Writing on the Heart: Inviting Scripture to Shape Daily Life

Gerrit Scott Dawson has written a large-themed book that deals with spiritual formation, the ways Christians are shaped or not shaped by reading the Bible. Others have written about this theme--Thomas Merton in Reading the Bible, Adrian von Kaam, Susan Muto, and Robert Mulholland in a variety of works. And yet, none gain the reader's attention as Dawson does.Consider Chapter Two, the encounter between Jesus and a crowd set on exacting punishment from a woman who had broken the Law (for the biblical account read John 7:53-8:11): "I stood in the ring of condemnation. The circle was drawn tight by the crowing people who gawked and jeered at me. I could feel them pressing, but they did not come any closer than about ten feet...." Dawson describes the effort of a mob to condemn the woman, the intervention by Jesus, and then continues this first-person narrative: "I stood alone in the empty ring. The words he wrote were still in the dirt, though the road dust was quietly eroding the letters....'Neither do I condemn you.' The words sounded in my head again. No condemnation....The circle of condemnation had become a ring of grace." Dawson's reading of Scripture pulls readers into the text and offers Christlike spiritual guidance. I read it for myself, but think it would make an excellent book for study groups.