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NOVEMBER 2012: INSIDE OUT by Clay Libolt "May it be to me according to your word." (Luke 1:38) The first morning in our new place my wife, Adria, and I went for a run. We had arrived a few days before from Michigan, each driving a car. Our furniture had yet to arrive, but we were anxious to move into our new place. We bought a mattress at a discount shop, threw it on the floor, borrowed a few chairs…

NOVEMBER 2012: REVIEW by Fred Mueller Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism Ed. Robert L. Plummer Zondervan, 2012. $18.99. 256 pages. Several years ago, a New Yorker magazine cartoon depicted a scene in which worshipers are coming out the door of a church, greeting the pastor and talking in clusters on the church lawn. Everyone has on their hands those foam "Number One" fingers seen at sporting events. Two men from the church, observing this, are saying,…

NOVEMBER 2012: REVIEW by Steve Van der Weele When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays Marilynne Robinson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. $24.00. 202 pages. Marilynne Robinson has become a heavy hitter on the American religious scene. In her lectures, writings, and teaching she soldiers prophetically against the mischief spread by an assortment of today's errant ideologies. She is making it more acceptable for even secular journals to publish discourse about religious and philosophical issues—The New York Times,…

NOVEMBER 2012: POETRY by Barbara Crooker NOVEMBER This tufted titmouse at the feeder, all perky peak and bright eyes, is the mirror image of the sky overhead, breast of gray feathers, orange smear of sun going down behind the clouds. Even though the oily sunflower seed is low, he keeps coming back, ever hopeful. The leaves have flown from most of the trees; it's November, season of less. A long freight rattles south, pulls the cold air behind it. The…

NOVEMBER 2012: ESSAY by Martha LaBarge and Todd Steen In the wake of the recent economic crisis, many Americans have found themselves in dire financial straits. Our financial decisions have resulted in crippling credit card debt, huge stockpiles of consumer purchases, and an epidemic of underwater mortgages. As the baby-boom generation ages, few have saved enough to finance their retirement. Christians are relatively indistinguishable from non-Christians in terms of personal finance decisions. We struggle to make ends meet. We worry…

NOVEMBER 2012: ESSAY by Mark Putnam I think I was born in the church nursery. It seemed anytime the door was open, I was on the inside. I loved every minute of it. My sense of self and identity grew from the experiences I enjoyed through those growing years. Born in 1960, I was part of a generation that had a foot in the stable "Leave-It-to-Beaver" experience of the post–World War II era and the societal upheaval that would mark…

NOVEMBER 2012: AS WE SEE IT by Jeff Munroe Have you ever thought about how much food there is in the Bible? I'll admit I hadn't thought about it much until recently, when I spent a couple of days with Doug Worgul at the Buechner Institute of Faith and Culture at King College in Bristol, Tennessee. Doug Worgul has written a wonderful first novel called Thin Blue Smoke, a book about second chances, love and loss mingled among generous quantities…