This, as you might expect from Walter Brueggemann, is both a cultural critique and a call to meaningful discipleship. Brueggemann battles our culture's obsessive self-indulgence, bringing its reality and consequences directly to the reader before calling us out of them through meaningful and embodied practices of faith. I highly recommend this. Lent is almost here - lead your church or small group through this devotional!

You can never go wrong with Brueggemann. A recognized authority on all things Old Testament, Brueggemann is an academic who is somehow able to write for a much wider audience than most academics.
This book is fantastic. Where Lent can be a time of introspection, Brueggemann does not allow it to stay in your own mind, in your own heart. This book is far more than a set of challenges to be internalized. This is a challenge to the formation found in the season of Lent, both in accepting the way of the cross and the building of a community of Christ. It is challenging, Brueggemann is never full of fluff; but there is solidarity with Christ and with the Church.
This is also a fantastic first book for people who may have heard of Brueggemann's reputation as a scholar. Bite-size but deeply enriching, this is a volume sure to make it off your shelf for seasons other than Lent.

I'm not sure why I felt this was "merely" good. Perhaps because Brueggermann seemed to be working out his idea of what it is to be an other and to help others. Believe me, I know that helping others is a biblical mandate. But when I'm reading a devotional specifically for Lent, I think it should turn me more to the suffering of Jesus, and prepare me for Easter. (And yes, it could be argued that that's just what he was doing.) But the topics seemed generally more appropriate for a "regular" devotional book than one for Lent. Still, it was good and thoughtful, and any effort to turn people's hearts toward those not like us isn't wasted.

Lent is a question, a gift, and a summons. The questions of Lent are: What are we doing? Are we working for that which does not satisfy? Are we spending for that which is not bread?

A journey of Lent for 40 days a devotional to bring to mind the questions of Lent. Each chapter starts with a verse, commentary and ends with prayer to be in God's presence. This all sounds very good to the follower of Christ and one that desires to look at Lent a fresh new way. I however, did not experience that and to be honest, I am not sure why. Maybe this is for you and if you are like me, maybe it's not. It just did not live up to the questions that it asked. The key word of the above questions is we...I am more encouraged when it reads what God did.

A Special Thank You to Westminster John Knox Press and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.