My Favorite Devotional . . .

The fever is spreading among my friends.  We talk about Oswald Chambers like he's in the room with us, when in fact he's been dead a very long time.  We trade notes and stand gaping with her eyes wide and amazed at how personal this little devotional is for each of us. In email exchanges, he's nicknamed OC.

His wife actually put this little book together in the 1930 several years after he passed on. It's from a series of sermons he gave at a college for ministers-to-be.  All that detail is in the intro.

I read somewhere that next to the Bible, My Utmost for His Highest is the best selling book in the Christian market. Why?  What makes it so special?  What makes a devotional more than a flash in the pan, or merely The Next Big Thing?  I'd say it's authenticity. This little book reaches out to the human soul right where it is--short-fallen, suffering, confused and just plain human.  There's no happy-doodle Christianity here. No emotionalism. No feel-good cheerleading. It's about picking up the cross and following Christ, being broken bread and out-poured wine, dying to our own desires and doing what is hard for our bodies but life-giving to our hearts. .

I sometimes joke that it's the "Dear Vicki Book."  It's been that relevant to the ups and downs of the past few years. I'm off to read today's devotional . . . You can too if you'd like . . .http://utmost.org/