Purified for a Purpose (Friday Devotional)

“Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”

- 1 Peter 1:22

At my wife’s insistence, all the drinking water in our household runs through a Brita filter before it gets poured into a glass. Brita’s claim is that by doing this, we are removing 99% of the chlorine and heavy metals found in tap water, delivering a purified version of the water comes out of the faucet. I just know Lindsey thinks it tastes better.

What I didn’t know was how many things that purified water can then be used for, things for which tap water is unsuitable. For example, technical specifications for laboratory testing requires that all water be purified; the potential for chemical interference from tap water is deemed an unacceptable risk. Purified water is used in the production of pharmaceutical products, both as an ingredient and a solvent; impurities render this an impossibility for tap water. Even in aquariums (which would surely love the cheaper option of using water straight from the tap), freshwater tanks are filled with purified water to reduce the likelihood of infecting the aquatic life inside. This much seems clear: when you purify ‘dirty’ water, it is suddenly able to do a lot of things it was previously incapable of.

This is equally true of spiritual purification. Much of the focus on spiritual purity rests on what is wrong with you apart from Christ (sin) and how that impurity is removed (by the grace of God through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ). Unfortunately, that’s usually where the conversation stops—you are cleansed of all unrighteousness by the blood of Christ, and now you can go on your merry way, washed in the blood of the Lamb.

But 1 Peter 1:22 points out that, just like water can do new things once it is purified, so too can Christians. When faith in Christ and obedience to the truth have purified your soul, the apostle says, you are now able to practice “genuine mutual love”, to “love one another deeply from the heart.” In Christ, you are able to understand and practice love in a new way, to engage people with his compassion and grace and to live out the truth of the cross in your daily life.

The only question is whether you will take advantage of this new power your purification offers you. The water Lindsey and I put through our Brita filter doesn’t do anything tap water couldn’t, and for too many believers, that’s true of their lives, lives which God has purified by the blood of His Son but which are devoted to the same pursuits as when sin ruled them. May you not fall prey to this kind of spiritual apathy, but instead seize the new opportunity to reach out to others with the deep, overflowing love of Jesus.

The Whole Truth (Friday Devotional)

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

- Romans 6:3-5

Made like him like him we rise, alleluia!

Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, alleluia!

Every Easter, millions of Christians joyfully sing those words, the conclusion to the fourth verse of Charles Wesley’s classic hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Those words so ably summarize the promise and the hope of the resurrection—that because Christ is risen, so too will his followers rise at the last day, transformed into the image of Christ and united with God. On Easter, with songs like these, we rightly claim the resurrection as our story, not only as a past event for one man but as a sign of what will come for all who abide with him. “Ours the [empty] grave, ours the skies, alleluia!”

But in gleefully claiming the hope of the resurrection, there is a danger of clinging to the promised joy of the future and neglecting the promised responsibility of the present. Ours is the empty tomb and the glory of the heavens, the resurrection and the ascension—but ours is also the cross.

In Romans 6, Paul speaks of the newness of life that Christ brings to every believer, saying we are “united with him in a resurrection like his.” But first we must be “united with him in a death like his,”; we must be “buried with him by baptism into death.” Being imitators of Christ means identifying not only with his glory, but his humility; it means not only standing beside him in victory, but recognizing and emulating how that victory was won. When you walk with Christ, you are marching to victory, but before you claim your glittering crown you should expect to first bear a crown of thorns.

The call of every believer is to be an imitator of Christ, to claim his story as your own—but it does you a disservice to only claim the happy ending without the beauty of what came before. Without Good Friday there would be no Easter Sunday, and just so, without being united with Christ in death you cannot be united with him in resurrection. So may your life be equally marked by the joy of the empty tomb and the sacrifice of the cross, by the freedom of salvation and the weight of its cost—so that when people see you, they may see the fullness of Christ in you.

Joseph of Arimathea (Holy Week Devotional)

“Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.”

