HOPE FOR TODAY

A writer offers a daily devotional for Christians.

In his nonfiction debut, Griffith presents his fellow Christians with a series of short meditations on a broad spectrum of topics. Some of these brief segments deal with real-world concerns like adoption, “worry,” and the significance of holidays like Mother’s Day or Memorial Day. But many of them are more intensely religious in their concentration, usually with the author raising a subject and illustrating it with a story from the Bible. When writing about times when readers must face seemingly insuperable odds, for instance, he invokes the biblical character of Gideon, who once led Israel against the Midianites. “Gideon’s story is an example of what God can do with a small group or an individual who will follow his instructions,” the author writes. “We may face many difficult situations and treacherous people, or philosophies that go against God’s word, but if we will believe God and follow his instructions we can be victorious people today.” This combination—extensive scriptural literacy matched with an undaunted optimism—makes Griffith’s little sermons uniformly uplifting, even when focusing on dark subject matter. The book’s form of a traditional daily devotional makes it inherently inviting; readers can pick any section regardless of its place in the whole work. “Do you really know God today?” the author asks at one point, and this is essentially the question underpinning virtually all of the volume’s entries: the immediacy of the faith encounter day to day. “No matter how much time we have wasted or how much time we have left to live,” Griffith writes, “we can ask God to make up for the wasted time and help us use our future time wisely.” This episodic quality is of course the strength of a daily devotional, but in this case, it’s also a slight weakness. The author is an insightful, companionable commenter on Scripture, but the format never gives him room to expound.

An episodic but warmly welcoming Christian daily devotional.