How Did I Miss this Book?

How did I miss seeing this recent book, "The Mystery of the Cross," by Judith Couchman, published by InterVarsity Press? For this past season of Lent, I put together a sermon series on "Crosses of Jesus," in which we focused on six different crosses of Jesus to help us reflect on the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the world.

This book would have come in really handy if I would have stumbled upon it sooner. Since there is a wealth of information regarding the crosses of Jesus thanks to Christian tradition and historical sources, the research for this sermon series wasn't too much of a problem. The difficulty was in deciding what information to include and not include for each sermon.

When I stumbled upon Couchman's book this morning, I couldn't help but to imagine how this would have been really helpful six months ago when I began preparing for the series! And the real kicker is that her book is available on Kindle, my favorite way to read.

Speaking of preparing for future sermon series, for our fall stewardship program, I'm presently reading Jim Tressel's "The Winners Manual," as a source especially for the Sunday in that series when we will be talking about the importance of making and keeping commitments. This is a series that will explore the five United Methodist membership vows of prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness, and what those vows mean to us as we make commitments in each of these areas for the coming year. The title of that sermon series is "Marks of a Christian."