- Luke 23:50-54

The crowd had dispersed. The Roman soldiers had been assigned to new posts. The religious leaders had returned to the temple. For the first time all morning, the air was still at Golgotha. Three bloodstained crosses lay flat on the hillside, stripped of the bodies they had once held aloft. Those discarded crosses testified to the same truth as the silence: the crucifixion was over. Jesus of Nazareth was dead.

For a follower of Jesus, Friday afternoon was surely a day of soul searching. Some had lost faith the moment they heard Jesus had been arrested. Others had been holding out hope that even from the cross there would be some miraculous escape, some angelic intervention, that at the last second Jesus would come down from the cross in glory and claim his kingdom. But by Friday afternoon, all hope was gone. Jesus was dead, and with him so were all their expectations of God’s kingdom coming to earth. Friday was a day for mourning—mourning not only the death of their Lord, but of their hope.

But for one man, Joseph of Arimathea, there was still work to do. Like many others, he had seen something in Jesus that inspired him, something that made him think the arrival of God’s kingdom was imminent. Despite his position on the council, he had not backed the religious leaders’ scheme to have Jesus killed, believing that far from being a blasphemer, Jesus might actually be the anointed one the prophets had foretold. Like the rest of Jesus’s followers, the crucifixion had dashed his hopes. But even in his disappointment and grief, he felt he owed something to Jesus. This man, Messiah or not, deserved more dignity than he had been given. Maybe he had not brought the kingdom like he’d promised, but he at least deserved a decent burial.

So, mustering up his courage, Joseph had the gall to approach Pilate, who’d had more than enough of the Jews and their demands for one day, to request the body of Jesus. Sabbath was about to begin, he explained, and the body would need to be tended to immediately. Could Pilate grant this last accommodation and give him custody of it? Pilate, whether from a place of graciousness or simple convenience, acquiesced.

Accompanied only by Nicodemus and the women who had witnessed the crucifixion, Joseph placed the body of Jesus in an unused rock tomb, wrapped it in linen cloth, and sealed the tomb shut. With this last act, perhaps he could finally move on from the Jesus who had so captivated him. With the stone rolled in front of the tomb door, with Friday turning to Saturday and the Sabbath now in full effect, perhaps he could use the day to reflect, for the last time, on all he had seen Jesus do and heard him say. With the body now out of sight and his memory of the crucifixion already beginning to fade in the cool light of a new morning, maybe now he could transition from disappointment back to expectantly waiting on God. After all, the crucifixion had been a piercing blow, but he still had faith—someday God’s kingdom would come.

“Who knows?” he thought. “It could even come tomorrow.”

The Two Crucified Criminals (Holy Week Devotional)

“One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.””

- Luke 23:39-43

Jesus’s companions in crucifixion, one on his left and another on his right, can be described in several different ways. Matthew and Mark call them “thieves,” an indicator of the crimes that earned them their crosses. Luke prefers the more general term “criminals,” perhaps unwilling to limit the extent of their sins. And John seems unconcerned with their back stories, thinking only of them as “two others” who shared an execution date with the Lord. I suggest another way of thinking about them, based upon their interactions with Jesus in Luke 23:39-43—they are our representatives; living, breathing examples of how all people respond to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The first criminal speaks to Jesus with derision, mockery, and perhaps a hint of desperation: “If you were the Messiah, you’d save the three of us!” He looks at the broken body and the spilled blood of Jesus and sees an imposter finally paying the piper—Jesus may have had some pretty words and some fancy tricks up his sleeve, but when all is said and done, he bleeds the same as any common criminal.

His response to Jesus, simply put, is rejection. He cannot see past the evil of the world and the darkness of his own circumstances; he cannot imagine that there may be purpose to the pain or hope from the horror. His only answer to agony is anger, and so all he can think to do in his final moments is hurl insults at God’s anointed. A Christ whose response to the world’s evil is meek submission will never be his king.

