictures of me and my friends, and ignoring the rest.

Not Much in My Heart to Pour Out
My sophomore year in college, my friends and I decided to spend two hours in prayer for the salvation of the unsaved high school students we were working with. We purposed to storm heaven and bring down the blessings of God for these kids. One of us had a part-time job in a church, so he asked the pastor if we could meet for prayer in the church building, a logical place to pray, one would think. The pastor told us just to show up some evening, any evening, and since my friend had a key to the building, we could pray anywhere we wanted. But the night we came to pray the church was bustling with activity, as various committee meetings, youth programs, and choir practice were spread throughout the facility. It was busier and more full of distraction than our homes and dorm rooms. The only free space was a large janitor’s closet that smelled strongly of detergent and disinfectant.

So we gathered in that closet to pour out our hearts to God. We had two hours to do nothing but stand before the Lord’s throne and plead for the salvation of souls. We prayed every which way we knew: We praised God and confessed our sins and lifted up the names of all the students we could think of. Then we praised and confessed and interceded some more. When we had prayed for everything and in every way we could think of, over and over, I looked at my watch to see if we had any time left. Just fifteen minutes had passed! The next one hour and forty-five minutes of prayer were the longest and slowest I had ever experienced.

I came to pour out my heart to God and discovered that there wasn’t much in my heart to pour out. It would be years before I understood why I saw prayer in the same way I saw the Psalms—only as a tool to help me ask God for what I wanted. The problem was that I wanted so little! What I didn’t understand was that learning to pray was learning to desire the things God wants to give, and then asking him for them.

The greatest enemy of prayer is not asking for too much of God but for too little. We’re like Bontsha the Silent in the Yiddish writer Isaac Peretz’s sad tale. All his life he had been denied, passed over, oppressed, and forgotten. Chronic disappointment had robbed him of the ability even to dream or desire; he had come to expect nothing and want nothing. He was Bontsha the Silent.

When he died he found himself standing before God in the court of heaven. God smiled tenderly at Bontsha, and said, “My son, all your joyless life you had nothing. You lived without hope. But now, here in my presence, there is the fullness of joy, eternal pleasures at my right hand. Only ask, and you shall receive. Anything, anything you want, shall be yours.”

The little man with a shrunken soul squinted his eyes and pondered the offer. “Anything? Anything at all?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” said the Almighty. “Anything you want.”

After a long pause, he said to the Almighty, “I would like a freshly baked roll, with real butter.”

Heaven wept. The greater tragedy of Bontsha’s life was not what he had been denied, but what he had ceased to desire. God had been reduced to the size of a loaf of bread and butter. This man had become far too easily pleased.

It wasn’t—and isn’t—that Bontsha’s desires or ours are unworthy to express to God in prayer. He is our loving and compassionate Father, and he listens to all we say with a kind and wise heart. But he knows better than we do what we need—and better yet, he desires things for us that we may not even desire for ourselves.

More than a Tool for Self-Expression
Prayer is more than a tool for self-expression, a means to get God to give us what we want. It is a means he uses to give us what he wants, and to teach us to want what he wants. Holy Scripture in general, and the Psalms in particular, teach us who God is and what he wants to give.

When the members of his synagogue complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt, Abraham Heschel, the great philosopher of religion, replied wisely and very biblically. He told them that the liturgy wasn’t supposed to express what they felt; they were supposed to feel what the liturgy expressed. To be taught by the Bible to pray is to learn to want and feel what the Bible expresses—to say what it means and mean what it says.

