Because Crack is Illegal takes a unique and witty approach to daily devotionals for mothers in every stage of life. For 30 days mothers are encouraged through personal, transparent and comical stories of trial; some bargaining and victory. Each day the reader is challenged to learn, grow, and laugh through reflection and daily application of scripture.

You spend one-third of your life sleeping. Is spirituality a part of that time? This book shows you how it can be. This inspiring, informative guide shows us how we can use the often overlooked time at the end of each day to enhance our spiritual, physical and psychological well-being. Each chapter takes a new look at traditional Jewish prayers and what they have to teach us about the spiritual aspects of preparing for the end of the day, and about sleep itself. Drawing on Kabbalistic teachings, prayer, the Bible and midrash, the authors enrich our understanding of traditional bedtime preparations, and show how, by including them in our bedtime rituals, we can gain insight into our lives and access the spiritual enrichment the world of dreams has to offer. Clear illustrations and diagrams, step-by-step meditations, visualization techniques and exercise suggestions for fully integrating body, mind and spirit show us the way to: Hashkivenu—Creating a safe space for sleep Hareni Mochel—Clearing our hearts through forgiveness Shema—Connecting to God in Love Bircat Cohanim—Experiencing the reality of blessing Hamapil—Thanking God for sleep and the illumination that comes in sleeps This perfect nighttime companion draws on the power of Jewish tradition to help us enhance our spiritual awareness—in both our waking and sleeping hours.

This Element reviews the state of the question regarding theories of cultic violence. It introduces definitions and vocabulary and presents relevant historical examples of religious violence. It then discusses the 1960s and 1970s, the period immediately before the Jonestown tragedy. Considerations of the post-Jonestown (1978), and then post-Waco (1993) literature follow. After 9/11 (2001), some of the themes identified in previous decades reappear. The Element concludes by examining the current problem of repression and harassment directed at religious believers. Legal discrimination by governments, as well as persecution of religious minorities by non-state actors, has challenged earlier fears about cultic violence.

Illustrated devotions to enrich your understanding of the Nativity narratives. includes readings and prayers to help individuals and groups walk the Stations of the Nativity.

Are you and your spouse speaking the same language? He sends you flowers when what you really want is time to talk. She gives you a hug when what you really need is a home-cooked meal. The problem isn't love--it's your love language. "The One Year Love Language Minute Devotional" is your daily guide to how to express heartfelt love to your spouse.

Techniques explained by the masters—for today's spiritual seeker Meditation is designed to give you direct access to the spiritual. Whether it’s through deep breathing during a busy day, listening to the quiet after turning off the car radio, chanting in prayer or ten minutes of visualization exercises each morning, meditation takes many forms. But it is always a personal method of centering our spiritual self. Meditation has long been practiced in the Jewish community as a powerful tool to transcend words, personality and ego and to directly experience the divine. Inspiring yet practical, this introduction to meditation from a Jewish perspective approaches it in a new and illuminating way: As it is personally practiced by today’s most experienced Jewish meditators from around the world. A "how to" guide for both beginning and experienced meditators, Meditation from the Heart of Judaism will help you start meditating or help you enhance your practice. Meditation is a Jewish spiritual resource for today that can benefit people of all faiths and backgrounds—and help us add spiritual energy to our lives. Contributors include: Sylvia Boorstein • Alan Brill • Andrea Cohen-Keiner • David Cooper • Avram Davis • Nan Fink • Steve Fisdel • Shefa Gold • Lynn Gottleib • Edward Hoffman • Lawrence Kushner • Alan Lew • Shaul Magid • Daniel C. Matt • Jonathan Omer-Man • Mindy Ribner • Susie Schneider • Rami M. Shapiro • Shohama Wiener • Sheila Peltz Weinberg • Laibl Wolf • David Zeller

Daily Strength, a year-long devotional, walks Christian men through Scripture passages that speak to their most pressing issues. Each single-page daily reading features a short summary of a Bible passage with a thought-provoking message from one of more than forty contributors.

Recently Markan scholarship has been exploring the role that the disciples play in the narrative of Mark's gospel. This interest in the disciples is a natural and logical concern given the widely held opinion that the gospel was written to a specific community comprised of young believers. While much of this has been helpful and necessary for understanding Mark, one must not allow equally significant themes to be forgotten. Any understanding of discipleship is only properly grounded in Christology. Most Markan scholars who have addressed the issue of Christology in Mark take for granted that Jesus' identity and mission are inseparable. Generally speaking, the gospel may be outlined in two halves, corresponding to the issues of identity and mission. This book is a verse-by-verse commentary that examines Mark 8:22-9:13, and concludes that these three episodes form the transition point dealing with Jesus' identity to his mission. Mark 8:22-26 serves to illustrate the inadequacy of sight already gained and the necessity for something additional. Mark 8:22-9:1 provides the opportunity for the final piece to be revealed about Jesus: a clear teaching about his suffering and death. The transfiguration episode (Mark 9:2-13) confirms the necessity of this outcome for properly understanding Jesus. Ultimately, the transfiguration, serving as a confirmation of Jesus' suffering death, provides the Christological resolution for the disciples to see clearly.

