LENT WITH LUKE
By David Thomson
Authentic Media. £4.99
ISBN 1 85078 597 X
What does Lent mean to you? For the author of this book, David Thomson, Archdeacon of Carlisle, it is 'an opportunity to reach down more deeply into the Good News, and reach up more fully into the new life it brings'.
David Thomson provides a Bible reading for each day in Lent accompanied by a related comment. The Scripture reading, from the NIV, is printed in full, and the book is attractively laid out with symbols down the side of the page in the manner of many Bible notes.
In addition, many of the days also include a photo of a famous painting of a scene from the gospels, and Thomson weaves comments on these works of art into his meditation on the reading.
There is much that is helpful in what he writes, and his knowledge of painting is fascinating. I guess many people would have questions about using art as (in some sense) a means of devotion, let alone alongside Scripture as an aid to instruction. As Jim Packer, commenting on the second commandment, puts it in Knowing God: 'There is no room for doubting that the commandment obliges us to dissociate our worship, both in public and in private, from all pictures and statues of Christ'.
I think this is a very well-intentioned book about which I'd love to be positive, but so far as I can understand it, the use of pictures in this way is not what God wants.
