There are so many devotional books that you can pick off a bookstore shelf. They tend to highlight a specific passage of Scripture and then give you some questions or a page of reflection on the text. But many of them are heavy and require a lot of thought and a lot of time. For those of us who have busy jobs or a loud house full of playing kids, it can be difficult to find time or energy to tackle those kinds of devotions. Laura Davis Werezak proposes an alternative: what if we could connect with God by doing something as simple as opening a window or sending a note to a friend? In Attend, she takes us through forty "soul stretches" to help the busy and the distracted find unexpected ways to encounter God.

Werezak frames her book around Isaiah 30:15 and the concepts of returning. rest, quietness, and trust. She talks about a time in her twenties when she found it hard to connect with God. She prayed, she read the Bible, and she went to church, but she felt like nothing was working. So she focused on the idea of attending, or stretching towards God, and noticing the little things about life and the relationship with the one who created it all.

Attend provides the reader with ideas that are seemingly simple, but there are great rewards from doing each one. Each devotion is a few short pages and it would be a perfect pick for the season of Lent, since it has 40 entries. Werezak writes with gentleness, recognizing that you may be tired and burnt out, and that life can just be downright difficult. She includes stories from her own life and reflections from scientists and theologians to encourage you to keep going, to keep reading, and to keep stretching towards God.

Attend
Forty Soul Stretches Towards God
By Laura Davis Werezak
Faithwords February 2017
223 pages
Read via Netgalley

Thoughts:

ATTEND: Forty Soul Stretches Toward God by Laura Davis Werezak drops you into a very different set-up and meaning of this one word. Really? Seriously? Yep!

This Inspirational read takes you from a dictionary explanation into the Biblical sense of the word in a simple, fast, and direct way. While you are there, you will begin to see things differently, approach things in a deliberate way, and come closer to faith in devotion. As this author is aware, today's world will move you without you even realizing it.

Have you noticed?

One sound will have anyone look at their "smartphone" in the middle of a face-to-face conversation while another alert will have someone walking with their head down and eyes focusing on something other than their surroundings. From worry to a never-ending to-do list, we interact with our world much different today from ever before. However, being in a hyper-state of contact is costing us a great deal. We are filling the emptiness with noise and the search for peace with activity.

You stop to wonder about why, and you will come up short on answers.

Meanwhile, we are moving away from what our soul longs for and needs. We are sidetracking and very much snarling ourselves in duties, responsibilities, friendships, follows, and the instant gratification ways of today that we don't recognize God in our daily lives.

God is there, wanting you to move closer.

You can discover where you are on the road of faith and come closer than you could imagine by a mindset based upon on the Bible. As the author shows through her own experience, sometimes even by doing the "right" things you will not get to where you need to be. However, by small adjustments in your mindset, stance, and expectations, you will move and stretch toward God and understand the true meaning of your soul need.

Take deliberate steps to accept a peace that is all around us by simply learning the real meanings of Attend, and you'll find God there for you!

***This opinion is my own.***

Preview:

Laura Davis Werezak's ATTEND: Forty Soul Stretches Toward God provides forty everyday and practical ways to encounter God in today's never stop engaging world. These simple reminders of life outside of today's tech-filled ways bring a newness to leaning toward God and bring daily rituals into focus. When the road you are traveling moves your presence away from God, it's an easy path back to feel God's Presence every day.

Simple exercises and steps will stretch you from underneath the heap of distractions to make something as simple as opening a window a way toward GOD!