Those who have practiced this kind of prayer over time make a surprising discovery: As they learn to feel what the Psalms express, their hearts and desires are enlarged. They find that what they once regarded as strong desires were really weak, puerile little wishes, debased inklings of what is good. Of course! Would not the God who made us in his own image understand better than we ever could what we really need? And shouldn’t we ask him for it? As C. S. Lewis put it,

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.8

The best part of prayer is who you pray to. Answers to prayer are wonderful, but the Answerer is better. Spend enough time with Jesus, and you’ll start to look and think and act like Jesus. Seeing is becoming. The church father Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” It’s true: God is never more glorified than when we come alive to the vision of God. Prayer is anticipation and preparation for the great day promised in Scripture when we will see Christ fully and “will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.”9

Augustine prayed,

How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, since in truth when I call upon him I call him into myself? Is there any place within me where God can dwell? How can God come into me, God who made heaven and earth? O Lord my God, is there any place in me that can contain you?10

Is there any place in us that can contain God? No, there is not. Something must expand us for that to happen. The Psalms are God’s gracious gift to us to do that very thing. How sweet and kind of God to give us a book of prayers in his Word. This Word “is alive and powerful . . . sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.”11 This is the very Word he gives us to pray in the Psalms!

Paul coined a word to describe the character of Scripture: He said it is “inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). The Greek is literally “God-breathed.” The breath of God permeates the Bible. The breath of God is the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who spoke light into darkness and turned dust into living beings made in the image of God. This is the Spirit who speaks to us in the Bible, making it “useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right” (2 Timothy 3:16). With this thought no doubt in mind, the poet George Herbert described prayer as “God’s breath in man returning to his birth.”12 The same Breath that gives us breath to pray comes to us through the God-breathed Scriptures. What we inhale in the Word of God, we exhale in prayer. Like language, what comes in comes out, changing us in the process.

Certainly, God invites us to pour out our hearts to him. The Psalms, which John Calvin called “an anatomy of all parts of the human soul,” can help us do that.13 All the joys, pleasures, hopes, fears, despairs, doubts, heartaches, terrors, and longings of which we are capable are mirrored, clarified, sanctified, and transformed in the Psalms, as are all the ways we may pray: supplication, intercession, praise, thanks, lament, and meditation. The Psalms, as many have said, are a mirror; they will reveal you. Yet they are much more. Read them and they will read you. Pray them and they will change you.

Prayer is better than a tool for mere self-expression, unless the self being expressed is the self being shaped by the Word of God into the image of Christ. And who is Christ, but the new Adam, the true human, the faithful Son who lived as we were all created by God to live? When we sin we are apt to excuse ourselves and say, “I’m only human.” But Jesus knows better. He points to himself and says, in effect, “When you sin, you are less than human.” We say, “Just be yourself when you pray.” Jesus says, in effect, “You need to be a self, a true self, before you can be yourself.”

To be in God’s presence is to be transformed. At the end of The Divine Comedy, Dante writes of passing through the levels of hell and purgatory before ascending through heaven into God’s very presence. He tries to describe what he saw when he looked into the face of God. Words fail him, for human language cannot express such a sight. But he does describe the effect gazing into the face of God has on his will and desire:

But now my desire and will were revolved, like a wheel which is moved evenly, by the love that moves the sun and other stars.14

The same love that moves stars and constellations and nebulae moves you. The apostle Paul said that to be in the presence of God is to have a veil lifted so we “. . . can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.”15

James Gilmour, the great Scottish missionary to Mongolia, went to the Psalms again and again when he was stuck in his prayer life, powerless to generate devotion on his own. “When I feel I cannot make headway in devotion, I open the Psalms and push in my canoe, and let myself be carried along in the stream of devotion which flows through the whole book. The current always sets toward God, and in most places is strong and deep.”16

It’s about Us
So learning to pray is learning to ask for the things that God wants to give. It is to be expanded in mind and spirit. There’s a second thing I didn’t understand about prayer that night in the janitor’s closet: Prayer is not just about me; it’s about us. This is especially the case with the Psalms-—the “one size fits some” and the “one size fits all” types. The Psalms were first the prayers of Israel, the people of God. With the coming of Christ they continue to be the prayers of Israel, but now it is the new Israel, the church—all those Jesus “ransomed . . . for God from every tribe and language and people and nation . . . [and] caused . . . to become a Kingdom of priests for our God” (Revelation 5:9-10). For millennia the people of God have prayed the Psalms, corporately and individually, but with the accent always on corporate prayer.

