A Review of Jeanie and David Gushee’s “A Morning and Evening Prayerbook”
Yours is the Day, Lord, Yours is the Night
Ethicist David Gushee has swiftly become one of my favourite Christian writers. He may be an evangelical, but he swings to the left and has done things — such as openly support the gay community — that leaves me with a bit of a glow as a cheerleader and supporter (and it doesn’t hurt that he’s a pretty good writer, to boot). That’s one reason why I wanted to pick up his (sort of) latest release, co-written and edited with his wife, Jeanie. The other reason is that it is a prayerbook, and as I look to enrich my spiritual life with prayer, I wanted to get my hands on something that was a bit more comforting to me than other prayer guides that have fallen into my hands recently, such as this book.
Well, this book was almost exactly the thing I was looking for. A Morning and Evening Prayerbook — which hasn’t changed much from its original 2012 edition, which was then titled Yours is the Day, Lord, Yours is the Night — is a book that has two prayers for each day of the year: one to be prayed over in the morning, and the other to be prayed over in the evening. The devotional covers every century of Christian history, which makes it interesting as the original English or English translation hasn’t been doctored for current readers, yielding an old-timey feel to this hardcover book (which comes complete with a sturdy black ribbon and is printed as a deckle-edge tome). The book also culls from Protestant, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox sources, making for a fascinating and completely Christian prayerbook that doesn’t subscribe to one point of view when it comes to the faith. I normally don’t peek at other reviews online when reviewing a work, but I accidentally saw one that called out this aspect of the book, citing that it was dangerous (probably particularly for new Christians) and it didn’t adhere to one type of Christianity, and the right kind at that.
I feel, though, that because the book is from different sources, you get a different flavour of Christianity with each passing prayer — which is meant as a launching pad for freestyling your own prayer on top of it. If I can say one thing, it is that I kinda wish the Gushees went even further and included indigenous prayers and words from other faith traditions. (That said, I can understand that such a book might be hard to find a publisher for, as Christian publishers can be pretty rigid most times when it comes to the types of books they publish, and are mostly geared towards an American evangelical base, I find.) Still, given the fact that the authors probably had limitations, I found that this book — and I’ve been sitting with it for two weeks or so now — is pointedly fabulous. Why? It works!
The thing that really gets me about A Morning and Evening Prayerbook is that it is generally well timed for the season. As I write these words, we’re headed for the end of January 2019, but I’ve found the January morning prayers to have a thread to them this month: chasing away gloomy thoughts, being strong, and doing the best work for God that you can. What wonderful sentiments to lift oneself up at the start of the day! I’ve found with the mornings here in Ottawa, Canada, being particularly cold lately and the sky dark at 6:30 a.m. when I wake up on weekday mornings to head into work, that reading one of these prayers out loud does a lot to cause my spirits to rise. I’ve noticed already in two short weeks that my anxiety in the morning has diminished from reading these prayers, and then adding a few words of my own to them. For that, I want to give the Gushees the rights to my first-born child (if and when I have one). This book is amazing!
However, I do have a criticism with the book: it’s essentially a reprint of the 2012 edition. That means the book starts with Lent prayers in early February, probably to coincide with the fact that Lent started early in the year the book was originally published. Lent comes in early March this year, which leaves me wondering — am I supposed to jump over February and part of March in this prayerbook until Lent rolls around in 2019? I really wish that the publisher and authors had updated the book to be a little more 2019-centric. Better yet, as I’m assuming this is a book you don’t want to necessarily get rid of after a year has passed, it might have been good to just have two prayers dedicated to each of the “floating” religious holidays, and treated the rest of the days as though they were in Ordinary Time, and you could flip to, say, an Ash Wednesday prayer on Ash Wednesday or an Easter Sunday prayer at Easter without affecting the continuity of the rest of the book.
Still, despite that quibble, this is the best devotional-style book that I’ve ever read. Most devotionals are geared towards women, or so I’ve found (at least at the commercial level), so it was great to have a gender-neutral book that even I could pray over. Its success lies in its overall inclusiveness — so much so that I’m willing to overlook the use of the word “Lord” in the book, and similar master-slave terminology — and willingness to include prayers from all across time and traditions. The book has worked small miracles for me and has opened up my spirituality in ways that I never thought could be possible, so I’m glad to have had the chance to have experienced it (and I will continue to experience it as I use it from here on in). If you’re doubtful at all about whether or not this is the devotional for you, know that the 2012 edition of the book is available in preview mode via Google, so you can sample some pages of the book online. You’re just a Google search away from something that’s divine and works wonders, so I hope you at the very least take a look.
Jeanie and David Gushee’s A Morning and Evening Prayerbook was published by Thomas Nelson on December 4, 2018.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
