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As you all know, last week I released my eBook, This Fearsome Thing of Grace, a collection of Advent reflections from the first Sunday to Christmas Eve. I am home, painting, baking, and buried in my thesis. But there is the livelihood to be considered, shamed as I am to say it aloud. So, as is the case when it comes to these things, I'm pitching it hard and fast right at you. The blurb on the description:

Daily reflections for Advent 2011, based on the lectionary readings from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. From the first Sunday of Advent to Christmas Eve, these are pooled words, short insights, and thoughts to hold close as we journey together toward the coming of our Saviour. Part memoir, part reflection, daily offerings of simple grace. Features hyperlinks to each of the day's readings for easy access.

Four ways to buy:

For your Kindle.

For iPad or iPhone to be in iBooks.

For any other eReader, including iPad and iPhone. (Download from Lulu, then drag the file into iTunes to load it into iBooks, or open the file in whatever eReader you have! If you need one, Adobe Digital Editions is a free reader that works on everything but Mac OSX Lion.)

For computer and to print, as a PDF. (Download from Lulu and you're ready to go!)

And another preview:

-December 19- Monday in the Fourth Week of Advent Vocation — “... He looked with favor upon me...” Luke 1:25 — In the morning: Psalms 61, 62 Zephaniah 3:14-20 Titus 1 Luke 1:1-25 In the evening: Psalms 112, 115 —

The coming of Christ in the incarnation, the hallowing of all this human form, has at times led to an odd interpretation of God’s will, a belief that to be like Christ is to do as Christ did exactly. If this were so, if the will of God was a sort of choice by choice kind of construction in which perfection only existed in following every single choice to the pattern of the perfect, then we should all become carpenters like Jesus was surely trained to be by His earthly father Joseph.

But if the hallowing of the human in the incarnation is the sudden, beautiful ability to live in such a way that is in conversation with and honoring of the Divine, then the way of Christ is rooted in the miracle of vocation. All are called, but not all are called to the same thing. Some of us have been called to write, some to work with numbers, some to teach, some to live in the wild fields of belief where we venture from thing to thing, for the breath of Holy Ghost rolls across the water one morning and says, “Go!”

Vocation is not about being called to a specific job, it is about being called to a life. Each of us have profound purpose in Christ, a gift that only we may offer back to the Creator. That is not found in employment, but in living. Joseph was employed as a carpenter when he was called to the frightful task of marrying a woman who claimed that she was carrying the son of God. What marks Joseph as so incredible is not his life of carpentry, it is his character that, when the angel came to him and told him what he was to do, he did it immediately. That is the place of vocation, that is the place where God turns His favor upon His creation and whispers in excitement, “Now!” and the wild run begins again.

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So, if you are so inclined ...

Four ways to buy:

For your Kindle.

For iPad or iPhone to be in iBooks.

For computer and to print, as a PDF. (Download from Lulu and you're ready to go!)

Today I am honored to release my eBook, This Fearsome Thing of Grace: Reflections for Advent Year B.

The book is a collection of daily readings spanning from the first Sunday of Advent, November 27th, to Christmas Eve. Each day features the appointed readings from the Book of Common Prayer lectionary, hyperlinked for easy-access to the text online in the ESV translation. Beneath the readings is a brief, 300ish-word reflection for the day based on a meme that was born out of the reading. Sometimes memoir, sometimes pure reflection, sometimes theology. All the content is original, though, if you're a regular here, you know that I used the word cosmos a little bit.

To give you a feel for the text, I am providing a sample below from the first week. The hyperlinks are not active and the spacing does not reflect the spacing in the eBook form. This was a simply cut and paste job.

You can purchase the book from Lulu here and then import it into iTunes or your eReader. iBookstore and Nook store releases are pending, but coming soon.

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-December 2-

Friday in the First week of Advent

Hallowing the Whole

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“ ... seek Me that you may live ...”

Amos 5:4

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In the morning: Psalms 16, 17

Amos 5:1-17

Jude 1:1-16

Matthew 22:1-14

In the evening: Psalm 22

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The disclosure of God in the person of Christ, the person who shall give Himself willingly over to death, should arrest us with wonder. The wait of Advent brings with it the wait of the Second Coming, the knowing that the cosmic symphony shall, indeed, be brought to a close someday. Until then, we sometimes feel as wayfarer believers, wandering in a tossing sea of quiet discontent, never able to quite lay hold to the present word for fear of its perishing and yet, at the same time, unable to neglect the realities of need, health, and safety.

Should we forget that Jesus ate? That Jesus laughed? That Jesus wept? That Jesus, often, went off to be alone? God did not disclose Himself in the person of Christ for the sake of making us into spiritual beings idly sitting around waiting for the apocalypse and a jettison ride into Heaven. God, in the great and divine mystery, hallowed the whole of the human being, for Christ was never without communication with the Father. God hallowed eating, laughter, and tears. God made holy the need to care for ourselves, the gift of taking time to rest. It is an absurd perversion of the Gospel to suggest that the whole purpose of Christ’s coming was for salvation in the abstract, a ticket off to an ether somewhere above this cosmos where God sits on His throne and idly watches the events of the world like a daytime soap.

No. Christ our Lord hallowed this wounded thing we call body. Christ our Lord made it possible to eat in a fashion honoring to the Creator. This is the great mystery of the incarnation, that the ordinary moments have become holy moments, and that God may be sought in the most unlikely of times, and that these moments may be moments of Life.

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You can purchase This Fearsome Thing of Grace: Reflections for Advent, Year B, here.

Meet Preston

Preston is a twenty-something once-upon-a-time conservative Southern Baptist from Texas who learned to read saints, cross himself, and move across the world to China, England, and Scotland. Since, he's been theologically conservative, oft politically liberal, but radically pro-life, a believer in sacraments and sacramentality, a sort-of Christian feminist, an idealist pacifist who also understands the need for civil defense ... and a handful of everything else in-between. He thinks of himself now as a haphazard and patchwork Bapto-Anglican, though he is becoming confirmed in the Anglican tradition. This blog is his repository of working this whole faith thing out day by day, bird by bird. His first book, Tables in the Wilderness, a memoir of God found, lost, and found again, is due out autumn 2014 with Zondervan.