Building Your Summer Reading List
My mother taught me not to be a self-promoter. Whether I succeeded is for others to judge, but I know what I am about to do leaves me a bit sheepish. I want to recommend my own book: Sing Us A Song Of Joy: Saying What We Believe In An Age Of Unbelief. You might think about it for your summer reading list, or perhaps as a recommendation or gift for a friend. We’re all building those lists right now for the long summer evenings. This book might be just the ticket.
My book came out somewhere mid-2018. During mid-2019 I went into hibernation to deal with some needed surgery. And then, of course, in 2020 the Covid thunderstorm blew into our lives disrupting everything. Amazingly, then, I had not reread my book until now.
I have just finished rereading my book, prompted in the past month or so, by teaching two classes where I used the book to frame our discussions. I was delighted that the book seemed to hold up and most of all that people found it helpful.
The quotation that gives structure to the book, and to these classes, is from Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept
as we remembered Zion.
On the willow trees there we hung up our lyres,
for there those who had carried us captive
asked us to sing them a song,
our captors called on us to be joyful:
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
There is ambiguity here to consider, but the questions asked, and the picture of exile presented, speaks to us down through the ages for just the moment of exile in which we live. As Christians, living in a pervasively secular world, how, indeed, do we sing the Lord’s song of joy? Or have we felt compelled to hang up our harps in the willow trees? Have we lost our voice for singing our song? And then this question: Is the world around us really asking for us to sing them a song of joy?
No easy answers here, but I come away from this rereading and this fresh teaching believing the answers are overwhelmingly positive. And I come away believing my book proposes some good thinking about where we might begin. This is the question for Christians in our moment: How can we learn better how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
Easy to order from Amazon here.
I hope you find the book as helpful and stimulating as so many in my classes did. Whatever you choose to do, keep building that summer reading list.