Do something for the environment--pray for the earth. The icecaps are melting. The air we breathe and the water we drink are polluted. Forests are being cleared of oxygen-making trees and ecosystem-integral wildlife. Our daily lives impact our earth--mostly leaving negative footprints. The environmental challenges we face are real and almost out of control. We're free to enjoy the earth's bounty and beauty, but along with that privilege comes responsibility. How are Christians to respond as stewards of God's creation? Explore through prayer the interconnecting love that binds God, humankind, and creation--forming a sacred trust. Earth Gospel offers four weeks of prayer (seven days per week with prayers for morning, midday, and evening) to encourage care of God's creation. Each daily reading includes scripture, hymn texts, beautiful poems and reflections from sages across time, and blessings. Featured voices include Emily Dickinson, Wendell Berry, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther, e.e. cummings, Julia Esquivel, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Catherine of Siena, and many others. Conveniently sized to tuck into a backpack for a field expedition or as a companion to your Bible during prayer time, Earth Gospel will deepen your appreciation and commitment to creation. Use it daily, and it will change your life.

WARNING! This book could make your life messy! Today’s church is continually being confronted with the question, “What is the gospel?” Many churches answer this through strong exposition of biblical truth. Others answer with a focus on community engagement. But doesn’t Christ call us to do both? The covenant of salvation demands a radical re-patterning of relationships. Bryan Lorrits, a pastor in the heart of one of America’s historically racially divided urban centers, seizes the opportunity to engage God, the church, and culture in ways that may challenge your beliefs, practices, and relationships. A Cross-Shaped Gospel clearly articulates the vertical dimension of the Christian faith, as well as looking at the horizontal implications of salvation for growth, service, and community. It provokes readers to think about the implications of living out their faith. What does the gospel mean for issues of: Political engagement? Class distinctions? Race Relations? It is only by reaching upward that we can reach outward in power and with the proper motives, so let A Cross- Shaped Gospel help you in crafting and communicating a biblical philosophy of engaging God and others well!

In its procession through indirection to attention, Gospel Earth, Jeffery Beam's big book of little poems, traces a transcendent open ecstasy & radiant physicality. Bridging aphoristic composure, Vedic & Zen alertness & the ecstasy of the Christian, Bhaktic, & Sufi mystics, the poems invoke earth spirits & the luminous power of the Word, breaching the divide between creation & humanity, healing the domination heating the earth & searing our moral compass. The poems animate the natural world beyond the confines of language, demonstrating once again as North Carolina's Independent Weekly stated "how large a canvas he can paint with a few deft strokes." Described by the poet as a work intended to "invigorate the startling propulsion of haiku's accessible simplicity & minimalism," Gospel Earth assembles a new Gnostic gospel, a distinct & astonishing beauty.

A much-overlooked aspect of the Gospel of Matthew is the theme of heaven and earth. Rather than being a reverential circumlocution for God, 'heaven' in Matthew is part of a highly developed discourse of heaven and earth language. Matthew's idiolectic way of using heaven language consists of four aspects: 1) a distinction in meaning between singular and plural forms of "ouranos"; 2) frequent use of the heaven and earth word pair; 3) regular reference to the Father in heaven; and 4) the recurrent use of the Matthean expression, kingdom of heaven. This book examines the historical precedents for each of these aspects and shows in Matthew how they serve one overriding theological purpose: to highlight the tension that currently exists between heaven and earth or God and humanity, while looking forward to its eschatological resolution.

God’s world is full of good things. Ice-cold lemonade. The laughter of children. College football. Scrambled eggs and crispy bacon. A late night with old friends around a blazing campfire. God certainly knows how to give good gifts to his children. But where is the line when it comes to enjoying all the pleasurable things our world affords? In The Things of Earth, professor Joe Rigney offers perplexed Christians a breath of fresh air by lifting the burden of false standards and impossible expectations related to the Christian life—freeing readers to gratefully embrace every good thing we receive from the hand of God. Helping us avoid our tendency to forget the Giver on the one hand and neglect his gifts on the other, this much-needed book reminds us that God’s blessings should drive us to worship and that a passion for God’s glory can be as wide as the world itself.

In How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Larry Hurtado investigates the intense devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus' significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. This book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject deserves serious historical consideration. Mapping out the lively current debate about Jesus, Hurtado explains the evidence, issues, and positions at stake. He goes on to treat the opposition to -- and severe costs of -- worshiping Jesus, the history of incorporating such devotion into Jewish monotheism, and the role of religious experience in Christianity's development out of Judaism. The follow-up to Hurtado's award-winningLord Jesus Christ (2003), this book provides compelling answers to queries about the development of the church's belief in the divinity of Jesus.

This volume connects American social and religious views with the classic American movie genre of the zombie horror film. This study proves that George Romero's films go beyond the surface experience of repulsion to probe deeper questions of human nature and purpose, often giving a chilling and darkly humorous critique of modern, secular America.