Word Like Fire

Maria Stewart is believed by many to have been the first American woman of any race to give public political speeches. In Word, Like Fire, Valerie C. Cooper argues that the religious, political, and social threads of Maria Stewart's thought are tightly interwoven, such that focusing narrowly on any one aspect would be to misunderstand her rhetoric. Cooper demonstrates how a certain kind of biblical interpretation can be a Rosetta Stone for understanding various areas of African American life and thought that still resonate today.

In this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Andrew Shead examines Jeremiah's commissioning, embodiment of the word of God, covenant preaching and "oracles of hope." He shows how a differentiation between the divine "word" and the prophet's "words" enables the word of God to function as an organizing center for the book's theology.

The Bible has the astounding power to transform lives. The stories of people like Francis of Assisi, Antony of Egypt, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. vividly demonstrate this. Why aren't more of us transformed by Scripture today? Too often we study biblical texts without believing that God truly inhabits this book. Scripture seeks to capture our minds, not merely educate them. In these pages Chris Webb explains that we can transform our Christian life by reading as lovers rather than as theorists. This is possible by coming to the text prayerfully, expectantly, in humility and empty-handed. When we open the Bible, it does not say to us, "Listen: God is there!" Instead, the voice of the Spirit whispers through each line, "Look: I am here." Reading the Bible this way can reconfigure the habits of your heart, refresh your imagination and memory, reshape and redeem your emotions, realign your reality individually and communally for kingdom life, and take us beyond the Bible into a renewed way of life. Here is the work of today—which is also the work of the whole of life—to open your heart afresh to the living Word of God.

These landmark essays on the prophet Jeremiah allow us to hear the prophet's voice as an urgent message in our own day. The contents include: Listening for the Prophetic Word Jeremiah: Portrait of the Prophet The Book of Jeremiah: Meditation upon the Abyss Recent Scholarship: Intense Criticism, Thin Interpretation Jeremiah's Use of Rhetorical Questions An Ending That Does Not End Theology in Jeremiah: Creatio in extremis Next Steps in Jeremiah Studies Hearing the Word in Exile The Prophetic Word of God and History A Second Reading of Jeremiah after the Dismantling A Shattered Transcendence: Exile and Restoration A "Characteristic" Reflection on What Comes Next Haunting Book--Haunted People Carrying Forward the Prophetic Task Prophetic Ministry A World Available for Peace God's Relentless "If" When Jerusalem Gloats over Shiloh Why Prophets Won't Leave Well Enough Alone.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

"Thank you, other twolegged bare featherless creature, for sharing the jagged horizon of my life. Thank you rainbow over the East Mojave low to the ground so early in the afternoon: thank you for being here with us." - from "Bagdad Chase Road in July" "A Word Like Fire," the first comprehensive selection of his poems, should confirm Dick Barnes's place as one of the most accomplished and likable American poets of the last fifty years. His great subject is the Mojave Desert, the vast basin of ranges and valleys east and north of Los Angeles, with its beautiful shrubs and flowers, magnificent trees, ephemeral grasses, high lakes, rivers and dry river beds, alfalfa farms, and isolated towns with names like Essex, Cadiz Summit, Elephant Butte, Running Springs, Helendale, and often canny and solitary men and women. Of this world, Dick Barnes gives an indelible portrait in poem after poem. But Barnes is more than a regional poet. As Robert Mezey writes in his brilliant Foreword, "He has an engaging variety of subjects, and to almost all of them he gives faithful perception and love." He is a master of the elegy, and wrote love poems, satires, devotional poems, and, Mezey notes, "poems of wry social comment and occasionally anger." In works such as "A Visit to Lonesome John: Autumn Coming," "Few and Far Between," "Clearing the Way," "Example and Admonition," and "Trophy Hunt" surely one of the masterpieces of American poetry the reader encounters a keenly observant, knowledgeable, humane, and passionate poet."

To the unstudied eye, St. Matthew's gospel can seem a terse narrative, almost a historical document and not the tremendously spiritual (and doctrinal) storehouse that it is. In his third volume of meditations on Matthew (chapters 19-25), Erasmo Leiva continues to show Matthew's prose to be not terse so much as economical-astoundingly so given its depth. The lay reader can derive great profit from reading this. Each short meditation comments on a verse or two, pointing to some facet of the text not immediately apparent, but rich with meaning. Leiva's work is scholarly but eminently approachable by the lay reader. The tone is very much of "taste and see how good the Lord is" and an invitation of "friend, come up higher!". The goal of the book is to help the reader experience the heat of the divine heart and the light of the divine Word. Leiva comments on the Greek text, demonstrating nuances in the text that defy translation. He uses numerous quotes from the Fathers and the Liturgy of the Church to demonstrate the way the Tradition has lived and read the Word of God. His theological reflection vivifies doctrine by seeking its roots in the words and actions of Jesus.

" ... a foundational tool for both the Word on Fire Institute and the broader Word on Fire movement. Its purpose is to help evangelists better understand the spiritual and theological ethos of Word on Fire. The contents of this book are aligned with the Eight Principles of Word on Fire." --