The second criminal behaves differently, scolding the first man for his irreverence and pointing out that, while Jesus is suffering the same punishment as they are, he is not guilty of the same crimes. He looks at the body and blood of Jesus and sees something different than his fellow thief does—he sees a king willing to suffer for his people, a Lord who is answering injustice with grace.

His response, in other words, is acceptance. So, facing is own death, he turns to Jesus with an earnest plea: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He knows that, with all his sins, he does not deserve the attention of Christ, but he prays that there is enough grace in the bosom of God to afford him some small legacy in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus gives him more than what he asks for: the man—no longer a sinner, but now a saint—will not only be remembered in the kingdom of God, he will be part of it.

Easy as it is to give the two men on either side of Jesus ostracizing labels—thieves, criminals, sinners—they are not so different from you. Just like them, you stand justly condemned in your sinfulness, incapable of saving yourself. Just like them, you face a punishment that is as unendurable as it is deserved. And just like them, Jesus is with you in your suffering, an abiding Lord to the end. When he turns to you for a response, what will you say?

Mary (Holy Week Devotional)

“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

- John 19:25b

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Mary had rapturously sung those words more than thirty years ago. The angel Gabriel had come to her with greetings and joyous news—she, an unwed virgin of humble means, would conceive and bear a son. Not just any son, in fact, but the Son of the Most High, the descendant of David whom the prophets had foretold, the one who would reign over the house of Israel and whose kingdom would know no end.

As that son had grown into a man, there had been days when Mary had known without a shadow of a doubt that the angel had spoken truth. There was the day when magi from the east had come to her family’s humble home guided only by a star, bearing gifts fit for a king. There was the time when she, her husband, and her son had traveled to Jerusalem, and she and Joseph had found the boy sitting among the teachers of the law, astonishing them with his insight. And of course, there had been that first miracle at Cana just a few years ago, when, with her gentle prodding, her son had turned water into wine. Whenever her child’s early life began to seem typical or mundane—the tantrums of infancy, the bruises and scrapes of boyhood, the awkwardness of adolescence—those astounding memories served as reminders of the angelic promise: one day her son would reign as king.

So how betrayed she must have felt as she stared up at Jesus—the Son of God, but also the son of Mary—dying a criminal’s death on a Roman cross. The sign over his head mockingly naming him “King of the Jews” served as a cruel reminder to her of the angel’s promise so many years ago. Having once felt assured that he would reign forever, she now watched through tears as the color drained from his face, life slowly slipping away from his body. This was not the way she had imagined God’s plan unfolding—in that moment, as her son gasped out his final breaths, it must have been hard to believe there even was a plan.

You are unlikely to ever encounter the same kind of stinging doubt Mary must have felt on that Friday morning at Golgotha—her circumstances are unique, her pain more so. But there will unquestionably be moments in your walk with the Lord when you become disenchanted with the unfolding of God’s will, when you dislike the direction He is taking you. You may wonder if you were foolish to have ever magnified a Lord who would allow you to suffer like this. In those moments of despair, remember the lesson only Easter could adequately teach Mary: God’s promises are not always fulfilled on our timetable, but not even death can make Him break them.

Simon of Cyrene (Holy Week Devotional)

“As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.”

- Luke 23:26

I wonder how Simon thought the day was going to go when he entered Jerusalem early Friday morning. He was probably there to celebrate Passover—it was customary for local Jews to make a pilgrimage to the holy city at that time of year. But that early in the morning, only an hour or two after dawn, no feasts were yet underway—so maybe he was sightseeing, or looking for a place to buy breakfast, or seeing if he could do some business before the Sabbath began.

Whatever his plans were for that day, they never came to pass. Instead, his quiet morning in Jerusalem was interrupted by the sudden commotion of a local criminal’s march to the gallows. Wave after wave of Roman soldiers, Jewish mockers, and curious bystanders filled the street, each shouting something different but all pointing at the same wretched man in the center, a wooden cross laid across his back. Drawing closer, Simon got a good look at the man—bruised, bloody, and crowned with thorns, this man was the picture of Rome’s cruel justice.