My problem with the Psalms was my problem with prayer: There was too much “me and Jesus” in my praying, and there needed to be a lot more “we and Jesus.” Eugene Peterson is right on the mark when he writes, “No Christian is an only child.”17 I never pray merely as an individual. Whether I am physically alone or in a group when I pray, I always pray as a member of the Body of Christ, a priest in a whole Kingdom of priests. To come into the presence of the living God is always to come with all those other people who, like me, have been given the same privilege. To ignore them is to reject the gift. “Prayer is an act, indeed the act of fellowship,” writes Peter Taylor Forsyth. “We cannot truly pray for ourselves without passing beyond ourselves and our individual experience. . . . Even private prayer is common prayer.”18

Now that is a liberating thought! When I pray, even if I am alone, I may imagine myself standing in the midst of a colossal assembly of God’s people, “from every tribe and language and people and nation”19 praying with them. That insight alone would have transformed that smelly janitor’s closet into a place of wonder and awe. According to Hebrews 12, when we pray we enter into a scene that is something like the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, times a billion: exuberant, majestic, noisy, the mother of all prayer meetings. For when we pray we come to:

Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering . . . to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven . . . to God himself, who is the judge over all things . . . to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. (Hebrews 12:22-23)

We Don’t Start the Praying, We Join the Praying
I am humbled and thrilled to know that the praying doesn’t begin when I begin to pray. When I begin to pray, I join the praying! The implications are stunning. When we pray we participate in what the Apostles’ Creed calls “the communion of saints.” We stand before the throne of God with all who are his, past, present, and future. Peter Kreeft calls God the “eternal contemporary,” meaning Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are as alive to him as we are.20 They are really there with us in God’s presence, along with countless others, living and dead: Moses and Peter and Paul and J. S. Bach; Luther, Augustine, Aquinas, and my dad. And you. We’re all there together.

Enter the Psalms: I may not personally be in the dark pit the man who prayed Psalm 88 was in, but there are many who were and are this very moment, my sisters and brothers in the persecuted church worldwide. We are part of the same Body; we’re family in a family closer and more enduring than any earthly family. The psalm enables me to enter into real fellowship with them, whether or not I ever meet them on earth, whether or not I ever experience personally what they experience. Their experiences are ours. I can pray that psalm, and as I do, I pray with them and for them. I may not know their names, but I am, in a very concrete way, obeying Scripture’s command to “rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”21 The first time I prayed Psalm 88 that way, tears flowed as I saw myself standing with those who grieve so deeply, and praying with them as I prayed for them,

O Lord, God of my salvation,

I cry out to you by day.

I come to you at night.

Now hear my prayer;

listen to my cry.

For my life is full of troubles,

and death draws near.

I am as good as dead,

like a strong man with no strength left.

They have left me among the dead,

and I lie like a corpse in a grave.

I am forgotten,

cut off from your care.

You have thrown me into the lowest pit,

into the darkest depths.22

Your Place in God’s Story
It took a while for me to appreciate what Paul meant when he said we Gentiles, by the grace of God, have been grafted into the vine of Israel.23 But when the lights came on, I was stunned and delighted to realize that their story is my story too. It’s our story. What happened to Israel at the Red Sea and Sinai and Meribah is as much about me as it is about them. I began to see my name written into the whole biblical story. I started reading and praying the Psalms like a child learning how to read, learning a new “vocabulary, a grammar, and a plot line”24—discovering a family tree I didn’t know I had. Huge parcels of the Psalms that had formerly seemed to belong to someone else started feeling like home, like Psalm 106:

The people made a calf at Mount Sinai;

they bowed before an image made of gold.

They traded their glorious God

for a statue of a grass-eating bull.

They forgot God, their savior,

who had done such great things in Egypt—

such wonderful things in the land of Ham,

such awesome deeds at the Red Sea.

So he declared he would destroy them.

But Moses, his chosen one, stepped between the Lord and the people.

