Can God Come Out To Play

Liturgy is not a religious frill or Sunday morning ceremonial exercise. It is a communal response to the sacred. The liturgies, ceremonies, and rituals in our lives are the stuff of reality and have the power to heal and inspire us. From archaic times they have had this capacity, as they have always been our interaction with God and the gods. This book is filled with essays and stories, ancient and modern. Some of its liturgies are tried and proven, creative, ecumenical services of worship and others are nonreligious, spirit-filled events. Can God Come Out To Play? is aimed at those who are looking for a spiritual approach to today's challenges and are interested in imaginative forms and methods to guide them. Educators, clergy, divinity students, event facilitators, care workers, and environmentalists will appreciate this book as a valuable resource. And all its readers will have one thing in common--a willingness to recognize God as their mysterious, playful companion.

Shares uplifting advice about the virtues of forgiveness, offering strategic and biblically based advice on how to achieve peace and personal fulfillment by letting go of past wrongs.

Liturgy is not a religious frill or Sunday morning ceremonial exercise. It is a communal response to the sacred. The liturgies, ceremonies, and rituals in our lives are the stuff of reality and have the power to heal and inspire us. From archaic times they have had this capacity, as they have always been our interaction with God and the gods. This book is filled with essays and stories, ancient and modern. Some of its liturgies are tried and proven, creative, ecumenical services of worship and others are nonreligious, spirit-filled events. Can God Come Out To Play? is aimed at those who are looking for a spiritual approach to today's challenges and are interested in imaginative forms and methods to guide them. Educators, clergy, divinity students, event facilitators, care workers, and environmentalists will appreciate this book as a valuable resource. And all its readers will have one thing in common--a willingness to recognize God as their mysterious, playful companion.

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

God’s world is full of good things. Ice-cold lemonade. The laughter of children. College football. Scrambled eggs and crispy bacon. A late night with old friends around a blazing campfire. God certainly knows how to give good gifts to his children. But where is the line when it comes to enjoying all the pleasurable things our world affords? In The Things of Earth, professor Joe Rigney offers perplexed Christians a breath of fresh air by lifting the burden of false standards and impossible expectations related to the Christian life—freeing readers to gratefully embrace every good thing we receive from the hand of God. Helping us avoid our tendency to forget the Giver on the one hand and neglect his gifts on the other, this much-needed book reminds us that God’s blessings should drive us to worship and that a passion for God’s glory can be as wide as the world itself.

Central to God’s character is the quality of holiness. Yet, even so, most people are hard-pressed to define what God’s holiness precisely is. Many preachers today avoid the topic altogether because people today don’t quite know what to do with words like “awe” or “fear.” R. C. Sproul, in this classic work, puts the holiness of God in its proper and central place in the Christian life. He paints an awe-inspiring vision of God that encourages Christian to become holy just as God is holy. Once you encounter the holiness of God, your life will never be the same.

Following on the heels of the successful New Testament for Everyone commentaries by acclaimed scholar and author N. T. Wright, Westminster John Knox is pleased to announce the first volumes in the all new Old Testament for Everyone Bible commentary series. John Goldingay, an internationally respected Old Testament scholar, authors this ambitious series, treating every passage of Scripture from Genesis to Malachi, addressing the texts in such a way that even the most challenging passages are explained simply and concisely. Perfect for daily devotions, Sunday school prep, or brief visits with the Bible, the Old Testament for Everyone series is an excellent resource for the modern lay reader. The book of Genesis is a lively read featuring familiar biblical tales such as the creation of the world, Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit, Noah and the flood, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the Tower of Babel, and Sodom and Gomorrah. While readers may know the facts of these stories, Goldingay's work will instill in them a deeper understanding of their spiritual and theological significance. True to the For Everyone series' goal, Goldingay writes in a thoroughly accessible and engaging style with chapter titles such as "Friday Lunchtime," "Bigamy, Music, Technology, Murder," "Babylon becomes Babble-on," "Stuff Happens," and "Two Guys Who Need Their Heads Banged Together."

Should we believe in God? In this brisk introduction to modern atheism, one of the world’s greatest science writers tells us why we shouldn’t. Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he’d felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind. Now one of the world’s best and bestselling science communicators, Dawkins has given readers, young and old, the same opportunity to rethink the big questions. In twelve fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer—the improbability and beauty of the “bottom-up programming” that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings—and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a “Good Book”? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Dissecting everything from Abraham’s abuse of Isaac to the construction of a snowflake, Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself. Praise for Outgrowing God “My son came home from his first day in the sixth grade with arms outstretched plaintively demanding to know: ‘Have you ever heard of Jesus?’ We burst out laughing. Maybe not our finest parenting moment, given that he was genuinely distraught. He felt that he had woken up one day to a world in which his peers were expressing beliefs he found frighteningly unreasonable. He began devouring books like The God Delusion, books that helped him formulate his own arguments and helped him stand his ground. Dawkins’s new book is special in the terrain of atheists’ pleas for humanism and rationalism precisely since it speaks to those most vulnerable to the coercive tactics of religion. As Dawkins himself says in the dedication, this book is for ‘all young people when they’re old enough to decide for themselves.’ It is also, I must add, for their parents.”—Janna Levin, author of Black Hole Blues “When someone is considering atheism I tell them to read the Bible first and then Dawkins. Outgrowing God—second only to the Bible!”—Penn Jillette, author of God, No!