Suddenly the man stumbled in the dirt right at Simon’s feet, his body crashing to the ground and his cross with it. Simon looked down at him in pity and bewilderment, only to feel a hard shove in his own back. Turning to face his assailant, his eyes met those of a stony Roman centurion. “You’re a Jew, aren’t you?” spat the soldier. “Help your king! Carry his cross.” And so, whether Simon was afraid of the soldiers, sympathetic to Jesus’s plight, or some mixture of the two, he picked up Jesus’s heavy cross and followed behind him as they made their way to Golgotha.

Simon’s morning may have started like any other, but without warning he found himself thrown into the battle between God Almighty and the forces of darkness and was called to play his part. He didn’t get to pick his moment or wait until he was ready—he was pushed into the fray at a time not of his choosing.

This is often the case in the Christian life. Given our druthers, we’d all like to take our sweet time growing in faith, but more often that maturity comes through the fits and starts of unexpected trials. It is not usually the Bible study that teaches you about perseverance, but the bad diagnosis; it is seldom the sermon that propels you to renewed faithfulness, but the exhaustion and depression of hitting rock bottom. As nice as it would be to learn about Jesus at your own pace, sometimes he just falls at your feet. In those moments, do you walk away or pick up the cross?

Pontius Pilate (Holy Week Devotional)

“So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.”

- Mark 15:15

The annals of history tell us Pontius Pilate was a vindictive, cruel, and corrupt Roman prefect, less interested in governing the Jews of Judea than terrorizing them. His willingness to continually disregard and disrespect Jewish customs earned him enmity, and the fury with which he put down rebellions earned him fear.

Yet the gospels show us a different Pilate than the monster that historians like Josephus describe. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John describe a man motivated not by cruelty, but cowardice, a governor whose chief concern was avoiding a mob. The Pilate they describe didn’t condemn Jesus to death because of any personal malice against him or because he wanted to see an innocent man suffer. Rather, Pilate placed our Lord’s fate in the hands of the mob, offering to grant freedom to either Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews, or Jesus Barabbas, a notorious murderer. “The choice is yours,” he said. Pilate’s was not a sin of malevolence, but of passivity—he simply gave the people what they wanted.

That Friday morning, Pilate learned something that is still true today: people rarely want Jesus. Sure, they want parts of him—his healing miracles, his compassion, his power, his forgiveness. But when the full picture comes into view, they get uneasy. Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor? Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? Take up your cross and follow? No thanks. Given the choice between a Barabbas—a bad choice, but a familiar one—and the unyielding holiness of Christ, it is only the leading of the Holy Spirit that allows us to even consider choosing Jesus.

So, with the crowd rejecting Jesus, Pilate had the unique opportunity to be part of something bigger than himself, bigger than Rome even, to stand for what was right and say, “I will not doom someone unworthy of condemnation.” But instead he took the easy, convenient route and gave the people what they wanted. Every day you face a similar test: to act on Jesus’s behalf or sit back and hope for the best, to bear witness to his saving power or leave that duty to the preacher, to serve the Lord or serve yourself. Pilate made his choice, and is remembered for it still today. In your life, will you give the people what they want or will you give God what He deserves?

The Disciples (Holy Week Devotional)

*Note: In honor of Holy Week, I will be sending a daily devotional each day this week, with the final one coming on Saturday. Each devotional will focus on a different individual or group who features prominently in the story of Jesus's crucifixion. I hope these daily devotionals will help you as you fix your eyes on the cross and eagerly anticipate the joy of Easter Sunday.*

“All of them deserted him and fled.”

- Mark 14:50

What a week it had been for the Twelve. From a victorious processional into Jerusalem on Sunday to a controversial purging of the temple on Monday to an enigmatic, sacred supper earlier that Thursday night, the disciples were by Jesus’s side for seemingly every moment of that week in the Holy City. They were his right-hand men, his loyal followers, his closest friends. Wherever Jesus was going next, they were sure to be close behind.