He begged him to turn from his anger and not destroy them.25

I had known that story for a long time—how those foolish folks had sinned so stupidly but Moses had prayed for them and God had relented in his judgment. I had even made “life application” from that story as the Scriptures encouraged me to do: “These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.”26 Yes, of course, I do the same kinds of things they did. God forgive me.

But now! I was no longer learning from them; I was learning about us. This sin problem is not just my problem; it’s our problem. The implications are critical to spiritual health. I tended to think I sinned mainly in isolation, as an individual. I thought I was taking responsibility for my own actions when I confessed my sins privately, but I was really separating myself from the protection of the community of God’s people, the Body of Christ. Sin flourishes in isolation, for we belong to Christ’s Body, not as members of a group, but as organs in a body. A member of a group can survive outside the group, but a member of a body dies outside the body. My individualistic approach to my sin increased the power that sin had over me. There is great comfort and strength in being able to pray, after a long litany of confession like Psalm 106, “Save us, O Lord our God! Gather us back from among the nations, so we can thank your holy name and rejoice and praise you.”27

Merely knowing this much that night in the janitor’s closet would have been a great encouragement to that little band of praying students. The walls with their shelves of detergent and disinfectants would have been pushed back and opened to include a lot more people—and some very fascinating people, at that. We would have been strengthened to see that our prayers were not about us as individuals in agreement; they were about us as living stones fitted together in the temple of the Holy Spirit, as royal priests, a holy nation.28 We were a cast of millions, maybe trillions. Prayer is not about me, or you; it is about all of us who belong to God.

Not about Us, but about God
But the third, and biggest, thing I didn’t appreciate that night in the janitor’s closet is that prayer ultimately is not even about us but about God. It’s not about the living stones that make up the temple but the Spirit in the temple. Overcoming this third misconception has been the most transforming of all to my prayer life.

Question: Who are the Psalms about? On the surface, they are about a lot of people: David, especially, but also Moses, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Jeduthun and Heman and Ethan and all Israel. Bigger question: Who is the Bible about? On the surface, the list is even longer. But Jesus made it radically short when he said to his opponents, “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!”29

This wasn’t a throwaway line for Jesus, an odd and obscure saying on the periphery of his teachings, something for future generations of scholars to puzzle over. It was right at the center, because he insisted that his whole mission was not to cancel what we know as the Old Testament Scriptures but to fulfill them.30 To fulfill is to fill-full, to complete what was implicit and incomplete in what came before.

So in Luke’s account of the Resurrection, establishing this fulfillment theme was very high on the Lord’s priority list. The Gospel writer tells us that, shortly after stepping out of the tomb, Jesus sought out two disciples walking to the village of Emmaus and explained to them what he meant when he said the “Scriptures point to me.” Luke says Jesus “took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”31 Later he appeared to the apostles and reiterated what he’d said earlier:

“When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.32

Every Psalm Whispers His Name
Jesus said he fulfilled all the Bible, including the Psalms of the Bible! The apostles grabbed hold of this and ran with it. On the Day of Pentecost, when Peter stood before the crowds in Jerusalem to preach the gospel, he went to one of David’s psalms, Psalm 16, to explain Christ’s resurrection. Peter said,

King David said this about him:

“I see that the Lord is always with me.

I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me.

No wonder my heart is glad,

and my tongue shouts his praises!

My body rests in hope.

For you will not leave my soul among the dead

or allow your Holy One to rot in the grave.

You have shown me the way of life,

and you will fill me with the joy of your presence.”33

Then Peter did something with the psalm that took tremendous chutzpah and would have been absolutely outrageous if the Lord had not given him the authority to do it: He said that David wasn’t really talking about himself; he was talking about Jesus!

