Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing

This is one of those books that really make you think. It challenges us to faithfully living out the challenge put forth in Micah eight.

Katongole and Rice begin by stating: "Reconciling All Things. It's a pretty preposterous title for a book. Especially one as short as this." My thoughts precisely, as I picked up the slim volume with a generic cover. Candidly, I was a little skeptical about the contents. Thankfully, I was wrong. Whether you are new to the idea of reconciliation or a veteran or somewhere in between you will find Reconciling All Things an outstanding read. It lays the foundation for a life given to reconciliation with concrete examples and practical guidelines. After establishing that reconciliation is God's gift to a broken world, a gift we are to receive and live on our journey with God and others, there comes a wonderful chapter titled "The Discipline of Lament." It is simply excellent and profound. We are encouraged to "see" the world in all its brokenness and asked to join the reconciliation journey. In order to do this well Katongole and Rice state that we must unlearn speed (history matters and there are no quick fixes), distance ("Like real estate, lament is about location, location, location"), and innocence (we are complicit and frequently resist our own transformation). This chapter offers a framework and terminology I can use to help me better understand my life experiences in my lower-income neighborhood and why reconciliation is so costly. And it gives me a chapter I can have students read, helping them slow down as they desire to make a big impact on the world. Subsequent chapters highlight the role of the church. The book ends with a "Reader's Digest" summary of the book, identifying ten theses of reconciliation, each accompanied by an explanatory paragraph. Pick up this book. Let its contents sink deep within you. You will be the better for having done so. Then offer to facilitate a discussion on the book at your church.