The Galli Report: Books
A double gift: a fine writer and a free book!
For the first edition of this supplementary Galli Report, I come bearing gifts. I bring the gift of a fine writer you may not be aware of: John Koessler, as well as a PDF book he has just published, Christmas Traveler: Essays and Poems for the Season. He’s the one who is offering the gift: It’s free to download!
Koessler, now faculty emeritus at Moody Bible Institute, is an accomplished author. He has written a number of books, including and most recently, Dangerous Virtues: How to follow Jesus When Evil Masquerades as Good (Moody). I know him as I was editor of a few pieces he has published in Christianity Today.
This devotional booklet is typically wonderful Koessler: simple prose that alerts one to remarkable commonplaces, an expert weaving of the gospel into our mundane and sometimes troubled lives, and most important, insights framed by divine mercy. This latter point is crucial in devotional writing, which too often falls into cheap moralistic finger wagging: “Mary humbly accepted God’s will. So should you….” Uh, I get it already.
This, as you can see, is no critical review. As an editor, of course, I see room for improvement here and there. But unless the book is subverting Christian faith (promising spiritual success, for example, as in the prosperity gospel), a critical review of a devotional book strikes me as an exercise in missing the point. His writing will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for whatever reason, it is mine; he always gives me pause for thought, wonder, and gratitude, which is what the genre is supposed to do.
John plays with the theme of traveling in this booklet, and rather than describing his writing, I’ll simply offer two examples. The first is an edited excerpt from the essay, “Christmas Traveler”:
For many, Christmas is a time for traveling. The same was true of the first Christmas. The Gospel narratives of Christ’s birth are crowded with travelers. Zechariah, the priest, travels to Jerusalem to burn incense before the Lord and is struck with dumb surprise when the angel announces that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a son in their old age. Mary travels too, heading for the hills to visit her relative, Elizabeth.
Then to Bethlehem with Joseph to give birth to the miracle child conceived by the Holy Spirit. Shepherds hurry into the night, leaving their flock behind to find the babe wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Magi travel from the east by caravan to lay their gifts before the newborn king of the Jews, while Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt to escape King Herod’s wrath. Everybody in the Christmas story, it seems, is on the road.
Yet of all the travelers in the Christmas narrative, none comes as far as Jesus. His is a journey that is measured not in miles but position. “Out of the ivory palaces, into a world of woe,” an old hymn says. The opening of John’s Gospel clarifies that the change was even more profound than the hymn-writer imagines. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” John declares (John 1:14).
The word that the theologians use to describe this miracle is incarnation…. If the theologians express the literal sense of John’s theology with this term, the 17th-century poet Richard Crashaw captures John’s lyrical warmth when he writes these words:
Welcome, all Wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer to winter, day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.The poet’s phrase “eternity shut in a span” measures the distance between heaven’s throne and Bethlehem’s manger.
The second example is his poem, “Bethlehem Night,” in which he imagines the experience of the shepherds. Here are the first two stanzas:
What makes this night
different from all others?
Our faces were lit before the fire,
as we repeated the old stories
and counted the constellations.Or we sat
in the habit of silence
like someone long married.
Until the angel appeared
with its stab of glory.
Enjoy the Christmas gifts!