Acting as himself in his essays and as various protagonists in his stories, the author shows us a hunger for a vanished world of natural splendor and ideal love. The essays are persuasively strong, rising to a thematic climax in the powerfully reasoned "Environmentalist as Misanthrope." As for the matching antiphonal stories, they delight with their surprise endings and several-"The Swimmer," "The Bright Side," "Assassinations" -may best be described as small masterpieces. Both the essays and stories that comprise Field Guide share a feature I call "page richness," a literary quality that causes the reader to savor certain pages before continuing toward the conclusion, as one might pause on a long journey to enjoy especially appealing vistas. Writers either have this ability or they don't. Steve Sherwood has it.

In a post-modern world leery of abstracted theology, might the answers to the deep question of why Jesus died on the cross be found, not in theology textbooks, but in the stories of the Bible? What if the playing out of one Hebrew word, hesed, tells us who we are, who God is, and what Jesus' life and death were all about? Embraced: Prodigals at the Cross tells the story of hesed, God's steadfast love, as it weaves its way from our creation for relationship, through our rejection of that relationship, to God's centuries-long pursuit of reconciliation. The story ends in embrace, the embrace of a good father who runs to his prodigal son, and a loving God who takes on human flesh to reach out to us on the cross. This book is God's story. This book is our story.

Revised Printing Now Available! The Bible has been the most discussed and scrutinized text in human history. Here we are, still obsessed with it The Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community serves as a guide to anyone hoping to understand the Bible's ancient context and its role for ongoing communities of readers. The publication puts the Bible's two identitiesan ancient document revered by billions of contemporary readersinto conversation with one another. Written for an introductory Bible course, The Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community is designed for Christians of all kinds, ""spiritual people"", and adherents to other religions. The Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community: Includes Ancient Context sections in each chapter. These sections critically examine and describe the languages, authors, and culture of the ancient world in which the Bible took shape. Features Ongoing Community sections in each chapter. The sections address today's world and the concerns of living readers. It asks how should we make sense of the Bible's contents? How can contemporary readers understand a text with statements about ethics, spirituality, gender, and the natural world that often does not make sense to us? Generally frames issues presented the Christian tradition, however asks frank and difficult questions about the historicity of some of these texts, the moral applicability of these texts, and the traditional reading of these texts. Cites the works of other scholars and thinkers either as a way of highlighting established opinions on the matter at hand, or to acknowledge a direct source.