Dear brothers, think about this! You can be sure that the patriarch David wasn’t referring to himself, for he died and was buried, and his tomb is still here among us. But he was a prophet, and he knew God had promised with an oath that one of David’s own descendants would sit on his throne. David was looking into the future and speaking of the Messiah’s resurrection. He was saying that God would not leave him among the dead or allow his body to rot in the grave.34

Peter could say this because Jesus had opened the door for him to say it. The church has been going through that door ever since. The writers of the New Testament write with the conviction that every story and psalm of the Old Testament “whispers his name.”35 The Bible is all about Jesus. As Peter explained it on the Day of Pentecost, when you pray the psalms of David as the psalms of Jesus, you pray exactly as David intended! You pray with David’s greater Son. Your voice resonates with a voice deeper than yours or David’s. You pray with Jesus. As Bonhoeffer put it, “If we want to read and pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us [and, I would add, or David or Israel!], but what they have to do with Jesus Christ.”36

So use your imagination. It helps me to think of it this way: I bow my head and begin to pray a psalm. I sense Someone’s presence, I hear Someone’s voice in my head, speaking as I speak. I look up, and behold! There is Jesus praying beside me. He smiles, and I know without his saying a word that when I began to pray it was not I who got his attention; it was he who got my attention. He didn’t join me in my concerns; I joined him in his. As I prayed his Word, my voice joined his voice. Precious mystery! Divine communion! Sweet intimacy!

There is more. I look at Jesus and see gathered around him his Body—countless multitudes there with me, also joined to him in prayer. Gathered from every tribe and language and nation, our voices are somehow subsumed, incorporated into Christ. Yet the intimacy with Jesus is not diluted! We are not a mass but members of a body. Just as every organ in a body is as directly connected to the head as any other organ—the nose no more connected to the head than the little toe—each of us in Christ’s Body is as close to Jesus as we would be if we were the only one. But—and this is crucial—there would be no intimacy outside the Body.

My wife grew up in a wonderful, loving family—a mom and a dad with six kids, living on the meager salary of a professor at a Christian college. There may not have been enough money, but there was no shortage of love. When they became adults, the brothers and sisters laughed uproariously when they discovered that each thought he or she was the parents’ favorite child! That’s a little bit like the Body of Christ: love and intimacy not in spite of the family but because of the family.

All the members of the Body of Christ are empowered to pray with Jesus, but never alone with Jesus. His brothers and sisters join their voices with his and pray whatever he prays, as family: “So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.”37 If you are in Jesus, you are now permitted to say whatever he says—not in yourself as an individual, but only as a member of Christ’s Body, with everyone else in his Body.

Body and Spirit
This unique relationship of union to Christ in prayer, with others, touches on what is sometimes called the communion of the saints, or the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Blaise Pascal saw with clarity how our love for God, for ourselves, and for each other—and therefore our prayers—are inextricably bound together in the Body (note: Pascal doesn’t capitalize the word Body as I do).

But in loving the body [each member] loves itself, because it has no being except in the body, through the body, and for the body. . . . We love ourselves because we are members of Christ. We love Christ because he is the body of which we are members. All are one. One is in the other like the three persons [of the Trinity].38

Here I must tread cautiously and reverently, for I touch on a mystery that goes far beyond my understanding. But for prayer it is a very practical mystery. The organic union of the Body of Christ is rooted in the loving union of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Together, the “community” of God helps us pray. In fact, we are drawn up into the communion of the Godhead when we pray. Jesus, the Son, teaches us to pray to the Father and intercedes for us as we do.39 The Spirit also helps us to pray, as something of a translator. In our weakness we don’t know what God wants us to pray for.

The Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.40

How to Pray through This Book
Given the mystery of prayer, you may wonder how this book can help you learn to pray through the Psalms. God’s Prayer Book is a beginner’s guide to learning to pray the Psalms, a “devotional commentary.” My aim is not to tell you what to pray. I want to say just enough about each psalm to stir your heart and imagination to lead you into prayer. So it’s far more devotional than commentary, more workbook than textbook. There are several wonderful commentaries any serious student of the Psalms should acquire. But the guides to prayer in this book say, “Here’s a psalm, here are a few things you should know about it, now use it.” Like a tool—a shovel, a hammer, or a saw—a psalm is best understood by using it, by praying it. Eugene Peterson likes the phrase “owner’s manual”41 for a book like this. I do too. The main idea is to give you enough information and reflection to get you started using the Psalms to teach you to pray.

