A thoughtful, well-planned journaling guide for Christians in search of God.
Barker offers a program for recognizing God’s presence in this debut prayer manual.
Many people, even the very devout, often feel that God is not taking an active role in their lives. The author suggests a novel solution to this crisis of faith: journaling. When combined with prayer and Bible study, journaling can furnish an active way to examine God’s presence on a daily basis. “It allowed me to have a record of my prayers and His faithfulness in answering my prayers,” writes Barker of his own experience with journaling. “Journaling provided a record of my time in God’s Word, as well as my reflections and interactions with His Word.” The author lays out a 40-day regimen to get readers into the habit of journaling. After the 40 days, readers will be prepared to continue journaling on their own. Barker presents a chapter for each day, including a short essay on some topic related to either God or journaling (or often the intersection of both). On Day 19, for example, the author ruminates on why readers question God’s integrity, encourages them not to worry, and transitions into using “journaling to develop a thankful heart.” Each day comes with both journal and Bible study/prayer challenges, which work as a prompt for readers. Barker writes in a gentle, accessible prose that mixes in details from his personal life: “One of my favorite traditions during Thanksgiving Week is to spend time reviewing everything from the previous Thanksgiving and make one big list. It is time consuming, but it is special to reflect on God’s faithfulness over the year.” Moments of levity (“Day 20: Integrating Artistic Expression Into Our Journal”; “Day 26: Adventure Time!”) keep the experience from feeling overly monastic. The author never lets readers forget that God is the focus here, and those journaling for self-discovery will find more sympathetic manuals elsewhere. But readers who want to make prayer and Bible study part of their daily routines should explore Barker’s 40-day program, which is not particularly dogmatic and will accommodate Christians of various traditions.
A thoughtful, well-planned journaling guide for Christians in search of God.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973608-97-4
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
