Peter Costello
Hidden in Christ: Living as God’s Beloved
by James Bryan Smith
(Hodder & Stoughton, £8.99)
How very often the mind slides all too easily over what we are reading, hardly taking it in at all. This is especially true perhaps of attempts to read the scriptures. The meaning escapes us as we try to cope with the manner and the thought.
The author of this book, James Bryan Smith, is a professor of theology at a Kansas university, and an ordained Methodist minister. So his message is aimed at all Christians.
He had been reading the famous passage on Christian life in St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. He found, however, that single words from it were filling his mind with thoughts. He found that by actually memorising the passage he could attend even better to the meaning with which each individual word was invested by Paul.
Each of his 30 chapters takes a single word, such as “thankful” and explores not just its meaning in the context, but its meaning to for us. “The goal here was not to excavate some scholarly insight, but to bring forth the main truth of the word or phrase in such a way that the reader will find encouragement, refreshment and enthusiasm.”
Now this chopping up of the text is an old familiar technique of Protestant preachers in the past, but there is nothing old fashioned about the author’s approach, for he draws his examples to enlarge the discussion very much from everyday life.
This is an accessible, thoughtful book, which provides as well guidance on how to interiorise and retain the insights gained through each chapter. For the single reader or parish groups, this book may well provide a fruitful way forward in deepening an awareness of the scriptures, and the reality of the divine word.
The city of Colossae had once been an important merchant centre on the trade route between Mesopotamia and the port of Smyrna. But by the time Paul wrote to the Christians there it was in decline. Today it no longer exists. Perhaps in this there is a reminder that things do not last, but we must persist. Here perhaps is another kind of lesson for those who see themselves as Catholics in modern Ireland.
Paul’s final words contain the essential message, as he saw it, of the new religion.
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
Wonders of the western seaboard
Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way
photographed by Carsten Krieger
(O’Brien Press, €12.99)
Carsten Krieger is a well-established photographer based in the west of Ireland. In this book he makes a pilgrimage along the western sea coast from Donegal southwards, capturing the various moods of places along the way. Here are powerful images of nature at its most brutal, but also images of quiet landscapes basking in summer sun. It is the ever varying, ever changing atmosphere of the west which makes the province of Connacht what it is. P.C.