Each devotional commentary has three parts:

A Psalm Text
This book contains the complete text of 76{verify} psalms that I believe can transform your prayer life. Read through each psalm slowly and thoughtfully two or three times. The psalm will be better than anything I say about it. Take note of any word or phrase that “glimmers”—stands out or gives you pause. The Holy Spirit may use these “glimmerings” to prompt you to pay attention to some specific matter in your personal life.

A Devotional Window
I offer a short devotional perspective on each psalm only as an aid in understanding and an encouragement to pray. But I am no more than a servant of the Word of God, a kind of pastoral docent in an art museum. Its halls are lined with the works of masters, objects of profound wisdom and breathtaking beauty. My job is to point out a thing or two about these great works and then get out of the way so you can look into them more deeply and personally and be taught by the Holy Spirit to pray more like Jesus. Be careful what you look into—the Psalms are mirrors that will look into you and read you more searchingly than you will ever read them.

A Prayer Route
The prayer points listed after each devotional are suggested ways to pray the psalm, routes one may take to pray through it, like climbing a great rock.

My son Andy is an expert rock climber. In May 2007 he climbed El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley, an imposing mass of granite that rises three thousand feet above the valley floor. It’s the kind of climb that normally takes a few days and nights—which means climbers typically anchor themselves in portable “ledges” in which to sleep at night.

One of the fascinating things about any great “wall,” as climbers term the rocks they climb, is that there is usually more than one way to the top. The wall is what it is, and it cannot be altered. It must be respected. There is one wall, and no amount of wishing it to be something other than what it is will make it so. Disaster awaits anyone who climbs wishfully. But within the parameters or boundaries the wall offers, there may be several routes for the climber, strategies one may take to move along the contours of the rock.

Like the God who gave them, the Psalms are like these great rocks. They are what they are, and no amount of wishing them to be otherwise will change that. Any attempt to make a psalm what it is not invites spiritual peril. But there are usually a variety of ways to pray through a psalm, while respecting its integrity. The prayer prompts after each devotional window are my suggested routes. They are based on my own prayers and analysis of the Psalms from dialogue with commentators and others I pray with—particularly my wife and the fine folks who have been praying with me these past four years in the school of prayer at Santa Barbara Community Church. But if you are moved to pray in different directions (see above, “A Psalm Text”), by all means do so.

You probably don’t know that you know one of the main Hebrew words for belief. It’s amen. It means to rest on something, to put your full weight down, to lash yourself to a truth as you would a tent to a stake or a rope to a rock face. Every time you pray a psalm, you anchor your soul to God’s truth the way a climber rests his or her weight on a handhold on El Capitan—Spanish for something like “the Lord.”

One more thing: During Andy’s three-day climb, my wife, Lauretta, and I went on a Web site to follow the route he took to the top. The wall is named the Salathe, and the Web site was loaded with photos of the breathtaking vistas he was enjoying on his climb. The prayer routes are like those photos. They’re vistas I got when I prayed the Psalms. It is my earnest prayer that they will encourage you to take your own photographs—or better, to paint your own pictures.

But this book is still just a beginner’s guide—or perhaps a change of pace for those seasoned in prayer. As you read through each devotional, I invite you to try out some other ways to learn prayer from the Psalms that may serve you over your lifetime. I’ll list five.

1. Say Them Out Loud
Just read the Psalms slowly and thoughtfully, assenting to what they say with as much understanding as you have, intellectually and emotionally. Don’t just read them, pray them; say them from the heart.

