Tomorrow the season of Lent begins. During this traditional season of fasting and preparation for Easter, I find that choosing reading material specifically about Jesus helps me to spend the season focusing on Him and what He accomplished rather than on me and what I am doing. In previous years, I’ve read through John Piper’s Book Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die (reading one reason a day, then fitting a few extra in during Holy Week).

This year I feel a greater need, and so I have selected a bit more to read. Here are some books I would like to read this Lenten season:

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In Christianity Today’s 2011 Book Awards, Elise Erikson Barrett’s What Was Lost: A Christian Journey Through Miscarriage won the award for "Christian Living." While I’m sure there are a number of Christian treatments of suffering in general, there do not seem to be an abundance of books on the subject of miscarriage, so I decided to give this one a try.

I expected to disagree with the author, a pastor in the United Methodist Church (the denomination in which I grew up) on some matters, since theologically I fit labels like "Calvinist," "credobaptist," and "complementarian" better than typical UMC labels like "Wesleyan/Armenian," "paedobaptist," and "egalitarian" (the last being obviously descriptive of the author). I was hoping the book would contain more of what is common to all Christians than what we would disagree on. Unfortunately, I disagreed a lot with the book.

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During the month of February, you can get an audio book version of Dr. Russell Moore’s Adopted For Life for free from christianaudio. It has been a while since I read it, but it is a book I would recommend for those facing infertility whether or not they are considering adoption right now (it is a good book for others as well).

Two specific features I enjoyed about the book were Moore’s honesty with the struggle and sin he faced when he and his wife were going through a season of infertility and his focus on adoption into God’s family. So, I would encourage you to give it a listen.

Through the Blogging for Books program, Multnomah provided me with a copy of Randy Alcorn’s book If God is Good to review. This book addresses how evil and a good and omnipotent God can coexist. While I didn’t agree with all of Alcorn’s conclusions, I appreciated his efforts at being logical and true to Scripture.

I thought the book was at its best when pointing out that we are sinners with a limited view, God is good and sovereign, and eternity, not this lifetime, is where we will see the complete picture of justice and beauty. I especially found this passage poignant:

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Through Book Sneeze, Thomas Nelson gave me a copy of the Special Edition of Then Sings My Soul by Robert Morgan to review. This book looks at 150 hymns, providing a hymn (or piece of a hymn) on one page followed by a second page providing the date, a short piece of scripture, then a short story related to the hymn. I love hymns and expected to enjoy reading about them, but this book drove me crazy.

Without any additional writing to explain the choices Morgan made, the author’s choices were confusing. This special edition was broken into the sections. Within each section, the hymns were mostly in chronological order, but the order was not entirely chronological, with some hymns out of order and the Easter section contained two distinct chronological sequences. The selection of which hymns went into each section also confused me; "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" was considered a Christmas song while "His Name Is Wonderful" was placed within "Easter" despite the story ending with "Though it was inspired on Christmas day by a traditional Christmas text, ‘His Name is Wonderful’ has never been pegged as a Christmas hymn. It’s been a favorite of Christians around the world throughout the year" (page 85).

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This is one of those posts I was hoping to get done over break. I had a few books to finish up that I thought would be contenders. Some didn’t quite get finished in 2010; others didn’t live up to their potential. I was going to write up short blurbs about why each of these made my top ten list, but I’ve already blogged about them.

• Anne’s House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery
• Dancing with Max by Emily Colson
• Dug Down Deep by Joshua Harris (Available at wtsbooks⁂)
• Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh
• The Mortification of Sin by John Owen (Available at wtsbooks⁂)
• Speaking Our Minds by Lisa Snyder
• Surprised by Grace by Tullian Tchividjian (Available at wtsbooks⁂)
• A Sweet and Bitter Providence by John Piper (Available at wtsbooks⁂)
• War of Words by Paul David Tripp (Available at wtsbooks⁂)
• When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert (Available at wtsbooks⁂)

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Dancing With Max by Emily Colson gives a glimpse into the life and heart of a single mother raising her autistic son, taking the reader on a journey of both extreme pain and joy.

The writing style was clear and engaging, and the stories she told kept my interest. I thought the cover design, featuring Max’s signature, was appropriately unique.

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I read a complimentary PDF copy of Cruciform Press’s recently released book Servanthood as Worship by Nate Palmer. Written from a reformed perspective, this book encourages every Christian in the "privilege" of servanthood, in the local church, for the glory of God.

Palmer sets out to "provide the theological framework that Christians need to understand what serving in the local church is really all about." (page 9) He describes serving as something we are always doing, and says "There is never a moment when we are not serving someone . . . Most of the time we are simply serving ourselves—pouring our energy and hope for happiness into the nurture of our own desires" (page 9).

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If I were to make a list of my top ten favorite blogs to read, it would certainly include Blogging Theologically by Aaron Armstrong. One of the first things I saw when I went online after my unexpected long weekend without internet was a Tweet announcing that this blog moved to a new site; I thought it would be a good opportunity to point out this gem.

While it might not have been the first I read, "Selling Ointments and Stealing from Moneybags" was one of his first articles I remember reading. It made me think and has certainly influenced how I think about poverty. I particularly liked the sentence "We pursue justice, not because we can end poverty, but because Jesus will."

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I was encouraged and challenged by reading Paul David Tripp’s War of Words: Getting to the heart of your communication struggles. Focusing on the theoretical nature of the heart struggles revealed in our words, this book is based on four main ideas:

• God has a wonderful plan for our words that is far better than any plan we could come up with on our own.
• Sin has radically altered our agenda for our words, resulting in much hurt, confusion, and chaos.
• In Christ Jesus we find the grace that provides all we need to speak as God intended us to speak.
• The Bible plainly and simply teaches us how to get from where we are to where God wants us to be. (page 5)

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