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Resources
Think, Read, Pray
On this page you'll find lectures, recommended readings On The Bookshelf, riches for Lent, Easter, Advent and Christmas, and other resources.
How can we better serve you? Please email us and let us know what additional resources you'd like to see here.

Surviving College: Online Advice for Students
Pick up some wisdom from our teams of experts. They'll give you great ideas for navigating college, growing in faith and facing thechallenges of university life .
Take me there!
In the News
"Is God silenced on College Campuses?" Read the USA Today article.
You are invited into our Prayer Circle
Each month we send out a one page Prayer Circle letter with
- Thanks for God’s blessings in the month that’s passed
- Specific prayer requests for Theological Horizons’ ministry
- Petitions offered by anyone in the Prayer Circle & beyond
- Brief devotionals, prayers and resources for your spiritual flourishing
We treasure your prayers & would be blessed by your part in this ministry! If you would like to be included, please contact us by email, letter or telephone.
Lectures by Charles Marsh
On Our Bookshelf
For these and other titles, we invite you to visit our friends at Splintered Light Bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia or online.

Welcoming Justice: God's Movement Toward Beloved Community
a new book from
Charles Marsh and John Perkins
Intervarsity Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8308-3454-2
Available through Splintered Light Bookstore or your favorite online bookseller
Historian and theologian Charles Marsh partners with veteran activist John Perkins to chronicle God's vision for more equitable and just world. They show how the civil rights movement was one important episode in God's larger movement throughout human history of pursuing justice and beloved community. Perkins reflects on his long ministry and identifies key themes and lessons he has learned, and Marsh highlights the legacy of Perkins's work in American society. Together they show how abandoned places are being restored, divisions are being reconciled, and what individuals and communities are now doing to welcome peace and justice.
"Together, Perkins and Marsh are attempting to restore the vision, both conceptually and practically, showing how theology can indeed be lived out in a multicultural society despite its deeply stained past. I know of no better time to attempt such a project, and no team better equipped to accomplish it." —from the foreword by Philip Yancey
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence (Whitaker House, 1982) ISBN:
0883681056
New! Recommended by Clair Wolterstorff is a small, compassionate work seeking to invite all of us into the depth of God's presence.
"[It] is a book which is most helpful for those who feel themselves to be too ignorant, too reticent, too ordinary -- no spiritual giant -- to undertake a way of prayer, but who nevertheless are deeply hungry for the abiding presence of God in their lives."
For more of her comments on the classic, The Practice of The Presence of God, read here.
The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justic, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today by Charles Marsh NOW IN PAPERBACK!
(Basic Books, 2005) ISBN: 0-465-04415-8

Philip Yancey praises The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, the new book by Horizons director Charles Marsh: "Half a century ago an underground army rallied around a vision in order to change the moral landscape of America. Part historian, part raconteur, and part preacher, Charles Marsh calls us to keep alive that vision and to fulfill its promise. I found myself both moved to nostalgia and stirred to action as I read his gripping account.”
Read More...
The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs
(HarperSanFrancisco, 2005)
ISBN: 0060766905
Disney’s big new film came last year: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, based on the book from C.S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia, a series which has sold more than 100 million copies and is one of the most enduring classics of children’s literature.
To accompany Disney’s movie release, HarperCollins publishers commissioned Dr. Alan Jacobs to write a brand new Lewis biography entitled The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, a book which has just come out to great reviews.
We are privileged know Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian professor of English at Wheaton College. Theological Horizons supported Alan with a writing grant over six years ago—and we are gratified to see this seed of encouragement play a part in a fruitful writing career. We congratulate Alan on the publication of this exciting new book!
Now The Narnian was nominated for the prestigious Quill Award in Religion, along with the Dalai Lama, Bart Ehrman, T.D. Jakes and Karen Armstrong.
“Alan Jacobs is an ideal biographer for Lewis…Even nonbelievers may find themselves drawn to this deft portrait of a man whose ineffable longing for grace speaks to the experience of us all.” The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2005
The Last Days: A Son’s Story of Sin and Segregation at the Dawn of the New South by Charles Marsh (Basic Books, 2002) ISBN: 0465044190
Seeking to come to terms with the haunting memories of his childhood in the
deep South—Charles Marsh has crafted a memoir of small-town Southern
life caught up in the whirlwind of the Civil Rights movement. The Last
Days examines the collision of worlds once divided—where Protestant
conservatism, the African American struggle for civil rights, and late 1960s
counter culture—that propelled the dramatic changes in everyday life
in a small Southern town.
“More than a spellbinding account of this horrendous moment in Southern
history, The Last Days is a stunning portrait of family love.” –Dennis
Covington
“A reverent look at the enduring quality of faith in the midst of challenging
times.”—Christianity Today
To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City by Mark Gornik
forward by Miroslav Volf, preface by LaVerne S. Stokes
(Eerdmans, 2002) ISBN: 0802846858
How are Christians to understand and respond to our distressed inner-city
communities? Building on both the perspective of God's new creation and the
view from the neighborhood, Mark R. Gornik's To Live in Peace shows how the
life of the church, the strategies of community development, and the practices
of peacemaking can make a transformational difference.
Help My Unbelief by Fleming Rutledge (Eerdmans, 2000) ISBN: 0802838952

