A Good Summer Read

It’s not exactly like I need another book to read. The stack on my desk, my kitchen counter, above our television and in various other empty spaces around our house is growing. But, I do like to get good recommendations in case the stacks shrink. Maybe you are a fellow stacker/ reader like I am, so here goes – a suggestion for a good summer read.

It’s not exactly like I need another book to read. The stack on my desk, my kitchen counter, above our television and in various other empty spaces around our house is growing. But, I do like to get good recommendations in case the stacks shrink. Maybe you are a fellow stacker/ reader like I am, so here goes – a suggestion for a good summer read.

One such book I would like to add to your list is Water From a Deep Well, Christian Spirituality From the Early Christian Martyrs to Modern Missionaries by Gerald L. Sittser, IVP, 2007. Lest you think this chronology is another boring, academic history book guaranteed to get you to sleep, think again. I had the opportunity to read it in a period of several days recently and was fascinated at the grasp it gave me on the working of God’s Spirit throughout Christendom through some very interesting figures.

This family of faith Sittser writes about are ones we will meet in heaven from generations before us. We might as well make their acquaintance now and get a head start on knowing ones who have carried well the banner of Jesus Christ many generations past. We really are in a relay race. We aren’t the first, nor are we the only generation who wanted desperately to know and to make Jesus known.

Eugene Peterson’s comment in the forward validates this. “This book is a timely antidote to the amnesiac, one-generational world we live in. A one-generational church is capable of generating energy but there are no roots. When the emotions wear off or difficulty arrives it withers. Soon there is nothing to show for it. Without cultivated memory we live from hand to mouth on fad and novelty…we are on a relay tam. We have a heritage, a richly composted family history. We need to know the members of our family who lived lives similar to what we are living and lived them well. As we get to know them, we are less isolated, less alone. We are not orphans. We are not misfits.”

Remember Jesus’s prayer recorded in John 17 in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion? He prayed for all who would ever believe that we would be one. He continues to intercede for us as recorded in Hebrews 7:25. Water From a Deep Well documents the unity Jesus’s prayers have brought about. There is still much to be done and not is all unified in various corners and places, but the Spirit of God is alive and well and has been very much on the move.

In these stories we learn that there is more, so much more we have to glean from in the lives of those who have gone before; from the lives of those who engaged in intense struggle. We are instructed in new ways as if these saints jump through the pages to mentor us in areas we need wisdom and direction in. They help inform us for the struggles and challenges we face in our generation, our culture, and in our particular time in history on the relay team.

Let me know what you think, if you get to read this interesting book.