And then, suddenly, they weren’t.

When Jesus had emerged from a moment of private prayer in the garden, they had yawned and sheepishly accepted his scolding—instructed to pray themselves, they had instead drifted off to sleep, weary from the eventful week and the late night. But their tired eyes had quickly grown wide with fear when they saw who was approaching: their companion Judas Iscariot, leading a small regiment of temple guards. Simon Peter had drawn a sword in defense, striking one of the guards, but was once again scolded by his master. There would be no battle tonight, only a long walk to the high priest, a false trial, and a hasty conviction—and Jesus would have to endure it all alone. At the moment of greatest testing, with their Lord being led away to an uncertain fate, the disciples deserted him and fled.

I’d like to think I’d have done better. I’d like to think I’d have shown the bravery of the women who came to the foot of the cross, that I’d have stood by Jesus to the end. I’d like to think that my love for the Lord would have overridden my fear of his accusers, that I’d have valued my relationship with him more than my own skin. I’d like to think I’m a better disciple than the ones who fled that night.

But I can’t know for sure. I’ve had too many moments of spiritual weakness, made too many moral compromises, and turned my back on God too many times to be sure. I’ve behaved like a sinner too many times to assume that, if I’d been in the garden that night, I’d have acted like a saint. I hope I would have stood by Jesus—but I just don’t know.

What I do know is this: while we were still sinners—while we were fleeing his punishment in terror, while we were cowering in the upper room, while we were denying we even knew him—Christ died for us. The disciples deserted Jesus and fled, and we do the same today more often than we care to admit. But he never leaves us.

Be Like Jesus (Friday Devotional)

“Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

- Philippians 2:4-8

“Be like Jesus”—whether by intuition or instruction, most believers understand that is the task of discipleship. Having lived according to your own dreams, whims, and temptations when you were apart from Christ, the follower of Jesus is called to a new life, one in which you are to be, in the language of Ephesians 5:1, an “imitator of God.”

But almost from the outset, we begin neutering this command. “Be like Jesus,” you might say, ”but if somebody hits you, you’d better show them you won’t be bullied and hit back. Be like Jesus—but stay away from certain kinds of people; you’ve got a reputation to protect. Be like Jesus—but remember, your first responsibility is to yourself.” With each “but”, you seeking a middle way between your old life and life in Christ, a compromise between sin and holiness. The way of Jesus becomes suggestion instead of command, an impossible ideal instead of the calling of every Christian. Before long, you have moved from “be like Jesus” to “be nice most of the time.”

It is perhaps with this gradual deterioration of discipleship in mind that Paul spells out what it means to approach life as Jesus did. Instead of clinging to unimaginable power, Jesus refused to see it as something to be exploited. Instead of making much of himself, Jesus emptied himself. And ultimately, instead of demanding an easier path, Jesus was obedient even to the point of painful, torturous death.

Following Jesus, we sometimes forget, is not about adhering to the cultural norms of what is right and wrong. It’s about radical, all-consuming, sacrificial love for God and people, even and especially when such love is impractical, inconvenient, and painful. Jesus did not seek a compromise between godly love and worldly acceptability, between obedience to the Father and deference to his comfort zone; he was fully devoted to exemplifying the love of God for humanity, no matter what it cost him. For any who would be his disciples, that is our task as well. “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others,” Paul says.  Put another way, be like Jesus.

March Reading Log

March was a busy month, as I polished off 6 novels, 4 history books, 5 theological works, and 4 graphic novels, for a grand total of 19 books read in March.

April Fool's. You're too easy.

In reality, a lot of my reading time in March was devoted to whittling down my always insurmountable pile of saved magazine articles, op-eds, and blog posts to a more manageable size. Nevertheless, I still spent plenty of time with a book in my hand, whether it was an explanation of narrative preaching, a collection of baseball essays, a horror-crime noir comic series, or something else altogether. Enjoy the reviews!

