Christian Contemplations Paperback – October 18, 2024

When you tell the world you are a Christian, the world throws back two questions to you: “What does that mean?” and “How Should You Then Live?” From the time of Tiberius, the second emperor of Rome, Christ’s followers have provided a clear answer to that question. Whole libraries have been written in answer to the second question, one much broader and demanding more detailed answers. Every Sunday preachers mount pulpits and transmit electromagnetic waves to partly answer that question. The answer is multi-faceted because human lives are complex, which is why there are so many kinds of Christian books to bow down the library shelves—beginning with more than fifty English translations of the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Bible. One category is the Christian devotional, a collection—usually, one short reading for every day in the year—of inspiring and enlightening thoughts (at least, in their authors’ intentions!) for those who desire to be, as the old hymn put it, “living for Jesus.” Christian Contemplations belongs to that general category, with a couple of significant differences. No writer can possible know which insight will be of use to each and every reader on the day he assigns it, so this book does away with dates. It contains 366 separate contemplations, one a day for Leap Years, but no reader is tied to a particular day. Instead, these readings are grouped into 20 different categories which cover most spiritual challenges arising in a given day, week, month or year. The reader is free to choose from the readings one whicht seems best to fit the day’s concerns. After a year and a day, or however long it takes to get through all of this book, a reader can have pretty well in hand the essential understandings and actions to enable "living for Jesus". While life is short, learning is indeed long, so that completing this book represents not the end of spiritual growth, but a firm foundation on which to build tomorrow’s life. Read more