Christianity Today 2020 Book Award (Award of Merit, Theology/Ethics) Outreach 2020 Recommended Resource of the Year (Theology and Biblical Studies) The question of what makes life worth living is more vital now than ever. In today's pluralistic, postsecular world, universal values are dismissed as mere matters of private opinion, and the question of what constitutes flourishing life--for ourselves, our neighbors, and the planet as a whole--is neglected in our universities, our churches, and our culture at large. Although we increasingly have technology to do almost anything, we have little sense of what is truly worth accomplishing. In this provocative new contribution to public theology, world-renowned theologian Miroslav Volf (named "America's New Public Intellectual" by Scot McKnight on his Jesus Creed blog) and Matthew Croasmun explain that the intellectual tools needed to rescue us from our present malaise and meet our new cultural challenge are the tools of theology. A renewal of theology is crucial to help us articulate compelling visions of the good life, find our way through the maze of contested questions of value, and answer the fundamental question of what makes life worth living.
Having successfully helped readers develop a solid prayer life with the best-selling release of A Praying Life, author Paul Miller applies his expertise to an even more important issue—love. After all, love is what holds all things together, it's what we're looking for, it's what we all need, and it's what we must learn how to give. But loving people is hard. Our neighbors, friends, kids, spouses, and even our enemies require a relentless, self-giving demonstration of love that only God can produce within us. Taking his cues from the perseverance and faithfulness portrayed in the book of Ruth, Miller sheds light on a biblical portrait of love that is sure to give us hope and transform our souls. Here is the help we need to embrace relationship, endure rejection, cultivate community, and reach out to even the most unlovable as we discover the power to live a loving life.
‘An intimate portrait of a woman who changed herself and Australia...Michelle Scott Tucker makes Elizabeth Macarthur step off the page.’ David Hunt , Author of Girt In 1788 a young gentlewoman raised in the vicarage of an English village married a handsome, haughty and penniless army officer. In any Austen novel that would be the end of the story, but for the real-life woman who became an Australian farming entrepreneur, it was just the beginning. John Macarthur took credit for establishing the Australian wool industry and would feature on the two-dollar note, but it was practical Elizabeth who managed their holdings—while dealing with the results of John’s manias: duels, quarrels, court cases, a military coup, long absences overseas, grandiose construction projects and, finally, his descent into certified insanity. Michelle Scott Tucker shines a light on an often-overlooked aspect of Australia’s history in this fascinating story of a remarkable woman. Michelle Scott Tucker owns and operates a management consulting company, and lives on a small farm in regional Victoria with her husband and children. Elizabeth Macarthur is her first book. ‘Tucker’s great achievement is to have scraped back the familiar historical material to uncover a fresh and compelling portrait of Elizabeth Macarthur in her own words and the words of those who knew her.’ Australian ‘In writing this lively, entertaining and profoundly empathetic biography, [Tucker] has also brought other colonial women out of the shaows and told their story too...There are not many biographies or histories of Australia that are unputdownable, but this one is. Highly recommended!’ ANZ LitLovers 'The triumphs and trials of Elizabeth Macarthur, a capable business woman and dedicated wife and mother, are given their due in this impressively researched biography.’ Brenda Niall ‘This carefully researched history is a highly interesting read that highlights the importance of women in the settlement of New South Wales.’ Otago Daily Times 'Finally, Elizabeth Macarthur steps out from the long shadow of her infamous, entrepreneurial husband. In Michelle Scott Tucker’s devoted hands, Elizabeth emerges as a canny businesswoman, charming diplomat, loving mother and indefatigable survivor. A fascinating, faithful portrait of a remarkable woman and the young, volatile colony she helped to build.’ Clare Wright ‘A nourishing, fascinating, and eye-opening read.’ Alpha Reader ‘Tucker expertly details the trials, tragedies and triumphs of the early settlement of NSW...This book is an important historical memoir documenting the incredible life of an Australian pioneer and her role as the matriarch of one of Australia’s first agricultural dynasties.’ Countryman ‘Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World is a great read. It crafts a compulsive story with good research, giving a convincing look into colonial New South Wales. It offers the pleasures of fine biography in tracing one person’s life in all its seasons, through its successes and failures, joys and miseries.’ NathanHobby blog ‘A stunning and intimate look at Elizabeth [Macarthur] and the family’s lives...Should be required reading in schools...An informative and learned look at colonial history.’ AU Review
Does your life feel cluttered? Maybe an overcrowded calendar isn't your only problem! In this updated classic, learn how our technology-focused generation can deal with stress and find balance in life by submitting to God in five areas: motivation, priorities, intellect, spiritual growth, and rest. We have schedule planners, computerized calendars, smart phones, and sticky notes to help us organize our business and social lives every day. But what about organizing the other side of our lives? The spiritual side? In Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald equips you to live life from the inside out, cultivating the inner victory necessary for effectiveness. Simplifying your external life begins with seeking internal order. In addition to focusing on spiritual and mental disciplines, you’ll discover: The difference between being driven and being called The lifelong pursuit of the growth of the mind The importance of being a listener and reader How to exercise your soul to keep it in good shape Our culture encourages us to believe that the busy, publicly active person is also the most spiritual. Our massive responsibilities at home, work, and church have resulted in many of us on the verge of collapse. Learn to take a step back from the outer world and deal with the stress of life by developing your inner world: your soul.