Does it strike you as odd that the Word of God, the Bible, should have at its center a prayer book, the Psalms? It’s better than odd; it’s beautiful and mysterious, for the Psalms contain both the Word God has to say to us about prayer and the words he wants us to say to him in prayer. “This is pure grace,” exclaimed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “that God tells us how we can speak with him and have fellowship with him.”42

2. Festoon Them
Think of a psalm as a Christmas tree. Read it and then festoon it with your own prayers, as you would decorate a tree. Your prayers are answers to what God says to you in the psalm. Or think of its words as a road map—let it show you where to go, and then go there. The psalm is your guideline, the Holy Spirit is your guide, and you are the traveler.43

A simple way to understand a psalm’s intent is to read it through the lens of the “three Rs”: Rejoice, Repent, and Request. Ask these three questions:

Rejoice: What do I find here that gives me cause to rejoice, to give praise and thanks? Then do it.

Repent: What do I read here that brings to light sin in my life? Then confess and repent.

Request: What in this psalm can inform the way I pray for others and myself? Then make your requests of God accordingly.

3. Paraphrase Them
Meditate and study a psalm until you understand it well enough to put it into your own words. Then paraphrase the psalm as you have come to understand it, and pray your paraphrase.

The Living Bible, a paraphrase by Ken Taylor, opened a generation’s eyes to the vitality of the Bible. You don’t have to be as skilled as Ken Taylor to write a paraphrase that helps you pray from the heart what you hear God saying to you in his Word. No one need read or hear what you have written but you and the Lord, who delights in the prayers of his people.

4. Learn Them by Heart
Memorize the Psalms—but not by rote. Rather, learn them by heart; make their words your words. Come to understand them so well you can recite them—by inflection and tone—as though you had written them yourself. This is, by far, the best way I know to learn to pray the Psalms. I can think of no more powerful way to allow the Word of God to change who you are and how you think. Over the years I have been grateful for every line of Scripture I have committed to memory, but the prayers of the Psalms have offered incomparable comfort and clarity in desperate, murky, and confusing situations, when I didn’t have a worthwhile word of my own to say—when I quite literally didn’t have a prayer.

5. Marinate in Them
Some people use the Bible like they use spice to liven up the taste of food—a little Tabasco here, some salt and pepper and oregano there; a favorite verse, a “one size fits all” psalm like Psalm 23 or 103 to read when you are (check one) sad or glad or afraid or lonely or struggling with doubt. Nothing wrong with that, unless that’s the only way you come to Scripture.

But it’s better to use the Psalms as you would a marinade. A spice touches only the surface of the food; a marinade changes its character. Chicken soaked in lemon juice or a steak drenched in garlic and teriyaki sauce isn’t the same thing it was before the treatment. The soul should marinate in Scripture by repeated, thoughtful, slow, comprehensive, and Spirit-enlightened reading. Make it your aim for Scripture to be for you what Charles Spurgeon said it was for John Bunyan: “Prick him anywhere, his blood is bibline.”44

Soak in the Psalms, using any of the methods I’ve suggested above: saying, festooning, paraphrasing, and memorizing. Mature Christians have long known that the best way to learn to pray is to pray through the Psalms systematically, psalm by psalm, day in and day out, week by week and month by month for a lifetime. Liturgical traditions use prayer books with assigned daily readings arranged on a monthly cycle. Anyone can divide them up for monthly (thirty-day) or bimonthly (60-day) cycles; just divide 150 by the number of days. A thirty-day cycle would pray Psalms 1 to 5 on the first day of the month, Psalms 6 to 10 on the second day, and so on. It’s not complicated.

Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is just showing up. So it is that 80 percent of learning to pray is just showing up—and doing it. Saint Benedict promised that this steady practice of prayer would eventually cause the mind to “echo in harmony with the voice.”45 Serious prayer is the work of a pilgrim, not the occasional dalliance of a tourist. It comes from what Nietzsche called “a long obedience in the same direction.” Certainly this was what Jesus did. The man who prayed the Psalms so meaningfully on the cross had been drenched in the Psalms from boyhood. As a matter of fact, the first psalm in the Psalter is quite specifically about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David.



My review:
I couldn't receive this book because postage cost too much, but I decided to post the tour anyway because it sounds like a great book! I'd love to read this, and I'm thinking of buying it.