Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Every Day Will I Bless Thee: Meditations For the Daily Office by Burnell F. Eckardt Jr.

I used the Treasury of Daily Prayer for a couple of years and really enjoyed it but was looking for something different. For the past few months I've been using Every Day Will I Bless Thee by Burnell F. Eckardt Jr. Use copies are selling for over $100 on Amazon but you can still purchase it new from the Concordia Catechetical Academy for $16 plus shipping and handling.The book is arranged according to the liturgical calendar. It follows the historic one year lectionary for Sundays and Feast Days and uses the suggested New Testament readings from The Lutheran Hymnal for the other days. There is also a Psalm for each week. The New Testament reading is printed in full on the page from the NKJV along with a short meditation. Unfortunately the Psalm of the week is not printed in the book.

The meditations are absolutely wonderful. Their short but profound. They interpret the passage in the same sort of way that the church fathers interpreted the Scriptures. These meditations provide an excellent example of how the Scriptures should be interpreted. They're all centered upon Christ and accurately apply Law and Gospel. Every Day Will I Bless Thee could easily be used with the Treasury of Daily Prayer if you desired more liturgy. With my growing family, I prefer the shorter devotional meditations in Every Day Will I Bless Thee to the ones found in Treasury of Daily Prayers. Treasury of Daily Prayer has some great selections for the meditations but they don't always explain the passage and are often too complicated for my children to understand. Every Day Will I Bless Thee reinforces what the children are already hearing at church. Every Day Will I Bless Thee reflects the spirit of the one year lectionary by really driving home a smaller number of shorter texts.

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