The LSB family of resources continues to grow with the announcement by Concordia Publishing House of a Treasury of Daily Prayer, which is due out in October. When Paul McCain sent me an advance pdf file of the Treasury, I was expecting a table of contents plus a few sample pages. What I got was the whole thing, less the service orders - 1519 pages!
What a treasury it is! Each day has a psalm, an Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospel reading, and an excerpt from the Confessions or a writing from the saints of the past, both ancient and modern, a hymn verse, a prayer for the day, and suggested readings from the Book of Concord. Additional prayers are also available. A quick glance through the acknowledgment pages reveals many wonderful gems waiting to be discovered, including some new translations of sermons and writings of saints past.
Oddly, the devotions begin with Ash Wednesday rather than the expected “beginning” of the Church Year in Advent. Paul sent me an official explanation, which I didn’t understand, except to say that the older tradition was to view the church year as growing out of Lent and Easter rather than Advent and Christmas. That’s fine - treasures tend to be old as well as valuable, and Lent is a good time to renew one’s devotional life if it has been lagging.
The Treasury of Daily Prayer promises to be both instructive and devotional, encouraging a richer daily life of prayer. It is by no means a “clergy” book, but will be accessible to all, including youth as a devotional book they can grow into. It will make a great Christmas gift. Scot Kinnaman, along with his assisting editors Henry V. Gerike, Arthur A. Just Jr., Nathan W Higgins, Todd A Peperkorn, and David H. Petersen are to be congratulated for bringing together such a fine resource that will have a place both in a pastor’s study and at the home altar.
Given the size of the pdf file I received, I’m wondering how big the book is actually going to be. But then, treasure chests full of riches are never small or light.
Posted On: September 02nd, 2008 at 10:41pm by ScotK[ + ]
Thanks for the great review, Pr.Cwirla. Having "lived" with the day/date arrangement of the Daily Lectionary since LSB came out in 2006, I think you and our readers will come to know and love it.
As for dimensions, it is 6" x 9" x 1.629". I hope that helps.
Posted On: September 03rd, 2008 at 7:07am by Leistico
Ash Wednesday makes sense to me as the start date because of the "floating" nature of its beginning on the secular calendar. You can take a look and see that's where CPH chose to start for the daily lectionary in LSB (the lectionary the Treasury follow) as well. So you get to the end of Epiphany, and you don't have to flip through a bunch of pages, you just start over in the book.
Advent has a "floating" start date too, but it can only start on one of 7 days.
btw, McCain also posted a sample for all us unimportant peons to review of 111 pages, which has index, forward, etc, and the pages for the month of November. http://cyberbrethren.typepad.com/cyberbrethren/2008/08/treasury-of-daily-prayer-samples-and-excerpts.html
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