Morning Meditations – For each Lord’s Day of the Year

‘And they shall not appear before the Lord empty’, Deut. 16. 16. Here we are offered fifty-three meditations with the express wish that, when they break bread, the Lord’s people come with ‘full hands’.

It is a privilege when any saint is prepared to open his heart and lay before us his meditations on his Lord. We are invited to approach this work not to judge but to come with due reverence and deep humility. In the words of R. C. Allison’s Foreword, ‘To some these meditations may not appear to be deep, but it is good and wise to remember that cream is not found in the depth of the cup, but on the surface’. Alex Ross offers thoughts which the youngest saint can grasp, yet the oldest saint cannot exhaust. He makes it clear that each offering will be of value only if the reader is prepared to follow the leads given. The Psalms, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels, the Epistles, the writings of the apostle John, together with some foreshadowings of Christ in the Old Testament scriptures are brought to the reader’s attention. The author’s own poetry is included, enabling us to enjoy his insights and to savour his enjoyment of his Lord. The value of this work is that it reminds us all of our responsibility to prepare ourselves when we gather to meet the Lord: not only to examine ourselves, but to come with ‘full hands’ – and all this whether we take part audibly or not. This is a book to be savoured.

[Our thanks to Ed Hotchin, Hucknall, Nottingham, for this review]