OVERHEARING THE GOSPEL by Fred Craddock

I never met the late Fred Craddock, but he is nevertheless one of my greatest preaching mentors. Having been introduced to his work in seminary (he wrote our primary textbook for Preaching I), I am always on the lookout for his sermons (written or audio), articles, and books. So when I stumbled upon Overhearing the Gospel at a used bookstore, I couldn’t get the cash out of my wallet and into the cashier’s hands fast enough.

The book serves as an effective explanation and justification for his method of preaching, typically called ‘narrative preaching.’ Craddock is no fan of the sermon as argument, where you lay out your thesis in the first 5 minutes, prove it with 3 points, and then summarize and restate it in the conclusion. While it’s easy to take notes during that kind of sermon, Craddock says there is a better way: the sermon as story. The preacher, he argues, should not approach the sermon like a lawyer who’s out to prove a point, but like a storyteller who’s there to tell you good news. And especially in the 21^st century (the book was published in 2002), when we are inundated with conflict every day, he says our congregations need to hear fewer arguments about Jesus and more stories about him.

Craddock leans heavily on the writings of Soren Kierkegaard to explain his method, returning time and time again to this quote: “There is no lack of information in a Christian land; something else is lacking, and this is a something which the one cannot directly communicate to the other.” To be an effective preacher today, Craddock believes, one must present the gospel message subversively and allow it to sneak up on the listener for maximum impact, in much the same way that Jesus did with his parables. The titular idea of the book is for the listener to ‘overhear the gospel’ in the narrative of the sermon, not be beat over the head with it from introduction to conclusion. And I’ll tell you this from personal experience: when you hear this kind of preaching done well, the sermon sticks with you in a way that most preaching rarely does.

As usual when I read Craddock, he altered the direction and style of my next sermon and had me pounding my head on the desk trying to make it work—his method of preaching is a LOT easier to understand than to implement. But after all, the best teachers challenge their students, so I’m continually grateful for books like this one that stretch my understanding of what a sermon ‘should’ sound like and force me to work harder at communicating as best I can. For anyone looking for a fresh perspective on preaching (especially if you’re unfamiliar with anything but the standard deductive, 3-point style), give this book a try.

HOW TO BE BORN AGAIN by Billy Graham

If you were to make a list of the 5 most influential preachers of the past century, Billy Graham would undoubtedly make the list, possibly at the very top. His evangelistic crusades, which he led from 1947 to 2005, reached millions of people for Christ and thrust his ministry into the national spotlight. For decades he was the unofficial "pastor to the presidents", having prayed with and provided counsel to every U.S. president from Truman to Obama. And along the way, he wrote over 30 books, including this one, first published in 1977.

How to Be Born Again is exactly what it sounds like, a primer on the biblical message of salvation in Jesus Christ. Divided into three sections--man's problem, God's answer, and man's response--Graham offers a compelling case for why each person needs to be born again, explaining with a diverse array of Bible verses and personal testimonies how God can change any individual's life if he or she will let Him in. Essentially, this book is a 183 page summary of his evangelistic sermons--and if you're going to read a 183 page sermon, you can do a lot worse than Billy Graham!

The book does have its drawbacks: the cultural references are dated and it tends to be repetitive. Furthermore, Graham is not breaking new ground; if you are a believer, you're probably not going to learn anything new about God from this book. But its core message is the timeless, biblical message of salvation, and Graham is a master preacher of that message. As in his sermons, his writing strikes a balance that lesser preachers and authors often fail to achieve: he is simple without being facile, folksy without being condescending, current (for 1977) without being overly political, funny when he can be and serious when he needs to be. Billy Graham has many imitators, but few preach the gospel with the grace and power God gave him throughout his decades of ministry. If you never heard him preach, want to know what his entire life has been about, or most importantly of all, don't know what being "born again" means, this book is a good place to turn.

THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST by Robert Frost

I am not a poetry guy, though not for lack of trying. Maybe it's the poets I've chosen to read, maybe it's a general impatience with how poetry is meant to be read (slowly and usually often loud), maybe it's just a lack of depth in my soul, I don't know. What I do know is that every morning I devote 15-20 minutes to reading poetry, and that a lot of mornings that feels like wasted time. Sometimes it's tempting to just throw up my hands and declare that poetry is just not my thing and leave the whole genre to more enlightened brains than mine.

So Robert Frost has my gratitude for restoring my belief that I can read and enjoy poetry. As I began reading his work (The Poetry of Robert Frost is a complete collection of all of his published poems), I was familiar with his greatest hits: "The Road Not Taken," "Mending Wall," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," and "Fire and Ice." So I had a general feel for the flavor of his poetry, but didn't know much else. What I was pleased to learn over the last 3 months as I slowly worked through this book was that Frost's poetry strikes an incredible balance between accessibility and insight; most of his poems can be appreciated by both the common man and the Ph.D in English.

Whether he's dealing with nature, religion, or politics (probably his three most prominent themes in my estimation) or something else altogether, Frost managed to make me think and feel, to admire his carefully chosen words and the meaning behind them. As best I can tell, that's the task of every poet--and Frost, one of poetry's household names, does it better than anybody else I've come across so far. When I was considering ditching poetry altogether, Frost reeled me back in...can't offer a much better recommendation than that.

SEASON TICKET by Roger Angell

I tend to group professional baseball prognosticators into four categories. The most common and least evolved of the species is the hot take artist--the newspaper columnist looking to stir up controversy, the sports talk radio host, and the ever-present ESPN talking head artist are all examples. These are the folks who watch 15 games a year, either on TV or from the press box, and then deem themselves experts. The second category is the beat writer, the person who is in the clubhouse every single day covering the local team, who doles out quotes, stats, and trade rumors whenever he or she can get them and offers opinions sparingly (at least before the advent of Twitter). Category #3, a recent addition to the world of baseball reporting, is the stathead. This is the blogger (since almost all of this writing is found online) who grew up on Bill James abstracts, thinks of Moneyball as a revered ancient tome, and talks more about WAR than General Patton did. They devote themselves to breaking down players, teams, and games according to the most minute statistical data available, and either work for Fangraphs or wish they did. The final category is what I might call the intellectual fan. These are the writers and broadcasters whose livelihood does not depend on baseball, but who use their broader platforms in the media to sneak in the occasional essay on the sport. George Will, Bob Costas, and Ken Burns would all fit in this category, and the most respected of all is the dean of baseball writers, Roger Angell.

Angell's day job for decades was fiction editor for the New Yorker, but he is better known for his sports essays, especially the ones about baseball.  A far cry from either the strictly-the-facts game reports of the beat writers or the controversy-of-the-day hot take artists, Angell writes poetically about the sport, radiating a love for and fascination with the game that time has yet to diminish. Season Ticket is a collection of 15 of his essays from 1982-1985.

The writing is superb throughout (his reputation is well deserved), but for this reader in 2017, the book as a whole was hit and miss. Several of the essays amounted to summaries of particular seasons, which was probably fun reading the year they were published, but lacked relevancy 30 years later. The best essays were those in which Angell researched a narrow topic, like catchers or the National Baseball Hall of Fame. These were both fascinating and impressively prescient--in his essay on catchers, for example, he spends pages talking about we now call pitch framing, a current fad among statheads that he was extolling 30 years ago. There's also a long profile of former Kansas City Royals closer Dan Quisenberry that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I started this book on a plane headed to spring training and finished it the week before Opening Day, and every page made me long for the season to begin. If you like baseball writing, you can't go wrong with Roger Angell, and Season Ticket has some great stories to tell.

