THE LATEST NEWS

Meet the book cover artist for He Restores My Soul

by | May 17, 2018 |

Last month we announced a new collaborative project with Katie Schuermann, a book entitled He Restores My Soul. Envisioned as a sequel of sorts to He Remembers the Barren, this new book taps into the wisdom of twelve female writers to broaden the discussion of suffering in the Church and apply the theology of the cross to a wider range of topics. (We’ll be posting a complete list of authors and topics very soon.)

Now it is our pleasure to announce the artist from whom we have commissioned a painting for the book cover of He Restores My Soul. Rebecca Shewmaker is an artist working in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Visual Arts from Rice University (2006) and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Intermedia from Texas Women’s University (2018), where she also taught Art Appreciation, Watercolor, and Basic Drawing classes. Recently her work was included in the Good Shepherd Institute’s Sola Faith-Grace-Scripture exhibition at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Selections from her body of work have been shown in several galleries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where she lives with her husband, Tim, who is the music director at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Dallas. When not making art, Rebecca enjoys singing in the church choir, knitting, listening to audiobooks, and entertaining her two cats.

A word from Rebecca: “In my work, I study the beauty I find in the Northeast Texas landscape. My maternal family has lived near Bonham, Texas, for several generations and I grew up playing in 300 acres of pasture and woods. The seasonal colors and topography of the land serve as my inspiration. I often spend Saturday mornings exploring this rural area and photographing the landscape. Based on the photographs and my childhood memories, I create landscape-based artwork.”

We are honored to be working with Rebecca Shewmaker, and we look forward to revealing the cover art this summer! In the meantime, please visit her website to admire her beautiful paintings, including unique thread paintings that use custom-dyed cotton fabric for the peaceful colors of both sky and land.

Shipping Hiatus: May 21-28

by | May 14, 2018 |

All orders placed by the end of Friday, May 19, will be mailed out this week. There will be a hiatus in shipping the following week, and then we resume our regular schedule on May 29. Thank you for understanding!

 

 

It’s Book Release Day!

by | May 8, 2018 |

In The Great Works of God, Parts Five and Six: The Mysteries of Christ in the Book of Exodus, Valerius Herberger shows that Jesus Christ is the center of every part of Scripture. The excerpt below is Meditation 47 (Part 5) in its entirety.
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XLVII. JESUS, The Mediator, Places Himself Between Pharaoh and the Israelites (Exod. 14:19–20).

Moses said, “The Angel of God which went before the camp of Israel stood with the pillar of cloud between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of the Israelites.” Above He was called “the LORD” (Exod. 13:21). Moses says the same thing again here in Exodus 14:24. Now then, if it is Jehovah (“the LORD”), it cannot be a created angel. But if it is the Angel of God, then it can be neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit, and must be “the Angel of the covenant” (Mal. 3:1), our Lord Jesus, as also the ancient Doctors of the Church and our own professors have proven from St. Paul.

O Lord Jesus, how comforting this is! When Moses sighed and the Israelites wept, You clearly demonstrated that You were alive, as Job 19:25 says, that You heard it, and that it stirred Your heart. And since the Israelites could not make very quick progress, You camped in their midst all night so that Pharaoh would be unable to gain power over them before they had traveled a good way into the Red Sea and escaped his wrath. You are the Angel which encamps round about the God-fearing (Ps. 34:7), like Elisha (2 Kings 6:17). You are a wall of fire round about Your people (Zech. 2:5). You are “the Angel which redeemed Jacob from all evil” (Gen. 48:16). Oh, how beautifully Your comforting office of Mediator is depicted to me here! O Lord Jesus, dear Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5), when the fierce wrath of Your Father burned against me, You stood between us so that the fiery wrath of Your Father would not consume me.

When the world, the devil, and death, yea, every foe of my salvation blew one horn and pursued me in order to capture me, You went behind me and stood between my foes and my misery, that I might be kept on the true road of faith to eternal life. (p. 234)

Excerpts from The Great Works of God: Exodus

by | May 1, 2018 |

The book of Exodus is a fascinating historical account of how God establishes His people as a nation. Valerius Herberger also shows how it can also be read devotionally, with Jesus at the center of all of Scripture. In The Great Works of God: The Mysteries of Christ in the Book of Exodus, this 17th-century Lutheran pastor teaches the faith with a certain timelessness, using a sacramental lens to reveal Christ in the Old Testament. Herberger draws the reader deeper into the text, providing an abundance of wisdom, comfort, and insight for the Church of today.

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“We know that there is no great undertaking in the Old Testament in which our Lord Jesus is not involved. Therefore He was also at work here, protecting His servant Moses on the water just as He preserved His disciples (Matt. 14:26). Yea, every notable history in the Old Testament earnestly anticipates the great history of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.  Thus, our blessed forefathers also compared this wondrous history of Moses with the account of Jesus Christ’s childhood, explaining one by way of the other.

“Moses, the ‘drawer and bringer out’ of the Israelite people, lay in a humble, simple ark of bulrushes. Jesus, the far greater Drawer and Bringer Out of mankind, who would draw the evil foe out of his armor, overthrow him, and bring us out of his power, also lay in a humble little manger (Luke 2:12). In both cases the beginning was poor, but the ending majestic. Miriam carried Moses, the redeemer of the Israelites. Mary (which is the very same name as Miriam) carried the Redeemer of the World, Jesus Christ. Miriam brought the infant to the king of Egypt’s daughter and arranged for him to be cared for by her. Mary brought the infant Jesus to the same land in which Moses was raised long before. ” (p. 24-25)

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“As the tabernacle was enclosed by ten curtains, the Church always carries the ten curtains of the holy Ten Commandments that she may better recognize her sins, and accordingly find hope in the ten curtains of Jesus Christ’s comforting benefits enumerated in the Second Article of the Creed. The five wounds of Jesus Christ must always be fixed to the five books of Moses. Law and Gospel must both be preached, that man may know how to live a Christian life and die a blessed death. We should and must hear Moses and the Prophets together (Luke 16:29–31).” (p. 450)

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