I recently read Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, a new book by Ruth Haley Barton, author of Invitation to Solitude and Silence. I appreciated Barton’s call for leaders to tend to their own souls, and I found the analogies she draws between the spiritual journey of the contemporary leader and the spiritual journey of Moses to be delightfully challenging. The thoughtful meditations at the end of each chapter introduced me to the work of Ted Loder, and when I found myself deeply resonating with the prayer-poems in his Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, I purchased two additional copies of Guerillas of Grace to give as Christmas gifts.

Since one of my 2008 New Year’s resolutions was to read more fiction, I recently decided to put some energy into that goal while 2008 is still here! So right now I’m reading Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice, after hearing a professor at George Fox Evangelical Seminary recommend this book to people who want to gain a richer appreciation for the humanity of Jesus. It took a bit of time for me to get into Rice’s writing style and the rhythm of her words, but now I’m greatly enjoying this book and the way it stretches my mind to really consider—as Rice does—who Jesus was as a little boy and as a man.