Books in the Connections series

Louisa Morgan is coming home. Back to Cornwall after forty years in London, a high-flying career, a daughter who to all intents and purposes appears to have no father, and a failed love affair. Like all good mums, Elise thinks she knows what's going on, but like all good daughters, Louisa has been somewhat economical with the truth.Shame and embarrassment are not words she would normally apply to herself, but times have changed, she's getting older, and it feels like she is returning home a failure. With long, empty days stretching ahead of her, can she find a new sense of place and belonging, or will life in a small town by the sea get the better of her?

This volume of the Connections Worship Companion series offers complete liturgies-from the call to worship to the closing charge, with prayers and litanies for every need in between-for all worshiping occasions between Advent and Pentecost of Year B. Part of the Connections commentary series, these worship resources help congregations illuminate the connections between Scripture and liturgical rhythms and between the Sundays of each liturgical season. A "Making Connections" essay precedes each season's resources, providing context for worship within the themes and purpose of the season, while liturgies for repeated use throughout each season enhance connections from Sunday to Sunday. Contributors to this volume include Claudia L. Aguilar Rubalcava, Mamie Broadhurst, Marci Auld Glass, Marcus A. Hong, Kimberly Bracken Long, Emily McGinley, Kendra L. Buckwalter Smith, Samuel Son, Slats Toole, and Byron A. Wade.

By exploring the relationship between the Bible and the Qu'ran, John Kaltner challenges Bible readers to think about their sacred book in different ways.

Worship, Virtue, and Authority

Provides a vision of living life in a sacred universe. This book reflects an interdisciplinary approach so as to build bridges of understanding between the Bible and contemporary disciplines.

How well are the psalms understood? The parables seem more accessible, but are they? And as familiar as we are with the texts of the psalms and the parables, how open are we to new perspectives on them?The studies in Like a Tree Planted, the first volume in the Connections series, encourage readers to deepen their understanding of the psalms and parables and to grow in their relationship with God. Like a Tree Planted invites reflection on eight pairs of psalms and parables by highlighting their shared metaphor. These images, familiar from our everyday lives as well as from both testaments, encourage fresh insights from familiar scriptural texts.The psalms presented here, all from the first book of the Psalter, and the parables, selected from Luke's Gospel, speak deeply and collaboratively through figures of the tree, our stature and status, searching faces, feelings of entitlement and responsiveness, the ecosystem, shepherding, the storehouse, and "the other side."An introductory chapter in Like a Tree Planted introduces readers to the process of reading metaphorically, and a concluding chapter draws implications from the reading of these particular psalm and parable texts as a set.