Book Recommendation: 'A Strange and Gracious Light: How the Story of Jesus Changes the Way we See Everything' by Andrew Arndt

Top Quotes from a Wonderful and Well-Written Book

Andrew Arndt wants to know, firsthand, what Robert Jenson meant when he defined the Gospel as “the story of Jesus told as a promise.” Arndt is serious about leaning into that story. It’s why he wrote this book. He wants to answer this inquiry: “How do we trust (this story) with our whole lives, learning to walk by its light, strange though it may be - strange, and yet gracious; for this light will heal and renew if we’ll let it, transforming our lives, transforming the way we see everything” (p. 25). The book is organized around the church calendar, with each chapter focusing on a particular season, from Advent to Pentecost. I found it an insightful, helpful, and devotionally pleasing. I think you will too.

Here are several of my favorite quotes from a new favorite read:

“When I arrive (at our church), the action begins. . . I head to the front door to greet congregants as they arrive: young and old, single and married, prodigals and I-wouldn’t-miss-a-Sunday-for-the-world types, wealthy, middle class, poor; white, Black, brown; immigrant and never-left-the-state’ers. They stream in. The existence of any congregation anywhere to me is a miracle - a sovereign work of God . . The bare fact of our coming together is already and always a sign to me that God reigns.” (p. 15)

“I find that our sense of ‘gospel’ is not too much but too little; that it has become narrow, limited, constricting, small. It leaves far too much out. For we have been taught to think of the gospel as mere instructions on how to get to heaven, to be presented to our unbelieving neighbors or to the listening congregation at the end of a sermon with an invitation to repent and believe. . . (I am) convinced that it is something very much more - and that something more is intensely powerful.” (p. 24)

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” (p. 43)

“We receive one another as Jesus Christ Himself, knowing that because of the incarnation, whenever we deal with people, we deal with God.” (p. 63)

“Relationship is a deep mystery. Maybe the deepest. You can spend a lifetime searching out its subtleties and feel you know less at the end of your quest than you did at the start. But one thing about relationship is certain, and it is this: Direct power is perfectly useless on it.” (p. 92)

“No one is ever bullied into genuine relationship.” (p. 95)

“Weakness, friend, is part of the deal. It’s a feature of the system. The miracle, whole and entire, lies on God’s side, not ours. It always does.” (p. 98)

“The gospel tells us that in Christ Jesus, ‘safe’ is precisely what we are. That he, the human God, made us and loves us and is our companion in life and death. That he means us no harm. And that he will never do us harm. And that he will hold us in every wonderful and horrible thing life will throw at us until he leads us finally - safely - into the kingdom of his Father, who is our Father, where sin and death will be no more.” (p. 116)

“Ascension, therefore, is not about Jesus going away from us, exacerbating the separations created by sin; rather, ascension is about Christ drawing ever-nearer to us, and us ever-nearer to Christ - it is about the transfiguration of our humanity by way of participation in God, a transfiguration that influences every area of our lives, most especially our relationships with other.” (people. 145)

“Our life together, congregational life, set under the prevenient care of the Life-Giving Spirit, is a place of signs and wonders. A place where, among other things, the lonely are set in families, and kids from chaotic homes suddenly become priests of the Lord and ministers of our God.” (p. 171)

**Photo found via Google Images at Amazon.