The unadorned self, living forward, and a great lake of beer

“Do you know of any good daily devotional books?” a friend asked me. “My pastor could use a new one.” I searched my shelves at the office this morning and found four books that I thought my friend’s pastor might find beneficial, each containing a year’s worth of devotions. But how would I assess them? I decided to open each one to today’s date—February 1.

I began with Henri Nouwen. The collection of his writings compiled and edited by Gabrielle Earnshaw contains a rich variety of prayers, theological reflections, excerpts from letters, and musings on scripture. The entry for February 1 is excerpted from In the Name of Jesus. “The first thing that struck me when I came to live in a house with mentally handicapped people,” Nouwen reflects, “was that their liking and disliking me had absolutely nothing to do with the many useful things I had done until then.” It didn’t matter anymore that he’d spent 20 years at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. Nouwen is honest about the anxiety this reality caused him, but he’s also honest about the transformative effect it had on him. It forced him “to reclaim that unadorned self” that’s unpretentious and marked by vulnerability, “open to receive and give love regardless of any accomplishments.” Wise words.

I moved on to Walter Brueggemann. I quickly learned that the title of his book, Gift and Task, accurately describes its contents. First of all, I had to work to find the right page, since there was no page for February 1. The book is organized by the liturgical calendar. (Thank God for Working Preacher, which told me that today is the Thursday after Epiphany 4.) When I turned to that page, I found a list of the daily lectionary readings, a brief prayer, and a thoughtful reflection on the readings. I wouldn’t just be reading a page a day with this book—I’d be digging into four biblical texts as well. What a marvelous gift, but also a task! Brueggemann’s rich engagement with scripture was apparent to me immediately. “Faith is living forward into the future,” he begins, and he then traces this idea through three of the texts, concluding “God is at work now in the world, keeping promises to those who have been excluded from a safe place.” Amen to that.