With this volume of sermons, Fleming Rutledge speaks directly to readers who are With this plagued by doubts and uncertainties about Christian faith. Among the challenging questions she addresses are: Doesn’t everyone have their own idea of God? What if I’m not very religious? Can we still believe in the Resurrection today?
With pastoral warmth and intellectual fearlessness, Rev. Rutledge aligns herself with the struggling questioner as she faces the most penetrating theological challenges of our day. At the same time, she entrusts herself to the explosive force of God’s Word.
“These sermons are life preservers thrown to a culture drowning in uncertainty.”
—Tom Long
Resources throughout the Year
Advent
For each Sunday through Advent and into the Christmas season, we invite you to join us for readings from the rich Christian tradition.
Send us an email and we'll send you a devotional email each week, full of images and resources for worship.
If you know of an online Advent treasure to share, let us know and we'll add it to this list.
Together we wait in hope, anticipating Christ's coming into the world!
Read
An Advent Retreat for groups or individuals
Following the Star: a daily advent devotional
Daily Scripture Readings for Advent
Daily Scripture Readings from the Book of Common Prayer
Daily Scripture Readings from Trinity Presbyterian Church Charlottesville
Our Suggested Advent Books
Listen
Handel's Messiah Celtic Christmas Music
Choirs and Carols
An Online Advent Calendar: music, Scripture, video messages
Pray
Prayers for the First Week of Advent (Nov. 29-Dec. 5, 2009)
Prayer for the Second Week of Advent (Dec. 6-12, 2009)
Prayer for the Third Week of Advent (December 13-19, 2009)
Prayer for the Fourth Week of Advent (December 20-24, 2009)
Hope for the new year
"Children, it is the last hour!" I John 2:18
"John's words, written centuries ago, have an apocalyptic tone. But his deeper message is meant for childlike hearts. He offers, not words of panic, but words of peace and reassurance. We who know Christ, who receive him, who believe in his name, receive power to become children of God. 'And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.'
"By living the Christin life on the deepest possible level, we remain secure in God no matter how fearful the times. How do we do this? Not by denying the uncomfortable facts of our environment and our troubled societies, but by letting the Incarnate Christ transform us. The God life within us will strengthen us in times of war and peace. And with transformed hearts we will do what we can for our anxious neighbors and our societies."
--Emilie Griffin in God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas
"When the time was fulfilled for the baby to be born, she gave birth to her firstborn, a son." Luke 2:6
"'When the time was fulfilled...' What a redeeming power there is in these words! We are concerned day and day out with lesser or greater matters that are to serve God and his cause. We work sometimes until we are weary and yet we see so little fruit. Does everything remain as it was? Haven't we gone forward at all? Have we really been able to help a little somewhere, or have we merely affected the surface of things? Where is there a trace or glimpse of the goal we long for? What are all our efforts against the apparently indestructible powers of misery and evil?
"It is well for us that at such hours the light is shining from the stable of Bethlehem and that we are able to sense what it means that the kingdom of God was born a little child when the time was fulfilled.
Christmas did not come after a great mass of people had completed something good, or because of the successful result of any human effort. No, it came as a miracle, as the child that comes when his time is fulfilled, as a gift of the Father which he lays into those arms which are stretched out with longing. In this way did Christmas come; in this way it always comes anew, both to individuals and to the whole world."
--Eberhard Arnold in When The Time Was Fulfilled
RICHES for LENT and EASTER

To receive our weekly email newsletter through Lent and Easter, simply drop us a line .
EXPLORE
New Spiritual Practices for Lent
The gift of listening
WEBSITES
Journey to the Center: A Lenten Passage by Father Thomas Keating
daily Scripture, devotionals & prayer.
ExploreFaith.org Accessible tools for lent from a broad Christian perspective
Bible Readings For Lent from the Book of Common Prayer Join believers throughout the world through shared Scripture readings throughout Lent
BOOKS
Show Me The Way: Readings For Each Day of Lent by Henri J.M. Nouwen
Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (various authors)
A Clearing Season: Reflections for Lent by Sarah Parsons
YOUR LENTEN JOURNALS
"The old German word for springtime is 'Lenz' which is also connected with our word Lent. Here in Germany, however, it is generally said that 'Lent' (which they sometimes use here, although the German term is 'Fastenzeit') comes from the Latin word 'lentus' which means slow, calm, quiet, reposeful, deliberate--all words that refer to the attitude we are to have during the 40 days of fasting."
--Mary in Berlin, Germany
"Ash Wednesday. Lent's forty day beginning. Reflecting and repenting as we think of all that Christ came to break and came to offer...then, three days after the cross, we will be those for whom great remembering rejoicing will come. Reflecting. Repenting. Rejoicing. Fasting. Feasting. Easter's coming.
Like the ebb and flow of the tidal marsh creek nearby, the seasons of the church year add a rhythm to our worship. Beginnings. Endings. Changes. Constancy. Fasting. Feasting. Heart journeys for celebrating, confessing, over and over again. Easter's coming."
--Lane in St. Simons, Georgia, USA
"Our Lenten Roses are showing up through our snows, and the morning air sifting thru our open bedroom windows smell of new life."
--Dan in Denver, Colorado, USA
Let us add your own reflections & resources! Email us and we'll post them.


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