Deus Misereatur

  Now and Not Yet: Theology and Mission in Ezra-Nehemiah Dean R. Ulrich IVP Academic www.ivpress.com ISBN: 978-1-5140-0407-4; $28.00; 21 December 2021  The biblical books Ezra and Nehemiah are a strain for many readers. Filled, as they are, with genealogies, historical tales, building projects, outside pressures, and troubled communities. Most times these books get rustled up and put into motivational sermons for the latest Church Building Campaign or lessons on leadership. For example, many years ago while I was stationed at an air base in the upper Midwest, I was taking night classes and working on my bachelor’s at a local Christian university. One of my classes was on leadership, and our reading assignment was a volume that elevated Nehemiah as a paragon of exemplary leadership. Thankfully, Dean R. Ulrich, biblical studies professor at several institutions nationally and internationally, and accomplished author, has penned a scholarly 218-page softback on these two books i

  We thank you for your constant care for us personally and as a congregation, loving Father. We thank you for how you have been pleased to bring many people into this congregation’s life over the years; and we thank you for bringing us to a new year.   O God of Israel, we join with Jabez as we pray over this coming year. Bless us and make us a channel of blessing to others, especially your Abrahamic blessing that in Abraham’s offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And in that regard, do enlarge our sphere of influence giving us a bit more space in your world rescue operation. But, Lord, keep your hand on us, because (as Martin Luther prayed), “if ever I should be on my own, I would easily wreck it all.” Yes, may your hand ever be on us. And do, please, liberate us from the hostage situation of the futile ways inherited from our forebears, keeping us from evil that we may not cause pain (1 Chronicles 4:9-10). May it be said of us that we are a most honorable people.