A guide to modern times that explores the challenges living in the 21st century can pose to our mental wellbeing. The modern world has brought us a range of extraordinary benefits and joys, including technology, medicine and transport. But it can also feel as though modern times have plunged us ever deeper into greed, despair and agitation. Seldom has the world felt more privileged and resource-rich yet also worried, blinkered, furious, panicked and self-absorbed. How to Survive the Modern World is the ultimate guide to navigating our unusual times. It identifies a range of themes that present acute challenges to our mental wellbeing. The book tackles our relationship to the news media, our ideas of love and sex, our assumptions about money and our careers, our attitudes to animals and the natural world, our admiration for science and technology, our belief in individualism and secularism – and our suspicion of quiet and solitude. In all cases, the book helps us to understand how we got to where we are, digging deeply and fascinatingly into the history of ideas, while pointing us towards a saner individual and collective future. The emphasis isn’t just on understanding modern times but also on knowing how we can best relate to the difficulties these present. The book helps us to form a calmer, more authentic, more resilient and sometimes more light-hearted relationship to the follies and obsessions of our age. If modern times are (in part) something of a disease, this is both the diagnostic and the soothing, hope-filled cure.
This book was originally written to serve as an outline for students in a discussion of the Christian "worldview." It suggests an approach to the world and to man's life in it that stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church. Alexander Schmemann understands issues such as secularism and Christian culture from the perspective of the unbroken experience of the Church, as revealed and communicated in her worship, in her liturgy -- the sacrament of the world, the sacrament of the Kingdom. - Publisher
The Bible is by far the leading source of inspiration for Western literature, and in particular, the life of Jesus has drawn the attention of artists and writers throughout the ages. Now, in a volume of astonishing range and originality, Robert Atwan, George Dardess, and Peggy Rosenthal present 280 remarkable poems from world literature focusing on Jesus's life and teaching. Readers accustomed to the predictable inclusions of many anthologies will be surprised and delighted by the diversity of poets represented here, from Aquinas, Dante, de Guevara, Donne, and Sor Juana, to D.H. Lawrence, Gabriela Mistral, Wole Soyinka, Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, Czeslaw Milosz, and Leopold Senghor. Perhaps no other thematically organized anthology could have brought together writers as different as Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Merton, Alice Walker, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Jack Kerouac. Indeed, simply to turn the page in Divine Inspiration is an adventure in itself. And in terms of form, style, modulations of tone and perspective, the variety here is as unparalleled as it is unpredictable. The editors of Divine Inspiration have done a masterful job of unifying this vast assortment of poems. Organized chronologically around the life of Jesus, the book is divided into nine sections--from Birth and Infancy, through Healings and Miracles, to the Resurrection-- and presents passages from the Gospels followed by the poems they inspired. This structure gives readers the dual pleasures of a strong narrative pull punctuated by moments of lyric intensity. Our familiarity with the life of Jesus is thus enlivened, deepened, and in some cases wholly transformed by the imaginative power of the poems. In the largest section of the book, on the Passion of Jesus, we find an array of poems by Anna Akhmatova, Antonio Machado, Thomas Hardy, Miguel de Unamuno, Charles Baudelaire, R.S. Thomas, Andrew Marvell, Frederico Garcia Lorca, and Denise Levertov, among others. To see the Passion of Jesus refracted through the lenses of such poets is to see it anew, or more vividly than before. And to encounter Chinese, Korean, Nigerian, Arab, Latin American, Scandinavian, Hungarian, and Greek poets alongside English, French, and German is a testimony both to the editors' devoted scholarship and to the power of Jesus's life to inspire great poetry across a spectrum of cultures and eras. An invaluable sourcebook for students, scholars, and general readers alike, Divine Inspiration should prove equally satisfying to readers with a strong interest in religion and to all lovers of poetry.
The Oldest Living Things in the World is an epic journey through time and space. Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and traveled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning and unique visual collection of ancient organisms unlike anything that has been created in the arts or sciences before, insightfully and accessibly narrated by Sussman along the way. Her work is both timeless and timely, and spans disciplines, continents, and millennia. It is underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by Sussman’s relentless curiosity. She begins at “year zero,” and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present. These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah. Sussman journeyed to Antarctica to photograph 5,500-year-old moss; Australia for stromatolites, primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth; and to Tasmania to capture a 43,600-year-old self-propagating shrub that’s the last individual of its kind. Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands. Alongside the photographs, Sussman relays fascinating – and sometimes harrowing – tales of her global adventures tracking down her subjects and shares insights from the scientists who research them. The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future.
What can we expect from life in a fallen world? How are we to live as redeemed people in such a world? In 22 concise chapters, Benjamin Shaw shows that the answers to these questions are to be found in the message of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. Whereas some commentators have viewed the book of Ecclesiastes as an alien intrusion into the Old Testament, and have deemed it of little use for the New Testament believer, Benjamin Shaw does not hold to this misguided view. In this commentary, designed to be used by non-specialists, he shows that this divinely inspired book is far from being the muddled collection of disparate voices it is sometimes presented to be. He demonstrates that in reality, Ecclesiastes is an integral part of the word of God, and conveys a very distinct message to all who are willing to listen to its wisdom.
