Читать книгу With My Eyes On Jesus - Dale Goldsmith - Страница 5

Lent is a time Christians devote to spiritual disciplines. The devotional readings in this volume invite the reader to focus on Jesus’ death and its relationship to our own mortality and dying.

Jesus faced death from the start of his time on earth both because he was human and because he was the object of death threats and murder plots. These meditations invite a closer relationship with the human, vulnerable Jesus. We may not be very good at emulating him, but this is the part of his story that comes closest to paralleling our own stories.

All but one of the authors of the New Testament—the exception is Jude—write of Jesus’ death, its centrality, its meaning, and its relationship to believers in their respective dying/deaths. While these meditations are not based on a biblical format or chronology, they have been arranged to integrate with the larger gospel narrative.

The following meditations offer a disciplined journey along a narrative arc that begins with Jesus’ life—his coming, mission, words and deeds, increasing opposition—and death. The story continues as the early church’s writers reflect on the meaning of Jesus’ death as the basis for hope and new life.

This can be hard work. Forty-six days focused on dying may seem daunting, even depressing, especially in our death-avoidant culture. It may lead into dark spaces that we would prefer to avoid. But the God of the New Testament is the God of life and of death, of living and of dying. This God offers us a hope for understanding and facing the end of life in Jesus Christ.

Each devotion consists of five sections, beginning with a New Testament text. Since the whole of the document used in each day’s devotion will have dealt with many topics, the original context of the day’s text is briefly described. The meditation is intended to draw the reader into focused engagement with the text. Finally, the prayer and today sections suggest directions for outward responses by the reader.

Dying and death are not the major problems for Christians in Scripture. But to the extent that they can be obstacles for us in our vocation to live faithfully, the hope is that these meditations might bring readers closer to the Lord of the living and the dying.

Dale Goldsmith

Amarillo, Texas