Composed in Germany in the early thirteenth century by Judah ben Samuel he-hasid, Sefer Hasidim, or "Book of the Pietists," is a compendium of religious instruction that portrays the everyday life of Jews as they lived together with and apart from Christians in towns such as Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Regensburg. A charismatic religious teacher who recorded hundreds of original stories that mirrored situations in medieval social living, Judah's messages advocated praying slowly and avoiding honor, pleasure, wealth, and the lures of unmarried sex. Although he failed to enact his utopian vision of a pietist Jewish society, his collected writings would help shape the religious culture of Ashkenazic Judaism for centuries. In "Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how this particular book was composed. The work, he contends, was an open text written by a single author in hundreds of disjunctive, yet self-contained, segments, which were then combined into multiple alternative versions, each equally authoritative. While Sefer Hasidim offers the clearest example of this model of composition, Marcus argues that it was not unique: the production of Ashkenazic books in small and easily rearranged paragraphs is a literary and cultural phenomenon quite distinct from anything practiced by the Christian authors of northern Europe or the Sephardic Jews of the south. According to Marcus, Judah, in authoring Sefer Hasidim in this manner, not only resisted Greco-Roman influences on Ashkenazic literary form but also extended an earlier Byzantine rabbinic tradition of authorship into medieval European Jewish culture.

'On all my travels, if I had the Gospels, Paul's letter to the Romans and Andrew Ollerton's book I would need nothing else!' Sir David Suchet With his trademark straightforward teaching style, Andrew Ollerton guides readers through Romans - one of the most theologically complex books of the Bible - to discover how an understanding of Paul's longest letter unlocks the whole story of Scripture and helps us make sense of life. It's been said that if the New Testament were the Himalayas, Paul's Epistle to the Romans would be Mount Everest. The chapters of this book therefore imagine the contents of the letter as a great mountain landscape - complex, challenging but highly rewarding. Together, we will take on the challenge of ascending to the summit, taking in the view and then descending to put it into practice on the other side. Readers will not only come away with a greater understanding of Romans, but as invigorated disciples, equipped for the adventure of life and faith, and emboldened to share the Gospel with others. Each chapter includes suggested Bible readings and questions for reflection, making this book a great choice for devotional reading for Lent 2023. Romans is a perfect follow-up read for fans of Andrew's first book The Bible, those who've completed Bible Society's 'The Bible Course', or the Alpha course.

Sacred Natural Sites are the world's oldest protected places. This book focuses on a wide spread of both iconic and lesser known examples such as sacred groves of the Western Ghats (India), Sagarmatha /Chomolongma (Mt Everest, Nepal, Tibet - and China), the Golden Mountains of Altai (Russia), Holy Island of Lindisfarne (UK) and the sacred lakes of the Niger Delta (Nigeria). The book illustrates that sacred natural sites, although often under threat, exist within and outside formally recognised protected areas, heritage sites. Sacred natural sites may well be some of the last strongholds for building resilient networks of connected landscapes. They also form important nodes for maintaining a dynamic socio-cultural fabric in the face of global change. The diverse authors bridge the gap between approaches to the conservation of cultural and biological diversity by taking into account cultural and spiritual values together with the socio-economic interests of the custodian communities and other relevant stakeholders.

It is commonly claimed that Islam is antiblack, even inherently bent on enslaving Black Africans. Western and African critics alike have contended that antiblack racism is in the faith’s very scriptural foundations and its traditions of law, spirituality, and theology. But what is the basis for this accusation? Bestselling scholar Jonathan A.C. Brown examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism, and history to comprehensively interrogate this claim and determine how and why it emerged. Locating its origins in conservative politics, modern Afrocentrism, and the old trope of Barbary enslavement, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition. From the imagery of ‘blackened faces’ in the Quran to Shariah assessments of Black women as ‘undesirable’ and the assertion that Islam and Muslims are foreign to Africa, this work provides an in-depth study of the controversial knot that is Islam and Blackness, and identifies authoritative voices in Islam’s past that are crucial for combatting antiblack racism today.

"Lord, prepare me for a miracle "
You could call them God's fingerprints. Suddenly you're seeing them all over your life. Unexplainable encounters. Little miracles. Big answers to simple requests that only recently you wouldn't have had the courage to utter.
Welcome to "life after Jabez." If you've been praying his simple prayer, you know what I'm talking about. Now you want to capture the miracle in a more personal way, every day.
"The Prayer of Jabez Devotional" is designed with you in mind. Every page is intended to help you make a lifelong habit of beginning each day with the expectation of seeing--and participating in--God's supernatural plans for your life. You'll find thirty-one days of personal mentoring and encouragement, plus suggestions for recording your spiritual journey in the accompanying volume, "The Prayer of Jabez Journal."
So join me in reaching for the blessed life today
--Bruce Wilkinson

Based on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data, Indigeneity in African Religions explores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of "indigeneity" and contributing to its conceptual understanding within socioreligious change in contemporary Africa. The future of Oza indigeneity in the face of modernity is illuminated against the backlash of encounters, contestations with multiple hegemonies, transmissions of Christianity and Islam and indigenous (re)appropriations. Thus, any theorizations of such encounters must be cognizant of instantiations of indigeneity politics and identity, culture, tradition and power dynamics. Through decolonizing burdens of history, memory and method, Afe Adogame demonstrates a framework of understanding Oza indigenous religious,sociocultural and political imaginaries.