Today I finished reading Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw's Jesus for President (if you want to buy it through Amazon, might I encourage you to use the Servant Partners amazon purchasing link on my blogroll). J4P was especially meaningful to me now because of some of the things I've been thinking about - rising nationalism and patriotism in a globalizing world, sustainability of consumerist culture, etc.

Let me just say that the book is a powerhouse. The book covers a lot of ground in relatively little text (it seems long but the font is huge and there are illustrations all over the place). Someone made the decision that the book should be wildly decorative, which I actually thought worked well with the content, because it's definitely not meant to be chewed over academically - rather the book itself is a challenge to transform/re-form/envision and act and live in faith, hope, and love. Shane and Chris write in a disarmingly simple and direct fashion, sharing with joy and patience a vision and stories of what the Christian faith could look like in modern times (in this case, we're talking America, militarism, and global capitalism). Many wonder why we, as a body, often look so much like the world around us. The authors challenge us to take up our crosses and follow a King who served with a towel and announced a Kingdom that was not of this world. The power of relentless imagination, transformed thinking, and the living experience of struggling to follow Jesus jump out from the pages.

As I mentioned, Shane and Chris go into a lot of different things - providing snapshots of what transformed life can be. They cover topics ranging from incarnational community to reimagined economics, and amazingly they had a lot meaningful things to say. Contents range from arrest experiences of various Christian peacemakers (like a seventy-something year old nun), to excerpts from early-church writers. I'd say the book is a quick read (really a page-turner, like Irresistible Revolution) but it's also loaded with life-changing possibility. Certainly I'd say it's not easy to read J4P and remain complacent. Perhaps one of the most important ways the book spoke to me was as a reminder that while following Jesus might call for sacrifice, we know that we don't sacrifice for asceticism's sake, but because we seek another Kingdom (and quite a beautiful one at that). There is grace and joy in the journey =).

Anyhow, I plan to lend this book out soon. I hope it can find its way around and touch/move/challenge people.

In perhaps an utterly unrelated note, I really want to go to Yosemite for some reason. It's beautiful there. Perhaps one Springtime sometime in the future...