Fernando, the national director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka, is  a speaker and author of 11 books.

This book’s 30 meditations/chapters are perfect for anyone wishing to use the book as a devotional guide for a month.

Each meditation contains thought-provoking stories and challenging applications of Scriptural wisdom.

One of Fernando’s critiques is how the modern Church has embraced marketing strategies that encourage numerical growth, so people “will come to church as consumers of the services that the church offers rather than as servants of the church.” This model, so common today, doesn’t strengthen ties to the church, as people too often look for a church based upon the best programs or services it offers.

“The idea of a leader caring for, teaching and nurturing a few people is going of out fashion,” Fernando writes. And in the end, “this model does little to foster commitment.”

Fernando addresses several issues with depth and wisdom: Christians being hurt by leaders, investing in others’ lives, and the glory that awaits us. These and others make the book compelling and stimulating for a Christian at any stage in his or her spiritual life. His admonitions are persuasively presented and based upon God’s Word.


‘Window Poems’ by Wendell Berry, Shoemaker & Hoard
Essayist, novelist and agrarian Wendell Berry invites us to slow down with him and observe the world at a more deliberate pace in “Window Poems,” a series of meditations (or one long poem) on life as he observed it through the window of his cabin outside his Kentucky home.

Anyone familiar with Berry knows his life’s work (in his essays, nonfiction works, poetry and novels) is centered on observing the importance of the simple, the close to home, the beauty of creation.

So in this elegantly-engraved book, Berry “observes” nature: “The foliage has dropped below the window’s grave edge, baring the sky, the distant hills, the branches, the year’s greenness gone down from the high light where it so fairly defied falling.”

Berry slowly moves from mere observations to their places within his philosophical understandings: “The window becomes a part of his mind’s history, the entrance of days into it. And awake now, watching the water flow beyond the glass, his mind is watched by a spectre of itself that is a window on the past.”

Most of Berry’s books, like “Window Poems” subtly present the idea of a Creator and the beauty of a creation that, even though it’s flawed, is worthy of our contemplation and admiration.

Book reviews by Scott Noble of Noble Creative, a writing and editing business based in the Twin Cities (www.noblecreative.com).