Smith, James K.A. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016. 210 pp. An Impulse to Pray Several years ago I had the opportunity to take a mission trip to rural Haiti. It was a challenging experience, not least because several of our team members began to experience what…

Marci Rae Johnson, Basic Disaster Supplies Kit: Poems (Steel Toe Books, 2015) In Basic Disaster Supplies Kit, her second collection, Marci Rae Johnson explores love, parenthood, and the Christian life in the context of life on-line, reveling in the Internet’s speed, distortion, and telescoping of time and space. Her poems absorb and transform distant galaxies,…

“I’ve given up fighting,” my friend said, “but I haven’t given up hope.” We sat together in his home, surrounded by medical equipment provided by hospice. My friend was glad to be out of the hospital. Each time he went to the ER or for a Hospital visit, his weary body was battered by the…