MY BOOKSTORE edited by Ronald Rice

The very existence of this monthly reading log probably tipped you off to the fact that I like bookstores. Few places are as capable as a good bookstore of of simultaneously relaxing and energizing me, of emptying my mind of the day's stresses and filling it with the musings of a good author. Give me a few shelves stacked with books, a comfy chair, and perhaps a cup of coffee, and I can lose a morning (and some cash) in no time.

My Bookstore is a celebration of the local, independent bookstore via a collection of essays by various professional authors about their own favorite bookshops. Each essay highlights a different locale, from the large and famous (Powell's, the Strand, Politics and Prose) to the stores familiar only to their loyal patrons. From tales of cats roaming the store (bookstore owners, for some reason, almost universally love cats) to stories of booksellers advocating for local authors, each author lovingly defends not only his or her preferred bookshop, but the very institution of the brick-and-mortar bookstore, making a case for its importance to the community and the broader cultural landscape.

The book is meant to be read an essay at a time, not in large bites, and you will enjoy it more that way, because it gets pretty redundant otherwise. You quickly start to pick up on repeated themes and motifs: the saintly and determined bookseller who helped put the author on the map, the store that serves as the center of a town's culture, the bookshop that has endured the dual assaults of Amazon and Barnes & Noble with some combination of local appeal, capitalistic brilliance, and personal touch. So my favorite essays were the ones that strayed from these templates, whether it was the rhyming ode to one store or the rambling letter to another. But whether you're reading one of these outside-the-box offerings or one of the more boilerplate essays, you'll find yourself wanting to hop in the car and head to your own local bookstore for an hour. Or in my case, three.

P.S. At the back of the book, all 84 stores are listed by state, a convenient checklist to consult whenever you're about to travel. So far I've only been to 3: Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Brookline Booksmith in Boston, and City Lights Books in San Francisco. I've got some traveling to do!

FATALE VOL. 1-5 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are one of the most reliable collaborative writer-artist teams in comics, churning out hit after hit, from the just concluded Hollywood murder-mystery The Fade Out to their currently running serial killer crime drama Kill or Be Killed to their best-known and longest running series to date, Criminal (which I own but haven't read yet...stay tuned in a future month.) For March, I chose to dive into their most polarizing series, Fatale.

Fatale is a tribute to the femme fatales of classic noir tales, and features just about every trope of those stories, from murder to sex to cults to Lovecraftian monsters. The plot revolves around Josephine, a woman cursed to never grow old who has a strange hypnotic power over men, able to get them to do whatever she asks with a word. Her power comes from her connection to a monstrous demon and his followers, who are out to kill her even as she seeks a cure for her curse. Each volume of the story finds her falling in with a different unwitting man, from a World War II GI to a 1990s grunge rocker, who all try to protect her from her terrifying pursuers, only to meet doom themselves.

If my description thus far hasn't tipped you off yet, this book falls firmly in the Adult category (for language, violence, nudity, drug use, you name it). And while I'm no prude about what I read, a lot of it felt gratuitous--perhaps intentionally, since classic noir gleefully exploited taboos to lure in readers. Whether purposeful or not, I wouldn't have complained if Brubaker and Phillips had offered a PG-13 version of this book instead of the hard R that they produced; frankly, the deluge of adult material distracted from the story they were telling.

And as unnecessary as I found all the R-rated stuff, the story was ultimately my biggest problem with this book. Phillips' art is beautiful, Brubaker writes excellent dialogue and paces his story with customary mastery, but the plot and its resolution leave the reader with way too many unanswered questions. I'm fine with some ambiguity, especially in a story where the supernatural has a role to play, but more world building was needed in this book. I never learned the origin of Josephine's curse, never really got a feel for how she was connected to her enemy, and left the final volume feeling more puzzled than satisfied. I don't need to know every detail of a story's mythology, but I need some kind of foundation, and Fatale's was not firm. Brubaker and Phillips are a great team, and this book isn't terrible, but it's definitely my least favorite thing I've read from them.